Hello, good evening, and welcome to The Not Fake News Update. There’s been tremendous excitement over a very minor development in the U.S. Senate, and we expect speeches, parades, and perhaps a big brass band next. We’ll cover that later, but first, here are some things you might have missed if you’ve only been reading the headlines.

– Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan, and several other places, before returning to the United States. A lot of people were very upset by this*, and China protested both vocally and by firing lots of missiles into the ocean. This last was strange, as the ocean has done nothing particularly offensive to China, but to each their own.

– WNBA player Brittney Griner has been sentenced to a 9-year prison term for possession of marijuana by a Russian court. Despite the substance being illegal in the United States, the which illegality having long been championed by President Biden and indeed was the foundation of the prosecutorial career of V.P. Harris, the U.S. Department of State has objected and is offering a prisoner exchange. No word yet on any movement by the Federal government on domestic legalization; it’s actually possible that Griner would again be prosecuted on her return, this time for smuggling.

– Iryna Slaunikava, a former journalist in Belarus, has been convicted and sentenced for the crime of running an extremist organization, or what we in the United States would call “a broadcast news show critical of the government”. Tucker Carlson has uncharacteristically issued no comment on this event, this despite his normal tendency to have opinions on everything.

– The fourth confirmed death linked to the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine took place in South Africa recently. COVID has now claimed nearly 6.5 million lives; more than 12 billion total vaccine doses have been administered worldwide — three to Tucker Carlson, who still says it’s a hoax.

– New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney has now walked back her walkback of her apology for retracting her remarks that suggested President Biden might possibly not run for re-election in 2024. While several other Members of Congress have refused to commit on the topic, Maloney’s waffling has in fact been extremely remarkable in a town renowned for its breakfast-pastry approach to cringeworthy subjects. There is no public record of the President’s response, although shortly after his viewing of the news interview, lightning struck and killed three people in Lafayette Park.

– Amnesty International has released a four-page report summarizing inappropriate behavior by the Ukrainian military during the recent conflict with Russia, to stand against over ten thousand pages issued condemning Russian military activities during the same period. Despite the justice of this and the further statement that “Crimes happen on all sides of every war”, the organization has issued an apology and the Ukrainian director has resigned. Thousands of conspiracy theorists immediately celebrated this as “undeniable proof” of the Shadow Conspiracy Controlling Everything; cynics everywhere just sighed, muttered the word “money” under their breaths, and moved on.

– Peace has been agreed to in Senegal, with the Casamance separatists agreeing to lay down arms. Meanwhile, Israel and Islamic Jihad have just signed a cease fire ending the most recent week of mutual killings. Afghanis killing Afghanis is on the rise, however, and the local Russian FSB commander has taken over for civilian administration in Donbas following “acute lead poisoning leading to a brain haemmorhage”.

– Colombia has elected former M-19 member Gustavo Petro to the presidency. “It is time for the world to acknowledge that the War On Drugs has failed,” he said while pledging peace and prosperity. The C.I.A. has yet to comment on whether his sudden and completely unexpected upcoming demise, tentatively scheduled for August 12th, will be due to illness or a palace coup.

– BREAKING: The U.S. Senate has passed a cut-down version of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan, presently called the “Inflation Reduction Act”, which in reality has little or nothing to do with inflation but at least sounds like it does, which in economics is pretty much the same thing. (We actually have economists on record saying this, God help us all.) The bill now goes to the House, which is presently expected to approve it without further modification. The major provision is the hiring of tens of thousands of I.R.S. agents, though it does also contain some windfalls for major oil companies.

– THIS JUST IN: Epstein is still dead, Ghislaine Maxwell is in her country-club prison, and nobody else has been charged. On the other hand, Brett Hankison, Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Hanna Goodlett, and Kyle Meany, the four principal officers directly involved in the service of a No-Knock warrant that ended with the death of Breonna Taylor, have been arrested by the FBI.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print, plus as always some that isn’t, just for fun. Any complaints about the humorous quality of this news digest should be written in pencil on the blank parts of a $100 bill and mailed to us here at The Not Fake News newsroom.

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*NOTE: To clarify, a lot of people were upset by Pelosi’s visit, and a lot of other people were upset that she returned to the United States afterward.