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Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has said that Moscow would have to respond if Sweden and Finland intended to join NATO.Maria Zakharova held a press conference on Friday and reflected on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the intentions of Russia going forward.A clip of her speech has begun to go viral on social media as she appears to issue a threat aimed at Sweden and Finland, saying it would have "serious military-political repercussions." The video has amassed over 300,000 views.https://twitter.com/Femi_Sorry/status/1497217148267253760"Finland and Sweden should not base their security damaging the security of other countries," Zakharova said during the press conference."Clearly [the]...

The Ukrainian military has released a statement thanking a marine for allegedly sacrificing himself in order to demolish a bridge that would allow Russian tanks to advance. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine released the statement Friday via social media, reporting that Vitaliy Volodymyrovych Skakun, a battalion engineer, had voluntarily undertaken a mission to mine out the support structure of the Genichesky Bridge near the Kyiv before Russian forces could cross it. Shakun did not have time to flee the blast zone before detonating the explosives, and informed his battalion that he would be blowing it up...

All residents living in the 93905 zip code of East Salinas have officially received at least one dose of the covid vaccine. This specific area held 18% of the total number of positive cases in Monterey County. "I feel a little more relaxed with life. Not too worried about all this," said Abraham Garcia, Salinas resident. With the indoor mask mandate being lifted, Garcia said this new hope in vaccination numbers gives him reassurance that things are starting to revert back to normal life. The program Virus Integrated Distribution of Aid VIDA has been a great help along with other...

I have been given a copy of document issued today by the Russian Ministry of Health which shows it is anticipating a major medical event in which doctors have to be drafted from across the country. It indicates Russia is anticipating a massive medical emergency and has ordered health organisations to immediately identify medical staff ready to relocate and work. The document from the Russian Ministry of Health is signed by the deputy health minister and dated today - February 25. It asks medical organisations to be ready "to be promptly involved in activities aimed at saving lives and preserving...

As Russian troops entered the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Friday, Russian officials indicated that Moscow was willing to send a delegation to Belarus for talks with their Ukrainian counterparts. But early indicators suggest that Moscow still seeks the full surrender of the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet for talks and indicated that he would be willing to discuss Ukraine’s “neutral status,” which would mark a dramatic shift for a country that currently seeks membership in both NATO and the European Union. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said...

A security guard posted inside a high-end jewelry store in Chicago foiled a broad daylight smash-and-grab on Tuesday, authorities said. The attempted heist happened just before 12:30 p.m. at the Marshall Pierce & Company jewelry store in the 900 block of North Michigan Avenue in the city’s Magnificent Mile neighborhood, Chicago police said. Three male suspects entered the store and walked up to a watch case when one suspect took out a hammer from his jacket, according to police. Before the suspect could smash any glass cases, police said a security guard intervened and ordered the suspects to the ground....

You guys ready to get madder than you've ever been? ...

Voters overwhelmingly grade President Joe Biden’s management of the Russia-Ukraine crisis poorly and equally view his handling of foreign policy — the former senator’s specialty — a failure.In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey on the crisis, 64% rated Biden’s handling of the conflict fair to poor. An equal amount said his “handling” of national security issues was fair to poor.Rasmussen noted that those rating Biden “poor” dominated the survey. In it, 49% called Biden’s handling of the crisis poor, while 51% said his foreign policy is poor.The polling outfit also asked likely voters about the importance of defending Ukraine against...

The real winners of the Super Bowl this year weren’t the Rams, who played a great game to win the title. They were cryptocurrencies, which in a few years have gone from nerd obsession to powerhouse advertiser buying airtime on the most watched television event of the year. But crypto going mainstream has left an increasing number of investors puzzled about their tax obligations. As the April 15 tax deadline approaches, they will need answers more urgently. Let’s start with the good news. Tax treatments have evolved from a one-size-fits-all approach to more nuanced guidelines for disposals, staking, hard-forks, payments...

President Barack Obama was caught on camera on Monday assuring outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have “more flexibility” to deal with contentious issues like missile defense after the U.S. presidential election. Obama, during talks in Seoul, urged Moscow to give him “space” until after the November ballot, and Medvedev said he would relay the message to incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin. The unusually frank exchange came as Obama and Medvedev huddled together on the eve of a global nuclear security summit in the South Korean capital, unaware their words were being picked up by microphones as reporters...

[Catholic Caucus] Does Dignitatis Humanae Mean Anything? The documents of the Second Vatican Council are sometimes characterized as ambiguous. This suggests, of course, that the documents have more than one plausible meaning. There is a worse possibility, however. At least when it comes to Dignitatis humanae, a Council document might have no meaning at all.The idea is shocking, but solely as a matter of logic, it is not impossible. Consider, for example, a document which says both "A" and "not A." The document is ambiguous only if the passages are read in isolation: the document might mean "A," and...

Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev wrote "No War Please" on a TV camera moments after advancing to the final at the Dubai Championships on Friday. The seventh-ranked Rublev had just beaten Poland's Hubert Hurkacz 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (5) in their semifinal match before writing his message on the camera -- as is common after matches. Russian troops bore down on Ukraine's capital Friday in an invasion of a democratic country that has fueled fears of wider war in Europe and triggered worldwide efforts to make Russia stop.

"Estimates are 50,000 Ukrainians will be dead or wounded," co-host Sonny Hostin first told viewers, "and that this is going to start a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis in Europe. We’re talking about 5 million people that are going to be displaced. It’s heartbreaking to hear what is going to happen." "Well, I’m scared of what’s going to happen in Western Europe too," Behar said. "You know, you plan a trip. You want to go there. I want to go to Italy for four years and I haven’t been able to make it because of the pandemic.Video at link

WASHINGTON — A Florida man who bragged he "broke the internet" when he was photographed carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's podium during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 75 days in prison on Friday. Adam Johnson, a stay-at-home father of five boys, traveled to D.C. in support of former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to President Joe Biden. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton sentenced Johnson to prison on Friday, saying Johnson made "a mockery" of the events by grabbing Pelosi's lectern and...

Just in the last day they removed all the PDF files from the embassy website here https://ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/sections-offices/defense-threat-reduction-office/biological-threat-reduction-program/ The good news is they are still archived https://web.archive.org/web/20170130193016/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-kharkiv-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210511164310/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-luhansk-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170221125752/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-dnipropetrovsk-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210506053014/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-vinnitsa-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170221125752/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-dnipropetrovsk-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170207122550/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-kherson-fact-sheet-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170223011502/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-ternopil-fact-sheet-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170208032526/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-zakarpatska-fact-sheet-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170208032526/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-zakarpatska-fact-sheet-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170202040923/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-lviv-dl-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170201004446/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-lviv-rdvl-eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20161230143004/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-eidss.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20210506212717/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-pathogen-asset-control.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170207153023/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/dtro-dnipropetrovsk-rdvl_eng.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170211022339/https://photos.state.gov/libraries/ukraine/895/pdf/kiev-ivm-fact-sheet-eng.pdf These labs are co-run by Fauci's EcoHealth Alliance and rumor is Russia's entire military operation right now is unofficially to either secure and/or destroy these labs and gather evidence.

Here is the literal memo to the Dems from Biden's polling firm. Declare a win over Covid and move on. I suspect CDC will get the memo. Will @GavinNewsom and @lapublichealth ? We shall see. SOTU is Tuesday. Documents at link---Sorry, it's Twitter.

OK, place your bets. (Is this question on the betting sites?) On what date will an agreement be signed ending the Russian/Ukraine conflict? I'm going with April 7, 2022.

/A>Cargill Ship Hit In Missile Attack In Ukraine WatersStar Tribune reports a vessel chartered by Cargill Inc., a Minnesota-based agribusiness giant, was hit in a missile attack after leaving a deep-sea port on the outskirts of Odessa on Thursday. “Right now, our priority is the safety of our people in the region. This is a rapidly evolving situation with a great deal of uncertainty,” said April Nelson, a Cargill spokeswoman, in an e-mail. “We are currently gathering information and assessing potential impacts to Cargill and our customers.” Cargill said that the crew was safe, and the vessel was rerouted to...

ArmA III, a video game that in the right circumstances can look pretty realistic, has a long history of turning up on news broadcasts and being either confused with or intentionally used in place of actual camera footage of real-world events. That trend is continuing in the current crisis in Ukraine. As Bloomberg reports, some of the most-viewed videos on Facebook’s gaming channel today were a number of clips purporting to be of military action taking place in Ukraine, “watched by more than 110,000 people and shared more than 25,000 times,” before they were taken down by Facebook. The same...

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a Friday Atlantic op-ed blamed Russia’s assault on Ukraine on former President Donald Trump, tying Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion to the January 6 Capitol riot. In an opinion piece that used the word “democracy” 47 times, Clinton claimed Putin, the “implacable enemy of democracy,” attacked Ukraine in part because “Republican leaders are abandoning core tenets of American democracy even as the stakes in the global contest between democracy and autocracy are clearer and higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War.”