Today’s News 4th April 2024

• Reuters Has Ulterior Motives For Reporting That Iran Tipped Russia Off Before The Crocus Attack
  Reuters Has Ulterior Motives For Reporting That Iran Tipped Russia Off Before The Crocus Attack

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

  This narrative is being pushed to deflect from the evidence tying Ukraine to the Crocus terrorist attack and to discredit the Russian security services…

  

  Reuters cited three unnamed sources to exclusively report on Monday that Iran had allegedly tipped Russia off about a then-impending major terrorist attack after learning about it from ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists who were detained after the group’s early January attack in Kerman. The information lacked specific details, but the outlet editorialized that “It is harder…for Russia to dismiss intelligence from diplomatic ally Iran on the attack” than from the West, the latter of which they claim that it downplayed.

  Accordingly, Reuters wrote that this “raised questions over the effectiveness of Russian security services”, thus exposing the ulterior motive behind this report. The West has done all that it can to deflect from Russia’s accusations that Ukraine was tied to this terrorist attack via the evidence that its investigation has uncovered. This includes claiming that the vague warning that the US passed along to Russia was obtained from spying on ISIS-K, not on Kiev like this analysis here compellingly argues.

  By including an Iranian dimension into the emerging narrative of early warnings ahead of the Crocus terrorist attack, the West via Reuters wants to further deflect from its own and Ukraine’s involvement in what happened while simultaneously discrediting the Russian security services. This analysis here debunks the false narrative that President Putin downplayed ISIS-K threats in the run-up to the attack, yet the West is doubling down on that claim, largely in response to evidence implicating Kiev.

  To be sure, there’s a chance that one or some of those ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorists that Iran detained in January might have heard about the group’s plans to attack Russia, but that’s altogether different than them having knowledge of the then-impending Crocus plot. Russia already knows that it’s in that group’s crosshairs after they bombed its embassy in Kabul in September 2022. Without specific information, whether from Iran or anyone else, nothing on the home front would have changed in response to that.

  For instance, Russia, the UK, or even a random social media person could vaguely claim that ISIS-K is planning to attack the US, which American officials themselves are already aware of but wouldn’t do anything differently on the home front upon being informed of the latest rumors. Likewise, it’s unrealistic to imagine that Russia would ramp up security at all large gatherings even if Iran told them that a detained ethnic Tajik ISIS-K terrorist might have claimed that the group is planning to attack it.

  For what it’s worth, RT quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that “I do not know anything about this” when asked about Reuters’ report, so objective observers should be skeptical of it. He either wasn’t informed ahead of his media briefing that such vague information was allegedly passed along to Russia by Iran or it simply didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter which of these two is true though since it wouldn’t have made a difference either way for the reasons that were explained.

  Promoting this unverified report from anonymous sources quoted by Western media is therefore only being done for the ulterior motives of deflecting from the evidence tying Ukraine to the Crocus terrorist attack and discrediting the Russian security services. Considering the driving force behind this latest report, it can be expected that more such stories might soon follow, and everyone should be equally skeptical of them as well while keeping in mind the narrative goals that they aim to advance.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 04/04/2024 – 02:00

• The Great Escape From Government Schools
  The Great Escape From Government Schools

  Authored by Jim Bovard via The Libertarian Institute,

  After enduring bullshit school shutdowns during the COVID pandemic, many students concluded that school itself must be bullshit and have skipped attending classes. Government bureaucrats are panicking since subsidies are tied to the number of students’ butts in chairs each day. Duke University Professor Katie Rosanbalm lamented that, thanks to the pandemic, “Our relationship with school became optional.”

  School absences have “exploded” almost everywhere, according to a New York Times report last week. Chronic absenteeism has almost doubled amongst public school students, rising from 15% pre-pandemic to 26% currently. Compulsory attendance laws are getting trampled far and wide.

  The New York Times suggested that “something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting.” Connecticut Education Commissioner Charlene M. Russell-Tucker commented, “There is a sense of: ‘If I don’t show up, would people even miss the fact that I’m not there?’” The arbitrary, counterproductive school shutdowns destroyed the trust that many families had in the government education system.

  

  The New York Times reflected the tizzy afflicting education bureaucrats across the land: “Students can’t learn if they aren’t in school.”

  Like hell.

  So kids are not enduring daily indoctrination to doubt their own genders? So kids’ heads are not being dunked into the latest social justice buckets of fear, loathing, and guilt? So kids are not being drilled with faulty methods of learning mathematics to satisfy the latest Common Core catechism and vainly try to close the “achievement gap”? A shortage of indoctrination is not the same as a shortfall of education.

  More than seventy years ago, University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins aptly observed, “The tremendous waste of time in the American education system must result from the fact that there is so much time to waste.” John Taylor Gatto, New York’s Teacher of the Year of 1991 (according to the New York State Education Department), observed, “Government schooling…kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.”

  My view on school absenteeism is shaped by my dissident tendencies. Government schooling was the most brain deadening experience in my life. Early in elementary school, I relished reading even more than peanut butter. But I was obliged to put down books and listen to teachers, slowing my mental intake by 80% or 90%. By the time I reached fourth grade, my curiosity was fading.

  Between my junior and senior years in high school, I lazed away a summer on the payroll of the Virginia Highway Department. I came to recognize that public schools were permeated by the same “Highway Department ethos.” Teachers leaned on badly-written textbooks instead of shovels. Going through the motions and staying awake until quitting time was all that mattered. Learning became equated with drudgery and submission to bored taskmasters with chalk and erasers.

  And then came the wooden stakes hammered home in English classes. Devoting two months to dissecting Hamlet made me damn all Danes, courtiers, and psychoanalysts. The week spent on Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” story made me lust to cast all frogs and folksy nineteenth century authors into hell. The six weeks blighted by Paradise Lost convinced me Samuel Johnson was right: “None ever wished it longer than it is.” Old books, rather than sources of wisdom and inspiration, were mental castor oil—something to forcibly imbibe solely to emit the right answers on the exams.

  I spent years mentally idling while teachers droned. As long as the government provided a seat in a classroom, it had fulfilled its obligations. There was never any inkling that later in life, I would need to mobilize every iota of talent I might possess. My brain was like the mythical village of Brigadoon. It showed up once every year or two to take a scholastic aptitude test and then vanished into the mists. Teachers chronically noted on my permanent record “not performing up to potential.” Mysteries never cease. As long as I didn’t fail a grade, I slipped under the radar.

  I was never a chronic truant until my family moved to a college town just before the start of my senior year in high school. I missed practically as many classes as I attended that year, scampering over to the nearby Virginia Tech campus. I scrupulously avoided going to a notorious bar—only two blocks away—during school hours. Actually, this was more expediency than principle, since the happy hour with 10-cent beer didn’t commence until after the last class finished.

  After my class absences reached a certain threshold, I was sent to the school counselor—a  perfectly coifed 30ish guy with an air of rectitude thick enough to cut with a knife.

  He asked why I was skipping out, and I said school was mostly bunk. If I could pass classes without enduring Chinese-water-torture monotony, why stick around?

  The counselor declared my attitude unacceptable and urged me to “get involved with the student government to try to fix things.” So I should fizzle away my time propping up the equivalent of the Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France?!? Paul McCartney’s “Band on the Run” line, “Stuck inside these four walls, sent inside forever,” echoed in my head. When misbehaving kids were compelled to stay after school, it was called “detention.” But the entire system was detention, especially for the final year or two.

  Our stupid COVID policies are going to create the largest policy induced cause of wealth disparity in World history. https://t.co/HR2PNlscRl

  — Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) April 3, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Boredom vanished from my life almost completely on the day I graduated from high school. My mental vitality surged after I no longer lost the bulk of my days fulfilling “seat time” requirements. Week by week, I began to regain the love of reading that I had lost years earlier.  That made all the difference for my life and writing.

  I recognize that many (if not most) of the new chronically absent students are probably putting their free time to good use. But at least teenagers have the chance to discover new books and to awaken their minds in a way that would never occur locked in classrooms. One epiphany is worth a dozen regurgitated exams.

  Maybe if politicians ceased treating kids’ minds like disposable resources, more young folks would voluntarily show up for school. But generations of young kids have been sacrificed for whatever fad sweeps political and education activists. The best solution is to enable as many children as possible to exit government schools as soon as possible.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 23:40

• Haiti & The Dominican Republic: Contrasting Fortunes
  Haiti & The Dominican Republic: Contrasting Fortunes

  Haiti is currently engulfed in the chaos caused by violent gang warfare, triggering a major wave of internal displacement.

  Almost 200,000 people are thought to have been displaced in 2023, and several thousand since the beginning of 2024.

  Thousands of Haitians continue to flee to the neighboring Dominican Republic, with the Haitian-Dominican border currently in a state of major crisis.

  Relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the island of Hispaniola, have long been complex.

  While the economies of the two countries were comparable in the mid-20th century, the Dominican economy gradually improved over the subsequent decades.

  The Republic of Haiti, long plagued by political instability, has seen its economy deteriorate.

  And as Statista’s Martin Armstrong details below, while Haiti is currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the situation is radically different in the Dominican Republic.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Nearly 6 out of 10 Haitians (58.7 percent) live on less than $3.70 a day, while only 4% of Dominicans are in this state of poverty.

  GDP per capita is also almost six times higher in the Dominican Republic than in Haiti.

  These differences are also reflected in the life expectancy of each country – Haiti has an average life expectancy at birth of 63 years, while in the Dominican Republic it stands at 73 years.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 23:20

• 4 More Christians Found Guilty Over Prayer Gathering At Nashville Abortion Clinic
  4 More Christians Found Guilty Over Prayer Gathering At Nashville Abortion Clinic

  Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  It is likely that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will be throwing an elderly survivor of a communist concentration camp in federal prison for sitting in a wheelchair in the hallway of an abortion business and singing church hymns.

  

  A bench trial at the Fred Thompson Federal Courthouse in Nashville this past week lasted just one day.

  By the end of it on April 2, four Christians were convicted of a misdemeanor FACE Law violation. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law prohibits anyone from obstructing, intimidating, or interfering with a woman seeking an abortion.

  They had been charged after singing hymns, praying, and persuading women not to abort their babies on March 5, 2021, at the now-defunct Carafem Health Center in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. The DOJ characterized the action as an illegal “blockade.”

  The abortion business closed after a change in Tennessee law, prohibiting abortion in most cases. It means the defendants are guilty of trying to stop what is now effectively outlawed in that state.

  The four found guilty are Eva Zastrow, 25, of Michigan; James Zastrow, 27, of Missouri; Paul Place, 26, of Tennessee, and Eva Edl, 89, of South Carolina, who was in a wheelchair on the day of the incident.

  Each faces up to a year in prison. They remain free until their July sentencing. But Eva Zastrow and Eva Edl have multiple FACE charges. They will go to a Michigan court in August, where each could get up to an additional 11 years in prison on a more aggressive FACE charge.

  In January, six other defendants were found guilty of FACE and felony conspiracy (for social media posts showing what they were doing) for the same Tennessee incident. Each of the six could get up to 11 years in prison at their July sentencing. More people are headed to trial for the same action.

  After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, President Biden formed the Reproductive Rights Task Force, a DOJ-led group that has increased enforcement of the FACE Law.

  Victim of Communism

  Ms. Edl has been a long-time, peaceful activist at abortion clinics, motivated by her traumatic childhood in communist Yugoslavia. She was removed from her home with her family. They were allowed to keep only a dish and the clothing they wore.

  She recalls being stuffed into a cattle car and shipped to a camp where she nearly starved to death, while she watched the people around her die. As a child, she watched the dead being put on wagons and then be buried in mass graves.

  “We were considered to be non-human, with just permission given for torturing and killing us by the government,” Edl told an interviewer with WJBF television in 2018.

  Our government’s legalizing abortion does not make it right or good, Edl told The Epoch Times in a 2023 interview.

  “If it is right for the American government to legalize the killing of innocent human beings inside the womb, preborn babies, then why do we condemn the Nazis who also legalized the extermination of born people—Jews, Gypsies, and others—all unwanted individuals,” Edl said.

  “If it is a good thing to kill human beings just as long as the government says so, then we have no right to condemn anybody else. But we all know deep down that these things are evil.”

  “Nobody’s life is ultimately safe in a nation ruled by someone who does not respect all human life, from conception to natural death,“she continued. ”It will just depend on who is in power, and whose whim will dictate who is permitted to live, and who is going to be exterminated.”

  She called compared abortion businesses to death camps.

  “When I was on the cattle car with all my people, and we were shipped to the death camp to be exterminated, the people around us were not in agreement with what the government did. But they were intimidated,” Edl said.

  “We have to overcome that fear and do what is right anyhow. … I wished in those days that somebody would have cared enough to go stand on those railroad tracks and say, ‘You cannot take these babies and children unless you go over our dead bodies.’

  “If more and more would just lay down their lives and be willing to at least go to jail to protect these babies, we would have more success. But then, who knows what the Lord will do. Maybe he will honor even the sacrifice of the few. I’m always hopeful.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 23:00

• Navy Reveals Major Shipbuilding Delays As Global War Risk Elevated 
  Navy Reveals Major Shipbuilding Delays As Global War Risk Elevated 

  The US Navy released a rare assessment of its “shipbuilding challenges,” indicating that the first Columbia-class submarine, classified as the future cornerstone of America’s strategic deterrence, is facing delays, as are other next-generation vessels. 

  “The purpose of the review is to provide an assessment of national and local causes of shipbuilding challenges, as well as recommend actions for achieving a healthier US shipbuilding industrial base that provides combat capabilities that our warfighters need, on a schedule that is relevant,” the document states, as quoted by Breaking Defense.

  The document lays out the notable delays, which account for eleven years of cumulative delays across four programs: 

  • The first Columbia-class submarine, built jointly by General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII, is projected to be between 12 and 16 months late.
  • The fourth and fifth blocks of the Virginia-class submarine, also by Electric Boat and HII, are 36 and 24 months late.
  • The first Constellation-class frigate from Fincantieri Marinette Marine is 36 months behind schedule.
  • The future aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN-80), built by HII, is approximately 18 to 26 months late.

  “When [Vice Adm. James Downey] and I started this review, we were looking at it from an internal [perspective]: What we were doing and how we were doing it. We weren’t just looking at the industry, we were also looking internally [at] how we were doing our business, how we were managing our relationships with our partners [military-industrial complex],” Nickolas Guertin, the Navy’s senior acquisition executive, told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

  In a separate report, Bloomberg said the Columbia-class submarine program’s Northrop Grumman Corp. Sentinel ICBMs also face testing delays. 

  

  “A delay of that length would make it more likely for the Navy to implement its backup plan to extend the service lives of up to five Ohio-class by a little bit,” Ronald O’Rourke, a naval analyst for the Congressional Research Service, said. 

  Given the delays, the next-gen sub is now expected to be deployed in 2031, compared with the initial October 2027 deadline. 

  O’Rourke said, “There would be some cost for doing those service life extensions.”

  The delays were mostly attributed to snarled supply chains during the government-enforced shutdown of the economy during Covid. 

  Delays and cost overruns are standard with the military-industrial complex. It comes at a time when Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East are on the brink of much larger military conflicts. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 22:40

• Wife Of Judge In Trump 'Hush Money' Trial Worked For AG Letitia James
  Wife Of Judge In Trump ‘Hush Money’ Trial Worked For AG Letitia James

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Lara Merchan, the wife of the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” case in Manhattan, once worked for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the massive $350 million civil fraud case against the former president, with the revelation reviving claims of bias and calls for the judge’s recusal.

  

  Records reviewed by The Epoch Times show that Ms. Merchan worked for 21 years as a Special Assistant to the AG in New York, including three years under Ms. James. She changed jobs over two years ago.

  Ms. James is a Democrat who fixated on President Trump as she campaigned for New York attorney general, calling him a “con man” and vowing to shine a “bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings.”

  She began investigating the former president soon after taking office, eventually suing him for allegedly misleading banks and others about the value of his assets.

  Ms. James eventually won the case on Feb. 16, with New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordering President Trump and Trump Organization executives to pay $350 million in damages, and barring the former president from doing business in the state for three years.

  Judge Juan Merchan is presiding over a separate criminal trial involving President Trump in New York, in which the former president is accused of falsifying business records in order to conceal a $130,000 “hush money” payoff to an adult performer to stay quiet about their alleged affair.

  President Trump on his Truth Social platform accused Judge Merchan of bias and corruption, while labeling the case against him “election interference” and also demanding the judge’s recusal.

  The former president has also alleged that the judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, has a partisan interest in the case because she leads a political marketing firm and has represented President Trump’s political opponents, receiving millions from them.

  Claims of Conflict of Interest

  Judge Merchan imposed a gag order against President Trump in the case and, on April 1, expanded it to include family members of the judge and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

  The judge wrote in the order that President Trump’s speech “injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, as ‘fair game’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”

  Laura Loomer, an independent journalist and popular conservative commentator who on social media shared records that Judge Merchan’s wife worked for Ms. James, wrote in a post on X that this fact represents “another major conflict of interest!”

  Various conservative accounts reacted to Ms. Loomer’s post, arguing that the revelation adds to evidence that the judge should recuse himself from the case.

  “And this is why they expanded the gag order on Trump,” Paul A. Szypula, a popular conservative commentator on X with over 140,000 followers, said in a post. “It’s even more obvious how biased Judge Merchan is. He has to recuse himself now. There’s clearly at least an appearance of a conflict here. That’s enough in itself.”

  Another popular account with over 46,000 followers called “The doppelgängers” argued in a post that, “everyone knows this is all connected and they are all connected to same sources to take down Trump.”

  By contrast, Brian Krassenstein, a left-wing political commentator with a similar size following on X, pushed back on Ms. Loomer, saying the fact Judge Merchan’s wife once worked for Ms. James is not evidence of bias or conflict of interest.

  “The New York State Attorney General’s office employs more than 700 Assistant Attorneys General. It’s not as if she was Letitia James’ right-hand woman,” he wrote in a post on X. “Literally 40% of all of the staff working in the Office of the AG in NY are ‘Special Assistants.’”

  “Loomer is trying to somehow say that since the Judge in Trump’s Manhattan case was or is married to a woman who once worked in an office with 700 other people under the AG, who already won a civil suit against Trump, that Judge Merchan now has a conflict of interest,” he continued.

  Further, Mr. Krassenstein suggested that Ms. Loomer, who is a vocal Trump supporter, may even have posted about the judge’s wife at his direction.

  “If so that would likely be illegal now that a gag order is in place,” Mr. Krassenstein said.

  Lara Merchan was not immediately reachable for comment.

  Judge Merchan has already declined to recuse himself from the case.

  In the case, Mr. Bragg charged President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, alleging a scheme to influence the 2016 election with payments meant to bury unfavorable news coverage of the alleged affair with the adult performer, which the former president has denied.

  The trial has been set for April 15, and in less than two weeks, the first-ever criminal trial of a former American president will take place in Manhattan.

  Catherine Yang contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 22:20

• From The Recycling Bin To The Landfill: The Major Flaw In Plastic Recycling
  From The Recycling Bin To The Landfill: The Major Flaw In Plastic Recycling

  Authored by Cara Michelle Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  People may be putting plastic into recycling bins, but most of it generally ends up in landfills or incinerated.

  

  Yet the demand for more plastic production continues—at a growing cost to human and environmental health—because of the belief that recycling offsets the associated waste and risks. A new report by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) alleges that the plastics industry knowingly caused the current plastic waste crisis.

  The nonprofit’s report claims that as the plastics industry faced mounting concerns over plastics being incinerated and piling up in landfills, they promoted recycling as a viable solution while dismissing it internally as impractical.

  “They knew since the 1970s that plastic recycling was not going to be scalable and effective in tackling the plastic waste crisis,” Melissa Valliant, communications director of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit aiming to reduce single-use plastic use and production, explained to The Epoch Times.

  The report asserts that the efforts to sell the false promise of plastic recycling were to avoid restrictive regulations and potential product bans.

  Plastic Recycling Poses Many Challenges

  According to the report, one problem with plastic recycling is that it is not technically or economically feasible at scale. Unlike glass and metal, plastic cannot be repeatedly recycled without quickly degrading in quality. Most recyclable plastics can typically only be recycled once. As a result, most recycled plastic eventually ends up in landfills, even if it goes through an additional use cycle as another product.

  Between the 1970s and 2015, 91 percent of plastic was either landfilled, burned, or leaked into the environment, according to a global analysis published in Science Advances. Another recent report published by Beyond Plastics estimated that less than 6 percent of plastic in the United States is successfully recycled.

  These figures are based on all plastic waste generated, which includes plastics not made to be recycled and those thrown away. As for the plastic that makes it to a recycling center, there isn’t an official nationwide estimate of what percent of those plastics get recycled in the end.

  However, certain types of plastic containers—soda and water bottles (PET 1) and milk jugs (HDPE 2), in particular—are more likely to be recycled.

  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organization focused on improving public policies, says only 9 percent of plastic collected for recycling worldwide in 2019 was actually recycled; 50 percent went into landfills, and 22 percent was mismanaged.

  Another challenge is that there are too many different types of plastics. Recyclable plastics cannot be recycled with plastics made of different chemical compositions, and sorting the waste is infeasible.

  Decades of Misleading Messaging

  The plastics industry’s actions “effectively protected and expanded plastic markets,” the CCI report states, “while stalling legislative or regulatory action that would meaningfully address plastic waste and pollution.”

  The report, highlighting industry communications and documents, details how, beginning in the 1950s, the plastics industry’s profits soared with single-use disposable plastics, and this “shift to disposables” created the waste problem.

  In response, the industry promoted landfilling and incineration. However, by the 1980s, the plastics industry faced growing backlash and legislation to limit the sale of single-use plastics because of pollution and its environmental impact.

  The industry “launched multimillion-dollar ad and PR campaigns to convince the public consumer that this was a consumer problem; just put the right things in the bin, and all the plastic pollution would go away,” said Ms. Valliant.

  Plastic production then skyrocketed, from approximately 2 million tons of plastic in the 1950s to nearly 460 million tons in 2019, and continues to rise.

  The CCI report cites a 1986 report by Vinyl Institute, a trade association, that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of.”

  Eight years later, an Exxon employee warned the American Plastics Council staffers that they did not “want paper floating around” saying they could not meet recycling goals since the issue was “HIGHLY SENSITIVE POLITICALLY.”

  The report’s authors aim to hold fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies accountable by pointing out that these admissions contradict decades of messaging promoting recycling.

  Plastics Companies Cite New Technologies, Goals

  Twenty petrochemical companies, including major oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil, manufacture half of the world’s single-use plastics, according to the CCI.

  In response to the CCI report, the Plastics Industry Association characterized the report as “political attacks” and that it is based on “outdated information and false claims.”

  “This report was created by an activist, anti-recycling organization and disregards the incredible investments in recycling technologies made by our industry,” Matt Seaholm, president and chief executive officer of the Plastics Industry Association, said in the press statement.

  Similarly, in a statement published by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), Ross Eisenberg, the president of America’s Plastic Makers, called the report flawed, saying it “cites outdated, decades-old technologies, and works against our goals to be more sustainable by mischaracterizing the industry and the state of today’s recycling technologies.” He also pointed to the benefits of plastics and how they can be reused to meet different needs.

  “We’ve set an ambitious goal for all US plastic packaging to be reused, recycled, recovered by 2040, and we are working towards this goal by supporting systems and technologies that remake new plastics from used plastics,” he shared.

  But many wonder: Even if the ACC’s 2040 goal is met, does it solve the wide-ranging issues linked to plastics?

  Is Recycling Enough?

  “Possibly more concerning than the environmental impacts are the health impacts of plastics on the human body,” said Ms. Valliant, who recommends consumers focus on efforts to reduce, reuse, recycle, and, when possible, refuse single-use plastic.

  The management of plastics “needs to be addressed at a higher level than the individual,” Mathew Campen, a toxicologist from the University of New Mexico, told The Epoch Times.

  When plastic is recycled improperly, it ends up not only in landfills and water sources but also in our soil, air, and even our bodies. Every day, we eat, drink, and inhale tiny bits of plastic because plastic doesn’t biodegrade over time—it simply breaks down into ever-smaller particles.

  Mr. Campen, who investigates the impact of environmental toxicants on human health, is concerned about the increasing amount of plastics, specifically microplastics, in the environment and the potential effects.

  “The truth is, governments and industry need to figure out a path to actually take care of this waste and not have it show up in our bodies,” he added.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 22:00

• CDC Releases Hidden Trove Of COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Reports
  CDC Releases Hidden Trove Of COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Reports

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released previously hidden reports of facial paralysis and other adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination.

  

  The 780,000 reports were received shortly after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, and show people experienced a wide range of post-vaccination problems, including heart inflammation, miscarriages, and seizures.

  “Loss of consciousness and seizure immediately following injection. Went to ER by ambulance,” one person reported.

  “Diagnosed with Bells Palsy today due to left-sided facial numbness and paralysis,” another said.

  People lodged the reports with V-safe, a text-message system created by the CDC to monitor for possible side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.

  The CDC, for years, declined to make the V-safe data public, instead publishing studies that described the reports as providing reassurance about the safety of the shots. However, according to data released in 2022, nearly 8 percent of the 10 million users required medical attention or hospital care after vaccination, and many others reported missing school, work, or other normal activities.

  That topline data came from check-the-box surveys.

  The same judge who ordered the release of that data ordered the agency in January to disclose free-text entries from a different section where individuals could describe their experiences. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by former President Donald Trump, dismissed the government’s arguments that processing the responses and redacting sensitive information would require too much work.

  The first two tranches, comprising 780,000 reports from some 523,000 people, include dozens of reports of heart inflammation, hundreds of reports of facial paralysis, and thousands of reports of tinnitus.

  Multiple people said things were so bad that they were struggling with suicidal thoughts.

  “For 24 hrs after [the] shot I was so fatigued I could not stay awake. I also have some very strong suicidal thoughts. Zero appetite,” one individual wrote.

  Another person said they experienced symptoms of an allergic reaction. “I read where [sic] this vaccine should not be administered to anyone allergic to PEG and I am allergic to PEG. It would be incredibly reassuring if someone would call me as all I run into is dead ends,” the individual said.

  The free-text portion of the surveys was the only place for people to report adverse events, including heart inflammation, even though the CDC knew the shots might cause those events, previously released documents showed. Other documents showed the CDC became aware of the vaccines possibly causing myocarditis, or heart inflammation, and a related condition called pericarditis early in 2021 but hid the knowledge from the public.

  Judge Kacsmaryk’s order came in litigation brought by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a nonprofit that has compelled the release of a number of government files since the COVID-19 pandemic started.

  “ICAN had to sue the Centers for Disease Control in order to gain access to the COVID-19 shot V-safe adverse event data, which is yet another shameful chapter in the decades-long history of federal health officials trying to cover up vaccine risks by ignoring patterns of vaccine reaction symptoms in reports made to the government,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times after reviewing the new data.

  “When people report the same symptoms over and over again after getting a biological product—in this case ’shortness of breath‘ and ’heart palpitations,’ which are both symptoms of myocarditis that has been causally linked to mRNA COVID shots—the public should be warned, not kept in the dark. It raises questions about what else government health officials are hiding,” she added.

  The free-text entries are not dated. Elizabeth Brehm, an attorney representing ICAN, said the group is seeking the dates of the reports from the CDC. The group does know that the entries are the earliest ones received by the CDC. V-safe was launched as the vaccines were rolled out in late 2020. The rest of the entries are expected to be produced on a rolling basis.

  A CDC spokesperson declined to answer many questions, including those related to the dates of entries.

  “V-safe participants who reported that they received medical care after vaccination were called and encouraged to submit a VAERS report. If they submitted a VAERS report and the adverse events were classified as serious (as defined in the Code of Federal Regulations), CDC attempted to obtain additional information (medical records, hospital records, etc.) about the reported adverse event,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times. “All data collected from VAERS is processed and analyzed for unusual patterns or unusually high numbers of rare and serious adverse events after vaccination.”

  She said the information from VAERS helped detect problems the agency now acknowledges are caused by the vaccines, including myocarditis.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 21:40

• How GPUs Are Disrupting High-Performance Computing
  How GPUs Are Disrupting High-Performance Computing

  Graphics Processing Units, or GPUs, have moved beyond their original role of rendering video game graphics and are now used in a variety of high-performance computing applications (HPC), from AI training to zooplankton classification.  

  To help understand this pivot, Visual Capitalist teamed up with HIVE Digital to look at how GPUs differ from traditional CPUs and what gives them an edge.

  

  CPU vs. GPUs

  CPUs, or Central Processing Units, and GPUs, generally have three main elements:

  • compute elements—technically ALU or arithmetic logic units—that perform calculations and carry out operations;

  • a control element that coordinates the operations of the above; and

  • various levels of memory, including dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a kind of RAM or short-term memory used in the main memory of computers, and caches.

  CPUs, or Central Processing Units, typically have one or more extremely powerful cores, made up of independent compute, control, and cache elements. A GPU, on the other hand, has many more less-powerful cores, each with multiple ALUs that share common cache and control elements. 

  Core Values and the Value of Cores

  The number of cores is important, especially when it comes to image processing. In order to display an image on your screen, the computer has to read, process, and display data for each pixel, which on modern high-definition displays can really add up. A 1,920 by 1,080 pixel display, for example, has 2,073,600 pixels.

  Unlike CPUs, which have to go one operation at a time, GPUs can handle multiple operations like this in parallel, thanks to its multiple-core architecture. Computer scientists call this method of data-handling single instruction, multiple data (SIMD), but all we need to know is that this is why today’s computer games look so much better than 1972’s Pong. 

  Beyond Graphics

  It turns out that GPUs can do more than just render graphics. Researchers are now using GPUs to model protein folding and sequence genomes, while cryptocurrency miners rely on them to validate transactions. GPUs are also playing a critical role in the field of AI, where training datasets are only getting larger. 

  GPUs are also working side-by-side with CPUs in the world’s only exa-scale computer, Frontier, which uses a combined 8,699,904 GPU and CPU cores to achieve an impressive speed of 1.194 exa-flops per second.

  But when you consider that CPUs are still built on roughly the same von Neumann architecture from 1945, it’s perhaps no surprise that new specialized designs, like the GPU, are emerging to help us tackle some of the world’s toughest HPC challenges.  

  Learn how Hive Digital’s renewably powered GPUs are helping customers worldwide meet their high-performance computing needs.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 21:20

• Trump Lawyers Reveal He Kept Classified Documents In Trump Tower
  Trump Lawyers Reveal He Kept Classified Documents In Trump Tower

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Lawyers for former President Donald Trump revealed in new court filings that the former president kept classified materials at his Trump Tower in New York City and his estate in New Jersey.

  

  The former president kept the classified documents at those two locations as well as his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while he was in office, and also during the months before he was inaugurated in 2017, the filings revealed.

  His lawyers were responding to a deadline to support U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s proposed jury instructions.

  “You may consider evidence that government officials discussed classified information with President Trump and provided classified briefings and documents to President Trump before and during his Presidency—including inside President Trump’s private offices and residences, such as at Bedminster, New Jersey, and Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as at Trump Tower in New York City,” they wrote to the judge.

  President Trump, the GOP presumptive presidential nominee for 2024, is facing dozens of felony counts related to alleged mishandling of classified documents, according to an indictment. Part of his defense centers around how he personally designated presidential files as his personal items before he left the White House in early 2021.

  In Tuesday’s court filing, his attorneys said that jurors could be told that President Trump had the legal power as president to make those documents his personal belongings.

  “President Trump acted as an ‘original classification authority’ while he was President of the United States” to declassify the records, it said, adding that it “means that all classification decisions during his term as President were based on his authority, and that he also had absolute and unreviewable authority to declassify documents and information.”

  There also is “evidence relating to former Presidents, Vice Presidents, and other public officials being authorized to possess documents containing classified information without criminal prosecution by the government after they left their positions,” his attorneys continued to say.

  “You heard evidence during the trial that President Trump exercised that authority, at times verbally and at times without using formal procedures, while he was President,” the proposed Trump jury instructions read. “I instruct you that those declassification decisions are examples of valid and legally appropriate uses of President Trump’s declassification authority while he was President of the United States.”

  The former president in a separate court filing again asked Judge Cannon to dismiss the case.

  Jack Smith’s Response

  Also Tuesday, special counsel Jack Smith—who brought the charges against the former president—criticized Judge Cannon and warned her that the jury instructions rest on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”

  Last month, Judge Cannon had asked prosecutors and defense lawyers to formulate proposed jury instructions for most of the charges, asking the lawyers to respond to two different scenarios on whether he was entitled under a statute known as the Presidential Records Act to retain the sensitive documents he is now charged with possessing.

  The Smith team wrote that the 1978 law, which requires presidents to return presidential records to the government upon leaving office but permits them to retain purely personal ones, has no relevance in a case concerning highly classified documents.

  Those records, prosecutors said, were not personal and there is no evidence President Trump ever designated them as such. They argued that the suggestion he did so was created only after it became public that he had taken with him to Mar-a-Lago after his presidency boxes of records from the White House.

  “Not a single one had heard Trump say that he was designating records as personal or that, at the time he caused the transfer of boxes to Mar-a-Lago, he believed that his removal of records amounted to designating them as personal under the PRA,” prosecutors wrote. “To the contrary, every witness who was asked this question had never heard such a thing.”

  

  As of Wednesday, it’s not clear when the trial would start. Judge Cannon last year set the case for trial on May 20, 2024, but she signaled she would reconsider that date during a March 1 hearing.

  The hearing took place as scheduled, but no replacement date was picked.

  Last month, the judge heard hours of arguments on two of the dismissal motions on whether President Trump was entitled under the Presidential Records Act to retain the classified documents after he left office and whether the Espionage Act law at the heart of the case was so vague as to be unconstitutional.

  Judge Cannon appeared skeptical of the defense assertions and, after the hearing, issued a terse two-page order rejecting the vagueness argument while permitting President Trump to raise it again later. She hasn’t yet ruled on the Presidential Records Act motion that was submitted by the defense.

  The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 21:00

• In Wake Of Khan's 14-Year Sentence Being Overturned, Pakistani Judges Say Intel Operatives Threatened Them
  In Wake Of Khan’s 14-Year Sentence Being Overturned, Pakistani Judges Say Intel Operatives Threatened Them

  Early this week a Pakistani court suspended the 14-year jail sentence previously handed down to former prime minister Imran Khan while allowing for appeal of his conviction for graft.

  The Islamabad High Court ruled in favor of Khan as his lawyer argued that the prior charge of retaining and selling state gifts in violation of his office when he led the country were politicized, trumped up charges concocted by his adversaries from the start.

  

  Despite the judge ruling Khan and his wife could be freed on bail, they remain in prison (however, reportedly at very minimal security facilities) given they are serving sentences for other convictions.

  Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which made a better than expected showing in the Feb. 8 parliamentary elections, have decried that this was all a conspiracy to prevent his return to office by the military-run deep state. There are still a whopping 170 legal cases against him.

  The Monday ruling has proven a big boost and vindication for his PTI party, with a close aide of Khan’s, Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, saying in a statement: “I have said this since the conviction that the cases against Khan and his wife do not have the legs to stand on and it was only a matter of time before they would get thrown out.”

  On Wednesday a new bombshell has emerged which appears to confirm brazen ‘deep state’ interference in Khan’s legal cases. The Guardian reports:

  Claims by senior Pakistani judges that the intelligence agencies put pressure on them in cases involving the former prime minister Imran Khan have reached the country’s supreme court, following the publication of an unprecedented letter that has created a storm in Pakistan.

  The letter from the six high court judges alleged the abduction of family members, torture, installation of cameras in their bedrooms and threats from the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

  In one case the judges said they were forced to hear an appeal against Khan even after the majority of judges had decided it was not maintainable.

  Torture was also reportedly used to induce officials to make “false allegations” against Khan:

  “Considerable pressure was brought to bear on the judges who had opined that the petition was not maintainable, by operatives of the ISI, through friends and relatives of these judges. Fearing for their security, they sought additional protection for their homes. One of the judges had to be admitted in a hospital due to high blood pressure caused by stress,” the letter claimed.

  It alleged the brother-in-law of one judge was abducted by “individuals who claimed to be operatives of the ISI” and “tortured into making false allegations”.

  Meanwhile Khan’s team in reacting to the suspension of the 14-year jail sentence on appeal expressed hope for the same outcome in the array of other charges facing him. “We welcome this decision and hopefully this will be the outcome in all other cases against Khan and his wife as they are all frivolous in nature,” Bukhari continued.

  There have also been new claims that the former first lady is being poisoned while in prison…

  Slowly poisoning Bushra Bibi aims to break Imran Khan, the founder chairman. History lacks instances where imprisoning Bushra Bibi intimidated Khan or weakened his resolve. If met with resistance, resorting to imprisoning his wife aims to break him.
  Kanwal Shuzab provided… pic.twitter.com/4zmODtlo5Q

  — Insaf Khan 🇵🇰🌏 (@mipakwatan) April 3, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Indeed, the graft sentencing and others had made Khan legally ineligible to run for public office for a full decade, and included a fine of the equivalent of $5 million for the couple (Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi). They’ve been in prison since August of last year, which helped set the stage of miring the February elections in violence. PTI candidates were also forced to run under independent labels. The tumultuous election week had witnessed bombings at polling stations and attacks on political offices. For example the two days going into the general election day vote saw over 35 people killed and scores wounded.

  Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who emerged victorious while Khan had languished in jail, was seen more as the “military’s man” in Islamabad, while Khan’s legacy has sought to be erased by those same elite powers.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 20:40

• Deep State Goes After Trump And Musk's Financial Assets… Who's Next?
  Deep State Goes After Trump And Musk’s Financial Assets… Who’s Next?

  Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

  Is America as we know it over? Are we in the middle – or perhaps the end – of the transition from a national republic to a single-party regime that rules by fiat instead of law?

  If we look at what’s happening to two, high-profile cases, the answer is less than comforting. It is becoming difficult to argue that the U.S. judicial system has not become a political arm of the Democratic Party.

  

  The Left Waging Political Lawfare

  Nations are either based on the rule of law or the rules dictated by the powerful. The former is meant to restrain, or better said, eliminate the possibility of the latter. But, as we’ve witnessed with the relentless political persecution of former President Donald Trump and, lately, of Elon Musk, laws only work when they’re fairly applied and enforced.

  Neither of those things are happening with President Trump or Mr. Musk. President Trump was found guilty of fraud by a left-wing judge who determined this without considering, or despite, mountains of evidence to the contrary. The New York Attorney General Letitia James accused President Trump of over-valuing his real estate to obtain loans.

  Coincidentally, Ms. James ran for the office of attorney general in 2018 with the campaign pledge to go after Trump, showing clear political animus toward President Trump. What’s more, Judge Arthur Engoron has been accused by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York of violating “political giving rules with financial contributions to Democrats as recently as 2018, and ignored a decision on the appropriate statute of limitations in the case,” according to NBC News. Ms. James prosecuted President Trump in a civil trial, which was by design; criminal court cases require a trial by jury and proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

  Somehow, Deutsche Bank was “defrauded” by President Trump into lending him hundreds of millions of dollars on a property, the value of which the bank determined by their own analysis. Talk about shifty business dealings. Then, after a period of time, the former president had the audacity to sell the property at over $130 million profit and then pay the loan back, with interest.

  Despite all of this exculpatory evidence that showed no fraud and no money loss or any other determinable damages, the judge refused to allow President Trump to give his closing argument in his own defense and found him guilty of fraud, fined him $354 million plus interest, and forced him to forfeit the profit he made on the deal with Deutsche Bank. President Trump was also ordered to pay $111,000 per day in interest. The financial penalty is excessive under the Eighth Amendment, which disallows “excessive fines,” which is the case because it doesn’t reflect the value of the “damages,” which are nil, nor the profits he made.

  What’s more, President Trump is barred from doing business or getting loans in New York for three years, and two of his children are also barred from their executive roles in the Trump Organization for two years. All of this for paying back loans on properties that the bank made willingly, according to its own value assessments, and profited from.

  Court Void Musk’s Payday

  Meanwhile, a Delaware judge voided Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla payout. The judge arbitrarily determined that the record-breaking compensation granted by the Tesla board was an “unfathomable sum” and was “unfair” to shareholders. The payout was the result of a 10-year pay plan that the board agreed to with Mr. Musk back in 2018.

  Mr. Musk is not only an entrepreneur extraordinaire, he’s also a fan of America and our constitutional right of free speech. He attracted the left’s wrath after acquiring Twitter (renamed X) and making it a bastion of free speech for conservatives who were formerly censored by Twitter and other social media outlets. In short, Mr. Musk single-handedly broke the stifling monopoly on speech and thought control the left had allegedly in close coordination with the federal government, prior to the acquisition.

  The rationale for the judge’s unlawful decision was that the board was, in some way, “beholden” to Mr. Musk. Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s Court of Chancery speculated if the payout plan was necessary in order to keep Mr. Musk involved in Tesla and achieve the EV maker’s business goals. By that logic, the entire EV market is “beholden” to Mr. Musk since he is the single biggest influencer in the industry. There is no indication that the judge has a seat on the Tesla board or possesses expertise in the Tesla business model or investing strategies.

  So far, Mr. Musk’s response has been to begin moving his companies out of Delaware to the business-friendly states of Texas and Nevada.

  The World’s Largest Banana Republic

  As unfair and anti-American as those two prosecutions undoubtedly are, they point to a more fundamental development in our national government, which is the undeniable breach of the walls that form the separation of power between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches on which our republic was founded.

  Of course, these aren’t the only examples of unconstitutional behavior by the left. The Biden administration is still holding American citizens in jail without bail from the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and has reportedly arrested a journalist for being present, reporting on the incident, and providing evidence that conflicts with the Justice Department’s version.

  Sadly, thug rule is becoming more common, not less. So is the celebration of it in the mainstream media. Persecuting political enemies through lawfare and unlawful asset seizure is the stuff of communist regimes, dictators, banana republics, and, apparently, of the United States of America.

  Imagine, if the legal system can be used to go after a billionaire former president and the most innovative and wealthiest man on the planet without due process of law, the question that comes to mind is simply, “Who’s next?”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 20:20

• Buzz-Free Drinking? The Rise Of Non-Alcoholic Beer
  Buzz-Free Drinking? The Rise Of Non-Alcoholic Beer

  As the brewing industry is still recovering from the aftershock of the Covid-19 pandemic, alcohol-free beer has become one of the bright spots in a troubled beer sector.

  And while buzz-free beer still accounts for just over 5 percent of global beer revenues, Statista’s Felix Richter reports that it has outgrown the alcoholic beer segment by a wide margin for the better part of the past decade, delivering double-digit growth in four of the past five years, with 2020 the only exception.

  As the following chart based on data from Statist Market Insights shows, the non-alcoholic beer segment is poised for strong growth in the years ahead.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Having long been neglected by the industry, non-alcoholic beer is now viewed as an opportunity by brewers, which are continuously extending their selection of low and no-alcohol choices in response to growing customer demand.

  “Consumers are increasingly looking for healthy hydration and a tasty, adult refreshment with lower or no-alcohol content to enjoy on any occasion,” the world’s second-largest brewing group Heineken recently noted in its annual report.

  “As this global consumer trend for health and wellness continues, we see a great future for low-calorie and non-alcoholic beer,” the report concludes.

  Following a small setback in 2020 due to Covid-related lockdowns and lifestyle changes, which hit the out-of-home segment particularly hard, the industry is back on track and expected to see solid growth this year and in the years ahead. By 2028, Statista expects global sales of non-alcoholic beer to reach $50 billion, more than double the 2020 figure.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 20:00

• Chicago Police Called To Illegal Immigrant Shelter Hundreds Of Times In 2023, Records Show
  Chicago Police Called To Illegal Immigrant Shelter Hundreds Of Times In 2023, Records Show

  Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times,

  Chicago police were called to an illegal immigrant shelter hundreds of times over the last year, in many cases to investigate allegations of violent crimes, records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show.

  

  The documents, obtained by resident Terry Newsome and reviewed by The Epoch Times, reveal that police were dispatched to the Inn of Chicago, a hotel now serving as a shelter for illegal immigrants, more than 250 times between January 2023 and February 2024.

  While many of those calls were for parking and traffic violations, a significant portion were for alleged crimes such as aggravated assault, domestic battery, child abduction, and child abuse, including sexual assault.

  In one case, a 4-year-old victim reported being “inappropriately touched” multiple times by an unknown offender living in the shelter. Another heavily redacted case involved three child victims who were transported to Lurie Children’s Hospital after alleged domestic battery and prior sexual assault.

  The increase in criminal activity at the Inn of Chicago has not gone unnoticed by residents of the hotel’s Streeterville neighborhood. The complaints have been numerous, prompting Ward 42 Alderman Brendan Reilly to call for the shelter’s closure.

  “I have heard from hundreds of neighborhood residents voicing their concerns about the ongoing issues related to the migrant shelter operating at the Inn of Chicago,” Mr. Reilly wrote in an email to constituents in October last year.

  Mr. Reilly said he and other residents had witnessed “a host of criminal activities” at the site, including narcotics sales, retail theft, and “apparent sex trafficking,” to name a few. He also said piles of trash and human excrement had accumulated in the alleys around the hotel.

  “The ‘experiment’ of housing 1,500 migrants at the Inn of Chicago has been an abject failure,” he wrote. “The conditions there are deplorable and the property is not safe for the migrant families living there who are co-mingled with hundreds of single, young adult males. Not only do I worry for the health and welfare of these young migrant families, I also worry for the safety of my constituents and thousands of tourists and visitors who come to the area every day.”

  That concern was shared by Mr. Newsome, who noted the hotel’s proximity to the city’s bustling commercial district along North Michigan Avenue.

  “It’s only a block off the Magnificent Mile. People fly in from all over the country, or world, to go shopping,” he told The Epoch Times.

  Mr. Newsome, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove, added that the costs associated with responding to the emergency calls would only add to taxpayers’ already hefty burden of housing and feeding the thousands of illegal immigrants in the city.

  “We have to pay for the police to come off their beat, we have to pay for the ambulance, we have to pay to take them to the hospital, put them through emergency [care]. That’s hidden costs that we don’t even have a clue,” he said.

  The Inn of Chicago’s illegal immigrant housing contract with the city was due to expire on Dec. 31, yet it remains closed to patrons. According to the hotel’s website, it will remain “temporarily closed” until July 2024, though attempts to book anything after July 1 online produce a “This site can’t be reached” message. The hotel’s phone number produces a busy signal, and an emailed request for comment received no response.

  The City of Chicago reports having taken on more than 37,000 illegal immigrants since August 2022. In total, the city has spent nearly $300 million accommodating them.

  Chicago’s Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson enacted a 60-day maximum stay policy for illegal immigrants in temporary shelters last month amid overpopulation concerns. The policy was originally slated to take effect in January, but inclement weather pushed back its rollout.

  The Epoch Times has contacted the Chicago Police Department and the mayor’s office for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 19:40

• These Are The World's Most-Populated Islands?
  These Are The World’s Most-Populated Islands?

  The word “island” tends to bring up images of remote paradise – a brisk sea breeze, waving palms, and inviting beaches, all ingredients for an idyllic life.

  However, they can also be hubs for human activity, home to 730 million people, or about 9% of the world’s population.

  This chart, by creator Perrin Remonté, via Visual Capitalist, ranks the 25 most populated islands in the world, colored by their population density patterns, along with an overview of their size relative to each other.

  

  Data for this graphic comes from a variety of sources listed at the end of this article.

  Ranked: Top 25 Islands by Population

  At the top of the list sits Java, Indonesia’s most populous island and the most populous island on Earth. Over 150 million residents inhabit the 130,000 km² landmass, resulting in a density of nearly 1,200 people/km².

  Its capital, Jakarta—also the capital of Indonesia—is a vibrant metropolis teeming with skyscrapers, bustling streets, and a rich tapestry of traditions.

  Even historically, the island has been the political and economic center of the region: the seat of empires and also the heart of the Indonesian independence movement.

  

  Note: Numbers are rounded. Area source: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Population source: See bottom of the article.

  Meanwhile, Japan’s Honshu Island ranks second, home to approximately 103 million people. Honshu is the largest and most populous island in Japan, housing iconic cities like Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo—the country’s capital, the world’s largest urban area, and one of the three biggest financial centers in Asia.

  At third place, Great Britain, the largest of the British Isles, boasts of around 67 million residents, of which England alone accounts for 83% of the population.

  Back in Southeast Asia, the island of Luzon, with 64 million people, is home to more than half of the Philippines’ total population.

  Coming back to Indonesia, parts of Sumatra, population 59 million, are more along the lines of a postcard picture, from the lush rainforests of Bukit Lawang to the pristine shores of Lake Toba.

  In total, Indonesia has six islands on this graphic, with tourist favorite Bali—consistently one of the most popular places to visit—coming in at the 25th spot.

  Missing from this list is Australia, home to nearly 30 million people, which would make the top five on this list, were it not for the continent-island debate.

  Most Densely Populated Islands

  For Salsette Island (ranked 9th by population)—administratively known as Greater Mumbai —magnification is required as it appears as a dot on the scale for the other most populated islands in the world.

  Consequently it’s one of the most densely populated islands in the world; at more than 30,000 people/km².

  Singapore (ranked 20th), is similarly dense, though not quite at the scale as Mumbai: 8,500 people/km².

  Other extremely populated and dense islands in the world include: Manhattan, Haizhu, Guangzhou, and Lagos Island, but none with the total population close to Singapore or Mumbai.

  *  *  *

  Population sources:

  • Citypopulation.de (New Guinea, Sicily, Hainan, Salsette, Singapore).
  • Central Statistics Office (Ireland).
  • IMF (Hispaniola).
  • Philippine Statistics Authority (Luzon, Mindanao, Negros, Panay).
  • Statista (Great Britain, Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Bali).
  • Statistics Bureau of Japan, (Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu).
  • U.S. Census (Long Island).
  • UN (Cuba, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan).

  Creator Note: For Great Britain and the Indonesian islands, the population figures are reverse engineered from the total population of the country and the percentage share of each island, available on Statista.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 19:20

• "Insane": US Physicians Received Billions From Pharmaceutical And Medical Device Industry, New Research Finds
  “Insane”: US Physicians Received Billions From Pharmaceutical And Medical Device Industry, New Research Finds

  Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  U.S. physicians received more than $12 billion in payments from the pharmaceutical and medical device industry over a 10-year period, according to a new analysis.

  

  A research letter published on March 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the industry made over 85 million payments to more than 820,300 (57 percent) of eligible physicians across 39 specialties from 2013 to 2022. Nearly 94 percent of the payments were related to one or more marketed medical products.

  Researchers examined data in the Open Payments database to determine what payments were made across different specialties and the medical products associated with the largest total payments. Data only included payments received for consulting, nonconsulting (such as speaker or faculty fees), travel, food, entertainment, education, gifts, grants, charitable contributions, and honoraria.

  The Open Payments database is a federal transparency program that was established in 2013 out of concern that financial relationships between physicians and the industry were unduly influencing healthcare decision-making and costs.

  The analysis found that payments varied considerably between specialties and among physicians of the same specialty. For example, the mean amount paid to the top 0.1 percent of physicians ranged from $194,933 for hospitalists to $4.8 million for orthopedic surgeons, while the payments to the median physicians ranged from zero to $2,339.

  Orthopedic physicians received the greatest sum of payments, $1.4 billion, followed by neurologists and psychiatrists, $1.3 billion, cardiologists, $1.3 billion, and hematologists/oncologists, $825.8 million. Nearly 55 percent of pediatricians and 63 percent of infectious disease physicians received payments from the industry, while physicians practicing preventative medicine received the least sum of payments.

  “From 2013–2022, pharma paid 12 billion dollars to U.S. physicians. That’s mind-boggling. Insane. That’s how silence is bought, the minds of physicians influenced, and ultimately patient care/prescribing patterns influenced,” Dr. Manni Mohyuddin, an oncologist, hematologist, and assistant professor at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, told The Epoch Times.

  Dr. Mohyuddin emphasized that the average payment received was low, but some physicians received a significant amount of money and have influence over writing guidelines, chairing committees, clinical trials, influencing opinions, and more.

  Top Drugs and Devices Associated With Payments

  The top three drugs associated with the most payments were Xarelto ($176.3 million), Eliquis ($102.6 million), and Humira ($100.2 million).

  Xarelto, jointly developed by Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Bayer, is used to prevent and treat blood clots. Janssen also created the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which caused rare and sometimes fatal blood clotting disorders.

  Eliquis is a multibillion-dollar blood thinner manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer. The drug in 2023 was 12 percent of Pfizer’s total revenue—second only to its Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has also been linked to blood clotting disorders.

  Humira is an immunosuppressive drug manufactured by AbbVie to treat arthritis, plaque psoriasis, ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis. Following the top three drugs are Type 2 diabetes medications Invokana, Jardiance, and Farxiga.

  According to the analysis, the three medical devices associated with the most payments were daVinci Surgical System, $307.5 million, Mako SmartRobotics, $50.1 million, and CoreValve Evolut, $44.8 million.

  ‘Highly Targeted to Lucrative Procedures’

  “Our paper is a modest analysis. It does not explain the problem of financial conflicts of interest. But it is a lot of money. And it’s highly targeted to lucrative procedures,” co-author and cardiac electrophysiologist Dr. John Mandrola wrote in a post on Substack.

  Dr. Mandrola believes that the strong influence of the industry can be seen in the approval of numerous medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Adminsitration despite “dodgy evidence.”

  “Cardiology is a technical field. We use devices. Innovation requires some collaboration. Innovation has made cardiology better. But industry influence is way too strong,” he said. Dr. Mandrola believes the payments reported in their paper are not only for physician–industry collaborations, but are for marketing and goodwill, which helps establish practice patterns among physicians.

  The industry is profit-driven, and if direct payments to doctors didn’t work, the industry wouldn’t spend billions doing it, he added.

  Payments Can Create Conflicts of Interest

  Dr. Andrew Foy, co-author and cardiologist, told The Epoch Times in an email the analysis shows a strong relationship between physicians and industry, but there are other indicators of this relationship as well. For example, it’s not uncommon for industry ads to be featured on homepages of major medical journals or for a medical conference or meeting to bombard physicians with industry advertising.

  “When I experience this at conferences, I feel like industry is not only welcome at these events but that the event is built around industry and its involvement,” Dr. Foy said. “There’s certainly no attempt to hide these relationships. The main reason being, at least in my opinion, is that many physicians, perhaps even the majority, believe the physician-industry collaboration is a net benefit to patients and society.”

  Dr. Foy said he doesn’t necessarily share that view, but he doesn’t believe there is strong, objective evidence to support one side or the other as it relates to the overall benefits or harms of the relationship between physicians and industry.

  “At this moment in time, the profession seems only interested in transparency. ‘As long as everyone is transparent, then everything is fine.’ As if someone cannot be transparent about their conflicts and highly biased at the same time,” he said.

  Dr. Foy said he worries that conflicts of interest directly related to physician–industry payments may lead to overly enthusiastic recommendations or guidelines from medical organizations to use new products, even if they have not been sufficiently tested or where the evidence is not strong enough to recommend them over an old standard, or in some cases, nothing at all.

  Additionally, Dr. Foy said a “major problem” with physician–industry payments is that they “have a way of tilting physicians sympathy toward industry” and the industry’s “medical advancements” which encourage physicians to more willingly adopt new products for the sake of  “industry advancement,” even if they don’t have a direct conflict of interest with that particular product.

  “In a way, they become cheerleaders for industry and more open to adopting new products simply due to this attachment,” Dr. Foy told The Epoch Times.

  “I think what our paper does do is provide some numbers, which some may find shocking, and hopefully it renews interest in having conversations about physician-industry payments and conflicts of interest and perhaps facilitates more research,” he added.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 19:00

• Pro-Palestine Group Attacks UK Defense Factory Producing F-35 Stealth Parts 
  Pro-Palestine Group Attacks UK Defense Factory Producing F-35 Stealth Parts 

  The sudden influx of unvetted migrants from around the world into Western nations poses a significant national security threat. Leftist-corporate media outlets are ignoring the mounting risks associated with unvetted migrants. However, citizen journalists on the ‘free speech’ social media platform X have outlined some of these dangers. 

  Let’s begin with the latest data from the UK that shows the number of migrants crossing the English Channel soared to a new record high for the first three months of the year, according to BBC News. 

  

  The surge in migrants continues despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop’ the migrant boats – though the latest data shows the PM is not doing enough. 

  Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said:

   “Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Rishi Sunak keeps on telling the British people that small boat arrivals are coming down and his promise to stop the boats remains on track.” 

  Kinnock added:

   “It’s time to get a grip and restore order to the border.”

  The latest evidence of national security risks emerging comes after a pro-Palestine group attacked the manufacturing facility of defense company Teledyne Technologies in the town of Baildon. 

  X user “Palestine Action” said, “Actionists are reaching every corner of this weapons factory to bring it down for Palestine!”

  The pro-Palestine group has called for attacks on at least one Western defense company. These firms are essential for providing technologies to enhance national security across the West. 

  Actionists are reaching every corner of this weapons factory to bring it down for Palestine!

  Join them at Teledyne, Shipley, BD17 7SW pic.twitter.com/fWrftE1kBX

  — Palestine Action (@Pal_action) April 2, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Actionists are dismantling the zionist war machine for the people of Palestine.

  Join us at Teledyne’s weapons factory, Shipley, BD17 7SW! pic.twitter.com/IpPhneWdAP

  — Palestine Action (@Pal_action) April 2, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  There is no word if the attackers were migrants/or citizens. At least one appeared foreign-looking… 

  

  “The site produces components for missiles and F-35 fighter jets used by the Israeli military to commit genocide in Gaza,” the group said. 

  BREAKING: Palestine Action is on the roof of Teledyne’s weapons factory in Shipley, West Yorkshire!

  The site produces components for missiles and F-35 fighter jets used by the Israeli military to commit genocide in Gaza.

  Join us at Teledyne, Acorn Park, Shipley, BD17 7SW! pic.twitter.com/sbERLM8wqR

  — Palestine Action (@Pal_action) April 2, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Across the Atlantic, the Biden administration’s disastrous open southern borders have allowed ten million migrants from around the world into the country – many of whom are unvetted. There have already been reports of known terrorists caught by federal agencies and continued reports of at least one Iranian assassin hunting current and former senior US officials.  

  The incident at the Teledyne factory won’t likely be the last attack on the West’s defense companies as the result of open southern borders allows the enemy to attack from deep within. 

  The West is compromised – the chaos is only beginning.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 18:40

• Judge Rejects Trump's Request To Delay 'Hush Money' Case Based On Presidential Immunity
  Judge Rejects Trump’s Request To Delay ‘Hush Money’ Case Based On Presidential Immunity

  Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

  New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on April 3 denied former President Donald Trump’s latest request to delay his upcoming trial, based on a presidential immunity defense that will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court 10 days after the Manhattan trial begins.

  “Defendant’s motion is DENIED in its entirety as untimely,” the judge wrote.

  “The Court declines to consider whether the doctrine of presidential immunity precludes the introduction of evidence of purported official presidential acts in a criminal proceeding.”

  The defense also argued that the prosecution’s evidence related to President Trump’s official acts should be excluded based on presidential immunity, which the judge rejected.

  In Manhattan, the district attorney is prosecuting President Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, alleging a payment scheme to kill unfavorable news stories to influence the 2016 elections.

  Trial will begin with jury selection on April 15, and in recent weeks the defense has made several requests to delay the trial, citing among other things a late discovery production of more than 100,000 pages.

  On March 25, the judge delayed trial until April 15 because of the late evidence produced, but has criticized the defense for “repeatedly” seeking delays in recent orders.

  The defense has another motion to delay the trial still before the judge, this one arguing that the sheer publicity surrounding the case would prevent President Trump from being able to seat an impartial jury.

  

  ‘Timeliness’

  The judge explained he decided against delaying the trial based on “timeliness,” describing the defense’s arguments as “excuses.”

  “In reviewing the excuses proffered by the Defendant for the timing of his motion, this Court finds that they are inadequate and not convincing,” he wrote.

  Justice Merchan found that the prosecutors had outlined the evidence they intended to show at trial in February, and wrote the defense should have raised the presidential immunity objections at that time, not with days to trial.

  “The Defendant had ample notice that the People were in possession of, and intended to use, the various statements allegedly made by Defendant on social media, in public, and in various interviews,” the judge wrote. “He was also well aware that the defense of presidential immunity, even if unsuccessful, might be available to him.”

  The judge noted that the defense had touched on presidential immunity last year in an attempt to move the case to federal court, yet did not argue it. He said the timing of the new motion “raises real questions about the sincerity and actual purpose of the motion.”

  “The circumstances, viewed as a whole, test this Court’s credulity,” he wrote, finding that the defense had “myriad opportunities” to raise this defense earlier.

  ‘Pressure Campaign’

  In arguing presidential immunity, the defense had also renewed arguments to exclude or otherwise counter evidence prosecutors intend to show regarding a “pressure campaign” they allege President Trump exerted over the star witness.

  Michael Cohen, formerly a personal attorney to President Trump, had made public claims that he paid off an adult actress alleging an affair with President Trump in order to keep the story out of the news. He claimed President Trump falsified business records to pay him for these alleged bribes, and prosecutors argue that the claims and case were not brought until well after the alleged payments because of this “pressure campaign.”

  The judge had rejected defense efforts to block Mr. Cohen from testifying, but the defense argued that they should be allowed to claim at trial that Mr. Cohen has never shied away from speaking about President Trump and would not have caved to the alleged “pressure.”

  Presidential Immunity

  Separately, special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting President Trump on four counts of conspiracy and obstruction for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

  Originally scheduled for a March trial, the case has ended up before the Supreme Court with an April 25 hearing on the defense of presidential immunity.

  Last year, defense attorneys had filed a motion to dismiss the case based on presidential immunity. The motion was rejected by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in December, and the defense appealed the decision.

  An appeals panel accepted and heard the appeal on an expedited schedule, and then issued the unusual decision that the court would not allow a stay in the event of a rehearing by the appeals court. It gave President Trump a six-day deadline to seek review from the Supreme Court.

  President Trump applied for a stay from the Supreme Court, which the court dismissed, instead granting the special counsel’s request to treat the application as a request for review and scheduled an April hearing.

  The arguments will be limited to applications of presidential immunity as it relates to official acts in criminal prosecutions.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 18:20

• Top US Egg Supplier "Temporarily Ceases" Operations At Texas Plant After Bird Flu Outbreak 
  Top US Egg Supplier “Temporarily Ceases” Operations At Texas Plant After Bird Flu Outbreak 

  The largest egg producer in the US has temporarily halted production at one of its facilities after bird flu—also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI—was detected. 

  Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. wrote in a press release that HPAI was detected at “one of the Company’s facilities located in Parmer County, Texas, resulting in depopulation of approximately 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets, or approximately 3.6% of the Company’s total flock.” 

  “Production at the facility has temporarily ceased as the Company follows the protocols prescribed by the USDA. Cal-Maine Foods is working to secure production from other facilities to minimize disruption to its customers,” the company said. 

  

  Bloomberg said this is the “biggest bird flu casualty” since early December when 2.6 million birds were culled at a commercial egg farm in Ohio after HPAI was found. Cal-Maine also had a Kansas farm cull 684,000 hens the same month.

  In a mid-March note, we pointed out that data from USDA showed that Grade A egg prices at the supermarket were soaring again. 

  

  Unlink the previous HPAI outbreak in 2022. There are reports the virus is spreading in dairy cattle herds – and even infecting humans. This raises significant concerns about the potential impact on the food supply chain. 

  Infected Texas dairy cattle are experiencing decreased lactation and low appetite, with older cows more likely to be severely impacted. Some herds have reported pneumonia and clinical mastitis — an inflammatory disease — the Texas Animal Health Commission said by email. Most animals seem to recover in as many as two weeks with supported care, albeit with reduced milk production levels.

  Some cows may never see their milk production recover to pre-infection levels, in which case they might be culled, according to a HighGround Dairy report Monday. “The longer-term impact on supply is not entirely clear, as farmers are trying to maintain herd inventories in a time of tight cattle supplies,” it said. –Bloomberg

  There have yet to be any reports that the virus has spread to beef herds, where the US cattle herd is at seven-decade lows, and supermarket prices are at record highs. 

  Dave Kurzawski, an analyst at StoneX Group Inc., mentioned in a note to clients that discussions are happening about possible consumer demand risks for dairy products. He further said that significant risks are present, and the effect of the illness on consumer purchasing patterns remains uncertain. 

  The US food supply chain faces yet another challenge, as mysterious fires have hit food processing plants in recent years. Additionally, billionaire activists in the WEF cult advocate for a ‘reset’ in the global food supply chain, moving from beef, dairy, and chicken towards plant-based and insect-based foods. 

  Meanwhile, billionaires like Bill Gates have been quietly purchasing America’s farmland. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 04/03/2024 – 18:00

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