Russian state media is using Tucker Carlson, Mike Pompeo to bolster Putin's moves in Ukraine

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was released from the hospital on Monday, after receiving treatment for a concussion.

McConnell tripped and fell last Wednesday after attending a dinner in Washington, D.C. David Popp, a spokesman for McConnell, said in a statement the 81-year-old senator's "concussion recovery is proceeding well" and "at the advice of his physician, the next step will be a period of physical therapy at an inpatient rehabilitation facility before he returns home."

Popp also shared that over the weekend, McConnell's medical team "discovered that he ... suffered a minor rib fracture on Wednesday, for which he is also being treated."

In August 2019, McConnell fractured his shoulder after tripping outside of his Louisville home, and underwent surgery.

With help from the Na'vi, Maverick, and a Michelle Yeoh from every universe, the Academy has staved off another ratings decline for the Oscars. 

Sunday's Academy Awards drew an average of 18.7 million viewers, an increase of about 12 percent from the previous year, according to Nielsen. This was the biggest audience for the Oscars since 2020. It also marks the second year in a row that viewership for the Academy Awards increased. About 16.6 million people tuned in to the 2022 Oscars, which was up from 2021's all-time low of 10.4 million. 

Sunday's Oscars may have benefited from having several major box office hits in contention, as 2022's two biggest movies, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water, were both nominated for Best Picture. They each won an Oscar, but the night was mainly dominated by Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won seven awards, including Best Picture. Everything Everywhere was also a surprise hit in 2022, grossing over $100 million worldwide.

It's also possible there may have been an increased interest in the Oscars due to the chaos of last year's ceremony, during which Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage. Though host Jimmy Kimmel made plenty of jokes about that incident, there wasn't any similar drama on Sunday evening. The solid viewership was also despite the fact that The Last of Us aired its season finale on HBO during the ceremony, drawing 8.2 million viewers.

The viewership for Sunday's Oscars was still the third lowest in the telecast's history and nowhere near the audience of more than 40 million who tuned in for the 2014 Oscars, for example. But after years of declines, the fact that the ratings have been ticking up is still a reassuring sign for the Academy, perhaps suggesting the future of Hollywood's biggest night isn't as bleak as it once seemed. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote a scathing opinion essay for The New York Times on Monday, saying "we know who is responsible" for last week's stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and ensuing financial fallout.

"In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to protect consumers and ensure that big banks could never again take down the economy and destroy millions of lives," wrote Warren, whose political reputation has been predicated in large part on fighting corporate greed. That law, however, was defanged in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump following intense lobbying pressure from various Wall Street and banking interests including, Warren pointed out, "Greg Becker, the chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank."

Indeed, one of the crucial rollbacks enacted by Trump was raising the threshold of how much money a bank possessed before it was considered "too big to fail" and thereby requiring certain regulatory oversight. Now sitting comfortably below the limit of $250 billion, SVB was therefore subject to fewer regulations over the past five years, leading to what Warren deemed "a toxic mix of risky management and weak supervision." This included relying largely on startups as its main batch of depositors — a move that left the bank particularly vulnerable to the economic flux of a single industry, rather than diversifying its stakeholder group. 

"Had Congress and the Federal Reserve not rolled back the stricter oversight," Warren said, Silicon Valley Bank "would have been subject to stronger liquidity and capital requirements to withstand financial shocks." And while the damage in this particular instance is done (although the Biden administration has vowed to cover deposit insurance above the usual $250,000 limit for bank customers), Warren nevertheless proposes a series of steps to prevent the next medium-size bank meltdown from occurring. Her suggestions include returning to Dodd-Frank-levels of regulation, amending deposit insurance rules to better protect payrolls and ordinary banking transactions, and — perhaps most importantly — ensuring that "those responsible not be rewarded" with the government empowered to not only "claw back" excessive executive bonuses, but also investigate potential civil and criminal lawbreaking on the part of those at the top of SVB. 

"These bank failures were entirely avoidable if Congress and the Fed had done their jobs and kept strong banking regulations in place since 2018," Warren concluded, warning "Washington must act quickly to prevent the next crisis."

Research has found that moose may actually be contributing to climate change. The mammal's enormous appetite (eating up to 60 pounds per day!) may actually be reducing forests' ability to store carbon, The Washington Post writes.

"It was really a surprise to see how much moose can influence vegetation growth, the carbon cycle, and the climate system," said co-author of the study Xiangping Hu in a news release. Moose reportedly consume 10 percent of the Norwegian forestry industry's yearly harvest as well as "alter land cover properties ... with direct implications for the climate," per the report.

"Moose are an ecosystem engineer in the forest ecosystem," said Gunnar Austrheim, one of the study's co-authors, adding that they "strongly impact everything from the species composition and nutrient availability in the forest." Along with eating forest trees which act as carbon sinks, moose feeding also impacts surface albedo or "fraction of reflected solar energy radiation." As the animals eat the trees, they allow more light to reflect off the forest floor, cooling it until the canopy regrows.

Moose have been found to benefit the forestry industry by eating deciduous trees and leaving the coniferous species, which tend to get harvested. "So moose to some extent, are helping them because they're reducing competition," explained Francesco Cherubini, also an author of the study. However, this is not necessarily good for climate change because it reduces the biodiversity of the region as well as the ability to hold carbon.

"I think as we get more of an understanding of how all these different things are interrelated, land managers could come up with an optimal plan," Cherubini remarked. "That could be a much-needed win-win solution for climate, for biodiversity, and for timber value."

A song from the J6 Prison Choir, a musical group comprising men who were jailed for their participation in the infamous Jan. 6 Capitol riot, hit No. 1 on iTunes over the weekend, Variety reports. The single, "Justice for All," features audio of former President Donald Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Trump reportedly agreed take part out in the song of respect for those that have been incarcerated. He recorded the audio at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

As Variety notes, "the song's dominance on the iTunes sales chart does not necessarily augur for it becoming a hit on the Hot 100 or any streaming chart, since paid downloads now represent a minuscule fraction of the music market." Indeed, it usually only takes "a few thousand sales a day" for a song to dominate the chart. As of Monday morning, "Justice for All" had not made it onto Spotify's "Top Songs - USA," a weekly chart of the 50 most streamed songs in the country, but was still No. 1 on iTunes.

At least 1,000 people have been arrested for participating in the 2021 riot, with roughly 42 percent of those having already received criminal sentences. The remainder are either awaiting trial or "haven't yet reached plea agreements," Time reports.