The War Zone: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia is waging an “overt gas war” against Europe.

  “The gas blackmail of Europe, which only gets worse every month, is needed by a terrorist state to make the life of every European worse,” Zelensky said last night in his nightly address to the country.

  Tightening the squeeze on Germany for its support of Ukraine, Russia’s energy giant Gazprom announced that it’s cutting delivery of natural gas over the Nordtream1 pipeline to just 20 percent of capacity. The Russians had already cut it to 40 percent and now they are claiming they have technical problems. The Germans don’t believe it.

  The price of natural gas, which has already doubled this year in Europe, jumped 12 percent on this latest news. Turning toward winter, Europe is looking at the possibility of chilly homes and closed factories. 

Apology Tour: Pope Francis was in Edmonton, Alberta yesterday apologizing for the church’s treatment and abuse of indigenous Canadian children. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.

  Some critics are already saying that an apology is not enough.

  Tens of thousands of native Canadian children starting in the 1800s until 1997 were swept into Catholic boarding schools in an attempt to make them forget their language and culture, assimilating them into white man’s world, and the Catholic faith.

  That was bad enough, but thousands of the children died in church custody. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported that more than 4,000 Indigenous children died either from neglect or abuse in the residential schools.

  The Pope will also travel to Quebec and Iqaluit, capital of the Canadian territory of Nunavut. He said, “An important part of this process will be to conduct a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past and to assist the survivors of the residential schools to experience healing from the traumas they suffered.”

Political Error: A Georgia judge has blocked Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from investigating Burt Jones, a Republican state senator who was one of the 16 fake electors appointed in the attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win. 

  Jones is running for lieutenant governor in Georgia against Democrat Charlie Bailey. Willis, a Democrat, made the mistake of hosting a campaign fundraiser for Bailey last month and donated to his primary campaign. The judge called that a conflict of interest with Willis’s investigation of Jones. “It’s a ‘What are you thinking’ moment,” the judge said. “The optics are horrific.”

  Jones can still be investigated, but by an appointed DA who could end up being a Republican.

The Obit Page: Actor Paul Sorvino, who played the mob boss in “Goodfellas” and a detective in the long-running cop drama “Law & Order,” has died at age 83. 

  Actress Mira Sorvino is one of his three children.

  Sorvino played Henry Kissinger in “Nixon,” and had roles in “Dick Tracy,” “Reds,” and “The Rocketeer.” He was probably most memorable as the mob boss Paulie Cicero who cooked gourmet Italian food even in prison, slicing garlic with a razor blade.

  He also sang opera.

  Acting was not an easy living in his early years. Sorvino once had a part in a play that closed on opening night.

  Sorvino broke out as the soulless strip-mining millionaire in the 1972 Broadway play, “That Championship Season,” about the sad reunion of high school basketball players years beyond their glory days. Sorvino’s character was having an affair with the mayor’s wife. He reprised that role in the movie version.

The Spin Rack: Fifteen homes in a Dallas suburb burned yesterday after a weed whacker sparked a grass fire.  — A woman upset about her husband having an affair opened fire yesterday at Dallas’s Love Field airport. No one was hit, but the shooter was wounded by police. — In an indication that the Justice Department is digging deeper into the events of January 6^th, two top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence, Marc Short, who was Pence’s chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, who was his counsel, have testified before a federal rand jury.  —A Brooklyn pastor known for wearing flashy outfits and draping himself with expensive jewelry says he was robbed along with his wife of more than $1 million in adornments while he was preaching at church this past Sunday. Three armed people entered the Leaders of Tomorrow church while pastor Lamor Miller-Whitehead was live-streaming his service and took the jewelry he and his wife were wearing. The pastor also known as “The Bishop” drives a Rolls Royce. — The principal of the Uvalde, Texas elementary school that was the site of a mass shooting has been placed on leave.

Hero in His Own Mind: Former President Donald Trump admitted Saturday in a speech that after he flew to Iraq aboard Air Force One he wanted to give himself the Medal of Honor. “But they wouldn’t let me do it,” Trump said. “They said that would be inappropriate.”

  The former president was speaking at the Turning Point USA summit, whose “mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”

  The Medal of Honor is given only to members of the military for exceptional action in combat, including “bravery, courage, sacrifice [and] integrity.” Many recipients have died earning the award. But Trump, who got deferments to get out of being in the Vietnam War, said of the medal, “I’ve always wanted that.”

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