Ukraine Talks, ‘Minor vs. Major’ Incursion, Black Mold or Crickets is Cause of Havana Syndrome

Biden raises ire with statements talking about Russia making a small not a large scale incursion during marathon presser while diplomatic talks continue through Friday. Many polls are showing waning approval for Biden after his first year as Commander-in-Chief.

For the first segment, Peter Oliver, RT correspondent and friend of the show, joined us from Geneva. Ukraine is the top story around the world. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his British, French, and German counterparts in Berlin in preparation for his meeting Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. John and Peter discuss their role in the talks. CIA Director Bill Burns is also in Berlin on the heels of a meeting in Moscow with President Putin. Also, how will Russia respond to sanctions? Would there be ways around them?

In the second segment, John caught up with commentator and political cartoonist Ted Rall. They talked about Biden’s marathon press conference that the White House promoted. Multiple public opinion polls this week show Biden mired at about a 41 percent approval rating, the lowest of any modern president at the one-year mark of his presidency besides Donald Trump, who was a few points lower. Biden came out strongly against what he called Republican obstructionism on his legislative agenda, he predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and he said that he could still get his agenda passed by breaking it up into a series of smaller bills.

The next segment features Dr. Mikhail Kogan, Medical Director at the George Washington Center for Integrated Medicine, associate professor of medicine at George Washington University and founder and executive director of the AIM Health Institute, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit delivering integrated services to the vulnerable. The latest is that Russia and China are not the culprits behind the Havana Syndrome plaguing diplomats. There is mounting evidence that an allergic reaction to black mold is a contributing factor, according to Dr. Kogan.

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time to talk a little about the week in sports. We’re joined by Austin Pelli, the cohost of Sputnik’s News’s Fault Lines, which you can hear every day, Monday through Friday. The games were blowouts. ESPN is saying that the NFL’s decision to expand wildcards in the playoffs has created bad football. This seemed to be the case last weekend.

John and Austin then talk about Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, telling Fox News that trans women should not compete in sports with women who were born women. This has been increasingly controversial, especially in college sports. It seems that we’re getting to a point where this issue is coming to a head. How should it be handled? Austin says it is complicated, that segregation in sports is unfortunate, but each group needs their own category for sports to remain fair for all athletes.

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