Joe Biden meeting with U.S. paratroopers in Europe last week.

Putin with a couple of his military guys few days ago.

Word is Putin is terrified of covid and never gets too close to anybody.

Robert Bruce Ford (May 28, 1969 – March 22, 2016) was a Canadian politician and businessman who served as the 64th mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014. Before and after his term as mayor, Ford was a city councillor representing Ward 2 Etobicoke North. He was first elected to Toronto City Council in the 2000 Toronto municipal election, and was re-elected to his council seat twice.

His political career, particularly his mayoralty, saw a number of personal and work-related controversies and legal proceedings. In 2013, he became embroiled in a substance abuse scandal, which was widely reported in national and foreign media. Following his admission, Ford refused to resign, but city council voted to hand over certain mayoral powers and office staff to Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly for the remainder of Ford’s term.

Ford took a sabbatical and received treatment for his alcohol and drug addiction. Despite the scandal, Ford initially contested the next mayoral election, scheduled for October 2014, but after being hospitalized and diagnosed with an abdominal tumour in September 2014, Ford withdrew from the mayoral race and registered instead to run for his old city council seat. John Tory succeeded him as mayor on December 1, 2014, while Ford regained his former seat. Ford received treatment for the cancer, and was able to return briefly to council, but died in March 2016 after chemotherapy was ineffective.

Ford suffered from alcohol and drug addiction for many years. After the death of his father in 2006, Ford’s abuse grew and led to public episodes of intoxication, followed by public denials. His episodes were symptomatic of alcohol and drug addiction. His episodes were reported in the media widely and attracted much condemnation. Ford’s abuse led to him being stripped of much of his powers as Toronto mayor and he later entered drug rehabilitation.

On April 15, 2006, Ford attended a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game at the Air Canada Centre. According to a couple nearby, Ford was intoxicated, using profanity, and insulting people. The couple then sent a detailed complaint to the City of Toronto.[80] When confronted about the episode three days later by a National Post reporter, Ford initially denied having been at the game, but later admitted it. “I’m going through a few personal problems, but it doesn’t justify, you know, getting drunk in public and pretty well acting like an idiot if you ask me.”

The death of Rob Ford’s father, Doug Ford Sr., in September 2006 due to cancer has been pinpointed as the time period when Ford transitioned to crack cocaine in addition to alcohol.[83] A convicted heroin dealer who used to supply Ford’s sister Kathy recalled a party with Ford around that time. According to reporter Robyn Doolittle, Ford would come home at night and drink heavily, use hard drugs or prescription pills.

From this upstanding, good natured and fair minded gentlemen to that pathetic excuse for a human being Trump. What the hell went wrong?

The document “List of Speeches and Visits Made by Heads of State and Dignitaries” gives the length of speech or speech times for many statements made from 1945-1976.

The longest timed speech listed in the above document was made by Fidel Castro of Cuba at the 872nd plenary meeting of the General Assembly on 26 September 1960. The time listed is 269 minutes.

Other long speeches:

• 10 Oct. 1960 – H.E. Mr. Sékou Touré – Guinea – President – 896th Plenary – 144 minutes
• 23 Sep. 1960 – H.E. Mr. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev – USSR – Chairman of the Council of Ministers – 869th Plenary – 140 minutes

• 30 Sep. 1960 – H.E. Dr. Soekarno – Indonesia – President – 880th Plenary – 121 minutes

In addition, we have this note:

• 23 Sep. 2009 – H.E. Colonel Muammar Al-Qadhafi – Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – Leader of the Revolution – 96 minutes – (according to the website of the 64th session General Assembly General Debate)

On 23 January 1957 V. K. Krishna Menon delivered an unprecedented eight-hour speech defending India’s stand on Kashmir. To date, the speech is the longest ever delivered in the United Nations Security Council, covering five hours of the 762nd meeting on 23 January, and two hours and forty-eight minutes on the 24th, reportedly concluding with Menon’s collapse on the Security Council floor. During the filibuster, Nehru moved swiftly and successfully to consolidate Indian power in Kashmir. Menon’s passionate defence of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir enlarged his base of support in India, and led to the Indian press temporarily dubbing him the “Hero of Kashmir”.

Famous Hugo Chavez speech

Speaking one day after Bush addressed the same session of the General Assembly, Chávez announced, “The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.” At that point, Chávez made the sign of the cross, positioned his hands as if praying, and looked briefly upwards as if invocation of God. He continued “Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world.” Chávez also said that President Bush “…came [to the General Assembly] to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.” Chávez began his talk by recommending Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: “It’s an excellent book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the 20th century, and what’s happening now, and the greatest threat looming over our planet.” Citing Chomsky’s book, Chávez explained, “…the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.”

BBC

A brawl has broken out in Ghana’s parliament during a late-night session over a contentious government-proposed levy on electronic transactions.

MPs shoved, pushed and threw punches at each other, while others tried to stop the fighting.

The chaos started after opposition MPs rushed forward to prevent Deputy Speaker Joseph Osei Owusu from leaving his seat to vote, local media reports.

He was chairing the session, which was then adjourned because of the disorder.

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has rejected the proposed levy of 1.75% on electronic transactions, which includes mobile-money payments.

It says it will hit low-income people and those outside the formal banking sector.

But Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Artta has said it is necessary to widen the tax net, arguing that it could raise an extra 6.9bn Ghanaian cedi ($1.15bn; £870m) next year.

The parliamentary session began on Monday morning and broke up after midnight, the local Graphic newspaper reports.

Trump Lost Billboard in Time Square

Former U.S. President Donald Trump asked a federal judge in Florida on Friday to ask Twitter to restore his account, which the company removed in January citing a risk of incitement of violence.

Trump filed a request for preliminary injunction against Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, arguing the social media company was “coerced” by members of the U.S. Congress to suspend his account.

Twitter and several other social media platforms banned Trump from their services after a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in a deadly riot on Jan. 6.

That assault followed a speech by Trump in which he reiterated false claims that his election loss in November was because of widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts and state election officials.

Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate,” Trump’s lawyers said in the filing. The filing was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

Twitter declined to comment on the filing when contacted by Reuters.

At the time of removing Trump’s account permanently, Twitter said his tweets had violated the platform’s policy barring “glorification of violence.” The company said at the time that Trump’s tweets that led to the removal were “highly likely” to encourage people to replicate what happened in the Capitol riots.

Before he was blocked, Trump had more than 88 million followers on Twitter and used it as his social media megaphone.

In the court filing, Trump argued Twitter allowed the Taliban to tweet regularly about their military victories across Afghanistan, but censored him during his presidency by labeling his tweets as “misleading information” or indicating they violated the company’s rules against “glorifying violence.”

In July Trump sued Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence conservative viewpoints.

Women sitting in an info gathering held by the Taliban in a teacher training faculty.