The New Arms Race: Russia announced yesterday that it has finally deployed a hypersonic missile that’s so fast it can outrun any US missile defense systems. It carries a nuclear warhead at speeds up to 3800 mph.

  The US is left to catch up not just with the missile, but with the technology to build the missile itself.

  The new system called “Avangard” can maneuver along unpredictable paths, making them more difficult to track and shoot down than currently deployed nuclear weapons. It sounds ominous, and it is, but Russia wants the US to renew New START, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia.

Freaking Evil: In video interviews obtained by The NY Times, the former team mates of retired Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher called him “evil” and a  man who “wants to kill anybody he can.”

  Gallagher was acquitted of murder but convicted of inappropriately posing for a photo with a dead ISIS fighter. President Trump pardoned Gallagher, calling him “one of our great war fighters.”

  “The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator Craig Miller told investigators. “The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview. Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic, told investigators, “You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving,” 

Getting Warmer: Satellite imagery has detected a Texas-sized patch of water in the South Pacific east of New Zealand that is nine degrees warmer than average for the latitude and time of year. It is the largest area of above-average water temperature on Earth right now.

The Bulletin Board:  A truck bomb at a busy intersection in Mogadishu, Somalia has killed at least 76 people. It’s the worst attack in the country in years. — Searchers in Kauai have found the remains of a missing tour helicopter that crashed in the mountains. The helicopter carried seven passengers and a pilot. —  In Georgia, a federal judge has backed the state’s removal of 100,000 inactive voters from the registration rolls. State officials have been accused of suppressing the vote of poor and nonwhite citizens. 

The Obit Page: Radio shock host Don Imus, who tested the limits of taste then went beyond them in his parodies and attacks on celebrities, politicians, racial and ethnic groups, women, gay people, and just about everyone with a pulse, died yesterday in College Station, Texas at age 79. He had entered the Hospital on Christmas Eve.

  Imus once had an audience of millions on 100 radio stations across the country. He wore a cowboy hat over his long, curly hair and there was nothing and nobody he wouldn’t insult on his long-running show “Imus in the Morning.” He called Vice President  Dick Cheney “a war criminal,” Hillary Rodham Clinton was “Satan,” and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich “a man who would eat roadkill.” To his credit, he also once called the editor of The Rooney Report  “a hunky guy.”

 On the side, a kinder, gentler Don Imus was raising millions for wounded veterans, children with cancer, and siblings victims of sudden infant death syndrome. Since 1999, he invited children to spend summers on his New Mexico ranch.

  Most of the time he was pretty rough. Imus once was forced off the air and sued when he call the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” When he came back he said, “Dick Cheney is still a war criminal. Hillary Clinton is still Satan. And I’m back on the radio.”

Wayward Son: Hunter Biden, son of the Presidential candidate who was missing from the Biden family Christmas photo, has been spotted in Los Angeles with his pregnant wife Melissa, whom he married in May. This would be his fifth child, including one he fathered in a fling with a stripper.

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