When Hillary Clinton's divine entitlement to the U.S. presidency began to look imperiled in 2016 — first due to the irreverent and unkempt (but surprisingly formidable) Democratic Party primary challenge from Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist Senator from Vermont — her campaign and its media allies invented and unveiled a deeply moving morality tale. A faceless horde of unnamed, uncredentialed, unmannered, violent, abusive and deeply misogynistic online Sanders supporters — dubbed with the gender-emphasizing name "Bernie Bros" even though many were women — were berating, insulting and brutalizing Hillary, her top campaign surrogates (U.S. Senators, former cabinet members, corporate executives), and especially pro-Hillary corporate journalists with a vast artillery of traumatizing words and violent tweets.

This storyline — and especially the way it cleverly inverted the David v. Goliath framework of the 2016 campaign so that it was now Hillary and her band of monied and Ivy-League-educated political and media elites who were the real victims — was irresistible to Harvard-and-Yale-trained journalists at NBC, CNN, The New York Times and Washington Post op-ed pages who really believe they are the truly marginalized peoples. This narrative scheme enabled them — the most powerful and influential media and political elites in the world, with access to the most potent platforms and megaphones — to somehow credibly lay claim to that most valued of all currencies in American political life: victimhood.

With this power matrix in place, what mattered was no longer the pain and anger of people whose towns had their industries stripped by the Clintons' NAFTA robbery, or who worked at low-wage jobs with no benefits due to the 2008 financial crisis caused by Clintonite finance geniuses, or who were drowning in student debt with no job prospects after that crisis, or who suffered from PTSD, drug and alcohol addiction and shabby to no health care after fighting in the Clintons' wars. Now, such ordinary people were not the victims but the perpetrators. Their anger toward elites was not valid or righteous but dangerous, abusive and toxic. The real victims were multi-millionaire hosts of MSNBC programs and U.S. Senators and New York Times columnists who were abused and brutalized by those people's angry tweets for the crime of supporting a pioneer and avatar for marginalized people: the Wellesley-and-Yale-Law-graduate, former First Lady, Senator from New York, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The inflation rate in Germany jumped to a more than 30-year high, and is expected to rise by 7.3% in March compared to the same period last year, according to preliminary data released by the German Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) on Wednesday. Consumer prices will also be 2.5% higher compared to February, data shows.

"The prices for natural gas and mineral oil products have again risen noticeably and are having a significant impact on the high inflation rate," Destatis explains, adding that the inflation rate was also similarly high in West Germany in 1981, nearly a decade before it was reunited with East Germany in 1990 to form the current state.

The statistics office also cites supply bottlenecks due to disruptions in supply chains caused by the coronavirus pandemic as a contributing factor to the significant price increases. Final inflation figures for March will be released on April 12.

Roughly a month after a group of University of Toronto faculty submitted a formal human rights complaint seeking an end to the school's vaccine mandate, the university announced it will be rescinding its COVID-related policies.

A group of faculty members revealed in a press release earlier this month:

"University of Toronto staff, students, and faculty presented a letter to the University of Toronto's top administrators on February 16, 2022, prepared by counsel Mr. Courtney Betty and Mr. Glyn Hotz and sent on behalf of individuals affected by the university's vaccination mandates. The letter outlines claims of the affected parties, many of whom have already been placed on 12-months unpaid leave, intend to make in a pending Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario Group Application. These claims are now being filed."

Less than two weeks after the complaint was filed, the University of Toronto updated its so-called COVID health guidelines, announcing that they will no longer be enforcing vaccine mandates or compulsory mask wearing on their campuses.

Multiple outlets use the same talking points, quotes, and 'experts' to whitewash Ukraine's notorious "Azov" regiment

During the last week of March, multiple major media outlets in the UK and the US ran stories about Ukraine's 'Azov Battalion', seeking to whitewash almost a decade of previous reporting that clearly identified the unit's Nazi sympathies and ethos. Supposedly acting independently, they nonetheless stuck to the same talking points and often the same verbiage, suggesting a concerted effort to spin the unit as heroic defenders of Ukraine against the alleged "real" fascists — the Russians.

The latest wave of the lionization of Azov began sometime before the Russian military operation - notorious was the much-publicized image of an AK-47-wielding Ukrainian granny training to repel invaders in the regiment's camp. The last week of March, however, saw the puff pieces come in a tight group, like the bullet holes after an AK burst.

Misinformation and other harmful posts rose in visibility up to 30 per cent globally because of the failure

A "massive ranking failure" of Facebook's news feed meant that half of all views were exposed to "integrity risks" over the past six months.

A new report from The Verge, based in internal documents from Facebook, suggests that since October 2021 a huge amount of misinformation began surfacing on the news feed. Instead of suppressing accounts that repeatedly shared misinformation, it was instead giving them a boost - up to 30 per cent globally, it is claimed.

The engineers were unable to find the cause of the issue, and misinformation surged on the site until 11 March despite it being a high-priority case, according to the report.

The Bank of Russia has resumed gold purchases this week, but more importantly, the regulator is doing so at a fixed price of 5,000 rubles ($59) per 1 gram between March 28 and June 30, raising the possibility of Russia returning to the gold standard for the first time in over a century.

If the country takes the next step, as has been proposed this week, to sell its commodities priced in rubles, these combined moves could have huge implications for the ruble, the US dollar, and the global economy.

To get some answers, RT spoke to precious metals analyst Ronan Manly at BullionStar Singapore.

A Russian TV host called for "regime change" in the U.S., and also for former President Donald Trump to be reinstated.

The host, Evgeny Popov, went as far as to refer to Trump as a "partner" to the Russian people.

Saturday, while speaking in Warsaw, Poland, President Joe Biden uttered words about Vladimir Putin which required a clarification from the White House.

Biden at first stated Putin is a "dictator bent on rebuilding an empire" as his forces continue to attack Ukrainian civilians.

"We will have a different future — a brighter future rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity, of freedom and possibilities," he said.

He then veered off the script and added: "For God's sake, this man can not remain in power."

Staten Island warehouse employees become first in US to organize in grassroots union.

Employees of Amazon's largest New York City warehouse have voted to unionize, overcoming the trillion-dollar company's ferocious opposition, to become its first American workers to successfully organize. The vote came in on Friday, with 2,654 votes for and 2,131 against union membership, and while it remains to be officially certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Amazon has not challenged enough ballots to change the total.

Workers at the Staten Island facility known as JFK8 will become part of the Amazon Labor Union, whose demands include "more reasonable" productivity rates in the warehouse, higher wages, more paid breaks and vacations, among other demands.

The Biden administration announced Friday that it will be terminating the Title 42 border policy at the end of May. "After considering current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19 (such as highly effective vaccines and therapeutics), the CDC Director has determined that an Order suspending the right to introduce migrants into the United States is no longer necessary," the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said in a statement.

Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich tweeted Friday afternoon:

"NEW: CDC announces Title 42 to be terminated May 23. 'Following a public health determination, the CDC Director is terminating the Order ... The implementation of the termination of the Order will be on May 23 2022.'"

In the now month-long mainstream media coverage of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, much attention has been paid to the actions of the 'Ukrainian Resistance'.

In a manner not dissimilar to its coverage of the 'Syrian rebels' a decade ago, a romanticised image of 'Ukrainian freedom fighters' fighting bravely against a militarily superior Russian foe has been widespread amongst corporate outlets, alongside their fawning over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his calls for the implementation of a No Fly Zone - a move that would undoubtedly trigger nuclear war.

This Hollywood-style PR makeover of the Ukrainian military by the corporate media - including the notorious neo-Nazi Azov Battalion - also shares a strong similarity with the aforementioned 'Syrian rebels' in that it highlights the strong presence of CIA involvement in the background.

Indeed, the training of Ukrainian military personnel by the CIA to engage in guerrilla warfare against Russia was recently outlined in a Western corporate media report, indicating that a plan was in place to draw Moscow into an Iraq-war style military quagmire in Ukraine - the second largest country in Europe.