Linkee-poo Saturday June 5

"On May 22nd, a stationary robot on Mars used its arm to scoop up some Martian sand. It then slowly dumped it onto itself, with the brisk Mars wind snatching the tiny grains and whipping them against the machine’s solar panels."

"A heroic rat named Magawa has been working for five years in Cambodia, sniffing out dozens of land mines. He is believed to have saved lives… Now, the animal is about to embark on a well-deserved retirement." That'll do, rat. That'll do.

"The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday urged parents to vaccinate their teenagers against Covid-19, citing a rise in the number of adolescents hospitalized with the disease in March and April."

"The United States was unprepared for the coronavirus, the response 'wasn't a good performance,' and there's still "a lot of work to do" to get ready for the next pandemic when it comes. That's the assessment of Dr. Anne Schuchat, the No. 2 official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is retiring this summer after 33 years at the agency."

"A year and a half into the pandemic, we still don’t know how it began. This week, a look at how investigating COVID-19’s origins became a political and scientific minefield. Plus, how a mistake of microns caused so much confusion about how COVID spreads. And, making sense of the 'metaverse.'"

On the Media podcast with some insights. "President Joe Biden portrayed the May jobs report as a jumping off point for more spending on infrastructure and education to keep growth going — essentially an argument for his agenda. But the employment numbers issued Friday also hinted at the possible limits of how much government aid can be pumped into the world's largest economy."

"The Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed Saturday to support a global minimum corporate tax rate of at least 15% in order to deter multinational companies from avoiding taxes by stashing profits in low-rate countries."

"Authorities said Friday that a man wanted on a weapons violation fired a gun before deputies fatally shot him in Minneapolis, a city on edge since George Floyd’s death more than a year ago under an officer’s knee and the more recent fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright in a nearby suburb."

Why the judiciary matters… "In a ruling that compared the AR-15 to a Swiss Army knife, a federal judge overturned California's longtime ban on assault weapons on Friday, ruling it violates the Second Amendment's right to bear arms."

"The American Legion Department of Ohio has suspended the charter of a post in the city of Hudson after a Memorial Day incident in which the keynote speaker's microphone was turned off during part of his speech that touched on Black people's historic role in creating the national holiday, the state organization said in a news release."

"Almost five decades later, police have arrested and charged a man in the death of an Illinois teen whose body was found in a field stabbed multiple times… Barry Lee Whelpley, 76, of Mounds View, Minnesota, was arrested on June 2 for the 1972 killing of Julie Ann Hanson, a 15-year-old resident of Naperville, Illinois, according to the Naperville Police Department."

"The FBI responded Friday after a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Nashville was diverted to Albuquerque after a passenger approached the cabin in a way that forced flight attendants to act. Delta said Flight 386 landed in Albuquerque without incident and the passenger was removed by law enforcement."

"The Justice Department is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over political fundraising activity at his former business, a DeJoy spokesman said Thursday." Couldn't happen to a nicer person.

"In the two decades since, the Taliban have fought the Afghan government and its international allies to regain land and power. Analysts say the insurgents have been growing stronger for years. Now, as American and NATO troops withdraw, the Taliban appear even more emboldened and are wresting more territory from the U.S.-backed Afghan government."

"The Arizona emails were obtained by American Oversight, a legal watchdog, via a Freedom of Information request. They showed how Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, pushed officials to act and how a controversial election audit in Arizona’s most populous county came to be set up."

"Alec Beck, the lawyer representing MyPillow's CEO, Mike Lindell, has left his law firm a day after filing a new lawsuit against Smartmatic and Dominion, according to Bloomberg… Barnes & Thornburg, Beck's former employer, said he filed the suit without its authorization."

"But back home, Manchin is facing a set of opposing forces. Republicans in the state, loyal to former President Donald Trump and consumed with the partisan politics of the moment, have grown annoyed at how Manchin signals a willingness to break with Democrats but often votes with the party in the end. And many Democrats in the state, worn down by years of Republican domination, worry that Manchin's undying focus on bipartisanship is no longer possible when the Republican Party is unwilling to meet in the middle."

"Facebook has extended former President Donald Trump's suspension for two years and says it will only reinstate him 'if the risk to public safety has receded.'… The decision comes after Facebook's Oversight Board told the company it had been wrong to impose an indefinite ban on Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol." Yeah, that'll help.

"A day after being suspended from Facebook for another two years, former President Donald Trump returns to the political arena Saturday night, poised to get back into his comfort zone speaking from the kind of platform he seems to enjoy most… He's making a speech before the North Carolina Republican Party convention, kicking off what's likely to be a spree of summer campaigning. It's his first public speech since his address at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February."