Terror in Sri Lanka: Another bomb went off today in Columbo as police arrested 24 members of a little-known terror group in the Sunday suicide bombings that killed at least 290 people and wounded hundreds more. Three police officers were killed in raids.

  The government blames National Thowheeth Jama’ath, a radical Islamist organization. They claim the group had help from “an international network.”

  Security forces were warned at least 10 days before the bombings that the group planned suicide attacks against churches but took no action. Top government officials say they never heard about the warning. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said,  “We must look into why adequate precautions were not taken.”

  Until now,  National Thowheeth Jama’ath has been known primarily for vandalizing Buddhist statues. Despite decades of civil war that ended in 2009, Sri Lanka doesn’t have much history with Islamic violence.

No Joke: A Ukrainian comedian who played his country’s president on television and brought virtually no policy ideas to his campaign has been elected President of Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky, 41, defeated the incumbent Petro Poroshenko with 70 percent of the vote.

 To say the least, it’s a rejection of establishment politics. Zelensky said, “As a citizen of Ukraine I can say to all countries in the post-Soviet Union: Look at us. Anything is possible!”

 Heis best known for starring in a satirical television series “Servant of the People” in which his character accidentally becomes president of Ukraine. He played a thirtyish high school history teacher whose in-class rant about government corruption is captured on a video that goes viral and wins him the presidency. 

 Ukrainian politics are notoriously corrupt and even dangerous. Zelinsky’s favorite campaign joke: “Why does Poroshenko want a second term? So he doesn’t get a first term.”

  In prison.

The Gathering Crowd:Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a third-term congressman who has pushed for a “new generation of leadership”, declared he’s running for president, becoming the 20th candidate in his party. “We need to restore our moral authority in everything we do,” he said.

  Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to become number 21 this week.

One Angry President:Donald Trump spent part of his Easter Sunday railing over Twitter about the Special Counsel report and his enemies. “The Trump Haters and Angry Democrats who wrote the Mueller Report were devastated by the No Collusion finding! Nothing but a total “hit job” which should never have been allowed to start in the first place!” he wrote.

 Congressional Democrats are holding a conference call later today to talk about how to proceed in the wake of the report. Despite the report laying out a regime of lies and sleaze led by President Trump, there seems to be little appetite among the Democrats for impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is against it and  only Sen. Elizabeth Warren among the presidential candidates has called for impeachment. The Republican-majority Senate would be unlikely to convict Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

  Doing nothing, though, amounts to a kind of acceptance of what’s in the Mueller report. 

  While the Democrats move slowly, Trump is busy defining their story for them. He tweeted, “Can you believe that I had to go through the worst and most corrupt political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States (No Collusion) when it was the “other side” that illegally created the diversionary & criminal event and even spied on my campaign? Disgraceful!”

The Roundup: The Trump administration is expected to announce later today that it will place sanctions on any countries that import Iranian oil, including US allies. — At least 13 passengers on an American Airlines flight from Miami to Boston were taken ill with an unidentified malady. They were part of a student group returning from the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador.  — Abigail Disney, an heir to the Disney company fortune and a critic of the management, did the math about Chairman Bob Iger’s $65 million salary. She found that he could have given a 15 percent raise to every employee at Disneyland and still brought home $10 million.

Fact and Fiction: With Earth heating up, bombings in Sri Lanka, and the gathering storm of the 2020 presidential election, the news is also focused on developments in the Seven Kingdoms. The final season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is being treated like an actual news story.

  Insider  headlines that “The third episode of HBO’s eighth season of “Game of Thrones” continues next week with the massive Battle of Winterfell.” They promise nearly 90 minutes of killing White Walkers.

 The Washington Postsays of last night’s episode that, “What we just saw could very well be the last moments of peace the Seven Kingdoms will experience.” Oh my, whatever shall we do? NPR’s Glen Weldon points out, “Did you notice? Not even a passing glimpse of a dragon.” 

 And an “Analysis”piece in The Washington Post contemplates, “Why was it so uncomfortable to watch Arya’s sex scene in ‘Game of Thrones’?” Inquiring minds want to know.

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