😲💸Elon Musk, the billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX, chipped in at least $500,000 to ex-girlfriend Amber Heard’s donation to the American Civil Liberties Union, the organization’s general counsel testified Thursday.

Terence Dougherty said Heard never made good on her $3.5 million pledge to the group, paying only $350,000, according to the ACLU exec’s taped deposition played during Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against his ex-wife.

The rest of the $1.3 million the ACLU eventually received came from Depp, who forked over $100,000, and a donor Dougherty believes was Musk.

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Russian national Konstantin Yaroshenko claims that he was kidnapped rather than arrested by the US as no formal procedures of the arrest have been conducted.

🤦🏻‍♀️🇨🇦 Canada top diplomat Melanie Joly swore she "won’t stop our efforts until Ukraine wins" and claimed more anti-Russia sanctions are needed

When asked about the efforts Canada has undertaken to precipitate a diplomatic solution to the conflict, Joly deflected.

😬It seems like he needs an interpreter...

⚡️🇺🇸👶The Oklahoma House passed the Heartbeat Act 68-12 on Thursday, which would ban abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt is expected to sign the bill in the coming days

❗️😱Donald Trump has just posted on his app Truth Social for the first time

🇺🇸📱Meanwhile: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she is introducing a bill that would force Twitter to reinstate her account

🚭🚭New standards-based on clear science and evidence establish the addictiveness and harm of flavored cigarettes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is announcing proposed product standards to prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes and prohibit all characterizing flavors (other than tobacco) in cigars.

These actions have the potential to significantly reduce disease and death from combusted tobacco product use, the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., by reducing youth experimentation and addiction and increasing the number of smokers that quit.

“The proposed rules would help prevent children from becoming the next generation of smokers and help adult smokers quit,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. “Additionally, the proposed rules represent an important step to advance health equity by significantly reducing tobacco-related health disparities.”

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🇺🇸Rep. Thomas Massie, who voted against the bill allowing Biden to engage in lend-lease deals for military equipment with Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, slammed the legislation on Thursday

🧐As the US and Taiwan have grown closer in recent years, Beijing has accused Washington of encouraging pro-separatist forces on the island who might seek to declare independence from China, which would trigger a war.

In its latest move to normalize the treatment of the Taiwanese government as a national-level entity, the US invited a senior Taiwanese official on Thursday to attend a White House-hosted event on the future of the internet.

According to a White House release, the event is to launch a “Declaration for the Future of the Internet,” by which some 60 nations will pledge “to advance a positive vision for the Internet and digital technologies.”

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😷 🌉“I strongly support requiring a mask to ride BART to keep all our riders safe,” said Rebecca Saltzman, board president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors approved the mask mandate during a board of directors meeting, and it comes just over a week after a federal judge tossed out the national mask mandate for public transportation that was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Fox affiliate KTVU in San Francisco.

Saltzman said that she believes masks should be included in the system’s code of conduct.

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⚡️⚡️CDC reports a human case of H5N1 bird flu in Colorado

😳😲Minneapolis officers used “covert or fake” accounts to seek and gain access to the online profiles of Black individuals including an unnamed City Council member and a state elected official, the report said, as well as groups such as the Minneapolis NAACP and Urban League.

The report released Wednesday by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights echoes numerous past revelations that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have sometimes illegally secretly surveilled prominent people and communities of color even though they weren’t involved in any criminal activity.

Overall, the two-year investigation found that the Minneapolis Police Department engaged in a pattern of race discrimination for at least a decade, including stopping and arresting Black people at a higher rate than white people, more frequent use of force on people of color, and a department culture that tolerated racist language.

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⚡️Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill on Thursday that would ban books and any teachings that suggest the US is inherently racist among other race-related concepts

❗️🇺🇸🇺🇦Wily Joseph Cancel, 22, an employee of a US private military company, has been killed in Ukraine, CNN reports

🪅Latin America has been a region that has been hit hard by the pandemic, with nations like Brazil and Peru registering some of the world’s highest death tolls. But cases and deaths fell this month in most places to lows resembling levels last seen in the first two months of the pandemic.

Even as coronavirus cases grow half a world away in China and authorities there impose new lockdowns, plummeting infection rates in Latin America have countries eliminating restrictions on mass gatherings, lifting some travel requirements, and scrapping mask mandates that have been in place for two years.

Most countries in the region have met the World Health Organization’s target of vaccinating 70% of their people with at least two doses. As case numbers and hospitalizations decline, so do many restrictions on social life.

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