State Sponsored: In what the head of the airline called a case of “state-sponsored hijacking,” Belarus forced down a Ryanair flight in order to arrest the dissident Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich traveling on board.

  The flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania was diverted yesterday because of a phony bomb threat and escorted to the ground by a MiG-29 fighter jet.  Also taken into custody was Sofia Sapega, the journalist’s girlfriend, a Russian citizen.

  The Irish airliner was emptied and all the baggage unloaded onto the tarmac and searched. Suspiciously, four other people remained on the ground when the plane was allowed to take off again seven hours later.

  The 26-year-old Protasevich has been a critic of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, the only person ever to serve in that position since 1996. Lukashenko has been called “Europe’s last dictator.”

  Independent journalism has been shut down in Belarus.  Protasevich, who fled the country, co-founded the NEXTA channel on the social media platform Telegram, which has become a pipeline for Lukashenko’s foes to share information and organize demonstrations against the government.

Shrinking World: The census counts announced this month by China and the United States showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries in what appears to be a worldwide trend of population stagnation.

  In India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward or below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.

  The Times reports that, “Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.”

  It’s a mixed blessing; fewer people means easing up on the planet’s resources and dialing back on climate change, but it also means older populations with fewer people of working age.

Deadline: The respected Chicago Tribune and the collection of newspapers owned by the Tribune Publishing Company have been sold to Alden Capital, a hedge fund company with a reputation for laying waste to the newsrooms at the  hundred daily newspapers it already owns.

  The deal also includes The Baltimore Sun, New York Daily News, Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, and other metro newspapers up and down the East Coast. 

  Aden has been described as a “vampire” and “corporate strip miner.” Reporters at the papers had tried to find alternative buyers and vowed to continue fighting against the hedge fund. The guilds representing the reporters said in a statement that, “Tribune Publishing shareholders voted to put profit and greed over local news in our country.” 

Lack of Culture: CNN dumped former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum as one of its commentators after learning that Santorum had delivered a speech to 

a conservative youth group in which he pretty much dismissed native American culture.

  Santorum had said, “we birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here.” He then backtracked into the manure saying, “I mean, yes, we have Native Americans. But candidly, that — there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

  There’s no longer any Santorum culture in the CNN culture.

Fear and Greed: The cryptocurrency Bitcoin was crashing yesterday, trading at half its value in April. Bitcoin was trading at $32,632, half the mid-April peak of $64,829.14.

 Digital currencies are rated on a “fear and greed” index, which was at 14, indicating extreme fear, after touching a level of greed last month at 55.

The Spin Rack: In  one of those “only in your nightmares” accidents, 14 people died in the Piedmont region of northern Italy in the crash of a mountain cable car. Two children, five and nine, were airlifted out, but one died. It appears that the cable failed. — An astounding 21 runners, including two of China’s top marathon athletes, died when freezing rain and high winds struck a 62-mile mountain race in northwestern China. The runners in shorts and T-shirts were at the 12-mile mark 6,500 feet above sea level when the heavy weather hit. — Microsoft announced that it is retiring the much-reviled web browser Internet Explorer and replacing it with Microsoft Edge by June of next year. Then you can hate Microsoft Edge.

Double Pike: Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles returned from hiatus to blow away the field at the US Classic in Indianapolis competing for the first time since October 2019. She was the all-around gold medalist at the 2016 Olympics.

  Biles landed something called a Yurchenko double pike on the vault, a move never previously performed by a woman in competition. It’s a move as hard to describe as it is to perform. It starts with diving onto your hands with a  roundoff onto the springboard, a back handspring onto the vault and a piked double backflip to the landing. “Piked” is when the body is bent at a right angle.

  The move’s creator, Russian Natalia Yurchenko, did it with only a single pike flip.

From the Greens: Phil Mickelson, who turns 51 next month, won the PGA Championship, becoming the oldest golfer to win a major championship. The record was previously held by Julius Boros, who was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA.  Mickleson is one of the best ever, but he has always been shadowed by Tiger Woods.

Cover Man: Following his breakup with Jennifer Lopez, former baseball star Alex Rodriguez is going into the makeup business for men. He has teamed up with Hims & Hers to develop the company’s first makeup for men. “I wanted to create a product that solved an issue I faced every day. I realized as I was jumping from meeting to meeting, I needed something quick and easy in my routine to conceal blemishes or razor bumps,” Rodriguez said on Instagram. 

   He’s offering “The Blur Stick, “a convenient concealer specifically designed for men that can be used for skin imperfections.” 

-30-