Random News: May 11, 2023

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s May 11, 2023, and it’s a Thursday for some reason. Stuff keeps happening, and you can ignore it or hate it or love it or be indifferent to it, but you should know stuff despite all of those possibilities…

• The coronavirus public health emergency officially ends today. Free COVID tests are going away and young kids won’t be able to get routine vaccinations at pharmacies. Tracking outbreaks will become harder. The CDC will get less data — or none at all — from labs, hospitals and state agencies.
• So that’s that, I guess.
• Also ending today: the pandemic-era Title 42 border policy. Title 42 let the U.S. turn asylum seekers away, instead of allowing them to stay here while waiting for a court date. Officials expect an even greater surge at the border now.
• The Biden administration sent more troops to the border, introduced an emergency rule limiting who’s eligible for asylum, and expanded enforcement.
• Birth control pills are a step closer to being available over the counter. The FDA’s outside advisers unanimously endorsed the idea yesterday. The agency is considering one specific pill, the progestin-only Opill.
• A final decision is expected this summer or fall. The FDA isn’t required to follow the advisers’ recommendations (although it typically does).
• I don’t want to waste a bunch of time talking about alleged criminal and current Republican congressman and continuing national joke George Santos.
• I do want to mention that he pleaded not guilty yesterday after being charged with 13 federal crimes including fraud and money laundering.
• Santos was released from jail on a $500,000 bond. Who paid it? No one knows.
• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said he would wait before calling on Santos to resign. Despite the serious federal charges, he will not expel Santos from Congress, it would seem. 
• Later in the day, McCarthy said he will not support Santos’ reelection, and confirmed that if the Ethics Committee determines Santos broke the law, he would call for him to resign.
• Which he won’t, and that will be hilarious. Regardless, it is likely (but not 100% guaranteed) that another Republican will eventually take that house seat in the district that includes parts of Long Island and Queens.
• Moving on…
• A second Michigan school district is banning backpacks on school premises due to concerns about gun violence, this time because a third-grade student was found with a loaded gun.
• Huh. I’d have just banned the gun.
• Grand Rapids Public Schools said in a statement that the weapon was discovered yesterday morning at Stocking Elementary School and that it was the fourth time this year that the district has uncovered a student with a handgun — three of them in backpacks.
• So the backpacks are obviously the problem.
• IT’S THE FUCKING GUNS, YOU INSANE IDIOTS.
• I didn’t watch Assface’s little town hall thing last night, so ask someone else about that.
• Fun Zak Fact: I don’t watch television at all. Basically zero, other than a few sporting events here and there.
• Based on its description, the whole thing sounded like a big GOP circle jerk, with Republican voters asking a Republican candidate Republican things.
• He did apparently say he would pardon the insurrectionists from January 6, and disparaged the woman who he sexually assaulted. I guess that’s all.
• Following up on a story I gave you last month, Daniel Perry of Texas, who murdered a BLM protester almost three years ago, was sentenced yesterday to 25 years in prison.
• The problem? Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has promised to approve a pardon for Perry despite the trial and conviction by a jury.
• Perry initiated the fatal encounter when he ran a red light and drove his vehicle into a crowd gathered at the George Floyd protest. Foster was legally carrying an assault-style rifle and approached Perry’s car and motioned for him to lower his window, at which point Perry fatally shot him with a handgun.
• Both men are white, if it matters. 
• Moving on…
• Heather Armstrong, who really launched the popular and acclaimed “Mommy Blog” trend back in 2001 with her site Dooce, has died via suicide. She was 47.
• Armstrong had battled both alcoholism and depression. It’s a constant fight for many people and they don’t always win. Rest in peace.
• And now, The Weather: “Plenty” by Good Wilson 
• Woke up today and got to hear the first new Queens of the Stone Age release in six years. “Emotion Sickness” is the first single from the upcoming album ‘In Times New Roman’, and I was afraid it would suck.
• It did not suck at all. I’m actually pretty stoked about it and am looking forward to the entire album release on June 16.
• Police officers in Enid, OK were on patrol when they heard someone repeatedly yelling for help. They valiantly ran through the fields searching for the person in distress.
• It was a goat. In the cops’ defense, watching the body cam footage, it really dd sound like a human, as goats sometimes do. The goat did not need help. It was just being a goat, though it did seem somewhat annoyed.
• From the Sports Desk… both of the NBA semifinals games that had teams on the brink of elimination ended with no eliminations. The New York Knicks beat the Miami Heat 112-103 to bring their series to 3-2. The Golden State Warriors beat the Los Angeles Lakers 121-106 to also bring their series to 3-2.
• And in fact, the other two matchups are also at 3-2. Whole bunch of exciting Game 6’s coming up tonight and tomorrow.
• From the Sports-Related Desk…the salary of West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins was cut by a million dollars per year, but he will return to the sideline next season in the wake of using an anti-gay slur in a radio interview earlier this week. He also got a three-game suspension and is required to attend sensitivity training.
• He should have been fired.
• In a radio interview on News Radio 700 WLW in Cincinnati, Huggins recalled “rubber penises” were thrown on the floor of a Crosstown Shootout game between Cincinnati and Xavier. Huggins then said, “What it was, was all those fags, those Catholic fags, I think.”
• The university stated that “any incidents of similar derogatory and offensive language will result in immediate termination.”
• Pffft. 
• Today in history… Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the British House of Commons (1812). Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format (1997). 
• May 11 is the birthday of organist Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach (1715), US vice president Charles W. Fairbanks (1852), aviator Harriet Quimby (1875), pianist/composer Irving Berlin (1888), artist Salvador Dalí (1904), actor Phil Silvers (1911), physicist Richard Feynman (1918), computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930), religious leader Louis Farrakhan (1933), singer-songwriter Eric Burdon (1941), NFL player Matt Leinart (1983), and NFL player Cam Newton (1989).

I’ve got a typical Thursday ahead… work to do, meetings to hold, people to talk to. I’m gonna listen to that new QOTSA song a few more times regardless. Enjoy your day.