weighing sanctions, increased military support to ukraine, heavier weaponry, for example, the kind of things russia would not want to see there. they have, of course, hoping this might, if they do use it, might speed up the european s willingness to ban russian oil imports. all of this is a way for the president to say to the international community that the u.s. and western allies are going to respond if russia does use chemical weapons. not drawing a red line that would force him to impose a no-fly zone, for example, or put boots on the ground in ukraine. that s the thing. he doesn t seem to want to be boxing himself in, the president for sure, even though he s done things i think we all thought he wouldn t do when it comes to this war. natasha, thank you for that report. joining us now, cnn anchor and chief national security correspondent, jim sciutto, just back from ukraine, seriously, yesterday, back from ukraine. i want to talk about may 9th. may 9th in russia, moscow, is
helen catt, bbc news. helen has been telling us how damaging this story has been to westminster as a whole. mac whenever you get these sort of stories about behaviour of this type by mps, it is another way of damaging public trust in politics. and that is the real risk with this and why these stories are important. we ve seen parliament try to fix this in the past. it has set up an independent whistle blowing scheme, thatis independent whistle blowing scheme, that is in place and people do use it, but there are questions about how long those investigations take and therefore how infective it is at having an impact on the culture in parliament. what the speaker is suggesting here, that is a way of addressing some of the imbalances between mps and their staff, and the potential for imbalances there, but when it comes to accusations between mps, it wouldn t help. there is set to be revisions to the code of conduct for mps, and we expect to hear the outcome of that in the next
bill, the president s executive order comes as the fire season out west is starting, season gotten longer due to years of drought, some portions of the country facing extremely critical fire threat today. yeah, it s grim, colorado, new mexico, so tinder dry there and the result of this 22 year mega drought gripping the west and i think a lot of president biden s greenest supporters love old growth forests and are happy to see today s executive order. those old growth, big old trees are the biggest oldest carbon capture machines we have left on earth until we invent something better but probably not going to off set the other moves he made last week which is opening up federal land to more drilling, even put in a use it or lose it clause encouraging more drilling, that was disappointing to his green base, also opening strategic oil reserves, encouraging allies, you know, to basically fight the putin/ukraine war, to get
recent remarks about this, he was saying there would be a use it or lose it strategy or use it or lose it policy for a lot of these private oil companies and drillers where they already have the lease, use it or else we will start taxing you more on it. but obviously in a week or two since the president said that didn t see enough people starting to break ground on some of these leases that they had. so now we have this new policy where they are making another 144,000 acres available. that is 80% less and what there is. neil: that s right. speak with the smaller reduced amount is still 144,000 acres, . neil: but it is something, as you said. peter, thank you very, very much. no trying to look at this on good friday with the markets are closed and do this in secret, but this is a very big event at a very big about-face. something we will follow closely
skewed a mask mandate for san francisco, same areas nancy pelosi, she gave her reason that she was really feeling the spirit at a concert and that s why she couldn t wear a mask. such a wonderful excuse, i think we should all use it. sean: those masks, they can ruin the vibe i guess, right? but i m going to go with remember the texas democrat who tried to flee the state to stop the voting rights bill? but then they were supportive of democrats in washington, d.c., that wanted to pass their own voting rights law. what hypocrites. great, what was the most cringeworthy moment of the year? this was really hard for me to decide. going to go with mayor de blasio. when he decided that he was going to eat fries and a hamburger on live television to try to get people to get the vaccine. i guess he was emoting his vaccine passport or something like that. no one likes to see anyone eat, but definitely not