Death Awaits: The hijacking of a Ryanair flight by Belarus has caused an international uproar with calls for banning flights over and out of that country while making an international cause of the previously unknown journalist whose arrest was the purpose of forcing down the airliner in Minsk.

  “The reaction should be swift and be severe,” Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander de Croo said. 

 The European Union called on all European Union airlines to stop flying over Belarus and began the process of banning Belarusian airlines from flying through EU airspace or landing in its airports, effectively cutting off the country’s air connections to Western Europe.

  The inconvenience goes both ways. With Ukraine already a no-fly zone, flights from Europe to Asia will be much more costly and time consuming.

  Saying that the diversion by Belarus had “endangered the lives of more than 120 passengers, including US citizens,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanded the “immediate release” of the journalist, Roman Protasevich and a full investigation.

  A protester of the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko since he was a teenager, the 24-year-old Protasevich fled the country fearing arrest in 2019. Living in Poland, he is a co-founder and a former editor of the NEXTAchannel on the social media platform Telegram, which is a popular site Lukashenko foes use to share information and organize demonstrations.

  In a classic Soviet-style appearance, Protasevich was put on Belarus television yesterday saying, “I continue to cooperate with the investigation and have confessed to organizing mass riots in the city of Minsk.”

 But passengers on the Ryanair flight said he became immediately upset when he realized the Ryanair flight was about to land in his home country. One man sitting a row ahead told the Lithuanian broadcaster LRT that “He said, ‘I know that death penalty awaits me in Belarus.’”

Viral News: While former President Trump disparagingly called the novel coronavirus that caused a world pandemic “the China virus,” researchers are increasingly suspicious that the virus escaped from a Wuhan research lab and China won’t admit it.

  Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in November 2019 and had to go to a hospital, according to a previously undisclosed US intelligence report. It was known that the lab workers had developed flu-like symptoms, but not that they had gone to a hospital.

  November 2019 is roughly when many epidemiologists believe the virus that brought the pandemic began circulating Wuhan, where the first confirmed case came on Dec. 8, 2019.

  Here in the states, the death rate is quickly diminishing. Four hundred and sixteen Americans died of Covid-19 yesterday. The worst day came in January when 4,300 Americans died.

  With life returning to somewhat normal, New York City announced the end  of remote learning next fall and that all school kids will have to go back to class in September. That’s the biggest school system in the country.

  It’s not going so well everywhere. Two months from the open of the summer Olympics in Japan, US health officials and the State Department are warning Americans not to go because of a surge in virus cases over there.

  The State Department raised its travel alert to Level 4, a blunt  “Do not travel.” 

Conservative Law: Largely in response to the banning of Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that prohibits tech companies from kicking politicians off their platforms for more than two weeks. It carries a $250,000 fine for violations.

  Twitter and Facebook banned Trump for saying things that were dangerously untrue, like claiming the election was stolen.

  Over in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said he will sign a bill that thwarts cities from reducing or reallocating police budgets. Maybe that’s good, because he’s also going to sign a law that allows anyone age 21 or older to carry a handgun without a license so long as they don’t have felony criminal convictions or some other legal prohibition in their background.

The Spin Rack. The family of George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police, is meeting today with President Biden. — Former ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, who testified in Donald Trump’s second impeachment that Trump and his aides pressured Ukraine to investigate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid, is suing former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the US government for $1.8 million in legal fees. — Israeli police say they arrested 1,500 people accused of mob violence in street disturbances over the past two weeks during the open warfare between Israel and Gaza. Seventy percent of the arrested were Israeli Arabs. — Actor Kevin Spacey plays a detective in an upcoming Italian movie, his first part since being accused of sexual misconduct in 2017. — How does it feel? Bob Dylan turned 80.

Shoah Me: Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is running a campaign to unseat Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert as the stupidest person in Congress.

 During an interview on a conservative podcast, Greene compared the requirement by House speaker Nancy Pelosi for members to wear masks on the floor to the Nazi requirement for Jews to wear an identifying star. 

  In the conversation with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Greene said, “You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany.” She said, “And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

  Somebody — please — give this woman a serious case of Covid-19.

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