I was watching my phone waiting for the new inflation numbers. That was my focus for the moment. Then, the alerts flooded in. Some kind of attack on a New York subway.

It looked bad. Really bad. People shot. Explosive devices. Terrorism?

Once things settled down, we learned that ten people had been shot. A dozen more suffered other injuries. One person, it appears responsible for it all.

He did a lot of damage. Sitting on a subway car, he tossed two smoke grenades, pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and started shooting. Thirty-three shots before the gun jammed. I guess it could have been worse.

Turns out it is probably not terrorism just a troubled man. Authorities are looking for a person of interest.

That was the headline story yesterday. Today, too. It reminded me that in the news business, you really can’t expect things to go as planned. Those consumer price index numbers took a back seat. By the way, inflation was higher than expected. 8.5 percent. The highest since 1981.

The subway attack was an even bigger story than the war in Ukraine. The headline there is something President Biden said. He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of genocide.

From NPR, the President was in Iowa talking about gas prices at an ethanol fuel plant. He blamed the Russian invasion for higher gas prices.

“Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.”

Yep, President Biden went there. He was asked about it later.

“Yes, I called it genocide. It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being—being able to be Ukrainian.”

Later on this morning, I’m talking to someone from the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg. The museum, along with several others, took out a full page statement in Sunday’s New York Times. It is titled “Statement by Museums on the War Crimes Committed in Ukraine.”

Here’s just a part of it: “It is with sorrow that we see yet another atrocity in Ukraine, 80 years after the ‘Holocaust by Bullets’ in which Jewish men, women and children were shot and buried in shallow graves.”

Yes, the statement compares what happened in Nazi Germany to what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

I’m hoping to ask the Florida Holocaust Museum representative how this could happen again? We always believed after World War Two that we could prevent these kind of atrocities.

The news doesn’t end. An attack on a New York subway. The economy. The horrible war in Ukraine. Just watch your phone. An alert is probably coming soon.

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