Via Business Insider:

Last week, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona canceled $1 billion in student loan debt for about 72,000 defrauded borrowers.

The decision, his first major one as President Joe Biden’s education chief, came after a series of investigations over the past decade of for-profit schools for engaging in fraudulent behavior related to federal loans. Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute were the main institutions connected with the canceled debt, but others were similarly accused, according to a series of legal settlements.

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Via Fox News:

President Biden will hold his first news conference as commander-in-chief Thursday at 1:15 p.m. EDT in the East Room of the White House.

The conference will be streamed on Fox News Channel and Fox News Digital.

Biden’s first press conference comes over two months into the new administration, a delay that raised eyebrows in the media world.

Donald Trump waited 27 days into his presidency to hold a press conference, Barack Obama waited just 20 days before holding one, and George W. Bush waited 33 days before taking questions from the press in a formal setting.

The White House defended Biden, noting he has taken brief questions in informal settings.

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Via NY Post:

She slept with his wife — and he made her pay.

A woman in Japan must fork over hundreds of dollars to a man because she had sex with his wife, according to a rare court ruling.

The Tokyo District Court ordered the unnamed 37-year-old gal to pay the 39-year-old jilted husband $1,010 because she had an affair with his 35-year-old spouse, according to a Feb. 16 ruling reported by the Japanese news outlet The Asahi Shimbun.

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Via Dnyuz:

A stockpile of 29 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine that were found languishing in a facility in Italy became the new flash point on Wednesday in the conflict between the pharmaceutical company and the European Union, as the bloc prepared to unveil stringent export restrictions primarily meant to stop drugmakers from sending doses abroad.

The Italian authorities found the vaccines in a site visit, European Union officials said, at a factory near Rome that is contracted to fill and finish Covid-19 vaccine vials for AstraZeneca.

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Via NY Post:

An Illinois man is facing a hate crime charge for giving a Nazi salute and saying “white power” to a mixed-race family outside a pharmacy, police said.

Justyn Giarraputo, 37, was arrested by cops in New Lenox Friday, one day after a woman told investigators he made the offensive gesture and yelled the racist slogan several times toward her and her three children outside a Walgreens, police said.

The woman’s three children, two of whom are black, had stayed in her car as she went into the pharmacy, she told cops.

The man later identified as Giarraputo was sitting in a vehicle parked next to hers when he struck his chest and made the hateful comment and gesture as she was leaving, police said.

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BIDEN: “…and who am I turning this over to?”

STAFFER: “I think it’s time for the press to leave.” pic.twitter.com/WtFc7iLDS5

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 24, 2021

Nope….

Researchers in Mexico have made a nose-only Covid mask, which is specifically for eating and talking

🙄
pic.twitter.com/yYUEi0e6Q3

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 24, 2021

Biden on tasking VP Harris with overseeing border response:

“When she speaks, she speaks for me — doesn’t have to check with me. She knows what she’s doing.” pic.twitter.com/Wtpz8Vgrx0

— The Recount (@therecount) March 24, 2021

Via DailyMail:

The first test of a project backed to spray millions of tonnes of chalk into the stratosphere, in an attempt to ‘dim the sun’ and cool the Earth, could happen in June.

Harvard University experts will test the system by sending a large balloon 12 miles above the Swedish town of Kiruna and have it drop 2kg of chalk dust into the stratosphere.

The aim of the estimated $3 million mission, backed by billionaire Bill Gates, is to have the chalk deflect a portion of the sun’s radiation, stop it from hitting the surface, and cool the planet.

The idea has been heavily criticised since its inception, with project director Frank Keutsch even calling the need for this scale of geo-engineering ‘terrifying’.

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Via CNN:

After mass shootings in Boulder and Atlanta that killed 18 people in the span of a single week, lawmakers are once again calling for stricter gun regulation in America. The gun industry is already preparing for a surge of sales.

“When you hear more calls for firearm restrictions, we have observed gun sale increases primarily from people buying before they’re not able to,” said Rob Southwick, founder of the market research firm Southwick Associates.
It’s too soon to know how the back-to-back shootings will affect sales of firearms, industry experts say. Reliable figures from federal background checks won’t be released until next month. But if history is any guide, gun dealers and manufacturers can expect a surge in demand.

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Via The Hill:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says in a newly published podcast interview that he does not “feel particularly comfortable” with Twitter’s permanent ban on former President Trump.

Sanders appeared on The New York Times podcast “The Ezra Klein Show” on Tuesday to discuss the state of the Democratic Party and was asked about criticisms from conservative figures that liberals had become “too censorious” and “too willing” to censor others.

“Look, you have a former president in Trump, who is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn’t believe in the rule of law. This is a bad news guy,” Sanders said. “But if you’re asking me, do I feel particularly comfortable that the president, the then-president of the United States, could not express his views on Twitter? I don’t feel comfortable about it.”

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Via Chron:

WASHINGTON – The long-running saga behind the coronavirus vaccine developed by the drugmaker AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford made another dramatic turn Tuesday as independent monitors took the extraordinary step of questioning the company’s portrayal of its data – a move that cast into doubt the fate of the vaccine in the United States.

In a memo sent to company and government officials obtained by The Washington Post, experts who have been overseeing the vaccine trial expressed concern and disappointment that the drugmaker had presented “outdated and potentially misleading” data on its coronavirus vaccine, making the shots appear more effective than shown by fuller data.

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Via CBS:

The Pentagon has received a request to provide space at military installations to house the influx of migrant children on the southern border. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier Tuesday signed an order directing Northern Command to support housing migrant children, and Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said the Pentagon is reviewing this request.

Kirby told reporters Tuesday the Department of Defense has received a request from the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for housing minors, for a vacant dorm at Joint Base San Antonio and land at Fort Bliss, located near El Paso, Texas.

Representatives from HHS conducted a site survey of Joint Base San Antonio last week.

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LOLOLOLOL.

Via NYPost:

The Los Angeles Times revealed late Tuesday that it is receiving a $10 million loan from the Paycheck Protection Program — the maximum allowed under a series of federal bailouts designed to help businesses devastated by the pandemic.

LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and the paper’s president Chris Argentieri have scheduled a virtual town hall for Wednesday morning. While sources said the town hall will likely focus on plans for the fresh funds, some insiders speculated that the long, drawn-out search for new top editor also might be over.

Still, the rumor that has been fast spreading among the more than 500 newsroom staffers is that the editor search to replace Norm Pearlstine who stepped away in mid-December was nearing an end.

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Via The Hill:

The Biden administration plans to open a second facility to house migrant children in Texas amid a surge in accompanied minors traveling across the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) said in a statement that the second facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, will have the capacity to house 500 children, with the possibility of additional semi-permanent housing in the future.

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Via NY Post:

The Biden administration is finally granting limited access to the press at the southern border — following overly restrictive measures to block journalists from documenting the migrant crisis.

One pooled network camera will join White House officials and members of Congress as they tour a facility holding unaccompanied migrant children in Carrizo Springs on Wednesday, the Daily Mail reported.

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Six months too late.

Via US News:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Assembly passed a resolution Tuesday to authorize an investigation into the 2020 presidential election that President Joe Biden narrowly won in the state.

The resolution, opposed by Democrats, is needed to give the committee authorization if it decides to issue subpoenas to compel testimony and gather documents, said Rep. Joe Sanfelippo. He is vice-chairman of the Assembly elections and campaign committee that would conduct the probe.

Biden defeated Donald Trump by fewer than 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. The election outcome was affirmed by a partial recount and several lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies alleging wrongdoing were rejected by state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. No significant problems were found with the state’s voting machines after audits and recounts in both 2016 and in 2020.

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Via Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden urged Congress to swiftly pass gun control laws and may take action on his own to stop mass violence, the White House said on Tuesday, a day after the second deadly mass shooting in a week.

The Democrat called on the Senate to approve two bills passed by the House of Representatives on March 11 that would broaden background checks on gun buyers. He also called for a ban on assault-style weapons.

“I don’t need to wait another minute – let alone an hour – to take common-sense steps that will save the lives in the future, and I urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act,” Biden said at the White House on Tuesday.

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