WAR ON HUNGER: As many as 100 Palestinians died after Israeli troops opened fire on a hungry crowd of people waiting for an aid convoy, resulting in a chain of events in which victims died of gunshots, were run over by trucks, or killed in the crush of the fleeing crowd.

  The Gaza Health Ministry called it a “massacre.” One hospital said it accepted 12 bodies of people shot and were 100 patients suffered gunshot wounds.

  Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said in a televised briefing. “We did not fire on those seeking aid, despite the accusations.” Hagari said soldiers fired warning shots in the air before firing “only in face of danger when the mob moved in a manner which endangered them.”

  Israeli Lt. Col Peter Lerner went even further in denial saying, “This is the unfortunate reality, a mass casualty event that has very little or nothing to do with Israel.”

  The incident happened at about 4:45 am yesterday outside Gaza City when thousands of people waited for a convoy of trucks bringing food. Dozens of people rushed the trucks and Israeli troops opened fire.

  During five months of war, Israel has claimed to have pinpointed its attacks even while levelling hundreds of thousands of living units, displacing more than a million Palestinians, and killing 30,000. 

BORDERING ON POLITICS: President Biden and Donald Trump both made a show of visiting the Texas border yesterday, which has become a political pit stop. But both agree that the flood of migrants coming over the border is an unsustainable situation.

  Biden said it is “long past time” to fix the border and immigration system, in part by hiring more Border Patrol and security personnel and appointing more immigration judges. A record number of immigrants has crossed the border during the Biden presidency. 

  Three hundred miles away, Trump was in Eagle pass, a busy crossing point, accompanied by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott 

  Trump, who was instrumental in convincing congressional Republicans to kill a bipartisan immigration bill, said “The United States is being overrun.” Biden during his appearance said, “Instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me.” 

  Trump also capitalized on the recent murder of a University of Georgia nursing student in which an illegal Venezuelan immigrant is the accused. The former president spoke about a “migrant crime wave,” although there is no evidence of that.

  In a blow to Gov. Abbott, federal court in Austin yesterday blocked the Texas law that would allow state and local police officers to arrest migrants who cross from Mexico illegally, siding with the federal government in a power battle over immigration enforcement. Judge David Ezra wrote in a 114-page decision that “disagreement with the federal government’s immigration policy does not justify a violation of the Supremacy Clause” of the Constitution.

HOOP DREAMS: Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark, who’s closing in on the all-time college scoring record, is putting herself up for the WNBA draft and skipping a possible fifth year of college ball. She is likely to be the #1 pick by the Indiana Fever in the April draft.

  Clark is the all-time leading women’s college basketball scorer with 3,650 points. She is #2 in three pointers with 503.

  On Sunday she is likely to become the all-time leading college scorer … male or female … when she has a shot at breaking the record set by LSU’s “Pistol Pete” Maravich.

THE PRESS ROOM: A federal judge held veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in contempt of court for refusing to reveal sources for her stories about a scientist who was investigated by the FBI.

  Herridge, who did the stories in 2017 for Fox News, was ordered to pay $800 a day until she gives up her sources. She was recently let go by CBS News, which hired her in 2019.

  Herridge and colleagues at Fox wrote the articles revealing that the FBI had investigated Dr. Yanping Chen, a Chinese American scientist, over suspicions of ties to the Chinese military and whether she had lied on US immigration forms. The FBI filed no charges and dropped their investigation a year before the Herridge reports. Chen sued the FBI, charging that they had violated the Privacy Act by leaking to Herridge.

  Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington wrote in is order that, “Herridge and many of her colleagues in the journalism community may disagree with that decision and prefer that a different balance be struck, but she is not permitted to flout a federal court’s order with impunity.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who campaigned for what he called the “great causes,” of free trade and reducing acid rain in North America as well as the overthrow of racial apartheid in South Africa, died at age 84 in Palm beach, Florida, where he had a home. 

  The hirsute and gentlemanly Mulroney was a conservative sometimes labelled as the Canadian Ronald Reagan. He led the country into signing the North American Free Trade Agreement with the US and Mexico.

  After leaving office Mulroney’s life devolved into revelations of financial scandal and the release of years of interviews with a journalist exposed him as, in the words of Clifford Krauss of The New York Times, a “foul-mouthed, insecure man with an enemies list that sprawls from Vancouver to Halifax.”

THE SPIN RACK: Congress passed a bill yesterday that will keep the government up and running for a week past tonight’s deadline. — In a nearly snowless winter for much of the country, California’s Sierra Nevada is expected to get ten feet of snow this weekend.

BELOW THE FOLD: Large crowds gathered in Moscow today for the funeral of dissident Alexei Navalny, who died under unexplained circumstances in an arctic penal colony two weeks ago.  They chanted his last name and “we are not afraid” as the coffin was carried into the church. They followed as it was taken to a nearby cemetery.