Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighteen. Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 5:03 PM, for 9h 51m 54s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1959, Vince Lombardi is named Packers coach.
Recommended for reading in full —
Alex Ward reports Biden had his first call with Putin. He said everything Trump wouldn’t:
Biden pressed Putin on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which many suspect was an assassination attempt ordered by the Kremlin, as well as the government’s arrest of hundreds of protesters who demonstrated in support of Navalny last weekend.
Earlier on Tuesday, the US and six other G7 nations released a statement condemning the Kremlin for the poisoning, the protest crackdown, and for detaining Navalny last week on seemingly bogus charges.
During the call, Biden also affirmed America’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, which has been under threat since Russia invaded the country in 2014. During his confirmation hearing to be secretary of state last week, Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Biden administration would continue to support Kyiv with lethal aid.
Biden also brought up three major issues related to Moscow’s belligerence toward the United States: Russia’s interference in the 2020 election; its alleged ties to the hacking of dozens of US government agencies and Fortune 500 companies by infiltrating SolarWindssoftware; and reports that Russia had offered cash bounties to Afghan militants to kill American troops in Afghanistan.
See also Whitehouse.gov, Readout of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Oliver Darcy writes of Zuckerberg’s Big Decision:
Mark Zuckerberg built one of the world’s most powerful — if not the most powerful — radicalization engines in history. For years and years, his platform has algorithmically pushed people into ideological political bubbles and reinforced their existing worldviews. It has enabled and rewarded media organizations profiting off of hyper-partisan trash and outright disinformation. And it has looked the other way as conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, flourished on the site
All the while, Zuckerberg was aware. But he defended his platform’s practices, while making a fortune, repeatedly hiding behind a commitment to free expression as reason to allow for poison to be injected into the American political conversation. But on Wednesday, Zuckerberg announced what can only be viewed as an about-face.
The Facebook chief observed on a call with investors — in which the company posted an $11.2 billion profit in Q4, an increase of more than 50% from the year prior — that “there has been a trend across society that a lot of things have become politicized and politics have had a way of creeping into everything.” (Hmm, I wonder what might have contributed to this!) “One of the top pieces of feedback that we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” Zuckerberg added.
As a result, Zuckerberg said Facebook is now considering steps it can take to reduce the volume of political content shown to users in News Feed. Additionally, Facebook will continue a practice of not recommending civic and political groups to users, a move that had been implemented ahead of the 2020 presidential election…
(Emphasis in original.)
Teacher Cathy Cluck goes on road trip to teach students from historical sites across U.S.: