You already know this: Ukraine has been invaded by Russia again, all the world except Tucker Carlson and a few of his more rabid followers hates Putin, and Kiev is now spelled Kyiv but will soon be smoking rubble. Too soon? Very much so, but it’s either laugh or cry.

But we’re not here to talk about World War III, so instead we’re pressing on with all the news you might have missed while waiting for the hammer to fall. Which it will.

– The 2022 Winter Olympics have concluded in China. This year’s games were marred by the usual Russian doping scandal and COVID restrictions, following an even more corrupt than usual process of selection by the IOC. The next Winter Olympics are scheduled to be held in Milan and Cortina, Italy, in 2026, should nuclear war unexpectedly fail to turn Europe to an uninhabitable heap of smoking ash.

– Iran has announced they are willing in principle to re-engage with the earlier 2015 nuclear deal, provided some sanctions are lifted, the United States commits itself to stay in until 2025, and documented evidence that Iran has frequently broken the deal in the past is ignored. Meanwhile, Belarus has changed its constitution in order to permit nuclear weapons on its soil.

– North Korea has launched yet another suborbital ICBM test, this one successful, in what it claims to have been a vital stage in the process of placing a recon satellite in orbit. There it will presumably join the other two North Korean satellites, both of which are nonfunctional. Policy experts are uncertain that this is the truth, and some have floated the suggestion that Leader Kim is simply jealous that global attention appears to be focused elsewhere for some reason.

– The 2022 FIFA World Cup, scheduled to be held in Qatar in November and December, has apparently already been won by Russia since no other team is willing to play them. Due to ongoing events in the Ukraine, the Russian team has been forbidden to participate as a national team by FIFA, and instead is required to fly a flag reading, “Just Some Guys From Up North Somewhere”. Qatar’s selection process is said to have been due to a multi-million dollar bribery effort designed by military contractors; FIFA officials dismissed the allegations, having performed a comprehensive internal investigation upon themselves during one of their weekly “Caviar And Champagne Working Brunches”.

– The Biden Administration has announced its pick for the next Supreme Court justice, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who unusually has served as both a public defender and a trial judge. Identitarians rejoice in the potential appointment of a Black woman; classists bemoan her Ivy League education at Harvard Law. Eight of the current sitting SCOTUS justices attended either Harvard or Yale, the exception being Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who attended Ma Frankland’s Automotive, Air Conditioning, and Law Night-Time Academy. (Kidding. Rhodes and Notre Dame; Juris Doctor. -editor)

– All of the public universities in Afghanistan have reopened to both male and female students for the first time since the Taliban returned to power six months ago. Despite being hampered by the enforced separation of genders and a desperate shortage of teachers, the reopening is being hailed as a mixed success. High schools are supposed to reopen across the country in upcoming months.

– Russia has blocked access to Facebook and Twitter for the majority of its citizens. This move comes in response to the continued refusal by both companies to stop fact-checking. A.V. Lipov, head of Roskomnadzor, the Russian Federation Telecommunications Supervision Service, explained that “Censorship is the job of the government, not private companies”. Public feedback by Russian citizens on the issue is encouraged, and can be posted on the agency’s official Twitter and Facebook pages.

– In response to enthusiastic DDOS attacks, apparently by the denizens of multiple Reddit and 4chan feeds operating without any government sanction whatsoever, every official website of the Russian government has been protected by Captcha! boxes requiring the prospective user to prove that they are not robots. Unfortunately, members of the Russian bureaucracy have demonstrated an extremely low rate of ability to comply with these measures. “I see no difference between these two pictures,” said one grey-suited office drone.

– Panama-flagged car carrier MV Felicity Ace has reportedly stopped burning in the middle of the ocean and is being towed into port by salvage workers. The vessel, cram-packed with some 4,000 luxury European automobiles destined for American millionaires, billionaires, and members of Congress (both parties), is expected to be a near total loss. Most of the manufacturers have already committed to replace the destroyed or damaged vehicles, though neither Lamborghini nor Bentley has yet issued a public statement. It is not expected that any of the readers of The Not Fake News will be remotely impacted by this report; we’re just adding it for variety because it doesn’t have anything to do with Ukraine.
UPDATE: The ship has sunk while under tow.

– The Canada convoy protest has ended amid few arrests and a great deal of boredom and frostbite. Canadian truckers were upset at mask and vaccination restrictions. Another protest, known as the “Freedom Convoy”, is scheduled to disrupt traffic across the United States this week; this is somehow expected to gain the sympathy of those stuck on the highway during their interrupted commutes. These protests come as the CDC announces a lifting of recommended mask restrictions and Omicron fatalities surge toward record numbers.

– The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has opened and begun producing electricity. This controversial construction is expected to provide low-cost power to vast swathes of eastern Africa which until now had no access to any energy grid whatsoever. Naturally, the project spawned massive diplomatic protests, not a few military incursions across the border, and a civil war over division of the expected spoils.

– There are widespread reports that the Libyan national army has begun to mobilize and pull back toward the capitol in advance of the upcoming planned formation of a new national government by Parliament. The present interim Prime Minister has refused to cede power absent new elections, but is also obstructing new elections.

– Several thousand sets of cremated human remains have been located in a former cartel site in northern Mexico, most burned and mechanically compacted beyond any possibility of identification. The crime scene is on the border between areas controlled by the Zeta Cartel and the encroaching Jaliscos; however, the majority of those who have been “disappeared” in the area are evidently innocent bystanders in the Mexican Drug War. In a desperate attempt to defend themselves, local towns have enlisted and armed groups of teenage boys into their local militias.

– Other wars and rumors of wars include Mali, where the recent coup d’etat has installed a government hostile to international efforts to root out Islamic State terrorists, Iranian-sponsored proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza, three different conflicts in Myanmar, a Communist rebellion in the Philippines, and an even dozen ongoing brushfire wars in central Africa.

– BREAKING NEWS: Epstein is still dead, Ghislaine Maxwell is unexpectedly still alive, and General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of Staff of the Russian Army, has drawn up his will “just in case”.

– IN OTHER NEWS, oil prices have hit record highs, Mardi Gras has begun in New Orleans, the CDC has advised that you no longer require a pulse, and President Biden is preparing to give his first State of the Union address as a forty-mile-long convoy of tanks and artillery inches south toward the city of Kyiv along narrow woods roads.

And that’s all the news we can stomach talking about here at The Not Fake News editorial offices. In lieu of our normal continuous coverage of events, we’re planning to consume vast amounts of medicinal whisky in order to be able to face tomorrow. Unfortunately, our supply is running dangerously low; on the other hand, it’s remotely possible one of our more charitable readers will buy us a bottle in time to help with hangover recovery, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday sometime.

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