The War Room: Ukrainian forces today mounted a counter-offensive against the Russian invaders in the northeast, attempting to drive them back from two key cities and break the brutal stalemate of combat. There’s fighting all along a 300-mile front.

  “There are fierce battles going on, as well as the transition from defensive operations to offensive actions in the Kharkiv and Izium areas,” the Ukrainian commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said he told Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

  Ukrainian authorities also say they are braced for a surge of Russian attacks that would give President Vladimir Putin something to crow about on May 9^th, Russia’s “Victory Day.”

  Russian bombardment of the giant steel complex in Mariupol continues even while attempts are still being made to evacuate 200 women and children still taking refuge there.

  The US appears to be giving Ukraine help beyond just sending weapons. The Pentagon has helped the Ukrainians target and kill Russian generals in the field, and now it appears that the US also helped with locating the Russian missile cruiser Moskva, which was sunk by anti-ship missiles.

  On the battlefields, the Russians have lost one of the most advanced tanks they’ve sent into the fight. Ukrainian war reporter Andriy Tsaplienko posted on Facebook an image of him standing in front of a destroyed T-90M in the eastern Kharkiv region. The Russians had only about 20 of them.

  “Here’s a fresh Russian tank…to improve your mood,” he wrote, “It’s hot, it’s smokin’ hot.”

  By itself, it’s not a critical incident, but the T-90M has the most advanced armor on a Russian tank, including reactive armor that explodes when hit, countering the impact of armor-piercing anti-tank weapons. Evidently, like hundreds of other Russian tanks taken out during this war, it’s not invulnerable.

Viral News: Millions more people around the world have died of Covid-19 than have been reported by their countries, according to a statistical analysis by the  World Health Organization. 

  The official number of Covid deaths is 6.27 million, but an additional 15 million people died during the first two years of the pandemic died than would  have been expected during normal times, the WHO says. In Mexico, excess deaths were twice the government’s count of Covid deaths; in Egypt, 12 times; Pakistan, eight times.  Nearly a third of the excess deaths globally — 4.7 million — occurred in India, according to the WHO estimates. The Indian government’s own figure through the end of 2021 is 481,080 deaths.

  Here in the United States, the official number of Covid deaths has surpassed one million.

  In other Covid news, the CDC says there’s a rare risk of blood clots with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and they’ve limited its use to people 18 and older for whom other vaccines aren’t appropriate or accessible. 

No on Roe: The Supreme Court is braced for potential violence after the leak of a draft decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that established the right to abortion. The justices have been receiving threats and the Court has put up an eight-foot fence around its building.

  In his first public remarks about the leak, Chief Justice John Roberts yesterday said it was “absolutely appalling” and that he hopes “one bad apple” would not change “people’s perception” of the nation’s highest court. 

  The decision written by Justice Samuel Alito says abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution and therefore it is up to individual states to decide whether they will make it legal. That has fed fears that the court will overturn other rights such as gay marriage, interracial marriage, and even the use of birth control also not specified in the Constitution.

   Maybe one of the first such challenges could come from Texas where Gov. Greg Abbott said yesterday that he would seek to overturn a 1982 decision that requires public schools to educate all children, including undocumented immigrants.

  And in an example of some of the absurdity surrounding the Court leak, Grant Stinchfield, a host on the right wing Newsmax, theorized that Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is confirmed but does not yet serve on the Court, could be the source of the leak. “She would be my first suspect when it comes to the leak,” Stinchfield said, “because Ketanji Brown Jackson is a radical left-wing activist.”

Econ 101: Stocks took another big nose dive yesterday on fears about what the Federal Reserve’s campaign to stall inflation might do to the overall economy. Investors worry that if the Fed raises interest rates too high or too quickly, the economy will slide into recession. 

  Trevor Noah, the host of the “Daily Show,”  blamed inflation on “the pandemic, supply chain issues and a Russian man who clearly wasn’t hugged enough as a child.”

The Spin Rack: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who helped lead President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, pulled out of a scheduled interview with the January 6^thinvestigating committee because they wouldn’t let him record the session. — An opposition group has released a video of scandal-plagued North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn naked in bed with another man. Cawthorn admits it’s him and that years ago he and a friend were just “trying to be funny.” — President Biden has named Karine Jean-Pierre to be  his second White House press secretary, replacing Jen Psaki later this month. Jean-Pierre has been Psaki’s deputy. She will be the first Black and first openly gay press secretary.

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