Rescue teams began winding down the search for survivors on Monday as the focus switched to tackling a dire humanitarian disaster caused by the earthquake that has left more than 35,000 dead in Turkey and Syria.

Former Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari, notorious for his outlandish personal corruption, once reportedly told U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke that Pakistan was “too big to fail” — likening the country to U.S. banks that received massive bailouts to prevent collapse in 2008. Although Pakistan is a nuclear power, as well as the fifth most populated country in the world, whether its leaders can pull themselves together and find a way out of the onslaught of crises — perhaps the worst in the country’s history — remains to be seen. Related: The underrated story of 2023

I’m talking about a state-led effort to raise taxes on multimillionaires and billionaires living in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York and Washington.

Cheating Teachers

Tech job bonfire rages on as Microsoft, GitLab and others join in

Biden Suddenly Orders Release Of Another 26 Million Barrels From Strategic Oil Reserve

Number of Newborns with Syphilis Infections Skyrockets in Mississippi

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 11, 2023

If you don’t have time to read down to the end, it seems like the reason that the US is suddenly seeing these things and shooting them down is because they have tweaked their radars in response to some intel to stop screening out slow flying objects. A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor has shot down an object over Canada’s Yukon Territory, per a Tweet from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.The shootdown is the second such incident in two days and the F-22’s third ‘kill’ ever, after the shooting down of a Chinese high-altitude balloon a week ago. Trudeau tweeted he spoke with President Joe Biden on Saturday afternoon about the incident, and that Canadian forces will recover the object’s wreckage.

Insulated from war, quake brings ‘first catastrophe’ to Syria city

Saudi Arabia And Russia Face Off Over Chinese Oil Market Share

Piece of sun breaks off, stuns scientists: ‘Very curious’

A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 8, 2023

Dut’s analysis suggests that Ukraine is bracing for an attack on or around Feb. 15, depending on the weather, and that the western Donbas and/or Zaporizhzhia Oblast are the most likely locations.

Hersh is very unreliable and he has been fooled in the past. But he has also been right in the past. Regardless, this is going to be the “truth” for a lot of people for a long time to come. Seymour Hersh: Navy Divers + Spooks + Norway Took Out Nordstream 2 on Biden’s Orders, Using Timer

A comparison the the war in Ukraine. BREAKING THE MANNERHEIM LINE: SOVIET STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL ADAPTATION IN THE FINNISH-SOVIET WINTER WAR

Chinese surveillance balloon part of massive program over 5 continents: Blinken

Turkish quake survivors face big freeze in cars, tents

Disney Cutting 7,000 Jobs, or 3% of Workforce, Eyes $5.5 Billion in Total Cost Reductions

I admit it, I am linking to this just because of the headline. Portland anarchists attack goat refuge as revenge over homeless encampment removal

Their Alzheimer’s Disease Didn’t Worsen. Why?

Horrific 3Y Auction Sours Post-Powell Bond Rally

Forgot to hit publish on this one.

The Last Undertakers of Bakhmut

Turkey-Syria quake toll tops 7,800 as rescuers battle cold

Medicaid rolls swell as 8 million New Yorkers get coverage at expected record- price of almost $35B

I asked ChatGPT to write a WordPress plugin I needed. It did, in less than 5 minutes

Eric Adams lifts COVID vax mandate for NYC workers — but what of the 1,780 fired?

‘Affront to democracy’: NY Assembly move to snuff out GOP voices in Albany

Ohio crews release toxic chemicals from derailed train

Oil Break Below $80 May Test OPEC’s Resolve

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Russia reported another attempted Tu-141 drone attack deep inside its borders, the latest in a series of such incidents.

Ukraine army discipline crackdown sparks fear and fury on the front

MIDDLE EAST EARTHQUAKE: ‘An Emergency Within an Emergency’

Can Beijing halt China’s housing avalanche? The most important economic-policy question for 2023?

A Wall Street Time Bomb

Migrants abandon NYC for Canada with taxpayer-funded bus tickets

They planned on “conducting critical infrastructure attacks, including statements about sniper attacks against substations, and how conducting a small number of attacks on electrical substations could cause a ‘cascading failure.’”

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 3, 2023

Kyiv Officially Getting Long-Range Rocket-Boosted Bomb

Joe Biden Offered Vladimir Putin 20 Percent of Ukraine to End War: Report

“First, our best assessment at the moment is that whatever the surveillance payload is on this balloon, it does not create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit,” the official added. “But out of an abundance of caution, we have taken additional mitigation steps. I’m not going to go into what those are.”

When it comes to describing the problems in Miltenberg in the German state of Bavaria, District Administrator Marco Scherf doesn’t know where to begin. In the past year, about 500 people from Syria, Afghanistan and North Africa came to the largely rural district, along with around 1,500 refugees from Ukraine.

An excellent interview that started of seeming like it was going to talk about things I already knew and then went into stuff that was all new to me. Inside the global battle over chip manufacturing.

Pfizer Director of mRNA Research Raises Fertility Worries Over COVID-19 Vaccine More info here.

Biden Administration Blocks Development of Alaska’s Pebble Mine