• East Bay Representative Eric Swalwell is defending remarks he made Thursday that the United States should boot Russian students out of the country as punishment toward Russia. The Livermore politician mentioned his wildly inhumane proposal on CNN yesterday during the network's Newsroom broadcast — "frankly, I think closing [Russia's] embassy in the United States, kicking every Russian student out of the United States, those should all be [options] on the table," Swalwell said; his comments were quickly weaponized by conservative news outlets and faced widespread backlash for their harsh nature. [Chronicle]
  • A Sunnyvale startup is being accused of exploiting its interns. Oigetit Fake News Filter — a Bay Area-based company that describes itself as using artificial intelligence to fact-check news articles — apparently relied on an “inordinate number of unpaid interns" to perform a majority of the work, according to interviews performed by the Chronicle; most of them said to the newspaper that they supervised more than 100 underpaid interns and were given tasks integral to the company's business, but were still unpaid, which is a violation of California law. [Chronicle]
  • SF police are looking for a man who allegedly robbed a bank on the first block of West Portal Avenue around 2:15 p.m. Thursday. [KPIX]
  • Alameda County prosecutors have charged 27-year-od Larry Coney of Oakland with murder for allegedly shooting and killing another man in a vehicle on an East Bay freeway back in October. [NBC Bay Area]
  • There's a Russian spa in Hunters Point offering free passes to any Ukrainian who walks through its doors this weekend. [SFGate]
  • About 70% of the U.S. currently falls in areas where the CDC recommends easing mask-wearing requirements, like removing face coverings inside schools; the majority of the country is also now considered "low-to-medium risk" regarding COVID-19 infections. [ABC News]
  • During the Cold War, the U.S. adopted an approach to Soviet aggression that came to be known as “containment," which was a dulled-down term that evolved into a complex Cold War strategy; Presiden Biden is clearly moving toward "Containment 2.0" — though its effectiveness remains unclear in such a connected world, nowadays. [NYT]

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