Ransom: The FBI said yesterday it has confirmed that the Russia-associated hacking group DarkSide carried out the ransomware attack that closed the Colonial Pipeline system that provides the East Coast with nearly half of its gasoline and jet fuel.

  The hackers want to be paid to unlock the system they took over.

  President Biden said that, so far, there’s no evidence Russia was directly involved, but he said, “There is evidence that the actors’ ransomware is in Russia. They have some responsibility to deal with this.”

  Colonial’s pipeline carries 2.5 million barrels every day, taking refined gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel from the Gulf Coast up to New York Harbor and New York’s major airports. Colonial says they’re working on getting the system back up, but fuel are beginning to spike and lines are developing at some southern gas stations.

Viral News: With vaccinations of adults slowing, the federal government is putting on a push to vaccinate young people ages 12 to 17. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the Pfizer vaccine for people that age.

  They appear to be up against resistance from parents reluctant to get their kids vaccinated even when they have been vaccinated themselves. But getting young people vaccinated would be a major step in fully re-opening schools and creating herd immunity to Covid-19. 

Trading Blows: Palestinians and Israeli forces traded rockets and missiles overnight in a conflict that has grown in intensity over several days. 

  Israeli warplanes struck back in Gaza yesterday, killing at least 20 people,  after militants fired rockets into Jerusalem.

  Tensions over there have been ratcheting up in recent days and then the Israeli police conducted a raid on the Aqsa Mosque, leaving  hundreds of Palestinians and a score of police officers injured. The basis of the conflict is that Israel wants to remove Palestinians from strategic parts of the city. 

The King of Mar-a-Lago: Although former President Trump has been denied a platform on social media, he has launched his own website to echo the continuing influence he has over the Republican party and enforcing loyalty. 

  In what are now nearly daily pronouncements, Trump has referred to “our fake Presidential Election,” “the Fraudulent Presidential Election,” “The Fake News Media,” and, demonstrating his talent for turning truth upside down, saying, “the 2020 Presidential Election was a Big Lie.” He even took a swipe at “gutless and clueless MINORITY Leader Mitch McConnell.”

  Falling in line with Trump, House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy set a vote for tomorrow on removing Rep. Liz Cheney from the #3 spot in leadership because she has spoken the truth about the former president losing the election. Cheney is expected to be replaced by Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik of upstate New York. Trump said on his website, “The House GOP has a massive opportunity to upgrade this week from warmonger Liz Cheney to gifted communicator Elise Stefanik.” 

  South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox News, “It’s impossible for this party to move forward without President Trump being its leader.”

The Horse Whisperer: Horse trainer Bob Baffert is claiming innocence and invoking the old “some other dude did it” defense following the revelation that  Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit tested positive for a banned substance. “It did not happen, that’s the really seriously troubling part of it,” Baffert told Fox News hosts yesterday morning. “I’m hiring investigators, but sometimes you never find out.”

  Kind of like OJ investigating who killed Nicole.

  This is Baffert’s fifth horse in 13 months to test positive for a banned substance and at least the 29th horse in his 40-year career.

  “These horses don’t live in a bubble,” Baffert added, suggesting that maybe someone slipped a Mickey to Medina Spirit. “People are touching them. You went from the derby, after the derby everybody is up there touching them. There are so many ways horses could get contaminated.”

The Spin Rack: — The Biden administration is reversing a Trump-era  policy that stripped gay and transgender people from discrimination in healthcare. “The Supreme Court has made clear that people have a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. — As many as 11 students and a teachers are dead in a rare mass shooting in Russia. It happened in Kazan, a regional capital about 450 miles east of Moscow. Russia restricts private gun ownership. — 

The Obit Page: Helmut Jahn, the German-born architect who designed buildings around the world but was most influential in his adopted hometown, Chicago, died on Saturday when he was hit by two cars while riding his bicycle near the horse farm where he lived, in St. Charles, Illinois. He was 81.

  Police said he failed to stop at a stop sign.

  Jahn was at times high on design and low on utility. His State of Illinois Center in Chicago’s Loop with its cavernous atrium is incredibly noisy and short of office space. His United Airlines terminal at O’Hare International Airport is a new age transporter of anonymous humans.

  Jahn was at times hailed as a genius, but it was also said of his buildings that they were “unrelated to anything else in the whole of Western civilization.”

Dying Up There: The value of billionaire Elon Musk’s Dogecoin crypto-currency dove about 30 percent Sunday following his appearance as host of Saturday Night Live and joking that his currency was a “hustle.” 

  The value of Dogecoin dropped from 65 cents to 44. Other than that, he was surprisingly funny, although not as funny as Bob Baffert.

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