Late Monday night, the world lost yet another great poet. Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tom Petty passed away at age 66 in Los Angeles having been found unconscious in his home and rushed to a hospital Sunday. Petty’s 40 year rock career included stints with various bands, among them the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys. As the frontman of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, he enjoyed his greatest commercial success, selling over 80M records. His nasally voice, twangy guitar, Floridian drawl, and lyrics have been a classic rock staple for decades. Petty “made a record and it went in the chart, [he showed that] the sky was the limit (the music video is perhaps Johnny Depp’s best casting except for certain 21 Jump Street episodes).”

The Complicated Relationship Between the United States and Guns: The deadliest mass shooting in modern US history happened Sunday evening, as thousands of concert goers gathered outdoors on a lovely night in Las Vegas to enjoy the Harvest Festival of country music. Stephen Craig Paddock, a lone gunman with assault weapons on the 32nd floor of a nearby hotel, killed at least 59 people and wounded 527 others. While the days of the week and the venues may be different, one thing is constant: the stock price of gun and ammunition manufacturers rise in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, as they did Monday. It happened after mass shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando (June 2016), in San Bernardino (December 2015), at the  Aurora, Colorado movie theater and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut (2012).

Despite a lot of talk and investor fears about stricter gun control after each of those tragedies, no such laws ever materialized. In fact, gun sales climbed during the Obama years as demand soared due in part to the gun control discussion. Gun aficionados bought more firearms just in case the rules changed. However, since the election of President Trump, who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association, demand for weapons has dropped, resulting in plummeting sales and profits for gun manufacturers. The gun sales slump has actually caused the administration to consider changing regulations to make it easier to export guns. The proposed change would treat handguns more like commodities and less like military weapons, shifting oversight of weapons exports from the State Department to the Commerce Department thereby loosening bureaucratic red tape for gun manufacturers.

Whether a new gun control debate emerges from this latest mass shooting remains to be seen.  When asked at Monday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed questions about policy responses to the  massacre, saying it is too soon to talk gun limits.

We Might Need “CSI: Fake News” To Find The Culprits: Politicized fake news became rampant on social media soon after the mass shooting in Las Vegas Sunday night, the latest example of hyper-partisan trolls battling to blame a tragedy on opposing political ideologies. Rightwing blogs falsely claimed the shooter was an anti-Trump liberal named Geary Danley  and a popular refrain on 4chan, the anonymous message board and a favorite platform of the “alt-right”, was that  Danley was a registered Democrat who “liked Rachel Maddow, MoveOn.org and associated with Anti-Trump Army”. It was all a hoax. Despite the fact that the claims were unproven and coming from non-credible sources, Facebook’s “Safety Check” page, which is supposed to help people connect with loved ones during the crisis, picked up the fake story. At the same time, Google users who searched Geary Danley’s name were at one point directed to the 4chan thread filled with false claims. The managing editor of the fact-checking website Snopes.com, said in an interview. “It’s getting more polarized… People are putting out crap information on purpose… A lot of this is pushed by trolls deliberately to muddy the conversation.

But just when people might need Google most to access legitimate news sources, the company is replacing its so-called “first click free” policy, which requires publishers to offer three free articles a day before readers come across a pay wall. Instead Google will offer a flexible sampling model that allows news organizations to decide how many, if any, articles it offers for free. It is recognition of the growth of subscription services. Google’s vice-president of news said “People come to Google looking for high-quality content, and our job is to help them find it. However, sometimes that content is behind a paywall.”

Three US Win Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Three US scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm,” often referred to as our biological clock. Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young were awarded the prize for their research on how plants, humans, and animals adapt their biological rhythm to synchronize with the earth’s day and night cycle. These scientists helped research and explain why in the middle of the day sometimes we feel an incredible need to take a nap or why we feel like we are free fallin and feel like yelling “you don’t know how it feels to be me” if we are still awake past our regular bedtimes.

All living organisms have an internal clock, known as the circadian rhythm, which is why humans are awake during the day and sleep at night. Our biological clock helps regulate eating habits, hormone release, blood pressure, and body temperature. The US trio discovered that a person’s well-being is affected when there is a “temporary mismatch between our external environment and this internal biological clock.” An imbalance between lifestyle and rhythm could lead to increased risk for a number of diseases including metabolic diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Dear Joseph Kabila: Seriously, It’s Time To Go Go Go: Opposition leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have called for new efforts to oust President Joseph Kabila who has yet to set dates for elections, despite his second (and final) term expiring nine months ago. In late December, Kabila agreed to hold elections this year in a deal with opposition leaders that was brokered by the Catholic church, but experts say the deal has now entirely broken down. “The people are tired,” said opposition member Martin Fayulu, as he called for a month-long campaign of civil disobedience. International pressure on Kabila is limited, and regional powers have not pushed Kabila to hold elections. But Western and African powers are concerned that the country, which this year has experienced continuing violence in the central and eastern parts of the country, will slide into civil war if elections are not held as promised.

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Bangladesh and Myanmar To Work Together To Repatriate Rohingya Refugees: Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed on Monday to set up a working group to plan the repatriation of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh. The UN has called the exodus of 507,000 Rohingya since late August the world’s fastest-developing refugee emergency. Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali said he and Myanmar official Kyaw Tint Swe had agreed in their talks to draw up plans for repatriation. The two countries have agreed on repatriation plans before, but the fundamental problem–the status of Rohingya in Myanmar–has never been resolved. The Rohingya are denied citizenship and classified as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots in Myanmar that go back centuries.

Another Cabinet Official Flies Privately Over The Swamp Instead Of Draining It: US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is under investigation by the department’s Office of the Inspector General for his use of private chartered flights. Zinke disclosed last week that he had taken three charter flights, including a $12,375 late-night trip from Las Vegas to his home state of Montana after speaking at  an event for the city’s new NHL hockey team, the Las Vegas Golden Knights. The team’s owner is a longtime backer of Zinke’s political campaigns. On Friday Zinke said that “taxpayers absolutely have the right to know official travel costs,” but he dismissed criticism of his flights as “a little BS over travel.”

Another Trump cabinet official, Tom Price, recently resigned as Secretary of Health and Human Services after criticism for using costly chartered planes while on government business. Other officials who are being scrutinized for their use of chartered flights are Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Shulkin attended a Wimbledon match and took a river cruise while on a taxpayer funded trip to Europe. Mnuchin requested a military jet for his honeymoon, which was denied, but then he used a private plane for a visit to Kentucky where he and his new bride watched the solar eclipse from Fort Knox. The White House has just imposed new restrictions on charter plane travel by government officials, and Chief of Staff John Kelly must now personally approve all future trips by cabinet members on private jets.

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