Jan 09

Today’s News 9th January 2025

  • Why Are Fertility Rates Not Rising?
    Why Are Fertility Rates Not Rising?

    Authored by Russell Clark via ‘Capital Flows and Asset Markets’,

    It is always hard to get back into writing in the new year – this year in particular. As a family we stayed in London – and over the last few years, with my oldest doing motorsport and my youngest at a football academy, as family we are rarely together for long periods of time. Hanging out at home has allowed me to try and make a dent in my massive tsundoku that has accumulated on my bed side table. One book I managed to finish is Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken – a Christmas present from 2023! There was nothing too radical in the book, the idea of processed food not being good for you is not particularly mind blowing. There was one very interesting idea I took from Ultra-Processed Food. While humans basically need a certain amount of calories, we also need various other macro nutrients, which turn up in various random foods. I know that I occasionally will have a craving for steak, grapes, pineapples and apples, that will disappear after a day or two of gorging on these foods. In Ultra-Processed Food, the author points out that these macronutrients do not really appear in processed foods, or if they do in very small quantities. Your body will need them, so you end up eating much more processed food to try and get that macronutrient. You end up in the perverse situation of being obese and malnourished at the same time.

    The fact of the matter is that general starvation and lack of food during and after World War II drove the industrialisation of food production. And in the post War Period was wildly successful at ending hunger in the industrialised world. Capitalism did what it does best – it was provided a profit motive to supply food to the world- and it solved it. The profit motive had a downside of course. Competition and profit seeking saw industrialised food emphasise addictive foods (high in sugar and salt) and food that lasts a long time to reduce costs (artificial preservatives). And lo and behold, in a single generation we have gone from a food crisis to a weight crisis. So does changing food production techniques have anything to do with falling fertility rate? In the UK fertility rates started dropping in the 1960s, after spiking after World War II. That fertility rates are at levels today seen during periods of war I find telling.

    My original thoughts was that in the 1980s, the world turned pro-labour, and real wages starting falling. With less money, people had less babies was the line of thinking. I thought that a pro-labour turn in politics would also lead to a turn in fertility rates. You can frame the argument in many different ways, but I thought the increased job security of the pro-labour world would allow families to have more children. I had also assumed improving Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART) would also help to cause fertility rates to surge. To my disappointment, Denmark, which publishes up to date birth statistics, and has very relaxed and supportive rules on ART has seen recent birth rates fall back to lows. In 2021, the surge in babies made me very excited that this theory was correct, but it now looks like an aberration.

    Thinking about obesity as a sign of a deficient diet allowed me to think about falling fertility rates in a different way. Obesity in the UK took off at around the same time that fertility rates fell. I never really saw any reason to tie falling fertility rates to rising obesity. If anything, birth rates have tended to fall during periods of food insecurity, such as during war and famine. But using the observation from Ultra-Processed People – obesity could be a sign of lack of macro-nutrients? That is excess calorie consumption in the search of vital minerals? That obesity is a sign of a lack of nutrition needed for baby making?

    Circumstantial evidence is easy to find. Mexico used to have a far higher fertility rate than the US. But the success of Coca Cola in Mexico is hard to understate – a former Coca Cola salesmen was President for awhile, and per capita consumption in Mexico is far higher than elsewhere.

    And Mexican fertility rates are now below that of the United States.

    Of course, correlation is not causation. And there is a big problem with this analysis. Japanese fertility rates have also fallen in this period, and this is a country that works hard at avoiding processed food. Japan is also a problem in thinking high house prices may affect the decision to have children. Japan has had falling house prices for most of the past 30 years with no effect on fertility. But one thing Japan has had in line with the rest of the world is rising urbanisation rates. Is city living non-conducive to having kids?

    Does big city living destroy the desire to have children? Are obesity, infertility and urbanisation all measure of the same thing – modernity? Could the possibility of telecommuting that seemed so real during Covid be the answer? Should governments mandate that all companies that can work remotely should work remotely? Is that the answer to the fertility crisis? It seems like a good idea to me – what harm can it do?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 23:25

  • Trump Envoy To Join Gaza Ceasefire Talks In Qatar
    Trump Envoy To Join Gaza Ceasefire Talks In Qatar

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Tuesday that he was traveling to Qatar to take part in Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations with Biden administration officials.

    Chances of a deal seem slim as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he has no intention of ending the genocidal war, and Hamas is saying any deal must lead to a permanent ceasefire, but Witkoff insisted progress was being made.

    Left: Steve Witkoff

    “We’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha,” Witkoff, a real estate investor, said at a press conference with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

    Witkoff said he was “really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president.” When asked what has been impeding a deal, Witkoff declined to answer. “I believe we’ve been on the verge of [a deal]. I don’t want to discuss what’s delayed it — no point to be negative in any way,” he said.

    Standing alongside Witkoff, Trump repeated his threat that there would be “all hell to pay” if Hamas doesn’t start releasing hostages by his inauguration on January 20.

    “If those hostages aren’t back — if they’re not back by the time I get into office — all hell will break out in the Middle East and it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is and they should have been back a long time ago,” Trump said.

    The president-elect has vowed to be a staunch supporter of Israel, as he was in his first term, and said on Monday that he was the “best friend that Israel ever had.”

    According to media reports, Hamas has released a list of 34 hostages it is willing to release as part of the first phase of a ceasefire deal in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

    The Times of Israel reported that a potential deal that’s on the table would only involve a six to seven-week temporary ceasefire. Relatives of Israelis still held in Gaza are calling for the government to pursue a comprehensive deal that releases all the hostages and brings an end to the conflict.

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    During previous rounds of negotiations, Netanyahu sabotaged the chances of a deal by constantly declaring that he wouldn’t agree to a permanent truce and adding new demands.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 23:00

  • Blinken Responds To Trump, Says US Won't Take Over Greenland
    Blinken Responds To Trump, Says US Won’t Take Over Greenland

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

    Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States likely will not take over Greenland anytime soon, referring to recent comments made by President-elect Donald Trump expressing interest in controlling the island.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 11, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

    “The idea expressed about Greenland is obviously not a good one, but maybe more important, it’s obviously one that’s not going to happen, so we probably shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about it,” Blinken said during a press conference in Paris on Wednesday.

    When he was pressed on Trump’s remarks about the United States acquiring Greenland from Denmark, Blinken stressed the need for allies.

    “I think one of the basic propositions we brought to our work over the last four years is that we’re stronger, we’re more effective, we get better results when we’re working closely with our allies, not saying or doing things that may alienate them,” he told reporters.

    Greenland, located to the northeast of the United States, is an autonomous territory under the domain of Denmark. Citizens of the territory are considered citizens of Denmark and the European Union.

    In a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump did not rule out using the U.S. military to acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal.

    “I’m not going to commit to that,” Trump said. “It might be that you have to do something.”

    This week, his son Donald Trump Jr. took a trip to Greenland to shoot video as part of a podcast.

    Denmark’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that Greenland can become independent if its residents want it but that it likely won’t become a U.S. state, as Greenland’s leader met with the Danish king in Copenhagen on the day.

    “We fully recognize that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialize, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.

    He did not say whether he believed that Greenland would become a territory of the United States, only commenting on whether it could become a state.

    He told reporters that the United States has significant security concerns in the Arctic, which he signaled were legitimate, due to higher Chinese and Russian activity in the region in recent years.

    “I don’t think that we’re in a foreign policy crisis,” Rasmussen said. “We are open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can possibly cooperate even more closely than we do to ensure that the American ambitions are fulfilled.”

    Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede has said that Greenland is not for sale, in response to Trump’s comments.

    “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” he said in a statement in late December 2024.

    Trump, while commenting on Greenland, announced he had chosen Ken Howery to be his ambassador to Denmark.

    “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

    The president-elect, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, said on Tuesday that the United States also needs to reassert control over the Panama Canal, a structure it built in the early part of the 20th century. He said that the canal’s control is a matter of national security and that Chinese companies control parts of it now.

    “The Panama Canal is vital to our country,” he said. “It’s being operated by China—China!—and we gave the Panama Canal to Panama, we didn’t give it to China. They’ve abused that gift.”

    Reuters contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 22:35

  • DOJ Confirms It Will Release Jack Smith's Report On Trump, But…
    DOJ Confirms It Will Release Jack Smith’s Report On Trump, But…

    Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to release only the volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s report dealing with Donald Trump’s plans to subvert the transfer of power after his loss in the 2020 election, holding back on sharing the Mar-a-Lago report while the president-elect’s two co-defendants still face trial.

    Garland’s decision all but assures the public will never see Smith’s report reviewing Trump’s mishandling of classified records at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort.

    However, the filing says the top members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees will be able to review the Mar-a-Lago report at the Department of Justice (DOJ)… so don’t be surprised when the leaks start.

    As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, DOJ officials said in a court filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that AG Garland intends to release part one of the report, which deals with Trump, “in furtherance of the public interest in informing a co-equal branch and the public regarding this significant matter.”

    Smith has already transmitted the report to Garland, officials said.

    U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday had ordered the department not to release the report until the 11th Circuit reviewed a motion by Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s co-defendants in a federal case.

    While prosecutors dropped charges against Trump following his November 2024 election win, they are still pursuing Nauta, a former Trump aide, and De Oliveira, a manager at Trump’s resort in Florida.

    Nauta and De Oliveira say Smith should be fired and that his report should not be released to the public, given he was found by Cannon to be unconstitutionally appointed.

    DOJ lawyers said in the new filing that whether Smith was unconstitutionally appointed is irrelevant because the issue at hand is how Garland handles Smith’s report. They also argued that Nauta and De Oliveira have no interest in part one, and do not have standing to block the publication of that part.

    “There is also no valid basis for this Court to pretermit the Attorney General’s discretion with respect to Volume One,” they wrote.

    Officials said that while part two of the report will not be made available to the public, a redacted version will be available for certain lawmakers to view in camera as long as the lawmakers agree not to publicly release any of the report’s contents.

    “This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of a significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” they wrote.

    Cannon’s order prohibited, pending resolution of the emergency motion from Nauta and De Oliveira by the appeals court, Smith, Garland, the DOJ, and all persons acting together with the parties from releasing, sharing, or transmitting the report or drafts of the report with any person outside of the DOJ.

    It did not bar Smith from transmitting the report to Garland.

    Federal law governing special counsels requires each counsel to prepare a final report explaining prosecution decisions and transmit it to the attorney general, who can decide whether to make it public.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 22:10

  • Red Pentagon? DoD's Leninist L-Band Expropriation Tips Ligado Networks Into Bankruptcy
    Red Pentagon? DoD’s Leninist L-Band Expropriation Tips Ligado Networks Into Bankruptcy

    Submitted by James Holloway via ‘A Temporary Problem of Liquidity’ substack,

    Ligado Networks filed for bankruptcy on Sunday thanks in no small part to the United States of America, specifically the Department of Defense.

    In a suit filed in October 2023, Ligado alleges that the U.S. expropriated and used spectrum awarded to Ligado by the FCC without compensation and then engaged in a strategy of “deceit and misinformation.” 

    Ligado is suing the U.S. for $40 billion, reflecting sunk costs and lost revenues related to a proposed 5G network in the L-Band that the Pentagon took for its own.

    It filed for breathing space to focus on that lawsuit, among other things. 

    The prearranged chapter 11/RSA supported by 88% of pre-petition funded debt, including first lien and crossholder groups. Funded debt (it sums to $8.6 billion):

    There are also series of preferreds (liquidation preference just short of $3b) and two classes of equity. Cash in the cookie jar: $9.3mm at petition. Ligado needs $115m to “operate smoothly” through the post-petition period, according to Bruce Mendelsohn, head of the financing/capital solutions group at PWP. Fortunately, the debtors hit the courthouse with a prearranged chapter 11 plan: a DIP, a “long-term commercial transaction” with a third party, and a restructuring supporting agreement (“RSA”).

    Telecom: it devours cash like a stoner crashing a bag of Doritos. The build cycles are long; companies are at the mercy of regulators, code enforcement officers and environmentalists with eager young attorneys desperate to Make a Difference, or at least an impression on the bosses. Has any industry been more creatively destroyed then re-assembled over the last thirty-odd years? Suppose it’s not some arm of the Law. In that case, it’s innovation (replace copper with fiber), its supply chain, or natural disaster (remember Fukushima? High yield primary was closed for three weeks as doom-mongers warned of mutant fish washing up on the beaches of California) or disasters of human invention. War, or perhaps the nationalization of what V.I. Lenin called the “commanding heights” of the economy. Lenin meant heavy industry – steel mills powered by hydroelectric dams and similar quaint relicts of a vanished age – and media/communications.

    This brings us to the amusing observation that Ligado was tipped into bankruptcy by the Department of Defense’s (“DOD”) de facto nationalization of spectrum that the FCC had authorized for Ligado’s use. We’d heard the U.S. military was “evolving” in the general direction of “woke.” Is it similarly “evolving” toward Leninist methods of procurement, e.g., “expropriation”? “Liberation”?

    Since 2010, Ligado has sought to integrate its satellite services with terrestrial networks, according to the first-day declaration (“FDD”) of CEO Douglas Smith. Specifically, it’s been seeking authorization to build out a 5G network using spectrums in what it calls the “L-Band,” a “highly attractive one- to two gigahertz (‘GHz’) spectrum category, known as the lower mid-band.” Ligado was nothing if not tenacious. After ten years of a “contentious, protracted regulatory process,”[1] the FCC in 2020 granted Ligado authority to build such a network using its “licensed and leased spectrum.”

    Bit of a problem, though. The below spectrum map from Smith’s FDD may be helpful. We wonder if Smith wishes he had never heard of the goddam L-Band. Or, perhaps, he wishes Ligado was not under the aegis of the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce (“DOC”) and the U.S. Congress “(collectively, the ‘U.S. Government’)”:

    The teal-ish box beside Ligado’s 1525-1559 Mhz L-Band is labeled GPS/GNSS. This band is reserved for satellite systems that provide “PNT”: positioning, navigation and timing services. GPS is the “Global Positioning System” owned by the U.S. Space Force (which planet gets invaded first!?!?!). GNSS are the “other” Global Navigation Satellite Systems. Europe’s is called Galileo (such an injustice! Eratosthenes, overlooked again!) Russia’s is GLONASS; China’s is IRNSS, and so on.

    The U.S., led by the Department of Defense, has argued since roughly 2018 that Lidago’s use of the L-Band would interfere with the GPS spectrum used by the the U.S. military to “coordinate tactical operations, launch spacecraft, track threats and facilitate air and sea travel.” Yeah, we get that. Say some general needs to extract himself from Kabul ASAP. What if noise from Ligado routed his entourage to the Friendship Bridgeover the Amu Darya River? How those Russians would laugh! And for all we know, noise from Ligado has already farked tactical coordination, contributing to this submarine’s collision with an undersea mountain, this naval supply ship running aground offshore Bahrain, and these two naval vessels almost colliding in San Diego Bay. (Maybe the Elite Human Capital in the Valley can make a Turning Circle app. The old folks did it with pencils, just like the old-school bond guys did repo in their heads.)

    Smith argues in his FDD that “scientific studies” show Ligado’s use of the L-Band would not interfere with GPS. The FCC “explicitly rejected” the military’s claims about GPS interference when granting Ligado authority. So what’s the deal? Smith knows the score the Pentagon “has taken the Debtors’ spectrum for the agency’s own use, operating previously undisclosed systems that use or depend on the Debtors’ allocated spectrumwithout compensating the Debtors.”

    Emphasis added. “Previously undisclosed systems.” Oh dear. If you ask us, sounds like 48, or some other GWOT agit-prop designed to rattle the populace into believing some “fight them there or we will have to fight them at the Rose Bowl in a way that will utterly ruin college football season” bullshit. The legendarily unaccountable Pentagon, or some entity within the archipelago of three-letter agencies infesting Northern Virginia like a colony of indestructible roaches, has some private war, or God knows what, going on. We assume that, too, is all highly classified. Ligado, through no fault of its own, stumbled into this band, and the FCC, believing it unused, shrugged and told them to take it. So the Pentagon, rather than – we don’t know, tell the fucking truth – reverted to the usual best practice: the tried and true “strategy of deceit and misinformation”(Smith’s words), an array of “unfounded claims” (Smith will not mind if we point out synonyms “lie” and “bullshit”[3]) disseminated like mean-girl gossip among the media and the legislative/administrative branches.

    Smith says the DOD and the DOC orchestrated a campaign of opposition which included eight parties filing petitions to reverse the FCC’s 2020 decision. Various U.S. Congresspeople—always ready, willing and able to serve their constituents, especially when the defense of Our Democracy is at stake (and maybe line up a nice gig for when the DC scene gets old) — have likewise objected.

    Ligado can’t be blamed for exercising its “rights and remedies” here: in October 2023, it sued the U.S., alleging that the DOD’s bullshit had cost it, Ligado, hundreds of billions in sunk costs and lost profits. $40 billion, to be precise: that’s how much Ligado is seeking in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (it’s also not very much in light of the Pentagon’s budgets). The U.S., in January 2024, filed a motion to dismiss the suit. In December, the Court of Federal Claims allowed the suit to proceed. The case is

    Then there’s the Cooperation Agreement with Immarsat. Immarsat, which also landed a piece of the L-Band, and Ligado agreed to coordinate their respective bits into “contiguous spectrum blocks within the spectrum and at the power levels agreed upon.” Ligado is required to pay Immarsat for those coordination rights. Rather, pay Viasat, which acquired Immarsat in 2021. Ligado has engaged in“extensive discussions” with Viasat about restructuring its “significant payment obligations” under the agreement. Just as the parties were finalizing the contours of a commercial agreement, Smith says, and right out of the blue, Viasat raised up a tax issue that had the effect of sinking the deal. Viasat ultimately“revealed that its true intent is to access the Debtors’ spectrum to implement Viasat’s commercial goals. In other words, without the Debtors’ spectrum, Viasat cannot execute on its business plan.”

    What could the company do against such an array of foes? Ligado filed with a DIP and an RSA proposing a pre-arranged chapter 11 and recognition proceeding under the Canadian Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.Prepetition funded debt will be equitized, other than the amounts repaid or rolled up by DIP. Equity and preferred interests are retained. As part of the RSA, Ligado is undertaking a long-term commercial deal with AST & Science LLC, a space-based 5G network.

    The DIP facility is the standard new money/rollup. It consists of $442m of new money loans, $12mm of which will be available on an interim basis. On the final order, $327mm of “DIP Secured Funding Loans” will be available to repay the 1L first-out, and $103mm of “DIP Delayed Draw Term Loans” (“DDTL”) three days after entry of the final order. The new money loans bear interest at 15.5% cash and 17.5% PIK. The DIP also provides for a roll-up of $442mm of 1L obligations (other than the 1L first-out piece), which can be increased to as much as $497mm. Ligado also seeks the use of cash collateral (the above-referenced $9.3mm).

    And those fees! Holy damn, but we assume it reflects the risk of supporting an entity that’s had the absolute cheek to defy the Exceptional Nation; make it mad, and it may smite well smite all the “consenting” investors unto the 70thgeneration. There’s a $20k DIP agent acceptance fee and a $80k annual agency fee. Those are in cash. These are PIK: 12.5% backstop fee, 5% commitment fee, 5% first funding discount fee, 5% second funding discount fee, DDTL funding discount fee (payable on the amount of DDTL draws made on funding date) and a 3% unused funding commitment payable on unused secured and DDTL funds.

    As for the AST deal, Smith calls it “transformative” (isn’t that what Gerry Levin called Time Warner’s deal with AOL?). AST gets the right to use Ligado’s satellites, ground assets and L-band Spectrum, “including substantially all of the capacity on SkyTerra-1 and any replacement or follow-on satellites.”AST will pay an annual usage-right fee of $80mm plus a percentage of revenue. Ligado will keeps control of its licenses and physical assets. The deal terminates on December 31, 2107. The implication that the parties believe civilization will survive until then provides a brief glimmer of comfort.

    Here are the percentages of support for the RSA:

    Ligado intends to use the “breathing spell” to pursue its lawsuit against the U.S. government, and here’s hoping that Smith, Ligado and their counsels stick it to the Man, as was said by the hippies of yore. It will also continue working on its technology and document the AST deal.

    Ligado’s first-day hearing yesterday ran just short of ninety minutes, which seems right given the support of prepetition secured lenders for the RSA. The docket includes a revised DIP motion incorporating revisions requested by the Court, which was signed this morning. The redline does not indicate monster changes. The Court approved other first-day relief.

    The next event in the docket is a final hearing on the cash management motion, set for January 29.

    Ligado also filed an adversary case against Inmarsat. The DIP posting memo is here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 21:45

  • Goldman's CES 2025 Takeaway: Chinese Firms Unveil New AI PCs, Mixed Reality Headsets, EV Tech & Panels
    Goldman’s CES 2025 Takeaway: Chinese Firms Unveil New AI PCs, Mixed Reality Headsets, EV Tech & Panels

    Analysts at Goldman Sachs working on the Greater China Tech Research desk in Hong Kong released a client note Thursday highlighting key product launches and demonstrations by Chinese companies at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 in Las Vegas.

    Goldman’s Allen Chang and Verena Jeng focused on 19 Chinese companies attending CES 2025 that released notable products across AI PCs, mixed reality (MR) and AI glasses, EV technology, eVTOLs, gaming PCs and monitors, and AI servers. 

    Here are the companies and their respective highlights:

    From the list, the analysts offered additional insights on launches from select companies, along with their analyst ratings: 

    AI PC

    ASUS (2357.TW, Buy): ASUS launched new Copilot+ PC models including Zenbook A14 (priced from US$899), Vivobook 14/ 16 at CES 2025. The new Zenbook model is based on Snapdragon X Series platform, featuring lighter weight under 1kg with innovative Ceraluminum chassis and over 32 hours battery life. For commercial AI PC, ASUS’s ExpertBook P5 was launched in Oct 2024, with self-developed “AI ExpertMeet” for AI translation and AI meeting functions. We expect stronger AI PC ramp up in 2025E on the back of more models with the mainstream chipset platforms (Intel) and software (Copilot+), along with the long battery life and growing generative AI functions.

    Lenovo (0992.HK, Buy): The company launched new AI PC models Thinkpad X9 14/ 15 (Aura Editions, priced from US$1,089), and unveiled ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable AI laptop during CES. Thinkpad X9 is Copilot+ PC model supported by Intel Core Ultra platform, and offers Smart Share functions to connect users’ smartphones to the laptop instantly through the AI virtual sensors, enabling users to easily edit photos or access to text messages on PC easily. In Dec 2024, Lenovo announced the collaboration with Volcano Engine to adopt Doubao LLM on company’s AI PC for AI search, AI writing etc. functions, and launched personal AI assistant Xiaotian to empower multiple user terminals, which has covered 1,500+ applications. We are positive on the new AI PC launch and expanding software/ ecosystem to accelerate company’s AI PC penetration. 

    AI Server

    Gigabyte (2376.TW, Buy): Gigabyte showcased multiple AI server solutions at CES 2025, including rack-level AI servers, and AI servers across AMD MI325, NVIDIA HGX, and Intel Gaudi 3 platforms. For cooling solution, the company is due to demonstrate the one-stop liquid cooling solution across CDU, manifolds, and cold plates for AI servers clients. The company also launched new AI PC models AORUS MASTER, GIGABYTE AERO, and GIGABYTE GAMING, empowered by Copilot functions and Gigabyte’s new AI agent “GiMate” to enhance the gaming experiences. The company also demonstrated new QD-OLED gaming monitors launched in Jan 2025, highlighting the enhanced Tactical features to bring users better experience in speed, clarity, and reliability.

    Automotive Tech

    Thundersoft (300496.SZ, Buy): The company highlights AquaDrive OS that integrates smart driving and cockpit domain and company’s expansion to smart driving software solution through the JV with Horizon Robotics. Thundersoft recently also introduced new AI smart cockpit empowered by LLM (Large Language Model) from Volcengine (private) to enable AI interaction and image generation functions, showcasing during CES. Besides automotive solution, Thundersoft launched 4 reference designs of Mini PC in Dec 2024 based on Qualcomm Snapdragon X platform to empower new models, supporting 13bn LLM to run on the edge devices.

    Black Sesame (2533.HK, not covered): Black Sesame launched Huashan A2000 Series (A2000, A2000 Pro, A2000L) by end of Dec 2024, showcasing the new products at CES 2025 with smart driving functions for car models of different pricing range. The company’s new NPU architecture “JiuShao” with its AI tool chains “BaRT”, featuring higher efficiency and enhanced performance.

    XPeng Aeroht (Private): The company showcased the Land Aircraft Carrier (LAC) during CES 2025, which is a six-wheeled van with a quadcopter drone, featuring 800V SiC platform and 1,000km mileages. The LAC completed the first public flight in Nov at China International Aviation Exhibition. We see growing entrants entering eVTOL and flying vehicles market, which is positive to the ecosystem expansion and future commercialization.

    Mixed Reality

    HTC (2498.TW, Neutral): The company showcased its VR/ MR headset and VIVE applications during CES 2025. The new headset model VIVE Focus Vision launched in Sep (Report link, priced at US$999) mainly targets high-end gaming and enterprise users, offering users sharper graphics, faster response time, and more immersive experiences. Meanwhile, the company continues to work with ToB (Business) clients to expand MR/ VR applications, for example, Sagrada Família VR exhibition, and VIVELAND in Kaohsiung.

    Sunny Optical (2382.HK, Neutral): Sunnyverse, the subsidiary of Sunny Optical, demonstrated XR glasses solution and optical module products during CES 2025, supported by the company’s capability to provide customized design for clients. IoT, wearables, and Robotics applications are also expected at CES, including AI camera of devices empowered by AI assistant, AI IPC vision solution for pet detection, and OCR solution for smart ironing.

    AAC (2018.HK, Buy, on CL): AAC demonstrated “Immersive Demos” and “Interactive Workshops” sessions at CES to showcase its product offerings across acoustics, haptics, optics and hinges. In Dec, the company’s new generation of acoustics solution with 600% higher volume and 25% lower power consumption was adopted by Vivo Y300, and we view the enhanced solution is positive to drive better mix. Meanwhile, post PSS acquisition, AAC is expanding its automotive acoustics client base, including Geely (Galaxy E5), Smart (Audiobox for new model.

    Besides Chinese companies at CES, we outlined:

    More from CES…

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    . . . 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 21:20

  • Time To Get Real
    Time To Get Real

    Authored by Citizen Soldier via RealClearDefense,

    “Lives depend on it,” said incoming Senate Majority Whip John Barasso.

    He’s urging confirmation of President Trump’s national security team of Kash Patel for FBI Director, Tulsi Gabbard for DNI, and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.

    He wants Mike Waltz appointed as national security advisor.

    Barasso wants serious people swiftly sworn into office on January 20—as we all should.

    Because reality returned at 0315 on New Year’s Day.

    Not fireworks and champagne, but a determined attack on American life by one man who plowed into a crowd on Bourbon Street, then opened fire on cops and civilians. Pipe bombs were found a few blocks away, rigged for remote detonation.

    The attack by Shamsud-Din Jabbar in New Orleans killed at least 14 people and injured dozens. Another image of death and terror seared into the Nation’s memory.

    We may not have all the facts but we know this: Regular police officers took fire and killed the attacker.

    Real people faced evil and stopped it, demonstrating courage under fire like countless local cops and agents in the field, like so many thousands of combat veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan. For people who wear the uniform, who train their mind and body to fight back when others flee, an entire life of preparation boils down to a few seconds.

    Few of Biden’s senior-most national security officials could possibly understand. Consider their qualifications:

    • Avril Haines, DNI, graduated Georgetown Law, rotated through various ministerial positions in the Obama Administration, managed a program at Columbia University, and advised private corporations.
    • Jake Sullivan, NSA, graduated Yale Law, held various ministerial positions in the Obama Administration, taught at Yale Law School, advised Hillary Clinton during her run for the presidency, and advised private corporations.
    • Christopher Wray, FBI Director, prosecuted cases early in his career, joined the Bush Administration, then left government to defend corporations at a prominent, white-shoe law firm.

    These are Biden’s national security leaders. 

    Lawyers and policy wonks, standing safely back from the action, sometimes attentive but many times distracted, reacting to atrocities the only way they know how — by creating more rules and processes, regardless whether they solve the problem.

    Contrast them with former terrorism prosecutor Patel, and Gabbard, Hegseth, and Waltz, all former Army officers who have actively defended the United States.

    National security leadership is as much a product of experience as education. Firsthand knowledge of violence and its consequences should be a prerequisite for the job. Haines, Sullivan, Wray, and many others boast blue-chip resumes and good social networks but have skipped their apprenticeships to violence, declining to put themselves in harm’s way as soldiers, intelligence officers, special agents, or cops.

    Left-wing allies in the media condemn Trump’s national security picks as “lacking qualifications,” but fail to scrutinize the records of Biden’s people, who are well-qualified for the classroom or board room, not the arena.

    Time to end the Obama-Biden practice of putting under-qualified people in charge of our national security. We need real leaders who are strong and decisive, just like the men and women who patrol our streets.   

    Citizen Soldier believes in life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 20:55

  • DOJ Sues 6 Landlords Over Alleged Algorithmic Rent-Fixing Scheme
    DOJ Sues 6 Landlords Over Alleged Algorithmic Rent-Fixing Scheme

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Tuesday that it is suing six large landlords over alleged anticompetitive practices in housing rental markets, expanding the DOJ’s first case alleging algorithmic collusion.

    The DOJ and a coalition of states filed the antitrust lawsuit in North Carolina in August 2024, accusing property management software company RealPage of enabling landlords to collude by sharing pricing information through the company’s software, which then recommends rent prices.

    The DOJ alleged the landlords exchanged competitively sensitive information on rents, occupancy rates, and pricing strategies through phone calls, emails, and user groups hosted by RealPage.

    The landlords—Cortland Management, Greystar Real Estate Partners, Blackstone’s LivCor, Camden Property Trust, Cushman’s Pinnacle Property Management Services, and Willow Bridge Property—were named as defendants in the amended complaint.

    The landlords collectively operate more than 1.3 million rental units across 43 states and the District of Columbia, according to the DOJ.

    “Today’s action against RealPage and six major landlords seeks to end their practice of putting profits over people and make housing more affordable for millions of people across the country,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division stated.

    The co-plaintiffs in the amended complaint include the attorneys general of Illinois, Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.

    “I don’t have to tell anyone, rent is completely unaffordable and out of control right now,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a Jan. 7 statement.

    “We are alleging today that some of the nation’s largest landlords—including three operating in Connecticut—rigged the market using unfair algorithmic pricing to suppress competition and jack up costs for millions of renters.”

    The DOJ stated that Cortland, which manages more than 80,000 rental units across 13 states, had agreed to cooperate with the department and enter into a proposed settlement.

    In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a Cortland spokesperson said the proposed settlement will be filed with the court for approval.

    “We believe we were only able to achieve this result because Cortland has invested years and significant internal resources into developing a proprietary revenue management software tool that does not rely on data from external, non-public sources,” the spokesperson stated.

    Greystar has denied the allegations and stated that it intends to “vigorously defend” itself in the DOJ lawsuit.

    “Greystar has and will conduct its business with the utmost integrity. At no time did Greystar engage in any anti-competitive practices,” the company said in a statement.

    Camden said it disagrees with the DOJ’s claims and plans to seek dismissal of the lawsuit. The company argued that the allegations stemmed from actions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “This was a time when Camden made the decision not to increase renewal rates, to waive late fees, to freeze evictions, and to take the unprecedented step of providing over $10 million in cash directly to our residents to assist them during that uncertain period, no strings attached,” the company said in a statement.

    “Rental rates are a result of many factors, most importantly government regulations limiting housing supply. When supply is limited by government regulations, rents go up.”

    RealPage issued a statement on Dec. 6 saying that the DOJ has closed its criminal probe into pricing practices in the multifamily rental housing sector.

    The company said the remaining lawsuits filed against it were “based on misinformation and baseless allegations.”

    The three remaining landlords did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 20:30

  • Senate Democrats Attempt To Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearings
    Senate Democrats Attempt To Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearings

    Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

    Just days after the new members of the United States Senate were sworn into office, Democrats in the upper chamber have already taken steps to delay the confirmation hearings of one major nominee for President-elect Donald Trump’s second Cabinet.

    As reported by Axios, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who serves as the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is delaying Republican efforts to hold confirmation hearings as early as next week for former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (R-Hawaii), President-elect Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

    Warner’s excuse for the delay is that the committee has allegedly not yet received certain materials from Gabbard, including her FBI background check, ethics disclosure, and her pre-hearing questionnaire.

    The background check, as per committee rules, must be submitted at least one week before the hearing is to take place.

    However, Gabbard had in fact completed her background check last week.

    Furthermore, her confirmation could be much smoother than most due to her already possessing a security clearance. She also already submitted her pre-hearing questionnaire, but will submit a second one by Thursday due to Warner’s demands.

    As for the ethics report, logistical issues have prevented the timely delivery of such information due to the Washington D.C. area being struck by a heavy snowstorm on Monday, which has caused similar delays for other nominees.

    Despite Warner’s efforts to block the hearing, Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) reaffirmed that the Senate “intends to hold these hearings before Inauguration Day,” according to a spokesman.

    “The Intelligence Committee, the nominees, and the transition are diligently working toward that goal.”

    “After the terrorist attacks on New Year’s Eve and New Years Day, it’s sad to see Sen. Warner and Democrats playing politics with Americans’ safety and our national security,” said Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition.

    Gabbard has generally been considered one of President-elect Trump’s most controversial nominees.

    Originally a Democrat who rose to the rank of vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Gabbard came to be at odds with her own party over its deliberate suppression of the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020.

    She left the House to run for President herself in 2020, then left the Democratic Party and switched to Independent.

    She became a vocal supporter of President Trump’s comeback bid in 2024, and switched her party affiliation to Republican shortly after his victory in November.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 20:05

  • Telegram's Transparency Turnaround: Major Increase In Cooperation With U.S. Law Enforcement After CEO Arrest
    Telegram’s Transparency Turnaround: Major Increase In Cooperation With U.S. Law Enforcement After CEO Arrest

    Following the August arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, the popular social network and messaging application known for its stringent privacy policies has sharply increased its cooperation with U.S. authorities. The platform provided data on more than 2,200 users in 2024, a stark increase from previous years, according to details from Telegram’s own Transparency Reports bot reported by 404 Media.

    For most of 2024, Telegram’s data-sharing with U.S. law enforcement was minimal, fulfilling only 14 requests which impacted 108 users by the end of September. However, the final quarter of the year saw an exponential increase – from 108 affected users to 2,253.

    Between January 1 and September 30, 2024, Telegram fulfilled 14 requests “for IP addresses and/or phone numbers” from the United States, which affected a total of 108 users, according to Telegram’s Transparency Reports bot. But for the entire year of 2024, it fulfilled 900 requests from the U.S. affecting a total of 2,253 users, meaning that the number of fulfilled requests skyrocketed between October and December, according to the newly released data.

    “Fulfilled requests from the United States of America for IP address and/or phone number: 900,” reads the company’s Transparency Reports bot when prompted by 404 Media.

    “Affected users: 2253” it added.

    Image: Screenshot of the transparency bot via 404 Media

    This surge in data provision coincides with Durov’s arrest and subsequent changes to Telegram’s privacy policy.

    In September, shortly after Durov’s arrest, Telegram revised its privacy guidelines, now stating it would provide user data, including IP addresses and phone numbers, to law enforcement upon receiving valid legal orders. Prior to this, the company had maintained a policy of only sharing data for terrorism-related investigations, asserting that it had never actually shared any user information under those circumstances.

    The implications of Telegram’s revised stance on privacy are far-reaching.

    Telegram is especially popular with hackers, scammers, violent criminals, child abusers, and others not necessarily because of its message security (messages on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted by default, and in 404 Media’s experience criminals rarely use the feature). Instead, it is the app’s social network-like features that allow for massive channels and group chats where many hundreds or thousands of people can discover and communicate with one another easily, and the (until recently) correct perception that Telegram was unlikely to hand over user data to the authorities even when asked to do so. -404 Media

    The increase in data sharing with U.S. authorities does not just mark a policy shift; it’s a pivotal moment in Telegram’s history – balancing the scales between user privacy and legal compliance. As the platform moves forward, user trust now hangs in balance.

    The company is set to release its next round of transparency data in April.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 19:40

  • With Trudeau On His Way Out, Can Canadians Get Their Free Speech Back?
    With Trudeau On His Way Out, Can Canadians Get Their Free Speech Back?

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    With Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will step down as prime minister, Canada is now looking for a new leader after a decade under his policies. The question is whether anyone will look for the remnants of Canadian free speech in the wreckage of the Trudeau government.

    In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about the collapse of free speech in Canada under Trudeau.

    Canada has long been a country caught between two influences: the United Kingdom and the United States.

    It has shared DNA with both nations. Unfortunately, it has largely followed the British approach in treating free speech more like a privilege than a right.

    That dubious tradition was magnified over the last decade by a wholesale attack on free speech deemed hostile, insulting or triggering for different groups.

    In many ways, Canada has been a cautionary tale for many in the U.S., as the same voices of censorship and criminalization grow on our campuses and in Congress.

    Indeed, BlueSky, a social media site that offers a safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views, has apparently embraced Canadian-style standards for censorship as part of its pitch for those with viewpoint intolerance.

    For over a decade, Trudeau has been the cheerful face of modern censorship. While exuding tolerance and inclusivity, he hammered critics with draconian measures and perfectly Orwellian soundbites. In the name of tolerance, he proudly proclaimed intolerance for opposing views.

    Trudeau shows how speech codes and virtue signaling are now chic on the left.

    In a town hall event, Trudeau chastised a woman for asking a question that used the term “mankind” and instructed her, “We like to say ‘peoplekind’ … because it’s more inclusive.”

    (He later claimed he was joking. If so, many of his policies have the same punchline and are no joking matter.)

    In many ways, Trudeau’s true colors emerged in his crackdown on the trucker protests opposing COVID-19 mandates in 2022, a campaign widely supported by an enabling media. Trudeau invoked the 1988 Emergencies Act for the first time to freeze bank accounts of truckers and contributions by other Canadian citizens, powers long condemned by civil liberties groups in Canada.

    The anti-free speech apple did not fall far from the tree. It was Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who as prime minister used the predecessor to the act for the first time in peacetime to suspend civil liberties.

    Trudeau was widely criticized for his anti-free speech policies, including his move to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act to criminalize any “communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

    It was used to prevent “social media platforms [from being] used to threaten, intimidate, bully and harass people, or used to promote racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynistic and homophobic views that target communities, put people’s safety at risk and undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy.”

    Under Trudeau, human rights commissions became virtual speech commissars in Canada. A conservative webmaster was prosecuted for allowing third parties to leave insulting comments about gay people and minorities on the site. Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley insisted that “the minimal harm caused … to freedom of expression is far outweighed by the benefit it provides to vulnerable groups and to the promotion of equality.” Even a comedian was prosecuted for insulting jokes involving lesbians.

    Recently, a Canadian mayor and a town were prosecuted for not hoisting an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag” in celebration of Pride Month — even though they did not have a flag pole.

    Despite crushing the trucker protests, the Canadian parliament extended Trudeau’s emergency powers to allow him to continue to harass and threaten those on the right. Despite broad opposition, the Liberal Party, the NDP and other allies were able to muster 181 votes to keep authoritarian powers alive in Canada. (The Canadian courts later, belatedly, declared the Trudeau powers unconstitutional).

    Many of the same legislators would later push to increase the penalties for certain speech crimes to life imprisonment.

    One of the most tragically ironic moments for Canada came last year, when Trudeau’s government blocked the citizenship of Russian dissident Maria Kartasheva because she has a conviction in Russia. She had been tried in absentia by a judge sanctioned by Canada for her exercise of free speech in Russia in condemning the Ukrainian war. The Canadian government informed Kartasheva that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offense relating to false information in Canada.

    Think about that. Canada was concerned because she violated anti-free speech laws that are similar to its own. The Russians convicted her of disseminating “deliberately false information,” and Canada convicts people under laws like Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada for efforts “to convey, cause, or procure to be conveyed false information with the intent to alarm or injure anyone.”

    That is why some of us spit out our soup in 2022 when Trudeau’s government condemned Cuba for its own crackdown on protesters, claiming that “Canada strongly advocates for freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly free from intimidation.” Trudeau also condemned China for cracking down on protests over COVID-19, the very subject of his own crackdown on the truckers.

    Yet Trudeau has been a darling of the Canadian and American press despite a disapproval rate of around 68 percent among Canadian citizens. The media clearly approves of his position that “freedom of expression is not without limits” when others seek “to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”

    So the question is: Now that Trudeau is heading out, where do Canadians go to get their free speech back?

    *  *  *

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 19:15

  • "Unprecedented Fires" Scorch 3,000 Acres In Los Angeles Area, Forcing 49,000 To Evacuate
    “Unprecedented Fires” Scorch 3,000 Acres In Los Angeles Area, Forcing 49,000 To Evacuate

    Watch Live:

    LA Fire Summary:

    • Fast-moving, wind-driven fires are sweeping through the Los Angeles area, forcing mandatory evacuations for over 49,000 residents. The fires remain 0% contained.

    • The Palisades Fire (caused unknown) has burned nearly 15,000 acres, while the Eaton Fire has scorched 10,600 acres. 

    • AccuWeather Estimates $52 billion to $57 billion in preliminary damage and economic losses

    • Gov. Gavin Newsom deployed 1,400 firefighters & declared a state of emergency.

    • Nearly 300,000 residential and/or commercial customers are without power in the LA region.

    • NWS: Worst fire conditions (high winds) will peak Wednesday morning. 

    • Malibu residents warned about potential evacuation.

    • Fires ZERO PERCENT CONTAINED 

    Evacuation Map (via NYT):

    Fire Map (NASA VIIRS image overlaid LA via X user loosenedspirit): 

    *  *  * 

    Update (1915ET):

    “The Palisades Fire, which has quintupled in size since this morning, has now prompted evacuations in the City of Santa Monica,” meteorologist Matthew Cappucci wrote on X.

    Evacuations are expanding.

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    Fire is zero contained. 

    *  *  * 

    Update (1830ET):

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    Just awful. 

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    *  *  * 

    Update (1545ET):

    Via Bloomberg Top Live Desk: 

    “In California, nearly 500,000 people have turned to the state’s insurer of last resort, the FAIR Plan, which has doubled in size over the past five years. The state is now exposed to nearly $458 billion in potential damage, Mark Gongloff writes for Bloomberg Opinion. The neighborhoods in the path of the Palisades and other fires burning this week have been among some of the hardest-hit by insurer defections in recent years.”

    Via Bloomberg’s Brian Sullivan: 

    “The Los Angeles region has a high risk of exposure to wildfires: More than 460,000 homes with a reconstruction value of $300 billion in LA and the Riverside region have a moderate to very high risk of exposure, according to CoreLogic, a property analytics firm.

    “CoreLogic noted that not all the homes deemed at risk are directly exposed to the current fires.”

    Via AccuWeather:

    Estimates $52 billion to $57 billion in preliminary damage and economic loss has occurred from the raging Los Angeles area wildfires.

    *  *  * 

    Update (1534ET):

    President-elect Donald Trump on Truth Social: 

    “The fires in Los Angeles may go down, in dollar amount, as the worst in the History of our Country. In many circles, they’re doubting whether insurance companies will even have enough money to pay for this catastrophe. Let this serve, and be emblematic, of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo. January 20th cannot come fast enough!”

    Meanwhile… 

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    Clown. 

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    It is time for Californians to usher in an era of accountability after radical leftist politicians and officials have left the state in chaos.

    *  *  * 

    Update (1115ET):

    LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone told reporters, “We have well over 5,000 acres that have burned and the fire is growing. We have no percentage of containment. We have an estimated 1,000 structures destroyed.”

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    Trump was right…

    There’s nothing like waking up to a fire apocalypse that morning…

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    *  *  * 

    Update (0700ET):

    The Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst wildfires raging in Southern California show no signs of abating.

    The Los Angeles County Fire Department reported on X that nearly 3,000 acres—roughly 4.5 square miles—are ablaze, and the fire is 0% contained as of early Wednesday morning.

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    According to PowerOutage.US, nearly 300,000 customers across the area are without power.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X that 1,400 firefighters have been delayed in the area to “combat these unprecedented fires.”

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    “Emergency officials, firefighters, and first responders are all hands on deck through the night to do everything possible to protect lives,” Newsom said.

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    Malibu City authorities have urged residents to leave immediately. 

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    Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is nowhere to be found because she is attending the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama in Accra, Ghana.

    But-but-but global warming… 

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    Scenes of the inferno:

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    Evil global warming? 

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    Or the homeless starting fires?

    *   *   * 

    A brush fire that has spread to over 1,200 acres in Los Angeles amid a massive wind storm has prompted a mass evacuation in the upscale Pacific Palisades area on Tuesday.

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    “Evacuate now from the area of Palisades…” officials warned on X. “Those not in the evacuation area should shelter in place.”

    The Palisades – home to numerous A-list celebrities, has roughly 9,400 homes and 27,000 residents. After the fire broke out, smoke plumes spread quickly toward structures and homes – including a large area of Topanga Canyon, tucked-away community with a single road in and out.

     

     

    Meanwhile, the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Tuesday issued an air quality alert for the Santa Monica Mountains “due to increased fine particle pollution from wildfire smoke,” which has now traveled as far east as Diamond Bar, located around 30 miles from downtown LA.

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    Officials shut down all traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Canyon Boulevard – causing (greater than usual) traffic jams that could be seen all over.

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    Via fire.ca.gov

    Actor James Woods has posted several videos to X showing the fire raging near his house.

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    People are abandoning their cars in the street…

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    Developing…

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 19:15

  • Maduro Says Americans & Ukrainians Among Group Of 'Mercenaries' Detained
    Maduro Says Americans & Ukrainians Among Group Of ‘Mercenaries’ Detained

    This kind of bizarre headline seems to only keep coming out of Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro says that US nationals are among a group of ‘mercenaries’ detained by authorities.

    Maduro claimed in a Tuesday announcement that seven foreign mercenaries, including Ukrainians and Americans, were caught in the act of plotting to attack and destabilize the country’s leadership. “Just today we’ve captured seven foreign mercenaries, including two important mercenaries from the United States,” he said.

    He described that the group also included two Colombian hitmen captured “in different places” as well as “three mercenaries who came from Ukraine, from the war in Ukraine, to bring violence to the country.”

    Via AFP

    The two Americans were characterized as “very high level” and “important” mercenaries; however, no further details of the identities of the detained have been released.

    Maduro claimed the group had planned “to carry out attacks on the leaders of the revolution” – in reference to Bolivarian socialism popularized which goes back to his mentor and prior leader Hugo Chavez.

    It’s possible the group is being subject to severe interrogation, or even torture: “I am sure that in the next few hours, they will confess,” Maduro additionally stated.

    Key context for all this is the Biden administration recognizing and welcoming into the US a new Venezuelan ‘interim president’:

    The announcement of the detention of the foreign nationals comes just hours after US President Joe Biden welcomed exiled Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia to the United States.

    Biden expressed his support for a “peaceful transfer back to democratic rule” in Venezuela and cautioned against further repression.

    The US and other neighboring countries believe Gonzalez Urrutia won a July presidential election by a landslide and that official results were fudged.

    The opposition is in the meantime calling for “millions” of Venezuelans to protest Maduro’s Friday inauguration to a third six-year term, which the US says was based on a rigged election.

    But as the AP points out, opposition leadership has been in shambles: “Whether people will protest against Maduro on Friday remains to be seen since the government’s post-election repression campaign, including the arrests of more than 2,000 people, has had a chilling effect. And even if opposition supporters decide to demonstrate, it is unclear who would lead them,” it writes.

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    The timing is also interesting given that in less that two weeks, Maduro’s archnemesis Donald Trump returns to the White House. Maduro has already accused Trump of seeking to orchestrate regime change in his country in order to take the oil.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 18:50

  • They Really Do Want To Reduce The Population…
    They Really Do Want To Reduce The Population…

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The End Of The American Dream blog,

    There is a clear consensus among the global elite that overpopulation is the primary cause of the most important problems that our world is facing today.

    Many of them are completely convinced that humans are literally a “plague” upon the Earth and that extreme measures are required to prevent us from destroying the entire planet.  

    To the elite, everything from global warming to our growing economic problems can be directly traced back to a lack of population control.  They warn that if nothing is done about our exploding population, humanity will be facing a future full of poverty, war and suffering on a filthy, desolate planet.  They complain that it “costs too much” to keep elderly patients that are terminally ill alive, and they eagerly promote “family planning” in developing nations as a way to combat population growth.  Of course just about anything that reduces the human population in any way is a positive thing for those that believe in this philosophy.  This very twisted philosophy is being promoted in our movies, in our television shows, in our music, in countless books, on many of our most prominent websites, and it is being taught at top colleges and universities all over the world.  The people that are promoting this philosophy have very, very deep pockets, and they are actually convinced that they are helping to “save the world” by controlling the growth of the human population. 

    In fact, many of them truly believe that they are engaged in a “life or death” struggle for the fate of the planet.

    The population of the world is currently sitting just above 8 billion, and the UN expects it to peak at 10.3 billion later this century…

    The world’s population is expected to grow by more than 2 billion people in the next decades and peak in the 2080s at around 10.3 billion, a major shift from a decade ago, a new report by the United Nations said Thursday.

    From the time of Charles Darwin all the way to today, we have been relentlessly warned about what would happen if something was not done to reduce population growth.

    Of course the dire consequences that we were warned about have never actually come to fruition.

    But that hasn’t stopped the elite from continuing to issue even more warnings.

    The following are 47 shocking population control quotes from the global elite that will make you want to lose your lunch…

    1. Charles Darwin: “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

    2. Bill Gates: “The problem is that the population is growing the fastest where people are less able to deal with it. So it’s in the very poorest places that you’re going to have a tripling in population by 2050. (…) And we’ve got to make sure that we help out with the tools now so that they don’t have an impossible situation later.”

    3. John D. Rockefeller: “The population problem must be recognized by government as a principal element in long-range planning.”

    4. David Rockefeller: “The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.”

    5. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class”

    6. CNN Founder Ted Turner: “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

    7. HBO personality Bill Maher: “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving—that’s what I’m for. . . . It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”

    8. UK Television Presenter Sir David Attenborough: “We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now”

    9. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “The primary challenge facing our species is the reproduction of our species itself…It is time we had a grown-up discussion about the optimum quantity of human beings in this country and on this planet…All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control.”

    10. Dave Foreman, Earth First Co-Founder: “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”

    11. Paul Ehrlich, a former  science adviser to president George W. Bush and the author of “The Population Bomb”: “Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism… of sexism… of religious intolerance… of war… of gross economic inequality. But if you don’t solve the population problem, you’re not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem.”

    12. Richard Branson: “The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”

    13. Environmental activist Roger Martin: “On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are, the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”

    14. Al Gore: “One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principal ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children… You have to educate girls and empower women. And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”

    15. MIT professor Penny Chisholm: “The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the developing countries to drop as fast as we can. And that will determine the level at which humans will level off on earth.”

    16. Julia Whitty, a columnist for Mother Jones: “The only known solution to ecological overshoot is to decelerate our population growth faster than it’s decelerating now and eventually reverse it—at the same time we slow and eventually reverse the rate at which we consume the planet’s resources. Success in these twin endeavors will crack our most pressing global issues: climate change, food scarcity, water supplies, immigration, health care, biodiversity loss, even war. On one front, we’ve already made unprecedented strides, reducing global fertility from an average 4.92 children per woman in 1950 to 2.56 today—an accomplishment of trial and sometimes brutally coercive error, but also a result of one woman at a time making her individual choices. The speed of this childbearing revolution, swimming hard against biological programming, rates as perhaps our greatest collective feat to date.”

    17. Colorado State University Professor Philip Cafaro in a paper entitled “Climate Ethics and Population Policy”: “Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change. Indeed, significantly reducing current human numbers may be necessary in order to do so.”

    18. Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka: “I have two grandchildren and I want them to inherit a stable Earth. But I fear for them. Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper. We are behaving like bacteria growing on an agar plate, flourishing until natural limits are reached or until another microbe colonizes and takes over, using them as their resource. In addition to our extremely high population density, we are social and mobile, exactly the conditions that favor growth and spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes. I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves. This idea has been espoused by ecologists for at least four decades and is nothing new. People just don’t want to hear it.”

    19. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General from 1997-2006: “The idea that population growth guarantees a better life — financially or otherwise — is a myth that only those who sell nappies, prams and the like have any right to believe.”

    20. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UN Under-Secretary-General from 2000-2010: “We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health.”

    21. Bill Nye: “In 1750, there were about a billion humans in the world. Now, there are well over seven billion people in the world. It more than doubled in my lifetime. So all these people trying to live the way we live in the developed world is filling the atmosphere with a great deal more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than existed a couple of centuries ago. It’s the speed at which it is changing that is going to be troublesome for so many large populations of humans around the world.”

    22. Actress Cameron Diaz: “I think women are afraid to say that they don’t want children because they’re going to get shunned. But I think that’s changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don’t have kids than those that do. And, honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”

    23. Democrat strategist Steven Rattner: “WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”

    24. Matthew Yglesias, a business and economics correspondent for Slate, in an article entitled “The Case for Death Panels, in One Chart”: “But not only is this health care spending on the elderly the key issue in the federal budget, our disproportionate allocation of health care dollars to old people surely accounts for the remarkable lack of apparent cost effectiveness of the American health care system. When the patient is already over 80, the simple fact of the matter is that no amount of treatment is going to work miracles in terms of life expectancy or quality of life.”

    25. Stephen Hawking: “In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9 per cent per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.”

    26. Gloria Steinem: “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal chords has to be an opera singer.”

    27. Jane Goodall: “It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.”

    28. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

    29. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

    30. Salon columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams in an article entitled “So What If Abortion Ends Life?”: “All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.”

    31. Paul Ehrlich: “Basically, then, there are only two kinds of solutions to the population problem. One is a ‘birth rate solution,’ in which we find ways to lower the birth rate. The other is a ‘death rate solution,’ in which ways to raise the death rate — war, famine, pestilence — find us.”

    32. Alberto Giubilini of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and Francesca Minerva of the University of Melbourne in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics: “[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”

    33. Nina Fedoroff, a key adviser to Hillary Clinton: “We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people.”

    34. Barack Obama’s primary  science adviser, John Holdren: “A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.”

    35. Another quote from John Holdren: “If population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.”

    36. David Brower, the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club: “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

    37. Maurice Strong: “Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.”

    38. Thomas Ferguson, former official in the U.S. State Department Office of Population Affairs: “There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it…”

    39. Mikhail Gorbachev: “We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”

    40. Jacques Costeau: “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”

    41. Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola: “If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die”

    42. Author Dan Brown: “Overpopulation is an issue so profound that all of us need to ask what should be done.”

    43. Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”

    44. Ashley Judd: “It’s unconscionable to breed, with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries.”

    45. John Guillebaud, professor of family planning at University College London: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.”

    46. Bill Gates: “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”

    47. Charles Darwin: “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 18:25

  • Ukraine Says Ready To Replace 'Putin-Friendly' Hungary In EU & NATO
    Ukraine Says Ready To Replace ‘Putin-Friendly’ Hungary In EU & NATO

    The long-running war of words and denunciations exchanged between Kiev and Budapest has shown no signs of abating. This week Ukraine is now saying it can replace Hungary in the European Union and NATO if Viktor Orbán keeps cozying up to Putin.

    The bombastic statement was issued by Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Wednesday, and was also made available on X. The statement was formulated in response to the “latest manipulative statements from the leadership of Hungary regarding Ukraine’s decision not to extend the transit agreement with the aggressor state, Russia, from 2025 onwards.”

    Via Shutterstock

    Ukraine said it “would be ready to fill any vacant space in the EU and NATO if Hungary chooses to vacate it” in favor of its membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), or the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

    Formed in 2002, the CSTO has of late been overseen by Putin and originally consists of the six post-Soviet states of Russia, Belarus,  Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

    “If Hungary genuinely wishes to contribute to ending the war, it should start by not undermining unity within the EU and instead work to strengthen the energy security and independence of its own country and citizens alongside the rest of Europe and the United States,” the statement said further.

    Prime Minister Orbán has made himself known as a constant vocal critic of Ukraine ever gaining access to NATO membership. He has further demanded more serious diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the war, standing with Slovakia’s Fico in this regard.

    All of this also comes amid the backdrop of the gas row triggered by Ukraine’s refusal to renew a 5-year transit deal with Moscow. Orban’s government has blamed Kiev for a some 20% rise in natrual gas prices on the European market.

    Slovakia and Austria in addition to Hungary remain heavily reliant on Russian gas purchased through Gazprombank, despite its being under US and European-led sanctions.

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    Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has charged Ukraine with intentionally putting Europe in an economic bind by not renewing the gas transit deal with Russia.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 18:00

  • Conspiracy Fact? Higher Fluoride Levels Linked To Lower IQ Scores In Children, New Review Finds
    Conspiracy Fact? Higher Fluoride Levels Linked To Lower IQ Scores In Children, New Review Finds

    Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times,

    Following the August 2024 release of a U.S. government report linking higher levels of fluoride in drinking water to lower IQ in children, a new review conducted by the National Institutes of Health appears to confirm those findings.

    The new analysis, published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, found that fluoride exposure exceeding 1.5 milligrams per liter (mg/L) was associated with reduced intelligence among children.

    The study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), took nine years to complete and is the largest meta-analysis to date on the health effects of fluoride.

    The studies reviewed measured fluoride levels in drinking water and in urine. The authors used urinary fluoride as a proxy for total fluoride exposure.

    74 Studies Reviewed

    Among the 74 reviewed studies, 64 found that higher levels of fluoride exposure were linked to lower IQ in children. The strength of this association is considered moderate to large.

    Thirty-one studies reviewed noticed a dose-response, such that increased fluoride levels in drinking water were linked to further decreases in children’s IQ results.

    However, the relationship between fluoride and lower IQ scores only persisted when fluoride concentrations in drinking water were above 1.5 mg/L, higher than the current fluoride drinking water standard of 0.7 mg/L.

    The 1.5 mg/L cutoff is the same concentration identified in the NTP’s August 2024 report. The report was cited over 120 times in a lawsuit that led the court to rule that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must revise its current drinking water standard of 0.7 mg/L.

    When evaluating urinary fluoride, the researchers found that every increase of 1 mg/L in urinary fluoride was associated with an average decrease of between 1.14 and 1.63 IQ points.

    Fluoride can cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in areas of the brain responsible for cognition and memory, although its effects on the brain remain unclear.

    The study’s findings inform future risk-benefit assessments related to fluoride exposure, the authors wrote, especially highlighting the significant contributions of water and drinks made with fluoridated water, like soft drinks, fruit juice, beer, and some bottled water, to total fluoride ingestion.

    In the United States, it is estimated that approximately 40 percent to 70 percent of fluoride intake originates from fluoridated drinking water.

    The World Health Organization has established the safe upper intake level of fluoride in drinking water to be 1.5 mg/L, and the U.S. Public Health Service recommends a fluoride concentration of 0.7 mg/L of drinking water. However, “fluoride levels above 1.5 mg/L are found in wells and community water systems that serve nearly 3 million people in the United States,” Christine Bruske Flowers, director of communications at the National Institutes of Health, told The Epoch Times.

    Food & Water Watch v. EPA

    In a September 2024 federal court case in California, environmental nonprofit Food & Water Watch sued the EPA, arguing that adding fluoride to drinking water is harmful. The judge ruled in favor of Food & Water Watch, finding that the current level of fluoride in drinking water (0.7 mg/L) poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s IQ.

    The ruling was based upon the NTP’s report, which found that fluoride concentrations close to the EPA’s current standard posed a risk to neurodevelopment.

    The EPA is now required to take action to address this risk, which could lead to significant changes in how we treat drinking water.

    Experts in Disagreement

    Despite the review’s findings, experts remain at odds about the meaning of the results.

    Studies that have suggested a link between childhood fluoride exposure and reduced IQ “have had their limitations,” Suparna Mahalaha, an assistant professor at Case Western University School of Dental Medicine who was not associated with the study, told The Epoch Times.

    In an editorial published along with the new study, Dr. Steven M. Levy, a dentist not involved in the study, pointed out that there is “no evidence” of an adverse effect at the lower fluoride levels commonly used in community water fluoridation systems.

    One example he cited in opposition to the NTP’s study was the researchers’ use of urinary fluoride as a way to measure long-term fluoride exposure, stating that such measures are invalid because “fluoride has a short half-life and there is substantial variation within days and from day to day.”

    Flowers emphasized the importance of fluoridated water and its use for decades to reduce dental cavities and improve general oral health.

    However, the increased modes of fluoride exposure can also put pregnant women and children at risk.

    Fluoride intake through food and drinks made with fluoridated water, toothpaste, and mouthwashes may increase children and pregnant women’s total fluoride exposure “and may affect fetal, infant, and child neurodevelopment,” Flowers added.

    Mahalaha noted that the concentration of fluoride in drinking water is much less than what is added to toothpaste and mouth rinses, which is why it’s essential to ensure children do not swallow these products.

    Toothpaste tubes carry warnings against ingestion because excessive fluoride intake can be harmful.

    “When applying toothpaste to a child’s toothbrush, less than a pea size amount is sufficient and safe,” she said.

    “From a public health perspective, in my opinion, high doses of ingested fluoride, and other things like sugar, processed foods, social media, and screen time all negatively affect the development of a child,” Mahalaha said.

    *  *  *

    In November, when RFK Jr. raised his concerns about fluoride’s effects, NPR was quick to attack the ‘conspiracist’…

    Despite the clear benefits, conspiracy theories around fluoride have existed for almost as long as the water has been fluorinated, according to Matthew Dallek, a political historian at the George Washington University.

    “In a way the conspiracy theory about fluoride in the drinking water is one of the original public health conspiracy theories,” he says.

    …

    Experts were swift to condemn the promise to remove fluoride from the water.

    “Fluoride has been well tested. It clearly and definitively decreases cavities, and is not associated with any clear evidence of the chronic diseases mentioned in that tweet,” says Dr. Paul Offit, a researcher and physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

    “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a science denialist. He makes up his own scientific truths and ignores the actual truths,” Offit says.

    Who’s the science-denier now Mr.Offit?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 17:40

  • NVDA Dips After Biden Doubles Down On AI Chip Export Ban Ahead Of Trump
    NVDA Dips After Biden Doubles Down On AI Chip Export Ban Ahead Of Trump

    With less than two weeks to go until President Trump takes over The White House – and 24 hours after he unveiled a new $20 billion major investment from Emirati billionaire Hussain Sajwani to build new data centers across the US – the Biden administration plans one additional round of restrictions on the export of AI chips from the likes of Nvidia in a final push in his effort to keep advanced technologies out of the hands of China and Russia.

    Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that Biden wants to curb the sale of AI chips used in data centers on both a country and company basis, with the goal of concentrating AI development in friendly nations and getting businesses around the world to align with American standards

    The regulations, which could be issued as soon as Friday, would create three tiers of chip trade restrictions, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

    • At the top level, a small number of US allies would maintain essentially unmitigated access to American chips.

    • A group of adversaries, meanwhile, would be effectively blocked from importing the semiconductors.

    • And the vast majority of the world would face limits on the total computing power that can go to one country.

    Countries in the last group would be able to bypass their national limits – and get their own, significantly higher caps – by agreeing to a set of US government security requirements and human rights standards, one of the people said.

    That type of designation – called a validated end user, or VEU – aims to create a set of trusted entities that develop and deploy AI in secure environments around the world.

    Nvidia explained its dissatisfaction at Biden’s decision in the most diplomatic manner:

    “A last-minute rule restricting exports to most of the world would be a major shift in policy that would not reduce the risk of misuse but would threaten economic growth and US leadership,” Nvidia said.

    Every data center and business is already incorporating AI through what the company calls accelerating computing, Nvidia said.

    “The worldwide interest in accelerated computing for everyday applications is a tremendous opportunity for the US to cultivate, promoting the economy and adding US jobs,” the chipmaker said.

    NVDA shares are down just over 1% in the after-market…

    …which pushes the giant tech company into ‘correction’ – down over 10% from its $3 trillion-plus peak market cap.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 17:20

  • LGBT Liberals Discover Second Amendment Over Fears Of Being Thrown In 'Camps' By Trump
    LGBT Liberals Discover Second Amendment Over Fears Of Being Thrown In ‘Camps’ By Trump

    Via Headline USA,

    LGBT liberals are reportedly buying firearms over fears they’ll be rounded up and placed in “concentration camps” under the incoming Trump administration, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

    The new gun-toting groups, including the Liberal Gun Club, the Socialist Rifle Association, and Pink Pistols, claimed they’ve received “thousands” of firearm training requests since Trump won the 2024 election.

    “Three months before the election, that’s when the alarm bells started to ring,” a 24-year-old transgender activist told the outlet, adding that armed leftists will now be able to fight back “in the event of hate crimes or terrorist attacks.”

    The activist added minorities should also take their Second Amendment rights seriously, since “minorities that are armed are more difficult to legally oppress.”

    Left-winger Matthew Thompson said he purchased his first gun in 2016 after Trump was elected the first time, though he claimed he was inspired more by the mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 

    “The people I’ve been seeing on the Left and the gay people who are out purchasing guns for the first time, it’s all about self-defense and fear,” he claimed. “We’re not looking to arm up and storm the [U.S. Capitol]. We just don’t want to be put in concentration camps.”

    Trump has not once suggested he is anti-LGBT.

    In fact, Trump became the first Republican nominee to mention LGBT issues during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, shortly after the Pulse nightclub shooting.

    “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you,” Trump said at the time.

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    LGBT leftists aren’t the only ones with deranged fantasies about being rounded up by Trump’s fantasies. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., also bizarrely claimed last year that she might end up a prisoner in one of Trump’s alleged “internment camps.”

    “I get worried enough when he talks about what he’s going to do to his political enemies, but he has talked about them in this with different groups of people,” she said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 17:00

  • Vital LA Firefighting Equipment Was Handed To Ukraine, Reports Show, As Americans Now Caught In Raging Inferno
    Vital LA Firefighting Equipment Was Handed To Ukraine, Reports Show, As Americans Now Caught In Raging Inferno

    As of Wednesday afternoon the fast-moving, wind-driven fires sweeping through the Los Angeles area are still zero percent contained, resulting in ongoing evacuations for 80,000+ residents.

    Hundreds of thousands of residential and commercial locations have been left without power in the LA area as the natural disaster has become so large in proportion that it has captured the nation’s attention. Many have been naturally focused on ‘thoughts and prayers’ for heroic LA and California firefighters, and their hoped-for ability to push back the raging inferno. But several local headlines from prior years make clear that area firefighters could have had more resources to draw from, if significant emergency response supplies and items weren’t sent to Zelensky…

    “Los Angeles County fire crews are sending some of their extra equipment to firefighters in Ukraine,” a local March 2022 story reads. “The plane carrying that much-needed surplus equipment, such as hoses, nozzles, turnouts, helmets, body armor and other personal protective gear, is expected to take off Friday.”

    This began in the opening months of the Russian invasion, and appears to have continued at various times over the last couple years, with large expensive items like firetrucks having been shipped oversees as well.

    Putting America “Ukraine first” is the Biden bad foreign policy idea that keeps on giving… and taking away from American citizens caught in the throes of emergency and disaster

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    While supporters of such programs argue that this was all surplus and ‘retired’ and extra equipment, we are quite sure that in these current dire circumstances surrounding Los Angeles any such ‘surplus’ could have been used and is still badly needed.

    President-elect Trump himself has highlighted the ongoing shortages being experienced among emergency crews in the area…

    Meanwhile, as California burns Biden is rushing many billions more in taxpayer dollars out the door to go to Ukraine.

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    And Biden is still planning a massive final aid package for Ukraine, so that as much as possible gets into Kiev’s coffers prior to Trump being sworn in on Jan.20. How about diverting some of those billions to actual US citizens in LA?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/08/2025 – 16:40

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