Today’s edition of quick hits.
* In the occupied Donetsk region: “Ukraine killed dozens of Russian servicemen using U.S.-supplied artillery to hit a base in an occupied part of the country on New Years Eve, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Monday.”
* Quite a quote: “Former White House aide Hope Hicks told a fellow aide in text messages during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that ‘we all look like domestic terrorists now’ as Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.”
* A new treasure trove: “The Jan. 6 select committee has unloaded a vast database of its underlying evidence — emails between Trump attorneys, text messages among horrified White House aides and outside advisers, internal communications among security and intelligence officials — all coming to grips with Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election and its disastrous consequences.”
* Bolsonaro fled to Florida? “After a contentious presidential race — seen by most as Brazil’s most consequential election in decades — the country’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, opted to take an unconventional route to get out of attending incoming President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva’s inauguration: Fleeing the country.”
* Encouraging news on crime rates: “At the start of this year, America’s crime trends looked grim: Murders had spiked at a record speed in 2020 and increased further in 2021. But now that the year is ending, it’s clear that the violence has eased.”
* Capital punishment: “Tennessee has not complied with its own lethal injection process ever since it was revised in 2018, resulting in several executions being conducted without proper testing of the drugs used, according to an independent review released Wednesday.”
* All is not well at Twitter: “Twitter Inc. was accused of not paying its rent in a lawsuit filed by the landlord for one of its offices in San Francisco. The landlord, Columbia Reit-650 California LLC, alleges that the social-media company has failed to pay $136,260 of rent due on the office space at 650 California St., according to the lawsuit filed Thursday.”
* Best wishes for a speedy recovery: “Rep. Jamie Raskin, a prominent member of the Jan. 6 committee and a former Trump impeachment manager, announced Wednesday that he’s been diagnosed with cancer.”
See you tomorrow.
