Pipeline Cancelled: The company that was building the disputed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Nebraska has given up and cancelled construction.

  One of President Biden’s first acts in office was to revoke the pipeline’s permit to cross into the United States, saying the project would add to global warming and climate change.

  The pipeline would have transported oil derived from what are called oil sands, a particularly gluey form of oil that needs to be heated, adding to pollution during production.

  Republican politicians yesterday were decrying the loss of thousands of jobs that would have been created by building the pipeline.

  While visiting US troops in England yesterday,  Biden said climate change is the “greatest threat” to US national security. “This is not a joke. You know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest physical threat facing America was? Global warming,” he said. 

  He went on, “There will be significant population movements, fights over land, millions of people leaving places because they’re literally sinking below the sea in Indonesia, because of the fights over what is arable land anymore.” 

Foreign Relations: As President Biden begins his European tour patching fractured relations left by Donald Trump, a Russian court designated the political movement of imprisoned dissident Aleksei Navalny’s as an extremist network, effectively putting a thumb in Biden’s eye before he meets next week with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

  Under the law, Navalny’s organizers, donors, and even social-media supporters could be prosecuted. 

  Putin and the Kremlin claim they have nothing to do with suppressing Navalny. They say it’s the courts enforcing the law. But Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation,  one of the groups declared extremist, said in a social media post that,  “The state has decided to fight any independent organizations with total bombardment.” 

Viral News: President Biden announced plans to give 500 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to 100 countries even as he fights to get more people vaccinated at home.

  Dwindling numbers of Americans are getting vaccinated, particularly in the South, which has eight of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates. Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi trail the pack. Thousands of unused doses are reaching their expiration date.

  Thirteen states, mostly in the Northeast and on the West Coast, have vaccinated at least 70 percent of adult residents, but, The NY Times reports that “Experts now believe that the United States may never reach herd immunity, the point at which the virus dies out.”

  Deaths in this country have slowed considerably, but a lot of people are still dying of Covid-19. The average is 420 a day so far this month.

Damn Right: Rebekah Jones, the scientist who said she was fired by Gov. Ron DeSantis for refusing to censor Florida’s Covid-19 numbers, announced that she’s running in the Republican primary to topple Rep. Matt Gaetz.

  “I hope I do better than a sex trafficker,” Jones told NBC News. “It’s absurd that he’s still in office. Someone like that should not go unchallenged.”

  Gaetz, of course, is being investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of paying an underage girl for sex. 

  Jones said in a video announcement, “I had hoped that someone in the Republican Party would step up and primary him, and I’ve yet to see that happen.” She said, “If it means getting one child sex trafficker out of office, you’re damn right I’ll do it.”

Vows: The majority of Republicans – 55 percent – now support same-sex marriage, boosting national approval to 70 percent, according to the Gallup Poll.

  That’s a 10 percent rise in approval since 2015, Gallup says. The polling company says approval among Democrats is now 83 percent, and 73 percent among Democrats.

The Spin Rack: Investigators in Hamilton County, Tennessee say the administration of 1970s Gov. Ray Blanton helped pay for the contract killing of a federal witness who was an associate of the infamous union leader, Jimmy Hoffa. The scandal at the time involved people in the governor’s office taking payoffs for paroling prison inmates. — The giant meat processing company JBS paid $11 million in Bitcoin to be relieved of a ransomware attack. — Ford Motors has electrified the small pickup market introducing a hybrid-drive short bed vehicle called the Maverick. It’ll tow 4,000 pounds, carry 1,500 pounds, and sells for just over less than $22,000. 

Initially Correct: Somewhere back in the sexual identity rights movement someone put together the first letters of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender to create “LGBT” as shorthand for people of non-traditional sexuality. It’s not exactly an acronym, like NASA, because you can’t pronounce it as a word, but it’s a usable handle.

  Then more recently came “Q” for “queer.” Once an insult for homosexuality, it’s now a term for people who defy exact definition or they’re still making up their minds. So that brought us to “LGBTQ.”

  A very few people are born with indeterminate gender. They’re a little of both and they too want to be recognized. They call themselves “Intersex,” hence, LGBTQI.

   Some people don’t bat from either side of the plate. They don’t bat at all. They’re “asexual,” and they too want to be on the sexual rights train. LGBTQIA.

  At this point someone had the good sense to add the “+” sign. LGBTQIA+. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and “plus,” meaning “anyone we’ve overlooked or can’t imagine they exist and anyway we already have too many initials.” 

-30-