—- Delayed and shortened today by power outage —

PEACE BE UPON YOU:  The last 20 remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were released to Israel today and Israel released 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange. Television news broadcast emotional images of hostages being reunited with family before being quickly transported to hospitals for evaluation.

  President Trump speaking in Israel declared an “end” to the war but he’s a little ahead of events.

  The Qatari prime minister told The New York Times that Gaza war mediators decided to delay talks on more difficult issues so a hostage-prisoner swap could be concluded quickly.

  “Hamas are actually open to have a discussion about how they won’t pose a threat for Israel,” the prime minister said.

  Hamas militants, meanwhile, have come out of their holes and reasserted control in unoccupied areas of Gaza, searching out and detaining people they believe to have been spies or informers for Israel during two years of war.

  “The security services and the resistance are conducting a wide-scale field campaign across all areas of the Gaza Strip, from north to south, to locate and arrest collaborators and informants,” said a Hamas statement. They released a video of a suspected collaborator being beaten.

  Israel is unlikely to tolerate this. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been adamant that Hamas must give up its guns and have no future in the ruling of Gaza.

THE SHUTDOWN: The  government shutdown is expected to begin affecting the US economy this week as employees miss paychecks and billions of dollars’ worth of federal spending is withheld.

  About 750,000 federal workers have been furloughed.

TARGET PRACTICE: With two of his perceived enemies under indictment … James Comey and Letitia James … President Trump has turned his sights on California Sen. Adam Schiff who as a member of Congress voted to impeach Trump twice and was lead prosecutor in the impeachment related to dealings with Ukraine. Trump posted on his Truth Social that: “The Ukraine Impeachment (of me!) Scam was a far bigger Illegal Hoax than Watergate. I sincerely hope the necessary authorities, including CONGRESS, are looking into this! Adam “Schiffty” Schiff was sooo dishonest and corrupt. So many laws, and protocols, were violated, and just plain broken!!! President DJT”

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: At least four people were killed and 20 wounded after an early-morning shooting yesterday in the crowded Willie’s Bar and Grill on St. Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina. 

  In Mississippi, nine people were killed over the weekend, four of them in a single incident in Leland, a town in the delta.

THE OBIT PAGE: Actress Diane Keaton, who made her mark as the namesake character in the 1977 Woody Allen  movie “Annie Hall” and played Michael Corleone’s wife in “The Godfather,” died over the weekend in Los Angeles at age 79.

  Keaton in “The Godfather” played Al Pacino’s girlfriend and then his wife after he spends time in Sicily to dodge revenge for killing a corrupt cop and a mob leader. As Pacino — Michael Corleon —  wipes out his enemies and becomes the don of his outfit, the last shot of the movie is Keaton’s horrified look as the door closes on Michael’s office.

  Keaton had a long career and major roles in such movies as “Reds,”  and “Something’s Gotta Give.” But she seemed stuck in one of them. As Annie Hall when she was 31, Keaton was a style setter, wearing oversized clothes, vests, a man’s tie, and a brimmed hat. She dressed as Annie Hall for the rest of her life.

THE SPIN RACK: A library director in Wyoming fired two years ago for refusing to remove books with sexual content and LGBTQ themes from a library’s children and young adult sections was awarded $700,000 in a settlement last week. “I don’t regret standing up for the First Amendment in any way,” the librarian, Terri Lesley, told The NY Times, “but it was kind of a brutal process to experience it, to have it be such a contentious issue, and for it to be across the country and be called things like a ‘pedophile’ or a ‘child groomer.’” — Authorities have yet to release the identities of 16 people killed in the explosion last week at a small Tennessee munitions factory. The blast levelled Accurate Energetic Systems which produced explosives for the military 

BELOW THE FOLD: President Trump claimed in a social media post over the weekend that: “THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6. If this is so, which it is, a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies. What a SCAM – DO SOMETHING!!! President DJT”

  OK then. On January 6^th, 2021, the date of the Capitol insurrection, Joe Biden was 14 days away from his inauguration and Donald Trump was president … with control of the FBI.

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