Extra, Extra
Will America Show Its Metal? “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address U.S. military officers at the National Defense University on Monday as part of a last-minute push to convince Congress to provide more money for weapons before funding runs out.” And from The Atlantic (Gift Article): We Only Need Some Metal Things: “‘I really hope that people in the U.S. can understand that this is not only war for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” Yuriy Matsarsky, the private, said. ‘It’s really war for democracy, it’s war for a better world, it’s war against dictatorship, it’s war against modern fascism.’ Ukrainians are not asking other countries to send troops, he added. ‘We only need some metal things to save Ukraine.'” (Meanwhile, “lawyers for Alexey Navalny said Monday they have lost contact with the jailed Russian opposition leader, who was believed to be imprisoned in a penal colony about 150 miles east of Moscow, and his whereabouts are unknown.”)
+ Bibi’s Bet: “Even as the Israeli military obtained battle plans for a Hamas invasion and analysts observed significant terrorism exercises just over the border in Gaza, the payments continued. For years, Israeli intelligence officers even escorted a Qatari official into Gaza, where he doled out money from suitcases filled with millions of dollars.” NYT (Gift Article): ‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan that Propped Up Hamas. Here’s the latest from CNN, BBC, and Times of Israel.
+ Prez Dispenser: Following last week’s Congressional hearings on antisemitism, Penn’s president Liz Magill resigned. Will Harvard’s president be next? As Harvard President Faces Pressure to Resign, Some Faculty Show Support.
+ The Cesspool: Elon Musk didn’t just allow Alex Jones back onto his platform, he welcomed him with a live chat. Elon Musk allows controversial conspiracy theorist Alex Jones back on X.
+ Travel Ban: “The family of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year old woman whose September 2022 killing sparked countrywide protests in Iran, has been prohibited from traveling to France to collect a human rights award in her name.” Iran blocks Mahsa Amini’s family from collecting a human rights prize in her name.
+ Moves Like Bagger: “Nearly one in seven shoppers admitted to having purposely stolen items at self-checkout, with nearly half of those saying they would do it again.” Dollar General is having its own self-checkout reckoning.
+ Career Criminal: “It feels like a script you’d find on the over-piled desk of some harried Hollywood agent: MAGA-style Republican, while toiling for years as a U.S. diplomat and ambassador, secretly leads a double life, allegedly spying for the Cuban government for more than four decades — completely undetected. Except that if true, the allegations against Victor Manuel Rocha, a career foreign service officer accused of serving as an agent of the Cuban regime since 1981, have real-life — and dangerous — implications. After Rocha was indicted on Monday on espionage charges, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, ‘This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent.'” Politico: The Too-Weird-to-Be-Fiction Story of Cuba’s Spying Ambassador. Talk about playing the long game; the Cuban intel agency may have started working with Rocha as early as 1973…
