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he number of oil rigs operating in North America fell this week, the second decline over the past three weeks amid elevated oil prices. The number of oil rigs fell from 869 to 839 due to a decline in Canadian oil rigs from 207 to 176, according to oil services giant Baker Hughes. U.S. oil rigs were unchanged at 663 and Gulf of Mexico rigs climbed by one to 12. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude contracts rose nearly 1.4 percent to close on Friday at $104.43. The U.S. average for a gallon of gasoline was $4.274, a penny...

Montefiore says that is his only work that he knows Putin has read. It charts Potemkin’s annexation of Crimea and conquering of southern Ukraine – territory they called “New Russia” and which Putin wanted back. “That’s what Putin wants to call it,” Montefiore said. He said Putin had probably planned to take back the southern coast as far as Odessa as part of Russia, and keep northern Ukraine and the capital Kyiv as a republic but governed by a PUPPET leader like Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. Montefiore, who wrote two biographies of Stalin, said that Putin’s raving speeches had betrayed...

Millionaire businessman Willie Wilson plans to give away $1 million worth of gas in Chicago as the White House recently confirmed prices would keep rising. Wilson said Friday he would donate the gas on Thursday at 50 locations in the city and Cook County, ABC 7 reported. “Starting at 7 a.m., each vehicle at those gas stations will get $50 in gas until $1 million is exhausted, as residents struggle with high gas prices,” the outlet said.

An Oregon man recently learned he was an $8.9 million lottery winner after checking a forgotten ticket he purchased on Christmas Eve. Wilbur Brown and some friends gathered at the Moose Lodge in Springfield on December 24, when one of his pals purchased a “26 for $25” Megabucks lottery ticket, the Oregon Lottery said in a press release. The ticket allows players to play 26 consecutive drawings by buying a single ticket for $25. After seeing his friend buy one, Brown purchased a ticket for himself. His ticket applied to drawings for 13 weeks, from December 25 – to February...

With prices rising at the gas pump — and a court order that allows climate change consideration when developing the agency’s policies — President Joe Biden’s Department of the Interior announced on Friday it will resume plans for issuing oil and gas leases on federal land. Biden had halted any oil and gas development on public land in the early days of his presidency and the issue has been in and out of the courts since. The case is the Louisiana v. Biden, Case No. 22-30087 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District. The Biden administration was...

Last week, Andrey Soldatov, a respected author on the Russian secret services, said sources inside the FSB told him that Sergey Beseda, 68, head of the agency's foreign service, had been placed under arrest on Putin's orders. Also arrested was Anatoly Bolyukh, Beseda's deputy, according to Soldatov, who said Putin is 'truly unhappy' with the agency - which he ran before becoming president. Putin is said to blame the agency for intelligence which assured him ahead of the invasion that Russian forces would face only token resistance from the Ukrainian army and that Ukrainians themselves were eager to be rid...

Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a Friends, today we celebrate the feast of St. Joseph. Every episode of Joseph’s life is a crisis. He discovered that the woman to whom he was betrothed was pregnant. He resolved to divorce her quietly, but then the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream and explained the anomalous pregnancy. So Joseph understood what was happening in the context of God’s providence and he took Mary as his wife. Next, discovering that the child was in mortal danger, Joseph took mother and baby on a...

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, alternatively translated into English as Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors or Shadows of Our Ancestors (Ukrainian: Тіні забутих предків, romanized: Tini zabutykh predkiv), also known in English under the alternative title Wild Horses of Fire and under the mistaken title of In the Shadow of the Past,[1] is a 1965 Ukrainian film by the Georgian–Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov based on the novel Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky that tells a "Romeo and Juliet tale" of young Ukrainian Hutsul lovers trapped on opposite sides of a Carpathian family blood feud.[2] The film was...

The prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia arrived in Kyiv in a show of high-level backing for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who briefed them on the war with Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday as Russian forces pushed deeper into the beleaguered southern port city of Mariupol, with heavy street battles shutting down a major steel plant and hampering rescue efforts.Military skirmishes erupted across the heart of Mariupol’s city center, obstructing local efforts to rescue hundreds of people believed to be trapped in the basement of a theater struck by a bomb or missile Wednesday. Russia denied bombing the theater, which was being used to protect children."The city is leveled to the ground," a member of the Azov regiment...

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said that while he thinks increased coronavirus funding is needed, “the Republicans are right to make that point that we need to pay for this money.” Because deficit spending fuels inflation. Brooks stated, “The Democrats are right. We need the money. We need to spend the money on the medicines, on the coverage, all the stuff that is in there. But I think we need to get back to a normal situation, where we pay for what we spend. If we just spend money without raising taxes, A. We fuel...

Explanation: 2MASS J17554042+6551277 doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but that's the name, a coordinate-based catalog designation, of the star centered in this sharp field of view. Fans of the distant universe should get used to its spiky appearance though. The diffraction pattern is created by the 18 hexagonal mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope. After unfolding, the segments have now been adjusted to achieve a diffraction limited alignment at infrared wavelengths while operating in concert as a single 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror. The resulting image taken by Webb's NIRcam demonstrates their precise alignment is the best...

Republicans demand new probe into Hunter Biden laptop, coverup A growing number of Republicans around the country are demanding a new investigation into Hunter Biden after the New York Times confirmed the authenticity of a laptop whose contents were published by The Post 17 months ago. Though The Post exclusively revealed in September 2020 the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the potentially compromising material contained there, the story was censored by social media companies at the behest of the Democratic Party. Mainstream media outlets — including The Times — attacked or ignored The Post revelations, while the Biden administration...

House Democrats are turning up the pressure on oil companies as high gas prices continue to hurt drivers, with a congressional hearing planned for April to question oil executives. As Republicans seek to blame President Biden for the pain at the pump – with gas prices nationally at $4.262 per gallon, according to AAA – Democrats have sought to turn the attention away from Biden and place the blame first on Russian President Vladimir Putin and now on big oil companies.

Greetings: Can anybody here point me to a non-PC web browser that can post images as wallpaper? I have both Microsoft Edge and Gab Dissenter, but neither appears to be capable of posting images as wallpaper. I was thinking of downloading Firefox again, as I've had it before, and it can create wallpapers from images. Unfortunately, I have no idea whether that lunatic who wanted to squash Trumpian internet thought is still in charge of Mozilla. (FD: I do use Firefox on my work laptop, and it's fine for that purpose and used by lots of us at work, along...

Aerorozvidka (Aerial Reconnaissance) is being used to attack Russian drones and target Vladmir Putin's army of tanks with the help of the newly available Starlink system which improves internet and connection speeds US billionaire Elon Musk's new technology helps to keep Ukrainian drones connected with their bases It comes as the country has continue to suffer through internet and power outages throughout the invasion The Starlink app is the most downloaded in Ukraine with global downloads tripling in the last two weeks Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system is giving Ukrainian forces the edge in winning the drone war as the...

The film follows U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin (Grant), who enlists the help of Alicia Huberman (Bergman), the daughter of a German war criminal, to infiltrate a Nazi organization. The situation becomes complicated when the two fall in love as Huberman is instructed to seduce Alex Sebastian (Rains), a leader of the organization who had previously been infatuated with her.

ANSING, Mich. (AP) — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday vetoed Republicans' proposal to permanently cut the state income tax, make more seniors eligible for deductions and restore a child tax credit, saying it would reduce funding for basic government services. The veto, which was expected, may prompt negotiations between GOP legislative leaders and the Democratic governor, who has called for more targeted tax breaks for retirees and lower-wage workers....... While Michigan has a $7 billion budget surplus, her administration says it is largely one-time revenue that cannot be counted on in future years..... “This plan would have cut taxes for...

Hitler phones Putin because he wants him to stop his invasion; people are comparing Putin to him and he's embarrassed. Putin refuses.

apocalyptic landscapes in Mariupol from today