GunBeat: Facebook announced that it is banning private person to person gun sales on its social network. Until now people have been able to negotiate private gun sales over Facebook without background checks. Facebook already bans sales of both legal and illegal drugs. The gun people have already expressed outrage — on Facebook.

She’s Got Mail: The State department has confirmed that Hillary Clinton did have “top secret” material in her email and that 22 items from her memory bank were too sensitive to be released. Some, if not all of the emails, originated from someone else, and were not properly marked as secret. The Clinton clan has argued that she cannot be held responsible for unsolicited classified material sent to her. But that glosses over the fact that she used a private email server vulnerable to hacking.

Hillary and Bernie: Nate Silver writes on his FiveThirtyEight website that even if Hillary Clinton loses the Iowa caucuses to Bernie Sanders, she could end up defying the historical wisdom that a candidate has to win either Iowa or New Hampshire to become the nominee. Sanders could win Iowa and is almost certain to win New Hampshire. But Silver says, “Even if Sanders gained a lot of momentum after the early states, he could have trouble closing the sale with voters who think he’s a little too far to the left.”

Net Loss: Germany’s Angelique Kerber upset the top-seeded Serena Williams, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, in the Australian Open today, preventing Williams from tying Steffi Graf’s record of 22 major singles titles. It was Kerber’s first appearance in a major match final.

Econ 101: The US economy grew by an anemic 0.7 percent in the last quarter of 2015. It was a mixed picture; sales of cars and washing machines were down but general consumer spending was pretty good. The economy just has the jitters about the economy of China and some other countries.

The Obit Page: Former Providence Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci, who during his time was both one of the most colorful and corrupt characters in American politics, died Thursday. He was 74.

The Rooney Report covered Cianci and his first fall in 1984. He loved Providence and rebuilt it, but also fed from the public trough. He squandered his brilliance. His first nine years in office ended after he pleaded guilty to a felony. He had kidnapped, urinated on, and beaten the man he believed to be his estranged wife’s lover.

While Cianci was mayor, public works employees sold city trucks to themselves, manhole covers for scrap, and short-weighted the concrete for new sidewalks. Election workers stole absentee ballots and used them to inflate the vote for Buddy.

Cianci was elected once again in 1991, but ended up in federal prison on corruption charges. He was one of the smartest people who held public office, but ended up both a hero and a joke. Teenagers in the animated show “Family Guy” attend Buddy Cianci, Jr. High School.

>Paul Kantner, a founder of the 60s psychedelic group “Jefferson Airplane,” has died at age 74. He was a co-author of the songs, “Today,” “Young Girl Sunday Blues” and “Volunteers.” He explored the world through lyrics and LSD. Kantner wrote “Wood Ships” for Stephen Stills and David Crosby, a song about a group of people escaping apocalypse to freedom in a new world.

Where CEOs Go to Die: The LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik, writing about the failures of IBM’s current boss Ginni Rometty, says, “It’s approaching Carly Fiorina bad. Fiorina took Hewlett-Packard’s stock price down some 49% during her more than five years as CEO; since her firing in 2005 she hasn’t had another corporate job and has been reduced to running for president.”