Declared Conflicts Of Interest for CDC Advisers Dropped Before RFK Jr. Dismissals: Study

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

Conflicts of interest declared by vaccine advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dropped significantly before the advisers were all dismissed by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to a new study.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meets in Atlanta on June 25, 2025. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

The reported conflict of interest prevalence rate at Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meetings declined from 13.5 percent between 2000 and 2004 to 6.2 percent between 2016 and 2024, researchers found after examining declared interests in a new tool released by the HHS, the CDC’s parent agency.

The average annual rates of conflicts reported by ACIP members fell from 42.8 percent to 5 percent.

There was also a decline over time in reported conflicts of interest for the parallel panel that advises the Food and Drug Administration, although the conflict reporting rate for that panel bounced back up from zero percent per meeting between 2008 and 2015 to 1.9 percent between 2016 and 2024.

The study was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association on Aug. 18.

“In the past, there have been high levels of reported conflicts on influential vaccine committees, but there has been substantial progress since the early 2000s,” study coauthor Genevieve Kanter, senior scholar at the Schaeffer Center and associate professor at the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy, said in a statement. “Although it’s important to remain vigilant, conflicts of interest on vaccine advisory committees have been at historically low levels for quite some time.”

The study was funded in part by the Harvey Motulsky and Lisa Norton-Motulsky Fund. Kanter and a coauthor also reported receiving funding from Arnold Ventures for unrelated work.

The study only examined declared conflicts of interest. An Epoch Times review found that multiple ACIP panel members in 2024 cast votes on vaccine recommendations even though they were receiving, or had recently received, money from companies that would be affected by the recommendations.

“HHS is ensuring radical transparency and restoring public trust,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Epoch Times via email. “Earlier this year we launched the ACIP Conflicts of Interest tool so the public can easily view historical conflicts.

“Secretary Kennedy is committed to eliminating both real and perceived conflicts to strengthen confidence in public health decisions.”

When dismissing all 17 members of ACIP in June, Kennedy said in an op-ed that “the committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

He cited a 2000 report that found that conflicts of interest were rife among members of the CDC and Food and Drug Administration advisory panels. He also cited a 2009 inspector general report detailing unresolved conflicts of interest for a majority of special CDC government employees, such as ACIP members.

“These conflicts of interest persist,” Kennedy said at the time. “Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines.”

ACIP advises the CDC on immunization schedules and other vaccine-related matters. The CDC typically adopts its advice.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 14:00

Putin Vetoed Hypersonic Missile Strike On Zelensky's Office, Belarusian President Says

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday told reporters in an anecdote given to a press conference that Russian authorities had plans to directly attack Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's office in Kiev, but that President Putin rejected the proposed action.

What's more, Lukashenko said, is that it would have happened with the new Oreshnik missiles, which are medium-range hypersonics that Russian officials have touted as having the same destructive power as a low-yield nuclear strike.

Sputnik/Reuters

RT News conveyed the Belarusian president's remarks as describing unnamed figures in Russia suggested using the system against Kiev's "decision-making centers" - but that Putin dismissed the plan by saying "absolutely not".

"There would have been nothing left, if the strike would have taken place," added Lukashenko.

There was no specific date or timeline attached to the story, and thus no way of verifying it - but very likely Russian military planners have long researched and prepared a large range of military options to present to Kremlin decision-makers.

RT has detailed that the "Oreshnik, Russia’s newly developed medium-range hypersonic missile system which can travel at speeds of up to Mach 10, has already entered serial production."

"The system, which analysts claim cannot be intercepted, can carry nuclear or conventional warheads, and release multiple guided warheads," the report added.

Putin PERSONALLY stopped strike on Zelensky’s office with DEADLY Oreshnik missile — Belarus’s Lukashenko

Ukraine FEARED Bankovaya Street, where Zelensky’s office is, might be targeted

REVEALS that, despite plans, Russian Prez CATEGORICALLY rejected them

‘Under NO circumstance’ pic.twitter.com/1G80V9eSJk

— RT (@RT_com) August 22, 2025

A number of pro-Moscow hawks and Russian military bloggers have long questioned why Putin has appeared restrained in his approach to the war - for example having never hit Ukraine's military and intelligence headquarter buildings in the capital.

It could have something to do with Putin being very 'lawfare'-oriented in the way he does things. For example, the long-running conflict itself is still at the legal designation level of 'Special Military Operation' and so is not considered a full war from Moscow's point of view, which would require total societal mobilization.

Putin could also still be hoping for permanent settlement which leaves Russia in control, and with recognized sovereignty over the seized eastern territories and Crimea. It further seems that Russia is in no mood to try and occupy and administer the whole of Ukraine, fearing a disastrous quagmire and over-stretching of its armed forces.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 13:25

The New York Times Publishes False Energy And Climate Information And Refuses To Correct Its Errors

Authored by Howard Gruenspecht via RealClearEnergy,

Articles addressing energy and climate topics in The New York Times (NYT) increasingly include Inaccurate data and false information. The problem is compounded by the paper’s failure to follow its own corrections policy when errors are called to its attention. 

Readers look to the NYT to deliver well-reasoned and fact-checked information and analysis in areas where they are not themselves experts. However, based on my professional focus on data and analysis of energy and related environmental issues over the past 45 years, which includes White House and Department of Energy senior positions in the Carter, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Trump 45 administrations as well as work at leading universities and think tanks, NYT coverage of these subjects too often fails to live up to its own standards for accuracy and journalistic integrity. 

As a lifetime reader of the NYT, the frequency of errors and a refusal to fix them raises doubts regarding the accuracy of information presented on other topics. Whether or not the problem extends beyond energy and climate, the NYT readership clearly deserves better. 

Three recent NYT articles illustrate the problem: a July 22 article by Max Bearak, ostensibly reporting on remarks by UN Secretary-General Guterres’ on renewable energy; a May 26 article by Ivan Penn on competition between electric vehicles (EVs) and vehicles powered by internal combustion engine (ICEVs); and an April 23 column by David Wallace-Wells on the loss of cultural and political momentum for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These are considered in turn below, followed by some summary conclusions. 

1. Max Bearak’s July 22 2025 article “U.S. Is Missing the Century’s ‘Greatest Economic Opportunity,’ U.N. Chief Says” (July 23 print edition).

The article opens with a review of UN Secretary-General Guterres’ remarks promoting renewable energy investment as both an economic opportunity and an environmental imperative. With deft mixing of quoted and unquoted words, Bearak reports that Guterres explicitly criticized the U.S. and other countries that follow its policies on fossil fuels. Though that may well be the Secretary-General opinion, that view is not borne out in the as-delivered transcript of his remarks.

The bulk of the article turns to a discussion of energy data and climate policy that attempts to explain why the current situation has arisen, noting that this material was “left unsaid” by Mr. Guterres. From this point forward the reporter’s own analysis seeks to establish that China, in contrast to the U.S., is constructively pursuing a green energy transition. Unfortunately, the article presents faulty and misleading data. 

In seeking to highlight China’s constructive role the article states “Over the past decade, China has gone from a largely coal-powered economy to one that is deploying more renewable energy than anywhere else.”  Growth in China’s production and deployment of a wide range of renewable energy technologies is indeed very impressive. However, data in the 2025 Statistical Review of Word Energy (a widely-respected source of energy data available online here), show that China is still largely powered by coal. In 2024 coal provided 58.1% of China’s total energy use (92.2 out of 158.9 exajoules), while in 2014 it accounted for 69.8% of China’s energy use (82.1 out of 117.6 exajoules). (FYI, 1 exajoule = 947.8 trillion British Thermal Units).Thus, coal still dominates in China’s energy mix, although coal use grew more slowly than total energy use over the past decade.   

Following its discussion of China’s renewable energy progress, the article turns to energy use and production the U.S. and other rich countries. It incorrectly states that “Relatively wealthy countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia are also the world’s biggest producers of fossil fuels.”   Data in the 2025 Statistical Review show that China’s total production of coal, oil, and natural gas totaled 112.3 exajoules in 2024, 32% higher than that of the second leading producer, the U.S., which totaled 85.0 exajoules. Indeed, China’s production of coal (94.5 exajoules) alone exceeds the total fossil fuel production of any other country. Moreover, the 2024 data is no anomaly; China has been by far the world’s largest fossil fuel producer in every year since 2005.        

Despite having contacted the NYT corrections team and the author to point out these errors, as well as the article’s mischaracterization of the temperature-related aim of the 2015 Paris Agreement, no corrections have been made to date. 

2. Ivan Penn’s May 26 2025 article “Electric Vehicles Died a Century Ago: Could that Happen Again?”  (May 27 print edition).

The article draws a parallel between the current competition between electric vehicles (EVs) and those with internal combustion engines (ICEVs) and the competition between them at the dawn of the automobile age. According to the article “scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics.” 

Actions taken since the start of the Trump Administration to eliminate EV subsidies and to modify mandates and regulations that would have forced very rapid rates of EV adoption do matter.These actions are widely expected to slow, but not stop, EV market share growth, compared to the outlook assuming a continuation of Biden-era policies. However, available data and research clearly refute the claim that the market extinction of EVs a hundred year ago can be attributed to lawmakers of that era having “put their thumbs on the scale — and coming out on the side of oil” by enacting a very generous oil depletion allowance in 1926.

The oil policy changes discussed in the article cannot have played a major role in the demise of EVs a century ago because EVs were already on their deathbed before they occurred. Data on vehicle manufacturing and registrations show that at least 98%, and possibly more than 99%, of the 17.5 million vehicles registered to operate in 1925 were already ICEVs. The article avoids recognizing that reality, which directly undercuts its line of argument. 

The Department of Energy’s History of Electric Cars paper, prepared during the Obama Administration, specifically notes that the market share of EV sales peaked in 1899 and 1900 and declined thereafter, while the absolute level of EV production peaked in 1912 and declined thereafter. The early peaking of both EV market share and production occurred against the backdrop of explosive growth in both annual vehicle sales (from 4,200 in 1900 to 181,000 in 1910 and 3.74 million in 1925) and total vehicle registrations (from 8000 in 1900 to 459,000 in 1910 to 17.5 million in 1925). The History of Electric Cars paper also identifies the four major drivers of the EV decline in the early 20th century: improved roads, which favored ICEVs that could offer long range capability; oil discoveries in Texas that led to lower gasoline prices; the invention of the electric starter, which eliminated the need for a hand crank to start ICEVs; and mass production of ICEVs, which dramatically lowered their cost. The 1926 oil tax policy change does not make the list. Indeed, it is not even mentioned in the paper.

Federal policy can sometimes be a key driver of energy market outcomes, as has arguably been the case with the Price Anderson Act that enabled commercial nuclear power, the Natural Gas Act, and renewable fuel content mandates. That said, the fate of EVs a century ago shows that federal policies are not always a significant factor in market outcomes. Today’s EV advocates can draw solace from that point, since modern EVs have many positive attributes that should favor continued EV market share growth, and perhaps a future market-leading role, even with the recent removal of some policy stimulants.

3. David Wallace-Wells’ April 23, 2025 article, “The World Seems to Be Surrendering to Climate Change” (subsequently revised twice).

Wallace-Wells discusses the declining cultural and political momentum for ambitious action to limit greenhouse gas emissions in recent years, noting that this trend applies both domestically and globally. 

In closing, the article observes that when climate advocates reckon with the loss of cultural and political momentum they often point to green records set each year. After reviewing some of these recent records and pointing out that a staggering share of global progress is taking place in China, Wallace-Wells notes that progress in the U.S. can be similarly breathtaking. It is here that problems in both the data cited and in the NYT corrections process are clearly evident.

In describing U.S. green energy progress, the original version of the article stated that electricity generation from renewables exceeded that from fossil fuels in 2024, which is woefully incorrect. Data readily available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration website and many other sources show that renewables provided 20% of 2024 US generation compared to 60% from fossil fuels. 

The NYT did issue a correction, but the initial one it posted on April 25 claimed that monthly electricity generated by renewables in the U.S. exceeded the amount generated using fossil fuels for the first time in March. That updated claim was also wrong, as fossil generation substantially exceeded renewable generation in both March 2024 and March 2025. When this new error was called to its attention, the paper issued a further correction, still dated April 25, that now appears on its website. The final correction took an approach that is simultaneously misleading for readers and instructive regarding how hard the NYT strives to avoid issuing clear substantive corrections that may embarrass its authors or cast doubt on its preferred narratives. Rather than simply strike the original errant point or its errant replacement, which are not at all central to the main focus of the article, the second correction reframes it as a comparison between generation from clean sources and fossil fuels. The trick here is that “clean sources” evidently includes include nuclear generation, which provides roughly 20% of U.S. generation, to finally make the comparison valid. However, nuclear is not once mentioned in the article or in the final correction note, which even suggests that the original article was also comparing generation from clean sources and fossil fuels. The losers here are the general readers, who would likely assume that “clean sources” is simply a synonym for “renewables” and never know that they had been badly misled.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, I could go on – the three articles reviewed above are only examples of a larger problem that has been evident for some time. 

The NYT, which has a very deep bench of staff who specialize in energy and climate matters, including the authors of these articles, must do better. Bearak should be able to correctly identify the world’s largest fossil fuel producer and coal’s continuing role as the dominant energy source in China. Penn should be able to recognize that history does not support the notion that EV developments today are repeating, or even closely rhyming with, the history of EVs a century ago. The temptation to craft tidy morality fable or reprise the origins dubious oil depletion policy first introduced in the mid-1920s that provided a huge windfall to the oil industry does not grant a license to posit a clearly invalid parallelism. The editors overseeing these articles also bear responsibility. 

Finally, even when factual errors do slip into articles, a sound and well-implemented corrections policy can greatly mitigate the damage. The stated NYT correction policy that “when we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction” is sound, but its current implementation is atrocious. The so-called Grey Lady of journalism should be blushing in shame. The paper quickly corrects errors that are of minor importance to most readers, such as misspelled names, incorrect job titles, or inaccurate event dates. However, when substantive factual errors are identified and reported to the paper, as in the examples discussed above, its response is to either stonewall, as in the case of the Bearak article, or to obfuscate and evade, as in its correction of the comparison of renewable and fossil fuel generation levels in the Wallace-Wells article. In the latter case, the common observation that the cover-up is often worse than the crime clearly applies.  

The NYT must always remember that the purpose of corrections is to inform the reader of what is actually true, rather than to protect its writers from embarrassment or protect preferred narratives that cannot withstand scrutiny. 

Howard Gruenspecht served in senior White House positions in the Carter and Bush 41 Administrations, in Deputy Assistant Secretary and Office Director roles in the Department of Energy policy office during the Bush 41 and Clinton Administrations, and as the Deputy Administrator (top non-political position) of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which provides independent energy data and analysis, during the Bush 43, Obama, and Trump 45 Administrations. 

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Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 12:50

"I Have No Idea": Justice Department Official Raised Objections To Ill-Defined Biden Pardons

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The House Oversight Committee is investigating the use of the autopen by Biden officials as allegations grow that President Joe Biden had little idea of some of the actions taken under his name, from executive orders to pardons. Now, the Committee has disclosed that at least one senior official warned that he had “no idea” what the parameters were for Biden’s blanket pardons and that the public was being misled about the pardons only applying to non-violent individuals.

Associate Deputy Attorney General Brad Weinsheimer told the Office of White House Counsel they needed an additional statement from the President as to his intent and the scope of the pardon:

“I think the language ‘offenses described to the Department of Justice’ in the warrant is highly problematic and in order to resolve its meaning appropriately, and consistent with the President’s intent, we will need a statement or direction from the President as to how to interpret the language…I have no idea what interpretation the incoming Administration will give to the warrant, but they may find this interpretation attractive, as it gives effect to the language but does not go beyond the four corners of the warrant.”

So, at least for this senior Justice Department official, it was not just Biden who may have had little idea of what pardons were being issued under his name. The confusion was shared by implementing attorneys. That is a serious problem in the use of this presidential power by unseen, unnamed staff members.

Weinsheimer also flagged how even the stated intent of Biden in barring violent individuals was being disregarded due to the ill-defined criteria:

“One other important note – in communication about the commutations, the White House has described those who received commutations as people convicted of non-violent drug offenses. I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading… As you know, even with the exceedingly limited review we were permitted to do of the individuals we believed you might be considering for commutation action, we initially identified 19 that were highly problematic.”

House Oversight Chairman James Comer is pursuing this investigation despite opposition from Democratic members and, of course, many in the media. Yet, there is mounting evidence that Biden was clueless on major decisions made in his Administration, including signing a major executive order on natural gas exports. In this latest controversy, a veteran Justice official did not have a clue about the scope of the pardons as staff members just compiled lists of people whom they wanted to include in the presidential order.

What is particularly disconcerting is how accountability for any abuse is made more difficult by the large number of staff contributing to these lists and lack of clearly defined decision makers.  With Biden abdicating his own responsibility, staffers were allowed to effectively add names to a signed blank page, exercising a presidential power with the level of circumspection of an inter-office memo.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 11:40

Canada's Refusal To Cooperate With DEA On Fentanyl "Superlab" Investigation Fueled Cross-Border Tariffs  

President Trump's new hemispheric defense strategy, stretching across North, Central, and South America, now includes the deployment of 4,000 troops and three guided-missile destroyers positioned in international waters off Venezuela, as part of a broader campaign to dismantle command-and-control hubs of narco-terrorists and purge Chinese-linked drug and money-laundering networks from the region. 

Last week, the Pentagon positioned three Aegis guided-missile destroyers (the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson) directly off the coast of Venezuela as new force posturing takes hold in the region, with the Pentagon's crosshairs focused on narco-terrorists fueling America's drug death crisis that claims 100,000 lives per year. 

Simultaneously, attention turns to Canada, which, like Mexico and other surrounding countries, remains a very weak partner in the region as the Trump administration advances its hemispheric defense strategy to clean up the Americas ahead of the 2030s. Trump's cleanup of the Western hemisphere is almost comparable to his micro efforts to restore law and order in crime-ridden Washington, D.C. - and soon, in many other cities nationwide left in ruins by failed Democratic leadership that allowed violent crime and open-air drug markets to flourish. 

Sam Cooper of the investigative outlet The Bureau has uncovered in recent years that North America's fentanyl crisis is not just a drug death crisis wiping out military-aged men and women by the hundreds of thousands - it's also a sprawling international money-laundering machine, run through Chinese Triads, Mexican cartels, and Canadian financial networks in a massive transnational crime web that fuels the crisis. Some view this operation to subvert Washington as Chinese irregular warfare, explained here.

Cooper's work, as we've covered in recent years, spans Chinese narcos using laundering networks via TD bank and other Canadian financial institutions to "Breaking Bad-style" superlabs in Canada to all things China subverting the Americas... 

• Chinese Narcos In Toronto Run "Command & Control" Fentanyl Laundering Network Used In TD Bank Case: U.S. Investigator

• Canadian Banks Linked To Chinese Fentanyl Laundering Risk U.S. Treasury Sanctions After Cartel Terror Designation

• Busted Fentanyl Super Lab In Canada Makes "Breaking Bad Look Minor League": Former Trump Official

• Chinese Intel-Linked Bankers Reportedly Fundraised For L.A. Mayor Karen Bass

• Brookfield's Deep Ties To Chinese Land, Loans & Green Deals

Cooper's latest report focuses on how Canada's federal police (RCMP) refused to cooperate with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2022 on a probe into a British Columbia fentanyl "superlab" tied to Chinese precursor shipments. It was only after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Iranian-Canadian businessman Bahman Djebelibak and his Health Canada–licensed Valerian Labs that the RCMP belatedly launched its own investigation, without sharing critical information with the U.S. Gov't. 

The superlab in Falkland, B.C. was eventually raided and dismantled, with investigations suggesting the lab was able to produce drugs on an industrial scale:

• Drugs: 54kg fentanyl (95 million lethal doses), 390kg meth, 35kg cocaine, 15kg MDMA.

Last year, Derek Maltz, Acting DEA Administrator, commented on the botched RCMP investigation, blasting the RCMP: "The way they conducted business was disgusting, honestly. We can't have that kind of activity when our countries are being attacked at levels we've never seen."

Former current and senior U.S. officials told Cooper that Ottawa's problem isn't just incompetence - it's structural. Weak, antiquated laws. It appears politics paralyze leadership, and corruption runs all the way to the top.

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Meanwhile, the investigation into the Falkland raid was a dark reality: Chinese underground bankers in Vancouver and Toronto move hundreds of millions through Canadian and U.S. banks, laundering cartel money and financing fentanyl labs. None of this is new, but what is, in the era of Trump, will all be dismantled.

Source: Heritage Foundation

Fast forward today, Ottawa has learned the hard way with a tariff war with Trump, following years of inaction and botched investigations into fentanyl superlabs in its country that fuel America's drug death crisis. 

Here's an excerpt of Cooper's latest report:

Canada’s federal police refused to investigate or cooperate with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration on a British Columbia fentanyl superlab probe tied to chemical-precursor shipments from China into Vancouver in late 2022, according to senior U.S. officials. More than a year later — only after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Iranian-Canadian businessman Bahman Djebelibak and his Health Canada–licensed company Valerian Labs, naming them as part of a Chinese fentanyl trafficking syndicate that Washington sought to disrupt — did the RCMP finally open a siloed investigation. The force continued to refuse coordination or information sharing with the American agents who had initiated the case. In an exclusive interview, Derek Maltz, DEA Acting Administrator in 2025 with oversight of the matter, called the B.C. superlab case a “major disaster.”

This explosive information, confirmed to The Bureau by current and former senior U.S. officials, has never before been reported in the Falkland, B.C., superlab case, which was covered internationally by outlets including The New York Times. It amounts to a rare public rebuke that elevates the matter from a Canadian policing failure into a high-consequence geopolitical dispute.

It also helps explain Washington’s decision on July 31 to impose 35 percent tariffs on Canada, reinforcing President Donald Trump’s claim that senior officials had warned him Ottawa failed to cooperate or devote sufficient resources to interdictions against Chinese- and Mexican-linked drug trafficking networks blamed for killing hundreds of thousands of North Americans. Three weeks ago, in a statement underscoring intelligence tied to the Falkland lab case, the White House said: “Mexican cartels are increasingly operating fentanyl labs in Canada.” It added: “Canada-based drug trafficking organizations maintain robust ‘super labs,’ mostly in rural and dense areas in western Canada, some of which can produce 44 to 66 pounds of fentanyl weekly.”

‘A major disaster on that big lab in British Columbia’

In multiple interviews with senior officials — including Derek Maltz, who retired this year after Mexico carried out an unprecedented wave of extraditions of dozens of cartel leaders to the United States — The Bureau confirmed devastating details of the Falkland superlab in British Columbia, hidden in mountainous terrain between Vancouver and Calgary. The case became public only in October 2024 — to the surprise of DEA investigators — when the RCMP announced it had dismantled what it called the most sophisticated drug laboratory ever uncovered in Canada, capable of producing up to 95 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. Investigators seized a staggering half-ton of narcotics: 54 kilograms of fentanyl, 390 kilos of methamphetamine, 35 kilos of cocaine, 15 kilos of MDMA, smaller amounts of cannabis, and large quantities of precursor chemicals from China. Police estimated the street value at about $500 million.

The raid also exposed the militarized posture of Mexican cartel–style operations, with 89 firearms — including handguns, AR-15-style rifles and submachine guns, many loaded — along with explosive devices, ammunition, silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armor, and roughly $500,000 in cash. So far, only a man named Gaganpreet Singh Randhawa, believed to be a lower level suspect, has been charged after the RCMP’s raid on the Falkland lab and related Vancouver-area properties. What Ottawa failed to share with Canadians, U.S. sources say, is that the DEA’s Newark, New Jersey office had already delivered the case to Canadian authorities through the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa nearly two years earlier — warning of precursor shipments tied to Djebelibak’s company, Valerian Labs. Canadian police, the officials said, not only declined to cooperate but also delayed launching their own siloed probe until after Washington imposed sanctions on Djebelibak in October 2023.

“The way they conducted business was disgusting, honestly,” Maltz said in an August 2025 interview. “And we can’t have that kind of activity when our countries are being attacked at levels that we’ve never seen in the history of our countries.”

Maltz, who limited his remarks to high-level confirmations, agreed with numerous other U.S. officials interviewed by The Bureau that the Falkland breakdown was neither isolated nor new — but part of a recurring pattern of refusal and delay in Ottawa’s dealings with American law enforcement.

“Over the years, we’ve had historical issues with the RCMP not sharing properly, and most recently there was a major disaster that happened on that big lab in British Columbia,” Maltz confirmed.

“The superlab was part of some ongoing stuff going on with DEA New Jersey. There was a major frustration with the DEA agents in the United States that had investigative equity and investigative knowledge on this particular case. And we were trying to share and cooperate. And it was a major problem.”

Like other senior U.S. experts interviewed by The Bureau this year regarding Canada’s increasing exploitation by Chinese and Mexican fentanyl networks, Maltz said Ottawa’s repeated inability to investigate and prosecute major drug trafficking and money laundering networks — and its frequent refusal to cooperate with international allies — stems from a combination of weak, outdated laws and ineffective leadership.

Other U.S. and Canadian police experts also warned they believe the RCMP and relevant Canadian agencies such as Canada Border Services suffer from significant corruption concerns.

“It goes down to the basic information sharing, the antiquated laws, that people are not stepping up and not leading the efforts,” Maltz said of the Falkland lab case. “When I was Acting Administrator, I met with the current leadership and it was actually sad because these guys came to see me and they want to do the right thing. They say all the right things, but they’re so far behind and the laws are so antiquated and so archaic.”

In an interview, Donald Im, who retired in 2022 after a long career as a senior DEA official, described the synthetic narcotics overdose crisis in North America — fueled by Chinese Communist Party chemical suppliers and cartel distribution networks — as a “slow motion, weapons of mass destruction that exposes the vulnerability of whole nations and regions.”

As part of the DEA’s Special Operations Division, Im oversaw sprawling investigations into global Chinese money laundering systems and fentanyl precursor supply chains. He said he provided support to the New Jersey DEA probes that became a linchpin of the agency’s strategy and indirectly tied into the Falkland superlab case. These investigations exposed how Chinese underground bankers — often operating from Vancouver and Toronto — were moving staggering nine-figure flows — in some cases, hundreds of millions within months — through U.S. and Canadian financial institutions, as well as through international trade routes between China, Mexico, Canada, and South America, to sustain the fentanyl trade.

Those innovative cases, Im said, connected Chinese laundering networks across North America to an extraordinarily wide array of actors, demonstrating that seemingly local probes connected to the same global syndicates moving precursors from China, laundering through Canadian and U.S. banks, and producing fentanyl on an industrial scale in hidden labs across Canada.

Im added, in his opinion: “If only one person was arrested in that sophisticated Falkland laboratory? It is either the RCMP is incompetent or, politically, they’ve been neutered.”

That assessment is supported by previous case studies. Another source for this story — deeply troubled by the RCMP and Canadian prosecutors’ decisions not to pursue major targets uncovered in probes of drug-laundering networks tied to Chinese, Iranian, and Mexican syndicates — said they learned the RCMP, while conducting a major investigation into Iranian state-linked drug launderers in Toronto and Montreal, stumbled onto a Chinese suspect moving $600 million in just six months. Yet when briefed, the DEA was told the RCMP would not pursue the case, citing a different investigative focus.

We reached out to the RCMP. They said “No”

While Derek Maltz spoke only at a high level about Washington’s concerns with Ottawa’s handling of the Falkland case, another U.S. official provided a more detailed account of the behind-the-scenes drama between American and Canadian agencies.

The U.S. government source, who had direct knowledge of the case and requested anonymity due to ongoing investigations, said that in late 2022 the DEA’s Newark, New Jersey office alerted colleagues at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa to precursor shipments from China bound for Valerian Labs, Inc., a Port Coquitlam–based company owned by Bahman Djebelibak, publicly known as “Bobby Shah" ... 

The rest of the report can be viewed on The Bureau's Substack... 

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 11:05

How Great Powers Fall Apart

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

We're humoring our self-delusion.

How do great powers come undone? We can start with a destructive force without equal: self-delusion.

Emperor Norton comes to mind in this context. In 1859, in the Gold Rush-enriched city of San Francisco, Joshua Norton, a bankrupt businessman, declared himself "Emperor of these United States" in a proclamation that he signed "Norton I, Emperor of the United States."

This grandiosity played well in the rough and tumble "get rich quick, then lose it all" zeitgeist of San Francisco, and rather than be abused or disabused, Norton was "treated deferentially in San Francisco and elsewhere in California, and currency issued in his name was honored in some of the establishments he frequented."

In other words, his self-delusion was humored. On a grand scale, the same can be said of Great Powers: they humor their own self-delusion.

The progression of a Great Power from self-delusion to collapse was insightfully traced out by Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik in the late 1960s, when Amalrik predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lone voice to make such a bold prediction at the apex of Soviet power.

Amalrik's analysis was nuanced, drawing upon the human weaknesses that blind us to our own self-deception and rosy assumptions. Chief among these is the comforting belief that "it will all work out because it's always worked out before," an assumption that blinds us to the extraordinary nature of the crisis and the decay that we avoid recognizing beneath the surface of normal life.

Amalrik noted that the primary motivation of the various classes and interest groups was self-preservation, seeking to maintain whatever each faction currently held in terms of wealth and power. The misguided assumption made by all was that the system was so stable and powerful that they didn't need to concern themselves with anything beyond securing their position in the system.

As the system destabilizes, nobody notices because they're focused solely on the infighting borne of self-preservation.

He was also alert to the government's role in mediating the forces seeking to suppress reforms as dangers to the status quo and those seeking to force reforms on a sclerotic systems, and how seemingly small policy decisions can grease the skids to rapidly unfolding crises few imagined were even possible.

One of Amalrik's analytic techniques is both novel and insightful. This excerpt from How a Great Power Falls Apart: Decline Is Invisible From the Inside explains the concept of working backward from whatever outcome seems unlikely or even impossible:

Amalrik also provided a kind of blueprint for analytic alienation. It is actually possible, he suggested, to think your way through the end of days. The method is to practice living with the most unlikely outcome you can fathom and then to work backward, systematically and carefully, from the what-if to the 'here's-why.' The point isn't to pick one's evidence to fit a particular conclusion. It is rather to jolt oneself out of the assumption of linear change--to consider, for a moment, how some future historian might recast implausible concerns as inevitable ones."

Catastrophic outcomes are considered impossible because the status quo views itself as already having the means to handle any crisis. There's nothing to be learned from others and no reason to even ponder unlikely outcomes, and this creates a toxic blend of hubris and blindness.

"Society was becoming more complicated, more riven with difference, more demanding of the state but less convinced that the state could deliver. What was left was a political system far weaker than anyone--even those committed to its renewal--was able to recognize."

Those in power reckon they have the means to deal with any problem. Suppress dissent, buy off a troublesome constituency, print more money, etc. This confidence reflects the dominant political mythologies of the Great Power and its people. Reformers believe the status quo is capable of systemic reform, those resisting reform believe the system will endure without any reforms, and both are disconnected from reality: the status quo is no longer capable of real reforms, and left on autopilot, it is heading off a cliff.

"Amalrik offered a technique for suspending one's deepest political mythologies and posing questions that might seem, here and now, to lie at the frontier of crankery.

The powerful aren't accustomed to thinking this way. But in the lesser places, among the dissidents and the displaced, people have had to be skilled in the art of self-inquiry. How much longer should we stay? What do we put in the suitcase? Here or there, how can I be of use? In life, as in politics, the antidote to hopelessness isn't hope. It's planning."

I often refer to author Ray Huang's summary of how the mighty Ming Dynasty fell apart:

"The year 1587 may seem to be insignificant; nevertheless, it is evident by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counselor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radicals or conservatives--in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment."

Nothing is as it seems. As correspondent Ray W. so presciently observed some years ago, "It is axiomatic that failing systems work the best just before they fail catastrophically."

Put another way, we're humoring our self-delusion.

*  *  *

Check out my new book Ultra-Processed Life and my updated Books and Films. Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 10:30

Big Tech Could Soon Use Brain Chips To Read Your Innermost Thoughts: Study

A new study out of Stanford University reveals that neural implants, also known as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), might not just help paralyzed individuals communicate - they could potentially lay bare your innermost thoughts to Big Tech.

Published in the medical journal Cell, the research shows these devices can decode brain signals to produce synthesized speech faster and with less effort.

BCIs work by using tiny electrode arrays to monitor activity in the brain’s motor cortex, the region controlling speech-related muscles. Until now, the tech relied on signals from paralyzed individuals actively trying to speak. The Stanford team, however, discovered that even imagined speech generates similar, though weaker, signals in the motor cortex. With the help of artificial intelligence, they translated those faint signals into words with up to 74% accuracy from a 125,000-word vocabulary.

“We’re recording the signals as they’re attempting to speak and translating those neural signals into the words that they’re trying to say,” said Erin Kunz, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford’s Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory.

But this technological leap has raised red flags among critics who warn of a dystopian future where your private thoughts could be exposed.

Nita Farahany, a Duke University law and philosophy professor and author of The Battle for Your Brain, sounded the alarm telling NPR, “The more we push this research forward, the more transparent our brains become.”

Farahany expressed concern that tech giants like Apple, Google, and Meta could exploit BCIs to access consumers’ minds without consent, urging safeguards like passwords to protect thoughts meant to stay private.

“We have to recognize that this new era of brain transparency really is an entirely new frontier for us,” Farahany said.

While the world fixates on artificial intelligence, some of the tech industry’s heaviest hitters are pouring billions into BCIs. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has raised $1.2 billion for his Neuralink venture, which is now conducting clinical trials with top institutions like the Barrow Neurological Institute, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.

Now, another tech titan is entering the fray.

OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman is launching Merge Labs to challenge Musk’s Neuralink. Backed by OpenAI’s venture arm and valued at $850 million, Merge Labs is seeking $250 million in funding, according to the Financial Times. While Altman will serve as a co-founder alongside Alex Blania of the iris-scanning World project, sources say he won’t take an operational role.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 09:55

Which Western Security Guarantees For Ukraine Might Be Acceptable To Putin?

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

He might hypothetically agree that the resumption of NATO’s present support for Ukraine (arms, intelligence, logistics, etc.) in the event of another conflict wouldn’t cross Russia’s red lines but he’s unlikely to compromise on the issue of Western troops in Ukraine once the present conflict ends.

Steve Witkoff’s claim that Putin allegedly agreed to the US offering Ukraine “Article 5-like protection” during the Anchorage Summit, which Trump repeated during his White House Summit with Zelensky and a handful of European leaders, raises the question of what form this could hypothetically take if true. Assuming for the sake of analysis that he did indeed agree to this, it’s important to clarify exactly what Article 5 entails. For starters, it doesn’t obligate allies to dispatch troops if one of them is attacked.

Per the North Atlantic Treaty, each member only has to take “such action as it deems necessary”, which could include “the use of armed forces” but doesn’t have to. As was explained earlier this year here, “Ukraine has arguably enjoyed the benefits of this principle for the past three years despite not being a NATO member since it’s received everything other than troops from the alliance.” Arms, intelligence, logistical, and other forms of support have already been provided to Ukraine in the spirit of Article 5.

It might therefore be the case that Putin agreed that such “Article 5-like protection” could be resumed in the event of another conflict without crossing Russia’s red lines. Although Russia objects to Ukraine’s remilitarization after the present conflict ends, it’s possible that it could agree to this too as part of a grand compromise in exchange for some of its other goals being met as explained here. What Russia doesn’t agree to, however, is the dispatch of Western troops to Ukraine after the present conflict ends.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova declared on the day of the White House Summit that “We reiterate our long-standing position of unequivocally rejecting any scenarios involving the deployment of NATO military contingents in Ukraine”. This position isn’t expected to change since one of the reasons behind the special operation is to stop NATO’s expansion inside Ukraine. Western boots on the ground there afterwards would therefore amount to the perceived failure of Russia’s primary goal.

This would especially be the case if they’re deployed along the Line of Contact, but their deployment west of the Dnieper in parallel with the creation of a demilitarized “Trans-Dnieper” region controlled by non-Western peacekeepers as proposed here could hypothetically be a compromise. That said, Russia would prefer for there to only be non-Western peacekeepers, if any at all. The deployment of foreign military forces, regardless of the country, could embolden Ukraine to stage false-flag provocations.

To summarize, in the order of the most hypothetically acceptable Western security guarantees to Ukraine to the least hypothetically acceptable from Russia’s perspective, these are:

1) the resumption of Western support for Ukraine only if another conflict erupts and without any peacekeepers at all;

2) continued Western support but with non-Western peacekeepers;  and

3) continued Western support, Western troops west of the Dnieper, and non-Western troops in a demilitarized “Trans-Dnieper” region.

The scope of Ukraine’s demilitarization and the extent of Western security guarantees to it after the present conflict ends are of the utmost importance for Russia in order to prevent Ukraine from once again being weaponized as a launchpad for Western aggression. It’s therefore highly unlikely that Russia will compromise much on this issue, especially the scenario of Western troops in Ukraine. Russia might be more flexible on other issues, but on this one, it might prove unwavering.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/23/2025 - 09:20

To Afford Seattle Rent, You Need Nearly $91,000 A Year

Renting in Seattle now requires a much higher income than just a few years ago, according to new Zillow data sourced by Axios.. To afford the typical monthly rent in the metro area, a household must earn nearly $91,000 annually — about 23% more than five years ago.

Zillow uses the standard guideline that rent should take up no more than 30% of household income. Based on that, the typical Seattle-area rent of $2,271 in April would require an annual income of $90,840, the 11th-highest threshold among major U.S. metros.

Seattle’s relatively high household incomes help cushion the blow for many families: the region’s median household income reached $110,744 in 2023, well above Zillow’s affordability mark. But single earners face tighter constraints. Census data show Seattle’s per capita income was $82,508 last year — leaving many individuals below the level needed to comfortably pay average rent.

Axios writes that nationally, typical rents stood at $2,024 per month in April, requiring about $80,949 in annual income — roughly $10,000 less than in Seattle.

“Housing costs have surged since pre-pandemic, with rents growing quite a bit faster than wages,” said Orphe Divounguy, senior economist at Zillow. “This often leaves little room for other expenses, making it particularly difficult for those hoping to save for a down payment on a future home.”

The findings highlight the widening gap between housing costs and wages across the country, even in regions with relatively strong incomes like Seattle.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 23:00

When Smartphones Get Smarter, Do We Get Dumber?

Authored by Makai Allbert via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As Mohamed Elmasry, emeritus professor of computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, watched his 11- and 10-year-old grandchildren tapping away on their smartphones, he posed a simple question: “What’s one-third of nine?”

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik, Getty Images

Instead of taking a moment to think, they immediately opened their calculator apps, he wrote in his book “iMind Artificial and Real Intelligence.”

Later, fresh from a family vacation in Cuba, he asked them to name the island’s capital. Once again, their fingers flew to their devices, Googling the answer rather than recalling their recent experience.

With 60 percent of the global population—and 97 percent of those younger than 30—using smartphones, technology has inadvertently become an extension of our thinking process.

However, everything comes at a cost. Cognitive outsourcing, which involves relying on external systems to collect or process information, may increase one’s risk of cognitive decline.

Habitual GPS (global positioning system) use, for example, has been linked to a significant decrease in spatial memory, reducing one’s ability to navigate independently. As AI applications such as ChatGPT become a household norm—with 55 percent of Americans reporting regular AI use—recent studies found that it is resulting in impaired critical thinking skills, dependency, loss of decision-making, and laziness.

Experts emphasize cultivating and prioritizing innate human skills that technology cannot replicate.

Neglected Real Intelligence

Referring to his grandkids and their overreliance on technology, Elmasry explained that they are far from “stupid.”

The problem is that they are not using their real intelligence.

They—and the rest of their generation—have grown accustomed to using apps and digital devices—unconsciously defaulting to internet search engines such as Google rather than thinking something through.

Just as physical muscles atrophy without use, so too do our cognitive abilities weaken when we let technology think for us.

A telling case is now called the “Google effect,” or digital amnesia, as shown in a 2011 study from Columbia University.

The current generation has grown accustomed to using apps and digital devices. hughhan/unsplash, Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Betsy Sparrow and colleagues at Columbia found that individuals tend to easily forget information that is readily available on the internet.

Their findings show that people are more likely to remember things they think are not available online. They are also better at recalling where to find information on the internet than recalling the information itself.

A 2021 study further tested the effects of Googling and found that participants who relied on search engines such as Google performed worse on learning assessments and memory recall than those who did not search online.

The study also shows that Googlers often had higher confidence that they had “mastered” the study material, indicating an overestimation in learning and ignorance of their learning deficit. Their overconfidence might be the result of having an “illusion of knowledge” bias—accessing information through search engines creates a false sense of personal expertise and diminishes people’s effort to learn.

Overreliance on technology is part of the problem, but having it around may be just as harmful. A study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research discovered that “the mere presence” of a smartphone reduced “available cognitive capacity”—even if the phone was off or placed in a bag.

This “brain drain” effect likely occurs because the presence of a smartphone taps into our cognitive resources, subtly allocating our attention and making it harder to concentrate fully on the task at hand, researchers say. Not only does excessive tech use impair our cognition, but also, clinicians and researchers have noticed that it is linked to impaired social intelligence—the innate aspects that make us human.

Becoming Machine-Like

In the United States, children ages 8 to 12 typically spend four to six hours per day looking at screens, while teenagers may spend up to nine hours daily looking at screens. Further, 44 percent of teenagers feel anxious, and 39 percent feel lonely without their phones.

Excessive screen time reduces social interactions and emotional intelligence and has been linked to autistic-like symptoms, with longer durations of screen use correlated with more severe symptoms.

Dr. Jason Liu, a medical doctor who also has a doctorate in neuroscience, is a research scientist and founding president of the Mind-Body Science Institute International. Liu told The Epoch Times that he is particularly concerned about children’s use of digital media.

He said he has observed irregularities in his young patients who spend excessive time in the digital world—noticing their mechanical speech, lack of emotional expression, poor eye contact, and difficulty forming genuine human connections. Many exhibit attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, responding with detachment and struggling with emotional fragility.

“We should not let technology replace our human nature,” Liu said.

Corroborating Liu’s observations, a JAMA study followed about 3,000 adolescents with no prior ADHD symptoms over 24 months and found that a higher frequency of modern digital media use was associated with significantly higher odds of developing ADHD symptoms.

As early as 1998, scientists introduced the concept of the “Internet Paradox,” which is that the internet, despite being a “social tool,” leads to antisocial behavior.

Observing 73 households during their first years online, researchers noted that increased internet use was associated with reduced communication with family members, smaller social circles, and heightened depression and loneliness.

However, a three-year follow-up found that most of the adverse effects dissipated. The researcher explained this through a “rich get richer” model; introverts experienced more negative effects from the internet, while extroverts, with stronger social networks, benefited more and became more engaged in online communities, mitigating negative effects.

Manuel Garcia-Garcia, global lead of neuroscience at Ipsos, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience, told The Epoch Times that human-to-human connections are vital for building deeper connections and that while digital communication tools facilitate connectivity, they can lead to superficial interactions and impede social cues.

Supporting Liu’s observation of patients becoming “machine-like,” a Facebook emotional contagion experiment, conducted on nearly 700,000 users, manipulated news feeds to show more positive or negative posts. Users exposed to more positive content posted more positive updates, while those seeing more negative content posted more negative updates.

This demonstrated that technology can nudge human behavior in subtle yet systematic ways. This nudging, according to experts, can make our actions and emotions predictable, similar to programmed responses.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 22:35

HHS Rolls Out 'MAHA In Action' To Spotlight Health Reforms

Early in his tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed to make transparency a key element of the department under his leadership.

This week, HHS announced the debut of MAHA in Action, an online platform highlighting federal initiatives and state-led reforms implementing the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda.

MAHA in Action offers visibility into how health care reforms are working in communities across the country, according to a HHS press release.

“Make America Healthy Again isn’t just a slogan—it’s a mission statement, and we’re delivering results, fast,” Kennedy said.

“The MAHA in Action tracker puts the wins on the map. It gives the public, the press, and policymakers real-time visibility into how we’re restoring health, integrity, and accountability to every corner of our public health agency.”

As Jeff Louderbeck reports for The Epoch Times, MAHA in Action features updates on federal reforms underway across multiple HHS agencies. Among them are removing petroleum-based dyes and harmful additives from the U.S. food supply, restoring public trust in vaccine safety and scientific transparency, closing the GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) loophole that allows chemicals into food with unknown safety data, and finding the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic, including autism.

One transparency-centered tool on MAHA in Action involves the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) Conflicts of Interest.

In recent months, HHS has dismissed all 17 members of the ACIP panel, ended the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children, and ordered the removal of mercury from influenza vaccines.

After it voted to advise officials to stop recommending influenza shots that have mercury, the remade ACIP said it plans to look at multiple other vaccines.

The ACIP conflicts of interest section on MAHA in Action includes declarations disclosed by voting members during ACIP public meetings since 2000.

“ACIP members are required to declare any potential or perceived conflicts of interest that arise in the course of ACIP tenure and any relevant business interests, positions of authority or other connections with organizations relevant to the work of the ACIP,” according to MAHA in Action.

MAHA in Action also includes an interactive map that follows Kennedy’s MAHA tours and a list of state policies that align with the MAHA agenda.

Among the key “victories” since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House include 12 states with USDA-approved SNAP waivers restricting candy and sugary drinks, eight states banning synthetic dyes or select additives from school meals, two states requiring warning labels on products with unsafe ingredients, 22 states limiting cell phone use in schools, and states restricting lab-grown meat, expanding access to Ivermectin, and removing fluoride from municipal water supplies among other initiatives, MAHA in Action reported.

“Americans are tired of toxic food, failed science, and chronic disease becoming the norm,” Kennedy said.

“We’re turning the tide through bold federal action at HHS and state-driven reforms. The momentum is real, and we’re just getting started,” he added.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington on May 22, 2025. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The MAHA Commission, chaired by Kennedy and established by Trump, “was on track to submit its Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy report to the president on August 12th,” Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, told The Epoch Times in an email on Aug. 11.

“The report will be unveiled to the public shortly thereafter as we coordinate the schedules of the President and the various cabinet members who are a part of the commission,” he added.

The commission’s first report was released in May. It largely details problems with the health of Americans and attributes the rise of chronic diseases among children to a poor diet full of ultraprocessed foods, exposure to chemicals, a lack of physical activity, and the overprescription of medications.

Trump established the commission in February and said that the commission should “study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism.”

Per the order, the commission was required to submit its first report to the president within 100 days. It was also required to present a strategy to Trump on how to address chronic diseases, including obesity, within 180 days. That deadline was Aug. 12.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 22:10

Microsoft Failed To Disclose Key Details About Use Of China-Based Engineers In U.S. Defense Work, Record Shows

Authored by Renee Dudley with research by Doris Burke via ProPublica,

Microsoft, as a provider of cloud services to the U.S. government, is required to regularly submit security plans to officials describing how the company will protect federal computer systems.

Yet in a 2025 submission to the Defense Department, the tech giant left out key details, including its use of employees based in China, the top cyber adversary of the U.S., to work on highly sensitive department systems, according to a copy obtained by ProPublica. In fact, the Microsoft plan viewed by ProPublica makes no reference to the company’s China-based operations or foreign engineers at all.

The document belies Microsoft’s repeated assertions that it disclosed the arrangement to the federal government, showing exactly what was left out as it sold its security plan to the Defense Department. The Pentagon has been investigating the use of foreign personnel by IT contractors in the wake of reporting by ProPublica last month that exposed Microsoft’s practice.

Our work detailed how Microsoft relies on “digital escorts” — U.S. personnel with security clearances — to supervise the foreign engineers who maintain the Defense Department’s cloud systems. The department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Microsoft’s security plan, dated Feb. 28 and submitted to the department’s IT agency, distinguishes between personnel who have undergone and passed background screenings to access its Azure Government cloud platform and those who have not. But it omits the fact that workers who have not been screened include non-U.S. citizens based in foreign countries. “Whenever non-screened personnel request access to Azure Government, an operator who has been screened and has access to Azure Government provides escorted access,” the company said in its plan.

The document also fails to disclose that the screened digital escorts can be contractors hired by a staffing company, not Microsoft employees. ProPublica found that escorts, in many cases former military personnel selected because they possess active security clearances, often lack the expertise needed to supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. Microsoft has told ProPublica that escorts “are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data” and preventing harm.

Microsoft’s reference to the escort model comes two-thirds of the way into the 125-page document, known as a “System Security Plan,” in several paragraphs under the heading “Escorted Access.” Government officials are supposed to evaluate these plans to determine whether the security measures disclosed in them are acceptable.

In interviews with ProPublica, Microsoft has maintained that it disclosed the digital escorting arrangement in the plan, and that the government approved it. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other government officials have expressed shock and outrage over the model, raising questions about what, exactly, the company disclosed as it sought to win and keep government cloud computing contracts.

None of the parties involved, including Microsoft and the Defense Department, commented on the omissions in this year’s security plan. But former federal officials now say that the obliqueness of the disclosure, which ProPublica is reporting for the first time, may explain that disconnect and likely contributed to the government’s acceptance of the practice. Microsoft previously told ProPublica that its security documentation to the government, going back years, contained similar wording regarding escorts.

Former Defense Department Chief Information Officer John Sherman, who said he was unfamiliar with the digital escorting process before ProPublica’s reporting, called it a “case of not asking the perfect question to the vendor, with every conceivable prohibited condition spelled out.”

In a LinkedIn post about ProPublica’s investigation, Sherman said such a question “would’ve smoked out this crazy practice of ‘digital escorts.’” His post continued: “The DoD can’t be exposed in this way. The company needs to admit this was wrong and commit to not doing things that don’t pass a common sense test.”

Experts have said allowing China-based personnel to perform technical support and maintenance on U.S. government computer systems poses major security risks. Laws in China grant the country’s officials broad authority to collect data, and experts say it is difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has deemed China the “most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.”

Following ProPublica’s reporting last month, Microsoft said that it had stopped using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud computing systems. The company did not respond directly to questions from ProPublica about the security plan and instead issued a statement defending the escort practice.

“Escorted sessions were tightly monitored and supplemented by layers of security mitigations,” the statement said. “Based on the feedback we’ve received, however, we have updated our processes to prevent any involvement of China based engineers.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to Hegseth last month suggesting that the Defense Department needed to strengthen oversight of its contractors and that current processes “fail to account for the growing Chinese threat.”

“As we learn more about these ‘digital escorts’ and other unwise — and outrageous — practices used by some DoD partners, it is clear the Department and Congress will need to take further action,” Cotton wrote. He continued: “We must put in place the protocols and processes to adopt innovative technology quickly, effectively, and safely.”

Since 2011, the government has used the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, known as FedRAMP, to evaluate the security practices of commercial companies that want to sell cloud services to the federal government. The Defense Department also has its own guidelines, which include the citizenship requirement for people handling sensitive data.

Both FedRAMP and the Defense Department rely on “third party assessment organizations” to evaluate whether vendors meet the government’s cloud security requirements. While the government considers these organizations “independent,” they are hired and paid directly by the company being assessed. Microsoft, for example, told ProPublica that it enlisted a company called Kratos to shepherd it through the initial FedRAMP and Defense Department authorization processes and to handle annual assessments after winning federal contracts.

On its website, Kratos calls itself the “guiding light” for organizations seeking to win government cloud contracts and said it “boasts a history of performing successful security assessments.”

In a statement to ProPublica, Kratos said its work determines “if security controls are documented accurately,” but the company did not say whether Microsoft had done so in the security plan it submitted to the Defense Department’s IT agency.

Microsoft told ProPublica that it has given demonstrations of the escort process to Kratos but not directly to federal officials. The security plan makes no reference to any such demonstration. Kratos did not respond to questions about whether its assessors were aware that non-screened personnel could include foreign workers.

A former Microsoft employee who worked with Kratos through several FedRAMP accreditations compared Microsoft’s role in the process to “leading the witness” to the desired outcome. “The government approved what we paid Kratos to tell the government to approve. You’re paying for the outcome you want,” said the former employee, who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential proceeding.

Kratos said it “vehemently denies the characterization from an unnamed source that Kratos’ services are pay for play.” In its statement, Kratos said that it has been “accredited and audited by an independent, non-profit industry group” for factors that “include impartiality, competence and independence.”

“Kratos hires and retains the most technically sophisticated, certified security and technology experts,” the company said, adding that its personnel “are beyond reproach in their work.”

For its part, Microsoft said hiring Kratos was simply part of following the government’s cloud assessment process. “As required by FedRAMP, Microsoft relies on this certified assessor to conduct independent assessments on our behalf under FedRAMP’s supervision,” Microsoft said in its statement.

Still, critics take issue with the FedRAMP process itself, saying that the arrangement of a company paying its auditor presents an inherent conflict of interest. One former official from the U.S. General Services Administration, which houses FedRAMP, likened it to a restaurant hiring and paying for its own health inspector rather than the city doing so.

The GSA did not respond to requests for comment.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Department’s IT agency, reviewed and accepted Microsoft’s security plan. Among those involved were senior DISA officials Roger Greenwell and Jackie Snouffer, according to people familiar with the situation. Neither responded to phone messages seeking comment, and DISA and Defense Department spokespeople did not respond to ProPublica’s request to interview them.

A DISA spokesperson declined to comment for this article, saying “any responses will come from Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs.”

The Office of the Secretary of Defense did not respond to questions about whether Greenwell and Snouffer, or anyone at DISA, understood that Microsoft’s China-based employees would be supporting the Defense Department’s cloud. A spokesperson also did not directly respond to questions about Microsoft’s System Security Plan but in an emailed statement said the information in such plans is considered proprietary. The spokesperson noted that “any process that fails to comply with” department restrictions barring foreigners from accessing sensitive department systems “poses unacceptable risk to the DOD infrastructure.”

That said, the office left open the door to the continued use of foreign-based engineers with digital escorts for “infrastructure support,” saying that it “may be deemed an acceptable risk,” depending on factors that include “the country of origin of the foreign national” being escorted. The department said in such scenarios foreign workers would have “view-only” capabilities, not “hands-on” access. In addition to China, Microsoft has operations in India, the European Union and elsewhere across the globe.

In a statement to ProPublica on Friday, Hegseth’s office said the Pentagon’s investigation into tech companies’ use of foreign personnel “is complete and we have identified a series of possible actions the Department could take.” A spokesperson declined to describe those actions or say whether the department would follow through with them. It’s unclear whether Microsoft’s security plan or DISA’s role in approving it was a part of the review.

“As with all contracted relationships, the Department works directly with the vendor to address concerns, to include those that have come to light with the Microsoft digital escort process,” Hegseth’s office said in the statement.

h/t Capital.news

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 21:45

These Are The US Cities Where Groceries Are The Most Expensive

Grocery bills vary dramatically across the U.S., and some cities are feeling the pinch more than others.

Adding to the strain are record meat prices, driving up up food price inflation 3% compared to June of last year. Meanwhile, vegetable prices are spiking as farmers struggle with labor shortages amid rising deportations.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, ranks the top 20 American cities with the highest cost of groceries, based on data from Numbeo.

America’s Top 20 Cities by Cost of Groceries

For the rankings, each city’s grocery index is compared against New York City, which is used as a baseline of 100:

Rank City Groceries Index
Mid-Year 2025 1 Honolulu, HI 120.2 2 San Francisco, CA 100.1 3 New York, NY 100 4 Seattle, WA 95.3 5 Boston, MA 90.5 6 San Jose, CA 89.8 7 Washington, DC 87.2 8 Philadelphia, PA 85.7 9 Pittsburgh, PA 83.1 10 Sacramento, CA 81.8 11 Los Angeles, CA 81.7 12 Minneapolis, MN 81.1 13 Chicago, IL 80.4 14 Atlanta, GA 79.9 15 Baltimore, MD 77.7 16 Charlotte, NC 77.3 17 Denver, CO 77 18 Spokane, WA 76.5 19 Miami, FL 75.8 20 Raleigh, NC 74.9

Honolulu, Hawaii ranks far above all other U.S. cities with a groceries index of 120.2. That’s over 20% more than in New York City, the benchmark.

As an island state, Hawaii faces higher import and transportation costs, driving up the price of food staples. The state’s geographic isolation continues to make everyday goods, including groceries, particularly expensive.

Meanwhile, California and Washington state are well-represented in the top 20. San Francisco (100.1), San Jose (89.8), Sacramento (81.8), and Los Angeles (81.7) all make the list, as does Seattle (95.3) and Spokane (76.5).

These cities are known for higher costs of living in general, and groceries are no exception. Limited space for agriculture and strong demand from dense populations contribute to elevated food prices.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out this graphic on the top 10 states with the highest cost of living on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 21:20

Atlas Robot Moves Spot Parts From One Place To Another As Humans Keep Playing Tricks On It

Authored by Daniel Patrascu via autoevolution,

Thanks to the many ongoing projects in this field, we're used by now to seeing humanoid robots performing all sorts of impressive, almost human-like tasks and movements. But it's not until you see one performing something as mundane as moving things from one box to another, or arranging stuff on a shelf, that you realize just how far things have gone.

Boston Dynamics, one of the most important names in robotics on this planet, has been working on a humanoid robot ever since 2013. It calls it the Atlas, and it April last year the most recent version of the machine made its way under the spotlight.

As it presents itself today, the Atlas is made of titanium and aluminum 3D printed parts and stands five feet (1.5 meters) tall. Tipping the scales at 196 pounds (89 kg), it has hands, legs, and a head that move thanks to no less than 28 electrically powered joints.

The previous versions were powered by hydraulics, and that kind of limited the range of motions the robot was able to perform, but also its strength, to some degree. Now that the switch to electricity has been made, the sky is the limit.

Like all other robots of its kind, the Atlas can lift and maneuver loads, including irregular objects, and can navigate unstructured, difficult terrain, without any prior knowledge of it. And it looks amazing doing all of that, thanks to the light ring head propped on the torso.

But a robot, no matter how spectacular its body is, is as good and effective as the software that powers it. In its current form, the Atlas uses the same software that powered the previous versions, but there were plans to deploy the Orbit, a solution that already powers the Spot dog-like robot.

In the fall of last year Japanese carmaker Toyota got involved in the Atlas project. Through the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), the company got in bed with Boston Dynamics (which, by the way, is owned by South Korean carmaker Hyundai) to gift the Atlas with one of its Large Behavior Models (LBM) solutions.

The basic idea about LBM is that it can be used to improve the robot's dexterous manipulation skills, allowing it to perform a multitude of tasks, including simultaneously. Above all, such a system allows robots to gain skills by simply watching demonstrations from humans, requiring no complex code to be written.

It's been months since the partnership between Boston Dynamics and TRI was announced, and to be fair, I kind of forgot all about it. Then the two partners published a stunning video of the Atlas (attached below this text) performing all sorts of tasks in a room somewhere, all while humans tried to play tricks on it.

The Atlas, powered by the TRI LBM, is seen at first repeatedly crouching to pick up some what appear to be the body parts of its sibling robot, the Spot, from inside a box. It then rises up and deposits them in another container.

It sounds like a pretty simple task, and it is, at least for a human. Present-day robots find it extremely difficult to coordinate hands and legs to such a degree, combining object manipulation with locomotion, especially when nearby humans "interject unexpected physical challenges mid-task."

What it means is that, from time to time, a human closes the lids of the box that contains Spot parts using a hockey stick, or simply pulls the box away from Atlas. The robot doesn't seem to mind, and patiently reopens the box or pulls it back close to it to continue its work.

The second part of the video shows the Atlas picking up Spot components from a table and depositing them on nearby shelves, including in boxes. In doing so, the robot shows real skill in performing packing, sorting, and organizing tasks.

According to the two partners in this research, the incredible coordination of the robot's actions is owed to the fact that a single LBM controls the entire machine, "treating the hands and the feet almost identically."

It's unclear what the next step in the project is, but we now hope the next update on the Atlas will come our way much sooner than a few months.

Just like the Spot, the Atlas was imagined by Boston Dynamics as a tool to be used in industrial settings. Among the first companies to adopt it for real-world applications is Hyundai, which plans to incorporate it into its carmaking operations. When will that happen is anybody's guess…

The Atlas is not the only humanoid robot currently in the works, and not even the only one that will be deployed in the automotive industry. The Sanctuary AI Phoenix has already been tested on the floor of the Canadian Tire Corporation (CTC) and European auto supplier Magna, the Apptronik Apollo is expected to work for Mercedes-Benz, the  Figure 02 is on team BMW, and the Tesla Optimus, well, you know where that one is going…

h/t Capital.news

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 20:05

Washington D.C. Has The Highest Unemployment Rate In The Nation

The U.S. labor market remains resilient in 2025, but unemployment figures vary widely by state.

While the national unemployment rate stood at 4.1% in June, some regions are experiencing far higher (or far lower) joblessness.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, highlights the unemployment rate by state using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for June 2025.

Washington D.C. Tops Unemployment by State

Washington D.C. tops the list with the highest unemployment rate at 5.9%, as seen in the data table below with the unemployment rate of every U.S. state (and D.C.).

The capital’s high rate marks a significant jump from 5.0% in early 2024, suggesting rising challenges in the capital’s job market amidst Trump’s layoffs across federal agencies.

Nevada (5.4%) and California (5.4%) follow closely behind, reflecting persistent difficulties in sectors like tourism, entertainment, and technology.

Michigan (5.3%) also ranks among the hardest hit, driven by weakness in manufacturing.

The States with the Lowest Unemployment Rates

At the other end of the spectrum, South Dakota recorded the lowest unemployment rate at just 1.8%.

North Dakota (2.5%) and Vermont (2.6%) also reported very low levels of unemployment, underscoring the relative strength of smaller state economies.

Montana and Hawaii, both at 2.8%, round out the bottom five, showing stability even in some tourism-driven markets.

While the U.S. national unemployment rate of 4.1% is slightly above the lows seen during the post-pandemic recovery, the range between the highest and lowest states—more than four percentage points—illustrates the uneven nature of the labor market in America.

To learn more about the challenges Americans are facing, check out the graphic on the cost of the American dream on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 19:40

How Managers Are Using AI To Hire And Fire People

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is evolving rapidly, and some are warning that using AI to make executive decisions without careful consideration could backfire.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images

AI is being used more and more in recruitment, hiring, and performance evaluations that could lead to a promotion or termination.

Researchers, legal experts, legislators, and groups such as Human Rights Watch have expressed concern over the potential that AI algorithms are a gateway to ethical quagmires, including marginalization and discrimination in the workplace.

This warning bell isn’t new, but with more managers using AI to assist with important staff decisions, the risk of reducing employees to numbers and graphs also grows.

A Resume Builder survey released in June found that among a group of 1,342 managers in the United States, 78 percent use AI tools to determine raises, 77 percent use it for promotions, 66 percent use it for layoffs, and 64 percent use it for terminations.

The use of AI as a human resource tool is already a cautionary tale. In an unprecedented 2023 workplace discrimination case, digital labor platform iTutorGroup paid $365,000 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The English language tutoring service was forced to pay damages to job applicants who were filtered out by its AI algorithm. The company used an AI algorithm that automatically rejected more than 200 applicants based on their age. The candidates were automatically disqualified if, in the case of women, they were older than 55 years old. Male applicants 60 years and older were also rejected.

“Hundreds of applicants lost out on employment during a difficult time for job seekers,” Timothy Riera, acting director of the EEOC’s New York District, said in a statement.

Avoiding Dehumanization

Civil regulations and government legislation are being put forward as a guardrail against the use of AI to evaluate and monitor employee performance.

In March, the California Civil Rights Council finalized its regulations surrounding AI decision-making systems in the workplace, which go into effect on Oct. 1. The regulations include protections for employees against the use of AI systems to increase company efficiency. This encompasses actions such as hiring assistance, firing, and promotions.

At the federal level, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced the AI Whistle Blower Protection Act in May. If passed, the bill will offer employment compensation and protection from retaliation to those working directly with AI who choose to disclose issues with these systems.

“Today, too many people working in AI feel they’re unable to speak up when they see something wrong. Whistleblowers are one of the best ways to ensure Congress keeps pace as the AI industry rapidly develops,” Grassley said.

Additionally, the states of Illinois, California, and New York have proposed, introduced, or passed legislation aimed at protecting workers from AI algorithmic discrimination in areas including recruitment, hiring, promotion, employment renewal, discipline, and training.

Business owners, AI experts, and managers using these digital tools to make decisions affecting employees have stressed the need for human oversight.

“I’ve used AI in recruitment. Tools like ChatGPT-powered screening systems and resume parsers have been game-changers,” AI expert and consultant Peter Swain told The Epoch Times.

Swain is the CEO of a namesake company that focuses on helping entrepreneurs strike a balance between AI systems and their human workforce. He illustrated the pros and cons of using AI systems to handle executive tasks.

“Advantages? Speed and scalability—AI can process 1,000 resumes in the time it takes a human to read 10. It also reduces bias if trained properly,” Swain said.

“Disadvantages? Garbage in, garbage out. If the AI is trained on biased data, it perpetuates those biases. Plus, it lacks the human touch—cultural fit and soft skills can’t be fully assessed by an algorithm.”

Data-driven tasks are where AI tools tend to shine, Swain said, but using them for actions such as raises, promotions, and layoffs is “tricky territory.”

“I’ve dabbled with AI-driven performance analytics—tracking [key performance indicators], productivity ... but I’d never let it make the final call,” he said. “It’s a tool, not a decision-maker. The risk is dehumanization, reducing people to data points.”

Swain also called AI’s use in managerial decisions an ethical “minefield.”

“AI can amplify biases if not carefully monitored—think gender, race, or age discrimination baked into training data,” he said. “Transparency is key. Employees need to know how decisions are made and have recourse to challenge them. Accountability matters—if AI screws up, who’s responsible? You can’t just blame the machine.”

A software company’s booth during the AI+Expo Special Competitive Studies Project in Washington on June 2, 2025. As AI technology advances, its use in company administrative work has become more common. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times Volumes of Data

Stephen Engel, CEO of Sanative Recovery and Wellness, told The Epoch Times that he recently used the AI chatbot ChatGPT to assist with deciding whether to fire an employee.

He said that although AI didn’t make the final decision, its ability to handle volumes of data quickly allows managers to think more clearly and “step back from the emotion of the situation” and analyze situations more objectively.

“To me, that’s the real value of AI in this context. ... It allowed me to think through the situation, weigh options more rationally, and ultimately decide on the best course of action,” Engel said.

“I also used ChatGPT afterward to help guide my thinking about what qualities and strengths to prioritize for my next hire. Again, not as a replacement for human judgment, but as a tool to focus my thinking.”

Some business owners use AI tools to identify employees who need help.

“Our AI voice simulations let new employees engage in realistic mock calls from day one. These interactions are scored automatically and paired with coaching opportunities. It’s a way to see quickly who’s progressing and who might need more support,” Lonnie Johnston, CEO of the training platform WizeCamel, told The Epoch Times.

“Our platform helps surface employees who are struggling early and tracks whether they are improving on an acceptable schedule.”

He gave a recent example of how AI evaluations provided data to help supervisors make decisions.

Read the rest here...

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 19:15

India, Russia Set $100BN Trade Target, Rejecting US Pushback

Via The Cradle

India and Russia plan to increase their annual trade to $100 billion over the next five years – an increase of 50% – despite US opposition to the growing cooperation between New Delhi and Moscow, a top Indian minister announced on Thursday.

During the first day of a three-day visit to Moscow on Wednesday, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar emphasized the need for India and Russia to broaden their trade ties, foster additional joint ventures between their companies, and hold more frequent meetings to resolve issues such as payment systems. Russia ranks as India’s fourth-largest trade partner, while India holds the position of Russia’s second-largest.

Via Associated Press

"We are all acutely aware that we are meeting in the backdrop of a complex geopolitical situation. Our leaders remain closely and regularly engaged," he said while speaking at the India–Russia Business Forum in the Russian capital.

Jaishankar added that rising global uncertainty puts the emphasis back on "dependable and steady partners."

Economic uncertainty has come from recent actions taken by US President Donald Trump to punish India for its ongoing purchases of Russian oil.

New Delhi’s purchases of Russian crude skyrocketed after the start of the war with Ukraine in 2022. After its oil exports to Europe collapsed in the wake of the war, Russia turned to India, offering steep discounts.

In response, Trump has imposed a 25% tariff on Indian goods, saying the oil purchases help fund Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war machine.” Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on India further, to 50 percent, a rate high enough to ensure Indian exports to the US will not be competitive.

In response, India has said it has the right to buy oil from the cheapest source, calling the tariffs "unreasonable."

Following Trump’s threats, India’s state refiners began last week to buy large volumes of non-Russian crude. Indian Oil Corp. and Bharat Petroleum Corp. have purchased oil from multiple alternate suppliers in recent weeks, including suppliers in the US, Brazil, and Gulf states, for October delivery.

Private Indian refiners are expected to continue purchasing Russian oil per the long-term contracts they have previously signed. Earlier this month, India halted plans to purchase US weapons and military aircraft in response to President Trump’s tariffs on New Delhi’s exports.

“India had been planning to send Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to Washington in the coming weeks for an announcement on some of the purchases, but that trip has been cancelled,” two sources speaking with Reuters said. 

Before the war in Ukraine, less than 1% of India’s oil came from Russia. Now it is 42%.

The system is allowing India to profiteer by buying cheap Russian oil, reselling it, and pocketing $16B in excess profits.

This opportunistic arbitrage is unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/zp4FuKs9vJ

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) August 19, 2025

In February this year, Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced plans for the procurement and joint production of Stryker combat vehicles made by General Dynamics Land Systems and Javelin anti-tank missiles made by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

The sources told Reuters that India’s defense minister was also planning to announce the purchase of six Boeing P-8I reconnaissance aircraft and support systems for the Indian Navy during the trip to Washington, which has now been canceled. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 18:50

Trump's Tariffs Will Reduce Deficits By $4 Trillion Over Next Decade, Says CBO Report

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

A report released on Friday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will reduce federal deficits by around $4 trillion over the next decade.

If Trump’s global tariff hikes continue, increased revenue could shrink primary deficits by $3.3 trillion and cut federal interest payments by $0.7 trillion over the next decade, the CBO said. The current top tariff rates may not hold as negotiations with trading partners and international legal challenges are ongoing.

“We estimate that the effective tariff rate for goods imported into the United States has increased by about 18 percentage points when measured against 2024 trade flows,” the budget office said in its report, adding that Trump’s tariffs would reduce “the need for federal borrowing.”

The CBO also said it “projects further increases in tariff revenues in the coming months” and that “if there are no further changes in tariff rates, we project that customs duties from new and existing tariffs will total about $200 billion this fiscal year.”

But the office cautioned that revenues often lag several months behind the implementation of tariff policies, noting that once the rates are in effect, they don’t get applied to goods that are already in transit to the United States.

“In addition, importers have the option to delay payments by up to six weeks by participating in Customs and Border Protection’s Periodic Monthly Statement program,” added the CBO, which is a federal agency within the legislative branch that provides budget and economic information to both houses of Congress.

In July, Congress passed the GOP-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act that contained several major Trump priorities on energy, the border, spending, and tax cuts. The CBO has said that it would add around $3.4 trillion to the national deficit over the coming decade, although the White House has disputed those figures.

The Trump administration has also said that the tariffs and policies initiated under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump backed and signed into law, would bring forth economic growth over the coming years that would offset any additions to the national deficit.

“It was the largest tax cut for middle and working class families in our nation’s history, and the president wants to see this country get our fiscal house in order. That’s why this was a fiscally responsible bill,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on July 21 in response to the CBO report on the bill.

In a statement on Thursday, the White House again touted the bill by posting excerpts from a series of recent newspaper articles that praised the measure. Earlier this month, the administration also said that Americans would see an average tax cut of $3,752 under the bill, citing a report from nonprofit organization the Tax Foundation.

Friday’s report from the CBO comes as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would scrap some of its retaliatory tariffs against the United States. Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico earlier this year, saying those measures were necessary to curb illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking into the country.

“We have the best deal of anyone in the world right now,” Carney told reporters in Ottawa. “Today, the Government of Canada is harmonizing its tariffs with the U.S.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 18:25

Dutch Foreign Minister Steps Down After Israel Sanctions Blocked, Caretaker Govt Fragments

Dutch parliament is fiercely divided on whether it should take more measures which add teeth to recent actions calling out Israel for the mounting civilian death toll and starvation conditions in the Gaza Strip. Just last month, the hardline Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who actively assist in Jewish settler expansion in the West Bank, were formally declared persona non grata in the Netherlands.

On Friday, following a five-hour parliamentary debate which made clear that the caretaker government is divided, foreign minister Casper Veldkamp (center-right New Social Contract party) stepped down in protest after members of his own cabinet blocked new sanctions measures imposed on Israel.

Caspar Veldkamp, file image

Veldkamp acknowledged that the government had already made positive moves, but he explained, "I felt resistance in the cabinet against more measures as a result of what is happening in Gaza City and the occupied West Bank at the moment."

"I find myself unable to implement meaningful additional steps to increase pressure on Israel," he added in a statement to the press. He felt 'constrained' on the vital issue, Veldmamp described.

Bloomberg observes that Veldkamp has "faced resistance to his stance from some members of the caretaker coalition that has run the Netherlands since the government collapsed in June."

Over twenty countries, including many in Europe and Netherlands among them, have this week signed a joint declaration condemning Israel's approval of a major West Bank settlement project, dubbing it "unacceptable and contrary to international law." However, Veldkamp and some in parliament have wanted to go beyond mere symbolic acts.

Parallel to the situation in the United States, the Dutch right is beginning to split on Israel - as more and more conservatives, and especially young people begin to question their governments' constant support of Israel - or at least lack of accountability when it comes to Tel Aviv's actions.

The political landscape on the Right in The Netherlands has always been supportive of Israel. But the shift is illustrated by parties like the Forum for Democracy (FvD), which have led the most vocal criticisms of Israel - and from the Right. Though its founding its relatively recent (2015), party leader and founder Thierry Baudet has described to ZeroHedge that FvD - despite currently having just a handful of seats in parliament - is the single largest party by membership in The Netherlands.

MP Baudet previously took to the parliament floor where he spoke inconvenient truths, and made clear his position that what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza goes too far:

"All of the Netherlands was wondering why the cabinet actually fell. I already raised the question on June 4th last year: did the cabinet perhaps fall over Gaza - not over immigration?" Baudet questioned.

Heel Nederland vroeg zich af waarom het kabinet nou eigenlijk viel. Ik wierp al op 4 juni j.l. de vraag op: is het kabinet wellicht gevallen op Gaza — niet op immigratie?

De PVV heeft immers gewoon meegedaan met de plaatsing van al die AZC’s de afgelopen anderhalfjaar, wat in… pic.twitter.com/YKNKGQBH9K

— Thierry Baudet (@thierrybaudet) August 22, 2025

Baudet continued in his earlier this summer parliament address, "Could it be that Geert Wilders [who resigned in June pulling his party out of government and toppled the ruling coalition] foresaw today’s clash, in which he would inevitably face opposition from a majority of the House - for whom expelling, killing, or starving all of Gaza would go too far?"

Indeed the issue has become a growing flashpoint, also as on Friday the UN declared a state of famine in parts of Gaza, ahead of the October 29 general elections.

The Dutch 'far-right' party Forum for Democracy has been forging relationships with Trump admin officials, and also with conservative/libertarian-leaning anti-Israel movements in the United States...

Division in Dutch parliament and within the caretaker government is only likely to grow more intense between now and then, and could translate into wins for parties critical of Israel and movements like FvD picking up many more seats.

* * *

Some of FvD party leader Thierry Baudet's latest statements before parliament (auto-dubbed):

"The complete destruction of Gaza and the colonization of the West Bank is morally unacceptable, unacceptable from a humanitarian perspective, and moreover, disastrous for everyone involved: for the Palestinians, for Europe, and for the Israelis themselves. This is why the FVD (Foundation for Freedom and Democracy) supports sanctions against both Hamas and the Netanyahu government," the MP has said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 18:00

Shocking NEW Documents Expose Multi-Front Effort To Protect Clintons While Framing Trump

Submitted by Peter Schweizer & Seamus Bruner of The Drill Down, 

Newly unearthed documents show deep state government actors once again circling the wagons to protect Bill and Hillary Clinton — and suppressing evidence that implicated them. Last week it was the FBI, this week it is the IRS.

In 2019, the IRS Criminal Investigations Division quietly launched a probe into the Clinton Foundation's tax practices, working closely with whistleblowers John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, financial experts who had compiled thousands of pages of evidence.

According to internal agency memos reported by Just the News, IRS agents reviewed the evidence and at least one agent concluded it meant that the "entire [Clinton Foundation] enterprise is a fraud." Agents then moved to treat the whistleblowers as cooperating witnesses and even set up secure computer servers to hold the material they had collected.

Then, without warning, the lights went out. "Can't talk about the CF," agents told the whistleblowers. By the summer of 2019, their inquiry was dead. Moynihan and Doyle are now battling the agency in Tax Court over the apparent shutdown of the investigation.

The IRS's abrupt reversal follows an earlier, more infamous pattern. In 2016, FBI field offices in New York, Washington, and Little Rock all opened probes into the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation, partly on the strength of Peter Schweizer's 2015 bestselling book, Clinton Cash, which exposed numerous examples of the Clintons using the foundation while she served as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama as a pay-to-play scheme for business and foreign government interests seeking political influence.

The book told the story of Uranium One, a US mining company that was sold to the Russians after investors pledged more than $100 million to the Clinton Foundation. That story was confirmed in a front-page story by the New York Times when the book was published and based on its material.

The FBI field office investigations were proceeding until they were ordered by higher-ups to stop. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates ordered prosecutors to "shut it down." Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe required his personal approval for every investigative step — effectively choking the cases.

The fallout from Clinton Cash was real. Clinton staffers scrambled for advance copies of the book, while Hillary's own pollsters flagged the Uranium One deal as her campaign's biggest vulnerability in the early primary states. By January 2016, the FBI was looking into the book's allegations — until the brakes were pulled.

Appearing on an OANN program this week, Schweizer told host Matt Gaetz that the government's double standard is unmistakable. "At the same time, they are killing an organic investigation into Clinton corruption… they were also creating a completely fictional investigation tying [Donald] Trump to Russia," he said.

Five FBI field offices had been involved before being shut down, including a satellite office in Africa. Schweizer called the saga proof of a new kind of corruption — "offshored, globalized corruption," complete with political dynasties selling access and foreign oligarchs buying influence.

The contrast between the scuttled investigation of the Clinton Foundation and the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into the Trump campaign's purported ties to Russia is glaring. While the Clinton probes were heavily throttled, the FBI raced to open a full investigation into Trump's campaign on the flimsiest of tips — a conversation in a London wine bar — green-lighting it within three days. Clinton's Russia vulnerabilities were turned into Trump's burden, projected onto his campaign in a haze of innuendo.

Put together, the picture is damning: an IRS that dropped the ball in 2019, and an FBI and DOJ that throttled their own field offices in 2016. The whistleblowers are still pressing their case, six years later.

But the old memos are now re-surfacing, and the "deep state" may yet face a reckoning from what may prove the largest political scandal of modern times.

Tyler Durden Fri, 08/22/2025 - 17:40