we're going to be printing a lot of money, no doubt about it (where it goes will be the new question and not every Congressperson will be able to answer that)

As border skirmishing increased last year, malware began to flow into the Indian electric grid, a new study shows, and a blackout hit Mumbai. It now looks like a warning.

No it's not QAnon but by David E. Sanger & Emily Schmall @ NYTImes.com, Feb. 28

WASHINGTON — Early last summer, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in a surprise border battle in the remote Galwan Valley, bashing each other to death with rocks and clubs.

Four months later and more than 1,500 miles away in Mumbai, India, trains shut down and the stock market closed as the power went out in a city of 20 million people. Hospitals had to switch to emergency generators to keep ventilators running amid a coronavirus outbreak that was among India’s worst.

Now, a new study lends weight to the idea that those two events may well have been connected — as part of a broad Chinese cybercampaign against India’s power grid, timed to send a message that if India pressed its claims too hard, the lights could go out across the country.

The study shows that as the standoff continued in the Himalayas, taking at least two dozen lives, Chinese malware was flowing into the control systems that manage electric supply across India, along with a high-voltage transmission substation and a coal-fired power plant.

The flow of malware was pieced together by Recorded Future, a Somerville, Mass., company that studies the use of the internet by state actors. It found that most of the malware was never activated. And because Recorded Future could not get inside India’s power systems, it could not examine the details of the code itself, which was placed in strategic power-distribution systems across the country. While it has notified Indian authorities, so far they are not reporting what they have found.

Stuart Solomon, Recorded Future’s chief operating officer, said that the Chinese state-sponsored group, which the firm named Red Echo, “has been seen to systematically utilize advanced cyberintrusion techniques to quietly gain a foothold in nearly a dozen critical nodes across the Indian power generation and transmission infrastructure.”

The discovery raises the question about whether an outage that struck on Oct. 13 in Mumbai, one of the country’s busiest business hubs, was meant as a message from Beijing about what might happen if India pushed its border claims too vigorously.

News reports at the time quoted Indian officials as saying that the cause was a Chinese-origin cyberattack on a nearby electricity load-management center. Authorities began a formal investigation, which is due to report in the coming weeks. Since then, Indian officials have gone silent about the Chinese code, whether it set off the Mumbai blackout and the evidence provided to them by Recorded Future [....]

The House on Saturday passed the American Rescue Plan, marking a crucial step towards the White House’s first major piece of legislation.

By Rachel Siegel @ WashingtonPost.com, Feb. 27

The House on Saturday approved President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, marking a crucial step toward passage of the White House’s first major piece of legislation.Biden unveiled his proposal, the American Rescue Plan, last month [....]

Many Democrats are backing Biden’s message that it is better to go too big on a relief bill than too small. Republicans, meanwhile, say the bill is much too large and is full of provisions that have little or nothing to do with responding directly to the pandemic.

The bill now heads to the Senate. Democratic leaders have said they hope to get a final version to Biden’s desk by mid-March, when expanded unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans.

Here’s what is in the House version. These breakdowns and estimates were compiled from Congressional summaries and reports, as well as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Stimulus checks, unemployment insurance, child tax credit | Expanded unemployment insurance and child tax credit | Minimum wage | Pandemic response | Aid for state and local governments and transit | Schools and child care block grants | Assistance for food, rent and mortgages Business relief and retirement security | Health care coverage

Stimulus checks, unemployment insurance, child tax credit [....]

By Ryan Mills @ YahooNews.com, Feb. 10

There are first world problems, and then there are San Francisco problems: for example, deciding whether or not a gay, white father of a multiracial daughter adds enough diversity to a volunteer parent committee filled with women.

That was the most recent head-scratcher for the San Francisco Board of Education, the same school board that voted 6-1 last month to scrub the names of such problematic Americans as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln from local schools.

During Tuesday night’s board meeting, one of the items on the agenda involved the seemingly innocuous appointment of a new member to the volunteer Parent Advisory Council. The candidate was Seth Brenzel, a professional singer and the executive director of an acclaimed Bay Area summer music school. Brenzel also is openly gay, married and a father, according to an online bio. Attempts to reach him for comment on Wednesday were not successful.

Opposition to Brenzel’s appointment began even before the board officially brought it up for discussion [....]

waddaya know, these guys are for law and order, who'd thunk it? and Fox News is reporting it, yet!

Main target is Shia militia.