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TOKYO (AP) — The Japanese economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.7% in the first quarter, according to government data released Friday, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war hurt exports and dented consumer confidence. Japan’s real gross domestic product, or the measure of a nation’s goods and services, shrank at a greater-than-expected 0.2% [...]
How Widespread Are Food Intolerances? In a limited survey by Statista Consumer Insights, between 6 and 17 percent of respondents said they had a food intolerance confirmed by a health professional. As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, the figure was highest in the U.S. and lowest in France. You will find more infographics at StatistaIn four other countries surveyed - the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico and China - between 10 and 11 percent said this was the case for them.Food intolerances and allergies, like insensitivity to gluten, dairy, sugar or more specific products, have been a hot topic over the last couple of years.While more and more people cut certain foods out of their diets because of allergies or because they consider them bad nutrition, other accuse those engaging in this behavior of following a fad. While awareness around food insensitivities has certainly risen and more people were able to get diagnoses in the field, hyperconsiousness around food, health and fitness are also becoming more widespread - with both areas increasingly harder to distingush from one another.According to the UK's NHS, common food intolerances include lactose, gluten, histamines and sulphites, but also caffeine, alcohol and lesser-known salicylates. Tyler DurdenThu, 05/15/2025 - 22:35
The state's unemployment rate compares with 4.2% nationally.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday at a Fed conference that longer-term interest rates are likely to be higher, The S&P 500 gained 0.41%, its fourth positive session. Japan’s Nikkei 225 dipped on data that the country’s economy shrank in the first quarter. U.S. President Donald Trump told Apple’s CEO he doesn’t want him “building in India.” China is still blocking exports of seven rare earth metals to the U.S. despite both countries’ trade deal. Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his White House counterpart Trump opted to skip Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Turkey. One European automaker is poised to benefit from the U.K.-U.S. trade deal.There’s a lightness in the air on Wall Street. Stocks have been rising throughout the week. The S&P 500 has just ended its fourth straight session in the green, giving it a 4.54% bump so far over the past four days.Tariffs are looking less thorny, for sure, as the U.S. negotiates agreements with other countries. But that’s not to say it’ll be a perfectly smooth path ahead.For instance, despite its agreement with the U.S., China is still withholding rare earth metals, crucial for important industries such as defense and energy, from being exported to the U.S.Similarly, even as India negotiates a deal with America, U.S. President Donald Trump appears to want more than just levies on U.S. imports cut. Trump told Apple CEO Tim Cook he doesn’t want the Cupertino-based company “building in India.” It’s hard to imagine India agreeing to keep Apple’s manufacturing out — or for The Big Apple to actually start producing Apple products.U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell seemed cognizant of such complications and warned on Thursday that “supply shocks” could be “more frequent, and potentially more persistent” in the future.The sense of buoyancy in markets, then, could be a head rush — evoked by the U.S.-China trade deal over the weekend — that could dissipate once the gravity of the economic headwinds takes over again.What you need to know todayPowell warns of potential supply shocksU.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday at a Fed conference that longer-term interest rates are likely to be higher, given that “inflation could be more volatile going forward” because of the possibility of “more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks” to the economy. Powell didn’t name Trump’s tariffs, but flagged risks around them at the Fed’s May meeting.S&P clocks fourth day of winsOn Thursday, the S&P 500 gained 0.41%, its fourth positive session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.65% but the Nasdaq Composite underperformed, dropping 0.18%. Asia-Pacific markets were mixed Friday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 hovered around the flatline the country reported that its economy shrank 0.2% during the first quarter, steeper than the 0.1% expected in a Reuters poll of economists — and the first time it’s contracted in a year.‘A little problem with Tim Cook’: TrumpWhile discussing on Thursday Washington’s trade relations with India, Trump said that he doesn’t want Apple CEO Tim Cook to build factories in India. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.”Rare earth exports from China still blockedChina has temporarily paused export restrictions targeting 28 American companies following the trade agreement reached by Beijing and the Trump administration over the weekend. But it is continuing to block exports of seven rare earth metals to the United States. Those metals are essential for the U.S.’ defense, energy and automotive industries.Putin and Trump skip peace meetingRussia leader Vladimir Putin and his White House counterpart Trump opted to skip Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Turkey. Responding to the diplomatic slight as he arrived in Ankara on Thursday to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the delegation of lower-ranking officials that Russia had sent to Turkey showed Moscow wasn’t serious about talks.[PRO] U.K.-U.S. deal to benefit European automakerBritish businesses are still hashing out exactly what the recently-unveiled U.K.-U.S. trade deal means for them. The European Union is yet to strike its own deal. Despite this, one automaker from the bloc’s biggest economy is about to see benefits due to its U.K. presence.And finally...Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty ImagesA man walks past an electronic board showing the Nikkei 225 index on the Tokyo Stock Exchange along a street in Tokyo on April 7, 2025. Japan assets experienced record inflows in April as investors fled U.S. markets — and analysts expect the Asian country to stay attractiveOverseas investors bought 8.21 trillion yen ($56.6 billion) worth of Japanese equities and long-term bonds in April, according to government data. The net inflows were the largest for a calendar month since Japan’s finance ministry started collecting data in 1996, according to Morningstar.Japanese assets are generally considered a haven, whose appeal rose as the “sell-U.S.” narrative gained ground in April, said Rashmi Garg, senior portfolio manager at Al Dhabi Capital.Furthermore, Trump’s policy flip-flops could sustain interest in Japanese assets “even if it is not as a strong as the April level,” said Vasu Menon, OCBC’s managing director of the investment strategy team. Japan’s ongoing talks with the U.S. with regard to tariffs have also raised some optimism over cutting the 24% “reciprocal” tariffs on Japan, Menon said.
TikTok said that the meditation feature, aimed at improving sleep quality, is triggered during “sleep hours” and will be turned on by default for users under the age of 18. The announcement comes amid public pressure and lawsuits concerning the app’s impacts on young users.Plagued with allegations and lawsuits of harming users’ mental health, especially that of children, social media sensation TikTok has decided to turn to meditation — or, rather, guide its users to the calming effects of deep breathing.TikTok said Thursday that it was launching in-app guided meditation exercises and other well-being features aimed at young users.The company, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, said it began testing the new meditation exercises with select teens earlier this year and will now make them available to users of all ages.TikTok said that the meditation feature, aimed at improving sleep quality, is triggered during “sleep hours” and will be turned on by default for users under the age of 18. If these young users are on the app after 10 p.m., their “For You” feed will be interrupted by the guided meditation exercise. If a teen continues to use TikTok after the first reminder, the company will show a second full-screen meditation prompt. The meditation app was teased earlier this week along with other features, such as new educational feeds, online safety tools and enhanced parental controls over screen time. TikTok’s recent focus on promoting healthier digital habits for young users comes amid public pressure and a slew of lawsuits concerning the platform’s impact on young users. A bipartisan group of more than a dozen state attorneys general last year filed lawsuits against TikTok related to the app’s effects on young users. One such suit from Attorney General Brian Schwalb of the District of Columbia alleged that TikTok was intentionally addictive and psychologically damaging to kids, posing profound risks including depression, anxiety, sleep loss and body dysmorphia.A TikTok spokesperson previously told CNBC that the lawsuit ignored proactive measures that the platform has voluntarily implemented to support community safety and well-being.Social psychologists have also advocated banning the app, warning that TikTok and other social platforms can cause mental health issues for children, adolescents, and young adults. The social media platform briefly went offline in the U.S. in January, after the Supreme Court upheld a law to ban it unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sold its stake in the app. However, U.S. President Donald Trump used an executive order to keep the platform running, and again delayed the enforcement of that ban last month. Its long-term status remains undecided, with ByteDance’s new deadline to divest set for mid-June.While Congress’s ban of TikTok has been focused on the app’s Chinese ownership and data and privacy concerns, governments have also begun to target TikTok and other social media over their perceived ill effect on young users. In November, Australia’s parliament passed a bill banning social media platforms from allowing users under 16 to access their services, threatening fines of up to AU$ $50 million (£22.2 million).In the U.S., TikTok says that users must be at least 13 years old to create an account, though there is a separate under-13 TikTok experience that offers additional safeguards.The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission filed a civil lawsuit against TikTok and ByteDance in August, accusing them of collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 and having insufficient policies and processes for identifying and deleting accounts created by children.TikTok and ByteDance didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments.On Thursday, TikTok said it was also making a $2.3 million donation in ad credits to 31 mental health organizations in 22 countries around the world as part of its “Mental Health Education Fund.”
Cartier owner Richemont on Friday posted better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter sales as wealthy spenders shrug off macroeconomic uncertainty. Revenues at the Swiss luxury group rose 7% to 5.17 billion euros, above the 4.98 billion euros. The fourth-quarter sales bump was led by growth at the group’s Jewellery Maisons division, which includes Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Buccellati. Cartier owner Richemont on Friday posted better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter sales, as the wealthiest spenders continued to shrug off global macroeconomic uncertainty.Revenues at the Swiss luxury group rose 7% year-on-year at constant exchange rates to 5.17 billion euros ($5.79 billion) in the three months to the end of March, above the 4.98 billion euros forecast by analysts in an LSEG poll.The fourth-quarter sales bump was led by double-digit growth at the group’s Jewellery Maisons division, which includes Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Buccellati.Sales nevertheless declined within the company’s specialist watchmakers segment, which features brands Piaget and Roger Dubuis, led by weakness in the Asia-Pacific region.Full-year sales rose 4% to 21.4 billion euros, up on the previous year and just ahead of analyst expectations of 21.34 billion euros.Sales rose annually across all regions, except Asia Pacific (ex. Japan) — the company’s largest market — where declines were led by a 23% drop in China. Japan led annual sales growth, up 25% at actual exchange rates, buoyed by “strong domestic and tourist spend” and a weak Japanese Yen.“The Group’s performance was robust overall, driven by remarkable growth at our Jewellery Maisons and retail, and improved momentum at our ‘Other’ activities,” Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert said in a statement. The company’s so-called “other” segment includes its pre-owned watch retailer Watchfinder & Co.The chairman nevertheless added that ongoing global uncertainties would continue to require “strong agility and discipline.”BofA Global Research said in a note last week that Richemont faces three key global headwinds: gold prices, U.S. tariffs and foreign exchange fluctuations, by way of the strength of the Swiss Franc and the weakness of the U.S. dollar.However, the bank’s analysts added that the company’s pricing power could provide a tailwind. “We think price will cover half the headwinds,” they wrote. “Pricing, product mix and higher capacity utilization are the most obvious offsets.”Richemont had previously reported its “highest ever” quarterly sales figure in January at 6.2 billion euros, even as China demand weighed.The earnings had, at the time, been taken as a signal of a wider turnaround in the beleaguered luxury sector. However, the specter of U.S. trade tariffs and subsequent macroeconomic uncertainty have threatened to once again hit consumer confidence and discretionary spending globally.This is a developing story, please check back for updates.
Coinbase said cyber crooks stole customer information and demanded $20 million ransom payment AP NewsCoinbase says hackers bribed staff to steal customer data and are demanding $20 million ransom CNBCCoinbase's cyber attack could cost it $400 million qz.comLargest US crypto exchange says cost of recent cyber-attack could reach $400m The GuardianCoinbase stock drops after cyber criminals swipe customer data and make $20 million ransom demand Yahoo Finance
OnQ Global, Inc. Launches Next Era of Streamlined Innovation and Service Excellence HOUSTON, May 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- OnQ Global, Inc. today unveiled a major structural evolution, introducing a bold new brand identity aligned with its three specialized pillars: QHealth, QTech, and...
Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have charged 13 men in what court records describe as a wide-ranging conspiracy to identify victims with substantial holdings of cryptocurrency, steal those assets, and then launder the proceeds. More than $265 million in crypto was stolen from the victims, according to a superseding indictment. One of the defendants, Malone Lam, was previously charged in connection with the largest of those thefts, which netted about $245 million in crypto from a man in D.C. Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., charged 13 men in what court records describe as a wide-ranging conspiracy to identify victims with substantial holdings of cryptocurrency, steal those assets, and then launder the proceeds.More than $265 million in crypto was stolen from the victims, according to a superseding indictment obtained Thursday by CNBC.The participants, Americans and foreign nationals who allegedly became friends on online gaming platforms, are accused of spending lavishly after the thefts, including $9 million on exotic cars and $4 million on nightclubs, as well as on multiple rental properties.One of the defendants, 20-year-old Singapore native Malone Lam, was previously arrested and charged in connection with the largest of those thefts, which netted about $245 million in bitcoin from a man in D.C. in mid-August.That theft is believed to have led to the brazen kidnapping in suburban Connecticut of the parents of one of Lam’s alleged co-conspirators by a crew of thugs from Florida who prosecutors say planned to hold the parents for ransom from their newly rich son.It also allegedly enabled Lam to purchase more than 30 exotic automobiles, among them Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Mercedez G Wagons, a Rolls Royce, a McClaren, and a Pagani, the superseding indictment says. He also allegedly bought a watch for $2 million.Neither Lam’s co-defendant in the original indictment related to the $245 million heist — Jeandiel Serrano — nor the son of the people kidnapped in Connecticut is named as a defendant in the new superseding indictment.Instead, both men appear to be identified only as “co-conspirator” in that charging document.But the new indictment accuses 12 other men and Lam of charges that include RICO Conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, and obstruction of justice.Two of the men, Hamza Doost and Kunal Mehta, were arrested this week in California, according to court filings, which alleged they were involved in money laundering for the ring.Most of the other defendants are believed to have been arrested around the United States in the past several days.Mehta, a 45-year-old who lives in Irvine, California, is the oldest defendant identified by name. The other named defendants range in age from 18 to 22 years old. Two defendants are identified only by nicknames.Michael Siluk | Ucg | Universal Images Group | Getty ImagesSquishmallow’s on sale at a Fred Meyer grocery store, a sub of Kroger. The second biggest theft attributed to the ring was of $14 million in cryptocurrency from a victim.“Members and associates of the enterprise used the stolen virtual currency to purchase, among other things, nightclub services ranging up to $500,000 per evening, luxury handbags valued in the tens of thousands of dollars that were given away at nightclub parties, luxury watches valued between $100,000 and $500,000,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington said in a statement.The participants also bought “luxury clothing valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, rental homes in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami, private jet rentals, a team of private security guards, and a fleet of at least 28 exotic cars ranging in value from $100,000 to $3.8 million,” prosecutors said.The indictment says that one of the defendants, 21-year-old Joel Cortes of Laguna Niguel, California, last year helped members of the ring “in changing stolen virtual currency into fiat currency and shipping the currency across the United States, hidden in squishmallow stuffed animals, each containing approximately $25,000 apiece.”“Members of the enterprise laundered stolen cryptocurrency proceeds by moving the funds through various mixers and exchanges using ‘peel chains,’ pass-through wallets, and virtual private networks to mask their true identities,” prosecutors said.The new indictment alleges that an off-duty law enforcement officer informed one of Lam’s alleged money exchangers in September that the ring was being investigated by federal law enforcement, and that the money exchanger then advised that Serrano stay in the Maldives instead of returning to the United States. Serrano later flew to Los Angeles, where he was arrested in September.The indictment says an off-duty law enforcement officer tipped Lam on Sept. 18 that authorities were on their way to arrest Lam at his Miami rental home.Lam soon after “walked to the rear of his Miami rental home and dropped his mobile telephone off the boat dock and into Biscayne Bay to destroy incriminating evidence,” the indictment alleges.Prosecutors said that after his arrest in September, and continuing while he was being held without bail, “Lam is alleged to have continued working with members of the enterprise to pass and receive directions, collect stolen cryptocurrency, and to have enterprise members buy luxury Hermes Birkin bags and hand deliver them to his girlfriend in Miami, Florida.”Lam and another defendant, Conor Flasburg, 20, of Newport Beach, California, were identified as organizers of the alleged scheme,e Lam’s defense attorney, Scott Armstrong, told CNBC, “Mr. Lam is 20 years old and has no criminal history.”“He is unfortunately caught up in a very complicated case. We will vigorously defend him,” Armstrong said.CNBC has requested comment from Serrano’s attorney.
U.S. stocks are drifting following a jumble of mixed reports that shed little clarity on how the U.S. economy is managing through President Donald Trump’s trade war. The S&P 500 slipped 0.3% Thursday and was on track for its first...
The advisory was reissued to 'emphasize the extreme danger.'
Europe is being shaken out of its lethargy, militarily and otherwise, by Donald Trump's changes in U.S. policy. Should investors start buying?
US Homebuilder Sentiment Slumps To Lowest Since 2023 Confidence among US homebuilders slumped in May to the lowest level since late 2023 as the NAHB sentiment index tumbled 6 points to 34 (well below the 40 expected)...Source: BloombergAll three components that make up the index fell, with a measure of expected sales in the next six months sliding to an 18-month low. A gauge of present sales dropped to the lowest since late 2022, while traffic of prospective buyers was the weakest in 1 1/2 years.“The spring home buying season has gotten off to a slow start as persistent elevated interest rates, policy uncertainty and building material cost factors hurt builder sentiment in May,” NAHB Chairman Buddy Hughes, a builder and developer from Lexington, North Carolina, said in a statement.Of course, we all know who is to blame for this...“Policy uncertainty stemming in large part from the stop-and-start tariff issues has hurt builder confidence but the initial trade arrangements with the United Kingdom and China are a welcome development,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “Still, the overall actions on tariffs in recent weeks have had a negative impact on builders, as 78% reported difficulties pricing their homes recently due to uncertainty around material prices.”Let's not forget that new mortgage rates are still sky-high relative to 'average' existing mortgage rates and homebuilders can't afford to subsidize that difference forever...In May, 34% of builders reported cutting prices, the largest share since December 2023, NAHB said. The share of builders reporting using sales incentives was unchanged at 61%.The only thing is, homeBUYER sentiment has been in the shitter for months because of high rates and lack of affordability...Maybe, homeBUILDERS are finally waking up to reality as Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Tyler DurdenThu, 05/15/2025 - 10:45
New Jersey rail strike could cause nightmare for commuters ... and Shakira and Beyoncé fans CNNNJ Transit strike 2025 update: Talks continue as rail engineer walkout nears ABC7 New YorkNJ Transit engineers strike looms Friday, here’s what commuters need to know New York Daily NewsNew Jersey on the brink of its biggest railroad strike in more than 40 years GothamistNJ Transit strike appears ever more likely ahead of midnight deadline: ‘It’s going to be ugly’ New York Post
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN – May 15, 2025. Karolinska Development AB (publ) (“Karolinska Development” or the “Company”) held the Annual General Meeting on May 15, 2025. The shareholders have had the right to exercise their voting rights in advance through postal voting pursuant to item 13 in the articles of association. Therefore, shareholders have had the choice to exercise their voting rights at the AGM by attending in person, by postal voting or through a proxy. The following resolutions were passed by the shareholders at the Annual General Meeting:
CRTC kicks off Canadian content hearing as big streamers cancel appearances CityNews VancouverView Full Coverage on Google News
- XCMG Machinery publica el Informe ESG 2024: pioneros en innovación sostenible en el desarrollo de la industria global de maquinaria de construcción Nuevo liderazgo energético, transformación digital y alianzas globales hacia la neutralidad de carbono XUZHOU, China, 15 de mayo de 2025...
The Pandemic Agreement: Surveillance, 'One Health', & A New Industry Of Government Grift Authored by REPPARE (REevaluating the Pandemic Preparedness And REsponse agenda) via The Brownstone Institute,After three years of negotiation, the delegates of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) agreed on the text of the Pandemic Agreement, which now goes for vote at the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA) at the end of May 2025. This text comes after the negotiations were extended for an additional year due to ongoing disagreements about intellectual property and technology transfers (Article 11), access to ‘pandemic-related health products’ (Article 12), and One Health.After extending the negotiations into a series of last-minute 24-hour sessions in April 2025, a draft was ‘greenlined’ with many countries suggesting that they had gone as far as they could via negotiation, and it was now time to bring it to vote. There are several interesting elements within the new draft of the Pandemic Agreement. For example, the Pandemic Agreement foresees ‘participating manufacturers’ (yet to be determined) to make 20% of their related pharmaceutical production available to the WHO, half as a donation, and half at ‘affordable prices’ (also to be determined). The expectation is that the WHO and other international partners will pool these and other resources for distribution (in an improved COVAX-like mechanism yet to be determined). In addition, a still relatively undefined ‘Coordinating Financial Mechanism’ (CFM) will be established to support the implementation of both the Pandemic Agreement and the amended International Health Regulations (IHRs), as well as to disburse surge funding to developing countries in the event of a pandemic.These commitments build on the IHR amendments that come into force in September 2025, which authorise the WHO Director-General to declare a ‘Pandemic Emergency.’ This represents an escalation of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), with a ‘Pandemic Emergency’ now representing ‘the highest level of alarm,’ which is meant to trigger a host of national and international responses. The PHEIC has been declared eight times since 2005, including for the ongoing Mpox outbreak in Central Africa, and there remains ambiguity about whether an outbreak like Mpox would now also qualify as a Pandemic Emergency. The Pandemic Agreement also now defines the first somewhat tangible effects of declaring a Pandemic Emergency, although these triggering effects are currently most clear regarding the mobilization of ‘pandemic-relevant health products.’In general, the text reads as one might expect when diplomats from almost 200 countries spent years negotiating and scrutinising every sentence. Although the United States and Argentina withdrew from these negotiations earlier this year, the document still had to navigate the manifold and often conflicting interests of delegates from Russia and Ukraine, Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan; not to mention members of the Africa Group who largely saw the Pandemic Agreement as a raw deal for Africa (see below). The result is therefore 30 pages full of vague declarations of intent, often qualified by references to the preservation of national sovereignty in an attempt to neutralize opposition. As it stands, the ‘Agreement’ looks primarily of symbolic importance, since a failure to reach an agreement would have been embarrassing for everyone involved.Yet, it would be churlish not to understand that the Pandemic Agreement consolidates ‘pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response’ as a definitive ‘space’ of global political action, for the purpose of which numerous new institutions and funding streams have already been created. Its potential passage into international law is unusual in global health and represents only the second time such a global health covenant has been created (the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control being the first), with the potential to mobilize substantial resources and policies.For example, according to estimates by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), expenditure on preparing for future pandemics had already more than quadrupled between 2009 and 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic unmistakably moved the topic into international ‘high politics.’ In the Agreement, governments pledge to ‘maintain or increase’ this funding for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response and to support mechanisms for its execution. As reported elsewhere by REPPARE, the requested funds for pandemic preparedness are $31.1 billion a year (for comparison, about 8 times global expenditure on malaria), of which $26.4 billion must come from low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), while $10.5 billion in new overseas development assistance (ODA) would need to be raised. Presumably, the WHO’s preferred mechanism for the distribution of this ODA is via the yet-to-be-defined CFM.Vaccine EquityThe declared guiding principle of the Pandemic Agreement is ‘equity.’ The focus on ‘equity’ is driven largely by the WHO and associated philanthropists, NGOs, scientific advisers, and several LMICs (particularly in Africa), who view a lack of equity, primarily ‘vaccine equity,’ as the main failure of the Covid response. Representatives of poorer countries, but also important donors, have criticised the inequitable access to vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 as a key failure of the Covid response and the reason for increased Covid mortality. This inequitable access has been labelled ‘vaccine nationalism,’ which refers to the stockpiling of Covid vaccines in high-income countries (HICs) during the pandemic, limiting availability to vaccines by LMICs. The World Economic Forum, for example, claims that a fairer distribution of vaccines would have saved over a million lives. While enough Covid vaccine doses were ordered in Europe to immunise the entire population from infants to the elderly more than three times over, and are now being destroyed, many African countries were denied access. In fact, developing countries only received large quantities of coronavirus vaccines months after richer countries had been ‘fully vaccinated.’ Even after vaccination had been universally available in most HIC countries by summer 2021, under 2% in low-income countries had been vaccinated, many of them with Chinese vaccines that Western countries deemed inferior and thus not qualifying for travel clearance.The proponents of the Pandemic Agreement do not question the success of universal vaccination despite its limited and rapidly declining protective effect, nor the numerous reported adverse effects. But even if we assume that coronavirus vaccines are safe and effective, global comparisons of vaccination rates remain nonsensical. In HICs, most Covid-19 deaths occurred in people over 80, suggesting the need for context-specific interventions in the case of the most vulnerable.In most low-income countries (LICs), this risk group comprises only a tiny fraction of the population. For example, the average age in Africa is 19, presenting an entirely different pandemic risk and response profile. In addition, a meta-analysis of blood tests by Bergeri et al. suggests that by mid-2021 most Africans had already had post-infection immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Yet, despite these variables, the manufacturers of the vaccines were encouraged to mass produce vaccines for global rollout, were given emergency authorisation, were released from liability, cashed in on advanced purchasing commitments, and were able to make record profits at the expense of taxpayers.As reported elsewhere, committing large resources to pandemic preparedness, particularly expensive surveillance, diagnostic, R&D, and the manufacturing of biomedical countermeasures, threatens to produce high opportunity costs since many LMICs must confront other more pressing and destructive disease burdens. This was at least implicitly recognised by many African countries during the Pandemic Agreement negotiations. Many resisted the inclusion of One Health into the Agreement, arguing that it was unaffordable and not a priority within their national strategic health plans.To paraphrase an African delegate on the INB, ‘We have difficulty doing coordinated surveillance within the health sector, let alone integrated surveillance across sectors.’ This concern not only suggests the need for more locally owned strategies to assure the efficient use of scarce resources, but also the need for strategies that better capture contextualised need to deliver greater effectiveness and true health equity, not just ‘product equity.’ Yet, even if product equity is a desired and justified outcome in particular cases, there is nothing in the Pandemic Agreement that guarantees this, since, in practice,e poor countries without their own production capacities will always be last in line. Although the ‘pathogen access and benefit system’ (PABS) in Article 12 of the Pandemic Agreement seeks to improve product equity, it is reasonable to expect wealthy countries to meet their own demand before making larger quantities available to LICs or the WHO for distribution (leaving it reliant on donations – which proved problematic during COVAX). As a result, it is hard to see what the Pandemic Agreement has improved in this regard, other than the codification of extremely loose normative commitments aiming to improve equitable access to pandemic products – an area on which countries would already broadly agree. The Pandemic Agreement also calls for more transparency for contracts between countries and manufacturers. This measure is seen as a mechanism that can expose rampant vaccine nationalism and profiteering, albeit only ‘as appropriate’ and ‘in accordance with national regulations.’ Thus, it is questionable whether such flimsy wording would have stopped EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from fixing billion-dollar deals with the Pfizer CEO through undisclosed text messaging nor stopped other countries from engaging in their own bilateral pre-purchasing and stockpiling activities.Of course, LMIC negotiators in the INB were aware of all this, which is why the fault line in the Pandemic Agreement negotiations mainly centred on issues of intellectual property and technology transfer. In essence, developing countries do not want to rely on handouts and want to produce vaccines and therapeutics themselves without having to pay expensive licensing fees to the pharmaceutical giants of the North. In contrast, the North has been steadfast in their commitments to intellectual property protections as outlined in TRIPS and TRIPS-Plus, seeing these legal mechanisms as important protections for their pharmaceutical industries. As a ‘compromise,’ the Pandemic Agreement contains provisions for ‘geographically diversified local production’ of pandemic products and closer international cooperation in research and development, with simplified licensing procedures intended to ensure technology transfer. However, the wording within the Pandemic Agreement is nonspecific and the EU insisted on adding last-minute footnotes to the technology transfer provision to ensure they only take effect ‘as mutually agreed.’ Thus, the Pandemic Agreement looks like the solidification of business as usual. Surveillance and One HealthWhereas a lack of ‘equity’ is understood by advocates of the Pandemic Agreement as the main failure of the Covid response, a ‘failure of preparedness’ is also seen as allowing the emergence and subsequent global spread of the novel coronavirus in the first place. The goal of eliminating the ‘existential threat’ of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) is dominant within the policy lexicon, endorsed by the G20 High Level Independent Panel, the World Bank, the WHO, The Elders’ Proposal for Action, and the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. As we have argued elsewhere, these assessments are largely based on weak evidence, problematic methodologies, the use of political eminence over expertise, and simplified modelling, yet they remained unquestionable mainstays within INB negotiations. In response to future zoonoses, the Pandemic Agreement calls for a ‘One Health’ approach. In principle, One Health reflects the self-evident fact that human, animal, and environmental health are closely connected. Yet, in practice, One Health requires the targeted monitoring of soil, water, domestic animals, and farm animals with the view to identifying possible spillover to humans. As highlighted above, implementing One Health necessitates integrated systems across sectors with sophisticated laboratory capacities, processes, information systems, and trained personnel. As a result, the costs of implementing One Health are estimated by the World Bank to be approximately $11 billion a year, which would be in addition to the $31.1 billion currently estimated as required to finance the IHRs and Pandemic Agreement. With more laboratories looking for pathogens and their mutations, it is guaranteed that more will be found. Given the current practice of over-securitized knee-jerk risk assessments, it is foreseeable that more discoveries will be deemed ‘high risk,’ even though humans have coexisted with many of these pathogens without major incident for centuries, and even though the risk of geographical spread is low (e.g., reactions to Mpox). The logic of the Pandemic Agreement is that, based on genomic advancements, ‘pandemic-related health products’ can then be quickly developed and distributed via the ‘WHO Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System’ (PABS). This is disquieting for at least three reasons. First, large resources will be poured into responding to these low-burden potential risks while everyday killers like malaria will continue to receive an underwhelming response. Second, this aspect of the Pandemic Agreement will undoubtedly engross under its own momentum, where new perceptions of threat legitimate ever-more surveillance, which will uncover even more potential threats in a self-perpetuating regress of securitization and over-biomedicalization. Lastly, nowhere in the Pandemic Agreement is there any mention of the fact that dangerous gain-of-function research will continue to be conducted to develop the ‘pandemic benefits’ expected under PABS, although biosafety and biosecurity obligations are mentioned in passing.This suggests that the risk assessments associated with the Pandemic Agreement are singularly focused on natural zoonosis spillover events, ignoring an area of risk that may have actually been responsible for the worst pandemic in the last 100 years. Thus, the recent Covid-19 pandemic is likely irrelevant to the Pandemic Agreement in terms of pandemic preparation and prevention.InfodemicsThe calamities of the Covid response have eroded trust in the WHO and other public health institutions. This has manifested in a clear scepticism of pandemic preparedness. For example, hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions warning of the WHO’s ‘power grab’ to undermine national sovereignty. These messages arose primarily after the proposed amendments to the IHR started to circulate, which contained original language allowing the WHO to issue binding recommendations to national governments during a pandemic. Ultimately, such plans did not materialise.The drafters of the Pandemic Agreement have seemingly agreed with such concerns. Article 24.2 states in unusually clear terms: ‘Nothing in the WHO Pandemic Agreement shall be interpreted as providing the WHO Secretariat, including the WHO Director-General, any authority to direct, order, alter or otherwise prescribe the national and/or domestic laws, as appropriate, or policies of any Party, or to mandate or otherwise impose any requirements that Parties take specific actions, such as ban or accept travellers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures or implement lockdowns.’ In practice, this clause has no effect, as there is no way of arriving at the interpretations Article 24.2 rules out, since the WHO simply does not have legal jurisdiction to force compliance. Regarding non-pharmaceutical measures, the signatories to the Pandemic Agreement merely agree to conduct research into their effectiveness and adherence. This includes not only epidemiology, but also ‘the use of social and behavioural sciences, risk communication and community engagement.’In addition, states agree on taking ‘measures to strengthen science, public health, and pandemic literacy in the population.’ Here, nothing is binding nor specified, leaving sufficient room for countries to determine how and to what degree to deploy non-pharmaceutical measures (for better or worse). It is just putting (again) in writing what States are already doing – an arguably pointless exercise.That said, references to the behavioural sciences are likely to trigger suspicion from those critical of the WHO. In particular, those concerned about the Covid response remember how behavioural scientists advised the British government to make people feel ‘sufficiently personally threatened’ and how UK Secretary of Health Matt Hancock shared WhatsApp chats about how he planned to ‘deploy’ the announcement of a new variant to ‘frighten the pants off everyone.’ Although it is the job of public health authorities to issue recommendations to guide the public, there are honest and more effective methods of doing so. Otherwise, public perceptions of disingenuousness undermine trust, something advocates of the Pandemic Agreement suggest is crucial for an effective pandemic response.In some ways, the explicit ruling out of WHO-imposed lockdowns or vaccine mandates is an excellent example of what the WHO calls ‘infodemic management.’ In the WHO’s ‘Managing Epidemics’ handbook, an infodemic is defined as ‘an overabundance of information, accurate or not, in the digital and physical space, accompanying an acute health event such as an outbreak or epidemic.’ Infodemic management also made it into the revised IHR, where “risk communication, including addressing misinformation and disinformation” is defined as a core capacity of public health. It is understandable that critics of infodemic management understand ‘addressing misinformation’ as a euphemism for censorship, especially given how scientists who spoke against mainstream narratives during Covid were sidelined and ‘cancelled.’ However, the first principle of infodemic management highlighted in ‘Managing Epidemics’ is ‘listening to concerns,’ which the Pandemic Agreement appears to have done by proactively ruling out lockdowns that they could not legally impose anyway. While the ‘zero draft’ three years ago still foresaw countries being expected to ‘tackle’ misinformation, this is now only mentioned in the preamble, where the timely sharing of information is said to prevent the emergence of misinformation. Nonetheless, the language around infodemics raises several concerns that remain unaddressed and require greater reflection. First, the criteria by which information is meant to be judged as accurate, and by whom, are unclear. Although this leaves the process undefined, allowing countries to design their own control mechanisms, it also leaves room for abuse. It is entirely feasible that some countries (with WHO support) could silence dissenting views under the guise of infodemic management. It is also not beyond imagination that mission creep will occur, where non-health-related information is also controlled under the pretext of ‘maintaining peace and security’ during a health or other emergency. Second, there is a serious risk that the poor management of information will exclude good science by accident, undermining overall public health. As witnessed during Covid, messages proclaiming that ‘the science is settled’ proliferated, and were often used to discredit credible science. Third, there is an underwritten presumption within the logic of infodemics that public health authorities and their affiliates are correct, that policies are always based entirely on the best evidence available, that those policies are free of conflicts of interest, that information from these authorities is never filtered nor distorted, and that people should not expect reason-giving from authorities via immanent critique or self-reflection. Clearly, public health institutions are like any other human institution, subject to the same potential biases and pitfalls. The Future of Pandemics and This AgreementWenham and Potluru from the London School of Economics estimate that the protracted negotiations on the Pandemic Agreement had already cost over $200 million by May 2024. Of course, this is only a fraction of the public expenditure on preparing for hypothetical future pandemics. The amount of ODA that the WHO, World Bank, and G20 have called for annually would correspond to about five to ten times the annual expenditure on combating tuberculosis – a disease that, according to WHO figures, has killed about as many people in the last five years as Covid-19, and at a much lower average age (representing higher years of life lost).Although the $10.5 billion a year in development aid for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response is unlikely to materialise, even a more cautious increase will come with opportunity costs. Moreover, these financial demands come at an inflection point in global health policy, where development assistance for health (DAH) is under massive pressure from serious stoppages and reductions from the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan. Thus, increase in scarcity requires the better use of health financing, not simply more of the same. Furthermore, as REPPARE has shown, the alarming statements of pandemic risk by the WHO, World Bank, and G20 are not well-grounded in empirical evidence. This means that the entire basis for the Pandemic Agreement is questionable. For example, the World Bank claims millions of annual deaths from zoonotic diseases, although the figure is less than 400,000 per year in the half-century before the Covid-19 pandemic, extrapolated to the current world population, 95% of which is attributable to HIV. The fact that many more new pathogens are being found today than just a few decades ago is not necessarily evidence of an increased risk, but rather the consequence of increased interest in research and, above all, the use of modern diagnostics and reporting processes.In many ways, the Pandemic Agreement is just a figurehead of a new pandemic industry that has already grown more robust in the last five years. This includes, for example, projects for pathogen surveillance, for which the Pandemic Fund set up at the World Bank in 2021 has already received $2.1 billion in donor commitments while raising almost seven billion for implementation (when additionality is calculated). In 2021, the WHO Pandemic Hub was opened in Berlin, where data and biological material from all over the world are collated as an early warning system for pandemics. In Cape Town, the WHO mRNA hub seeks to promote international technology transfer.And the 100 Days Mission, driven primarily by the public-private partnership CEPI, aims to ensure that vaccines are available in just 100 days during the next pandemic, which not only requires substantial investment in R&D and production facilities, but also a further speeding up of clinical trials and emergency use authorisation, posing potential risks regarding vaccine safetyTo coordinate the complex ecosystem of different pandemic initiatives, the signatories to the Pandemic Agreement will need to develop ‘whole-of-society’ pandemic plans that will presumably be ignored in the event of a real crisis, as happened with the existing plans in 2020. They are further expected to ‘report periodically to the Conference of the Parties, through the Secretariat, on their implementation of the WHO Pandemic Agreement.’ The WHO Secretariat, in turn, publishes ‘guidelines, recommendations and other non-binding measures.’ This suggests that the Pandemic Agreement will set global norms and seek compliance through the usual mechanisms of nudging, naming, and shaming, and through conditionalities imposed by the CFM or through other World Bank development loans. It is in the case of the latter where policy choices designed within the Conference of Parties could become more coercive on low-income countries.However, the importance of this new global pandemic bureaucracy should also not be overestimated, and the potency of the Pandemic Agreement is not immediately clear. After all, it is just one in a long list of United Nations agreements, only a few of which, such as the Climate Change Conference or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, receive any broader attention. Thus, it is feasible that both the Conference of Parties and Pandemic Agreement will become politically inert. Nevertheless, what tempers this moderate view is a key similarity between the three aforementioned policy areas. Namely, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and pandemics are all continually presented as an ‘existential threat,’ which drives media coverage, consequent political motivation, and continued investment. In the case of pandemic risk, the official narratives project an apocalyptic vision of ever-increasing pandemics (e.g., every 20 to 50 years), with ever-increasing severity (2.5 million dead per year on average), and ever-increasing economic costs (e.g,. $14 to $21 trillion per pandemic if investments are not made). Therefore, it is to be expected that the Pandemic Agreement will continue to enjoy a status of high politics and increased investment through perpetual fear and vested interests. Consequently, if the draft Pandemic Agreement is adopted at the 78th WHA and subsequently ratified by the required 60 countries, the key to its potency will be how various legal obligations, governance processes, financial instruments, and ‘partner’ commitments are defined and implemented into policy via the Conference of Parties (COP). In many ways, the drafters of the Agreement merely ‘kicked the can down the road’ regarding the most difficult and contentious disagreements in hopes that future consensus will be found during the COP.Here, comparisons and contrasts between the Climate COP and Pandemic COP could help to glean some useful insights on how the politics of the Pandemic Agreement might play out. Both have become industries with significant levels of vested governmental and corporate interest, both use fear to motivate political and fiscal action, and both rely heavily on the natural proclivities of the media to propagate fear and justify states of exception as dominating narratives. Tyler DurdenWed, 05/14/2025 - 22:35
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose on Wednesday, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell. Nvidia shares are back in positive territory for the year after climbing 4% on Wednesday. Boeing and Qatar Airways announced a deal for the Middle Eastern airline to buy up to 210 jets. U.S. President Donald Trump gave a speech at U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum praising Saudi Arabia and its crown prince. Steve Cohen, founder of investment firm Point72, said he thinks stocks could “go back toward the lows” in April.The “Magnificent Seven” group of stocks — comprising Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — drove much of the S&P 500’s sterling 23.31% gain in 2024.They have also been some of the hardest stocks hit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Those that rely heavily on global supply chains and export markets, such as Apple and Nvidia, suffered the most. By contrast, Meta and Microsoft, which derive more of their revenue from digital services, such as ad sales or enterprise software, actually saw their shares head upward this year.On Wednesday, Nvidia joined Meta and Microsoft to become the third member of the Magnificent Seven to trade in the green year to date. It’s a significant move because the chipmaker — as the word suggests — doesn’t deal in intangible products that can slip through trade barriers.Nvidia’s recovery suggests that deal-making under Trump — in terms of tariff agreements and broad bilateral ties, such as those he is forging with Saudi Arabia on his state visit — is providing businesses with a better environment. But it also emphasizes how volatile the market can be this year, when the engine behind 2024’s blistering rally can sputter out within the weeks surrounding Trump’s “Liberation Day.”What you need to know todayThree-day winning streak for S&P 500U.S. markets traded mixed Wednesday. The S&P 500 ticked up 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.72%. The tech-heavy index was lifted by a 4.7% rise in AMD shares after the chip company announced a $6 billion share buyback as well as a jump in Nvidia shares. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.21%. Asia-Pacific stocks fell Thursday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 declined around 0.9% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped nearly 1%.Nvidia is back in the greenNvidia on Wednesday climbed more than 4% on the back of news that it would sell more than 18,000 of its top artificial intelligence chips to Saudi Arabia. The share move puts Nvidia into positive territory for the year, becoming the latest “Magnificent 7” member stock to return to the green amid the for broader market’s recovery. Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla and Apple are still facing year-to-date losses in their share prices.Largest deal for Boeing and Qatar AirwaysBoeing and Qatar Airways on Wednesday announced a deal for the Middle Eastern airline to buy up to 210 jets during Trump’s state visit with the emir of Qatar. The order, which is the biggest in Qatar Airways’ history — and for Boeing, according to Trump — is a boost to the beleaguered planemaker, which hasn’t posted a profit since 2018.‘I like you too much’: Trump to Saudi crown princeAt the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum on Tuesday that was attended by CEOs such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Trump gave a speech in which he praised Saudi Arabia and told the country’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who was in the audience — “I like you too much.” Trump also met with Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia the same day.[PRO] Stocks could retest April lows: Steve CohenSteve Cohen, founder of investment firm Point72, said he thinks stocks could “go back toward the lows” in April and that there’s a 45% chance of a recession. Cohen, however, said a decline in the stock market would not necessarily be a “calamity.”And finally...Pallava Bagla | Corbis News | Getty ImagesCritical minerals such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese can be found in potato-sized nodules at the bottom of the seafloor.Trump’s critical minerals drive paves the way for a deep-sea gold rushSeeking to counter China’s mineral dominance, the Trump administration in April signed a sweeping executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining within U.S. and international waters.The move is designed to help private companies access billions of tons of potato-sized rocks known as polymetallic nodules, which are rich in strategically important minerals.The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a government agency, appeared to welcome Trump’s announcement, saying the executive order heralds “the next gold rush” and lays the ground for “a thriving domestic manufacturing industry.”
Stocks drift, dollar wobbles as markets bide time ahead of US data Yahoo FinanceStocks ease, dollar wobbles as markets bide time ahead of US data ReutersGlobal Markets Lower as Trade Deal Optimism Loses Steam; U.S. Data Eyed WSJEconomy: Asia Gains Altitude, Dollar Loses Ground CointribuneMarket Stalemate: US Debt Woes And Trade Policy Jitters Finimize
Elon Musk was part of the Trump coterie who flew to meet with the Saudis this week. The planned series of forums and spectacles was a way for Musk, who runs his own artificial intelligence (AI) company, xAI, to position himself within fierce peer competition for funding from the Saudis. ... [continued]The post Musk Visits With The Saudis — With US Citizens’ Private Data In His Pocket appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Clover Health is betting its future financial standing on its artificial intelligence subsidiary, Counterpart Health. Here's what the company had to say to its investors about its direction, the company's financial standing and why AI is the future.
European ports face an increasingly urgent mandate to reduce carbon emissions across their landside and waterside operations, driven not only by climate policies but also by local air quality concerns. The scale of the challenge is enormous yet manageable, provided clear strategies and timelines are established. My perspective is straightforward. ... [continued]The post Powering the Future: A 30-Year Roadmap to Zero-Emission Port Operations appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Compared with March 2025, plug-in vehicle sales dropped slightly in both New Zealand and Australia in April. In New Zealand, 649 cars with a plug were sold, approximately 10% of the market (7.3% BEV — 442 units, 3% PHEV — 207 units). In Australia, 8,628 cars with a plug were ... [continued]The post EV Sales in New Zealand — April Update appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Beam Global to Release Q1 2025 Operating Results, Conference Call Scheduled for Thursday, May 15, 2025 at 4:30 p.m. ET.
Oklo stock advanced Wednesday after the nuclear-power startup reported first-quarter earnings late Tuesday.The post Oklo Stock Soars After First-Quarter Earnings As AI Confidence Continues appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.
Portland's permitting department director said his office is already operating with a minimum level of staff necessary to meet demand. Proposed layoffs would leave it 'woefully understaffed.'
Two Central Florida restaurants shut down the week of May 4-10, according to data from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
Chemed (NYSE:CHE) has outperformed the market over the past 10 years by 5.49% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 16.17%. Currently, Chemed has a market capitalization of $8.36 billion. Buying $1000 In CHE: If an ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
CBTS, Cincinnati-based information technology company that sold last year to a global private equity group, has a new CEO at the helm.
Don Lemon Rages Over White Refugees: "Most Racist Shit Ever!" Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,Ex-CNN host Don Lemon had a total meltdown over Trump resettling a small number of white South African refugees in America, calling it “the most racist shit ever.”A mere 59 Afrikaners arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on Monday, prompting widespread derision and demonization from leftists and the media, who claimed they were not real refugees while also monstering them as white supremacists.The backlash to the refugees arriving in America was so vociferous that it became a stunning mask off moment in proving that anti-white hatred is still mainstream.Don Lemon hyperventilated over “this South African farmer bullshit, which is the most blatantly obvious racist shit ever,” implying that Afrikaners couldn’t be refugees because they “own most of the land and the property” in South Africa.Lemon failed to acknowledge that this is precisely why they are being targeted, sometimes violently, and officially by government discrimination in the form of compulsory land grabs.The former CNN anchor’s main bone of contention was that Trump was “trying to cut down on immigration from other countries” while favoring people from white countries.Don Lemon has a meltdown over South African refugees: “The most obvious racist sht ever”pic.twitter.com/eNXmnXTEXu— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) May 13, 2025Because legally admitting 59 white people from South Africa is totally the same as the millions upon millions of illegal immigrants who entered America under Joe Biden, many of whom were violent criminals.Lemon then ludicrously tried to justify the South African government taking land from farmers without compensation by claiming it’s only for land that isn’t being used.Who decides whether the land is being used or not?The same government seizing it without compensation.I’m sure that’s a completely impartial and fair process!Suddenly developing a flair for per capita statistics that leftists can’t seem to grasp when it comes to crime, Lemon complained that white South Africans own more land than blacks despite being a minority of the population.Apparently, this alone, in true Communist dictatorship style, is enough to justify the government just stealing it from them without compensation.As we highlighted earlier, African-American influencers are now suggesting that the white refugees should be violently targeted because they’re “racist,” proving precisely why they needed to flee South Africa in the first place.“These racist motherfuckers gonna find out the hard way, they’re gonna fuck around and find out, you can’t talk that shit over here on our soil,” he said.Tiktoker threatens the immigrants from South Africa and says they’re all racist and Trump brought them here to be racist“They’re gonna find out the hard way... These people will start getting their ass whooped”Seems totally normal and stable... pic.twitter.com/NuRrBxweap— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 14, 2025“So what’s gonna happen is that these people will start getting their ass whooped...we’re gonna start lighting motherfuckers up because they don’t know how to talk to black people in America,” he added.The influencer then complained that when white South African refugees start getting violently attacked, people will complain about it, prompting more discrimination against black Americans.* * *Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews. Tyler DurdenWed, 05/14/2025 - 10:45
CHICAGO, May 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The global Control Valves Market is projected to be valued at USD 7.2 billion in 2024 and reach USD 12.40 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 9.4% according to a new report by The Research Insights. Industry 4.0 has revolutionized the manufacturing and processing sectors through the integration of automation and real-time data into operational processes. The control valves market has seen a major expansion as factories and industrial plants pursue increased intelligence and operational efficiency. Simple mechanical valves are transforming into intelligent components with sensors and digital interfaces that enable remote monitoring.Download PDF Brochure: https://www.theresearchinsights.com/request_sample?id=11950Browse in-depth TOC on "Control Valves Market"106 - Tables74 - Figures213 - PagesBy Based on component, the valve body stands as the most important element within the control valves market because it serves as the primary structure that manages fluid flow in systems. Although actuators, positioners, and I/P converters improve functionality and automation capabilities the valve body remains critical for defining performance standards as well as durability and compatibility across various applications and fluid types. The increasing demands of industrial processes lead end users to focus on high-performance valve bodies capable of handling extreme conditions driving the control valves market growth.By Based on product type, the control valves market shows a growing preference for rotary control valves as their compact design and lower cost along with their wide application range make them the top choice. Ball and butterfly rotary valves deliver faster operation and superior throttling performance for large flow rates while requiring less maintenance compared to linear valves which makes them perfect for water treatment and oil & gas industries as well as HVAC applications. The increasing demand for rotary valve types drives significant changes in product development and procurement patterns throughout the global control valves market.By Based on size, the control valves market favors valve sizes between 1" and 6" because these dimensions fulfil the requirements needed for multiple industry applications including oil & gas production as well as chemical processing and power generation facilities. Control valves sized between 1" and 6" provide superior flow capacity and precision control along with installation flexibility which suits both typical and moderately demanding process environments. The segment's valves are affordable and simple to maintain while supporting automated actuation systems to increase their industrial automation market attractiveness. The size ranges from 1" to 6" maintains its position as the most sought-after segment in terms of volume demand across the worldwide control valves market.By end-use, the control valves market sees the oil & gas sector as its leading end-use field because this industry requires precise flow, pressure, and temperature management throughout its upstream, midstream, and downstream processes. Complex operations like crude oil extraction and gas transmission require control valves because system reliability and safety hold top importance. The rebirth of energy projects and increased financial commitments to LNG terminals along with offshore drilling infrastructure expansion cause the need for robust control valves to maintain steady growth.The oil & gas industry's focus on automated systems and predictive maintenance strategies complements the growing capabilities of smart valve technologies. The oil & gas industry demands advanced valve bodies and actuators because of harsh operating conditions and corrosive elements which helps maintain its leading position in the worldwide control valves market. The oil ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
Exelixis Inc. (NASDAQ:EXEL) reported adjusted earnings of 62 cents per share on Tuesday for the first quarter of 2025, compared to 17 cents a year ago, beating the consensus of 36 cents.The cancer-focused company reported quarterly sales of $555.45 million, beating the consensus of $498.18 million.Total revenues included net product revenues of $513.3 million, compared to $378.5 million for the comparable period in 2024.The increase in net product revenues was primarily due to an increase in sales volume and an increase in average net selling price.Also Read: FDA Approves Exelixis’ Lead Cancer Drug Cabometyx For Expanded Use In Neuroendocrine Tumors“Exelixis delivered outstanding financial performance in the first quarter of 2025, driven by accelerating growth in Cabometyx demand, new patient starts, and revenues,” said Michael M. Morrissey, president and CEO of Exelixis.“The Exelixis commercial team rapidly mobilized for the launch of CABOMETYX in advanced neuroendocrine tumors (NET) within hours of receiving U.S. regulatory ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
FTC rule bans hidden fees, requiring ticket sites to display full prices upfront by default.The post Ticketmaster and StubHub Must Now Display Upfront Prices for Concert Tickets appeared first on Idaho Statesman.
NEW YORK and NEW ORLEANS, May 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until July 8, 2025 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Compass Diversified Holdings (NYSE:CODI), if they purchased the Company's securities between May 1, 2024 and May 7, 2025, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.What You May DoIf you purchased securities of Compass and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email ([email protected]), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-codi/ ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
Inflation cooled again even as some tariffs took effect. But economists don't expect that to last
Archer Aviation Inc (NASDAQ:ACHR) shares are surging Tuesday following the company’s better-than-expected first-quarter results. Multiple analysts reiterated Buy ratings following the print. Here’s a look at what’s going on.What To Know: Archer reported a smaller-than-expected loss for the first quarter, posting a 17-cent loss versus estimates for a loss of 28 cents, per Benzinga Pro.The electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer said in the report that it plans to deliver its first Midnight Edition aircraft to the UAE in the coming months, with planned deployment expected later this year. Archer also highlighted its partnership with Palantir, and said the companies are working to build AI software for next-gen aviation systems.Archer reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $109 million for the first quarter and forecasted a second-quarter adjusted EBITDA loss of $100 million to $120 million. The company said its spending for the ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority has worked with the city and county for years to replace the existing Park Street Terminal with a multimodal facility that adds downtown Clearwater as a stop in the transit system. That plan is moving forward as the authority takes steps to prepare for construction.
Erickson, a longtime voice in right-wing media, rejected the idea that the gift was technically a bribe or outright corruption.
Oviedo, Fla., May 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dandy® Produce, a leading grower of fresh celery, radish and corn in the U.S., launches the "Shucks & Smiles Sweepstakes". Now through May 30, participants can enter HERE for 31 chances to win different prize packs, including one grand prize valued at $670, five secondary prizes valued at $210 each and 25 third place winners who will receive free product and coupons.At the end of the promotion, one lucky winner will be chosen to receive a brand name 22-inch griddle with grilling accessories, a variety of BBQ seasonings and rubs, along with a $250 gift card to a popular online grocery ordering and delivery service, and free Dandy corn sample coupons. Five additional winners will receive an 11-quart name brand cooler, pool float, insulated tumbler $50 online grocery and delivery service gift card as well as more Dandy corn products. The brand will also choose 25 winners to receive coupons to enjoy fresh corn even after the ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
The service will be called ESPN: "Simple, straightforward, clear," chief Jimmy Pitaro said Tuesday.
Plug Power Inc (NASDAQ:PLUG) Monday reported its first-quarter results.With U.S. policy for green energy posing challenges, the company is likely to shift its focus to international opportunities, according to JPMorgan.The Plug Power Analyst: Analyst Bill Peterson maintained a Neutral rating and price target of 96 cents.The Plug Power Thesis: The company reported its quarterly revenue at $134 million, in-line with its pre-announcement, and reiterated its second-quarter revenue guidance of $140 million-180 million, Peterson said in the note.Check out other analyst stock ratings.The wide range in Plug Power's revenue guidance was due to ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
AMSTERDAM, 13 mai 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- XPENG, constructeur automobile chinois à vocation mondiale spécialisé dans la haute technologie, signe un partenariat stratégique avec Plugsurfing, l’un des plus importants fournisseurs de services de recharge de véhicules électriques d’Europe. En conséquence, ses clients bénéficient désormais de plus de 940 000 bornes de recharge réparties dans 27 pays, et le réseau de recharge devient transcontinental pour relier l’Europe à l’Asie.
Deere (NYSE:DE) has outperformed the market over the past 5 years by 14.54% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 29.28%. Currently, Deere has a market capitalization of $135.63 billion. Buying $1000 In DE: If an ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
JMIR Mental Health invites submissions for a theme issue on AI-Powered Therapy Bots and Virtual Companions, with a focus on next-generation research that moves beyond proof of concept and addresses the real-world challenges, risks, and opportunities these technologies present in the context of digital psychiatry and mental health.
TAIPEI, May 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr.AI ( https://www.draiai.com/ ), an AI medical platform designed for healthcare professionals, has been honored with the 2025 COMPUTEX "Best Choice Award – Digital Healthcare Category" for its groundbreaking applications and outstanding performance in...
Fourth-quarter revenue was in line with LSEG mean estimates, but fourth-quarter operating profit posted a huge miss. Revenue for the full financial year rose 6.2%, but operating profit fell 12.2% and missed expectationsJapanese auto giant Honda missed fourth-quarter earnings estimates as operating profit plunged 76%, with the company bracing for the full impact of U.S. tariffs.Here are Honda’s results compared with mean estimates from LSEG: Revenue: 5.36 trillion yen ($47.26 billion) vs. 5.36 trillion yen Operating profit: 73.5 billion yen vs. 275.52 billion yenHonda’s fourth quarter ends March 31.For its financial year ended March, revenue came in at 21.69 trillion yen, compared to the average expectation of 21.63 trillion yen from LSEG and marking a 6.2% rise year on year.Operating profit fell 12.2% to 1.21 trillion yen, against the average LSEG estimate of 1.41 trillion yen.Honda’s results come amid trade tensions with the U.S., which has slapped a 25% tariff on foreign automobile imports.In March, Honda had reportedly decided to produce its next-generation Civic hybrid in the U.S. state of Indiana, instead of Mexico, to avoid potential tariffs on one of its top-selling car models, according to a Reuters exclusive.According to U.S. car marketplace Carpro, Asian automakers made up six of the top eight automakers in the U.S. by sales volume in 2024, with Honda in fourth place.Back in February, Honda and rival Nissan terminated talks over a $60 billion merger, which would have created the world’s third-largest automaker by sales volume.This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
Nolensville's population boom has landed it on a national list, placing the Williamson County city among the 10 fastest-growing communities across the United States.
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DHS Investigates Los Angeles For Allegedly Providing Federal Benefits To Illegal Immigrants Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),The Department of Homeland Security has issued a subpoena to Los Angeles County for records tied to a state-run assistance program, which the department alleges might have been used to unlawfully provide federal benefits to illegal immigrants.A Social Security Administration building in Burbank, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2020. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty ImagesHomeland Security Investigations served a Title 8 subpoena to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, which administers California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants.While the cash assistance program is a state-funded initiative, the federal subpoena seeks records from January 2021 to the present to determine whether any recipients received Supplemental Security Income benefits but who were ineligible, based on their immigration status.The requested documents include applications, immigration status records, proof of Supplemental Security Income ineligibility, and supporting affidavits, DHS said in an announcement.“Radical left politicians in California prioritize illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens access to cash benefits,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.“If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now. The gravy train is over. While this subpoena focuses only on Los Angeles County—it is just the beginning.”The move comes less than a month after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing federal agencies to crack down on misuse of Social Security Act funds. The April 15 directive, aimed at enforcing Executive Order 14218, calls on federal officials to identify and prevent payments to ineligible recipients, including those without lawful immigration status.Trump’s memorandum directs federal agencies to investigate fraud and prioritize enforcement in areas with high numbers of illegal immigrants. It also calls for expanding fraud prosecution programs through special assistant U.S. attorneys, particularly targeting identity theft and improper benefit payments.According to DHS, more than 2 million illegal immigrants were issued Social Security numbers in fiscal year 2024 under prior policies. The department said it is now working with other agencies to prevent any further disbursement of benefits to ineligible recipients.The Social Security Administration previously expressed support for the White House memo and outlined steps it is taking to prevent future benefit fraud. In an April 16 statement, acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said the agency is committed to ensuring that benefits are “paid only to those who should receive them.”The Social Security Administration said it is reviewing questionable earnings reports and considering whether to resume civil monetary penalties in cases of fraud. The agency also confirmed that it recently reclassified more than 6,300 Social Security numbers as ineligible after identifying recipients who had been paroled into the U.S. despite criminal records or national security concerns.California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, and the California Department of Social Services did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times before publication.Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report. Tyler DurdenMon, 05/12/2025 - 22:35
The U.S. and China on Monday agreed to an initial trade deal that cuts “reciprocal” tariffs from 125% to 10% for 90 days. Chinese officials, influencers and state-run media on Monday were casting the trade agreement with U.S. as a victory. Now that the U.S. and China have struck an agreement over tariffs, major global banks are growing optimistic on Beijing’s economy and market in 2025. News of the two superpowers’ trade deal turbocharged U.S. stocks on Monday. Shares of technology and consumer discretionary stocks jumped. The idea of a “Trump put” was resurrected by the president’s trade agreement with China. The S&P 500 shot past a key technical indicator, and looks to be on its way to surpass another.Over the weekend, both the U.S. and China agreed to slash tariffs on each other for 90 days from 125% to 10%. That’s much more than expected, as Trump on Friday has said that an 80% tariff on China “seems right!” The U.S. is still keeping its 20% fentanyl-related levy on China, so the total duty on Beijing adds up to 30%.While high, 30% is a far cry from 145%. Investors were ecstatic, and sent stocks soaring. Technology names such as Nvidia and Broadcom, as well as consumer discretionary stocks including Nike and Starbucks, rallied. The market frenzy brought to mind the “Trump put,” the notion a falling market will prompt measures from the president that prop it up.That said, as Dario Perkins, managing director of global macro strategy at TS Lombard pointed out, it is “(sort of) of funny that the optimistic case for Trump 2.0 is basically that it will reverse most of what it has done so far.”A Trump put, perhaps, is just the president putting things back where they once were.What you need to know todayChina and U.S. suspend most tariffsThe U.S. and China on Monday agreed to an initial trade deal that suspends most tariffs on imports for 90 days. “Reciprocal” tariffs between both countries will be cut from 125% to 10%, but the U.S.′ 20% duties on Chinese imports relating to fentanyl will remain, meaning total tariffs on China stand at 30%. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday that the deal represents progress in the country’s “decoupling” from China for “strategic necessities.”A win for China, according to BeijingReferring to the U.S.-China trade deal, U.S. President Donald Trump said Beijing “agreed to open up,” but offered few other details. However, Chinese officials, influencers and state-run media on Monday were casting the trade agreement with U.S. as a victory and vindication of Beijing’s negotiating strategy, “China’s firm countermeasures and resolute stance have been highly effective,” said a social media account linked to China’s national broadcaster CCTV.Deal boosts China’s prospectsNow that the U.S. and China have struck an agreement over tariffs, major global banks are growing optimistic on Beijing’s economy and market in 2025. In a late Monday note, UBS hiked its forecast for China’s economic growth to between 3.7% and 4% from 3.4%, while Nomura raised China equities to “tactical Overweight” and rotated some funds out of its position in India to China, the Japanese said in a note following the trade talks.Investors cheered trade dealNews of the two superpowers’ trade deal turbocharged U.S. stocks on Monday. The S&P 500 shot up 3.26%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.81% and the Nasdaq Composite surged 4.35%. U.S. Treasury yields and oil prices jumped during U.S hours as the chance of a recession appeared to diminish. However, Asia-Pacific markets were mixed Tuesday. Even though Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose more than 1.7%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell nearly 1.5%.Technology shares rallied stronglyMembers of the so-called Magnificent 7 group added an aggregate $837.5 billion in market value on Monday, the largest collective move for the group since April 9. Outside this bag of stocks and their technology peers, consumer discretionary stocks also rallied. The U.S.-China agreement resurrected the idea of the “Trump put,” in which the president will take action to prevent markets from falling too drastically.[PRO] S&P shoots past key levelWith the S&P’s rally on Monday, the broad-based index has broken through a key technical level. The speed of the movement, however, is not typical, and suggests that investors were caught off guard by trade developments — and might continue to be for the next market milestone.And finally...Betty Laura Zapata | Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe app icons for Revolut and Monzo displayed on a smartphone.Fintechs that raked in profits from high interest rates now face a key testFinancial technology firms were initially the biggest losers of interest rate hikes by global central banks in 2022, which led to tumbling valuations.But with time, that change in the interest rate environment steadily boosted profits for fintechs. This is because higher rates boost what’s called net interest income — or the difference between the rates charged for loans and the interest paid out to savers.Now, fintechs — especially digital banks — face a key test as a broad decline in interest rates raises doubts about the sustainability of relying on this heightened income over the long term.
A study by the jobs website Career.IO finds one out of four people admit to lying, exaggerating, or giving inaccurate information on their job application.
The Dow Jones surged on the stock market today. Treasury Secretary Bessent spoke out on China amid tariff progress. Alibaba cleared an entry.The post Stock Market Today: Dow Jones Soars As Bessent Says This On China; Nvidia Surges, Alibaba Clears Entry (Live Coverage) appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.
Stock Market Today: Dow Jones Soars As Bessent Says This On China; Nvidia Surges, Alibaba Clears Entry (Live Coverage) Investor's Business DailyStock market today: Dow gains 900 points, while S&P 500, Nasdaq surge as US-China deal spurs a rush into stocks Yahoo FinanceRetail Stocks Jump on Lower China Tariffs. It Isn’t the ‘All Clear’ Yet. Barron'sTrump China tariff truce ignites stock markets – will it also pump up president's poll numbers? Fox NewsDow Jones Futures Surge As U.S., China Slash Tariffs; Tesla, Palantir, Alibaba Jump Investor's Business Daily
Opening marks the second of a 55-branch buildout in the Carolinas over three years CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Huntington National Bank (Huntington) has officially opened its first North Carolina branch at 6700 Fairview Road, Suite 113, in Charlotte's SouthPark area....
OSI Systems (NASDAQ:OSIS) has outperformed the market over the past 5 years by 11.66% on an annualized basis producing an average annual return of 26.74%. Currently, OSI Systems has a market capitalization of $3.82 billion. Buying $1000 In OSIS: If ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
Apple May Hike iPhone Prices For First Time Since 2017 Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 17 lineup on September 9, with pre-orders likely to open later that week—consistent with the company's usual early-September launch cycle. However, this year's release may come with a notable deviation from the norm: according to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is considering its first iPhone price increase since the debut of the iPhone X in 2017.Sources familiar with the upcoming iPhone lineup told WSJ that CEO Tim Cook is expected to steer clear of linking any potential price increases to the ongoing U.S.-China tariff dispute. While most of Apple's devices are still manufactured in China, the company has steadily shifted iPhone production to India to mitigate tariffs and potential supply chain snarls. Positive news emerged earlier, with the US and China agreeing to limit tariffs, including reducing levies on Chinese goods entering the US from 145% to 30%. This 90-day cool-off period will allow both economic superpowers to move forward and attempt to strike a resolution to end or at least continue de-escalating the trade war. The people said Apple's most profitable, high-end phones, such as the Pro and Pro Max models, will still be produced in China. They pointed out that Indian production lines are still incapable of mass-producing Pro models. Jefferies estimates that approximately 65 million iPhones were sold in the US market last year, 36 to 39 million of which were Pro or Pro Max models. Apple hasn't raised iPhone pricing since the X debuted in 2017, keeping prices at a $999 ceiling. The sources did not indicate future pricing for the models.Via Apple Club...Here's more from WSJ:These circumstances have led Apple to look at what supply-chain insiders described as the least-bad choice: raising prices on the new iPhones to preserve profit and finding reasons other than tariffs to explain the move. It couldn't be determined what new features Apple may offer to help justify price increases.Apple traditionally rolls out new models of its iPhones in the fall. If it follows convention, this fall's models will be known as the iPhone 17 lineup. Current iPhone models range from the base model iPhone 16, which starts at $799, to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which costs $1,199 and up.It's clear that Apple can't put a premium on Apple Intelligence because it has so far been a bust...Apple Shares Slide On Report Cook' Lost Confidence' In AI HeadStocks Slide As Apple Exec Admits Efforts To Replace Google For AI SearchIn Trump's first term, Tim Cook lobbied the administration to exempt some of its devices from tariffs. Before the trade war broke out earlier this year, Cook visited the White House."By the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027, we are optimistic that India will be capable of meeting both the U.S. and India's demand, but China will still be important" for sourcing components, Abhilash Kumar, an analyst with tech research firm TechInsights, said, quoted by WSJ. Jefferies analysts cautioned that increasing production of high-end iPhone models in India to around 40 million within two years was a "tall order."A previous WSJ report cited sources who said Apple has been studying various ways to shift overseas iPhone production to the US—a move that could take years. Wedbush Securities suggested that an American iPhone could cost $3,500. Tyler DurdenMon, 05/12/2025 - 10:45
Big gains for Wall Street, along with other global stock markets including the TSX today on news the Trump administration is pausing tariffs with China ahead of a new trade deal.
President Donald Trump says he'll set a 30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower the cost of prescription drugs in a sweeping executive order that he will sign. Trump will sign an executive order calling on the nation’s health department to...
Drowning in debt? This company can negotiate your debts in half. For example, this Green Beret and father of three, $84K in debt, is saving $700 a month on payments.This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, a personal finance...
Mining and metals company South32 said on Monday that Anglo American executive Matthew Daley would become its new CEO in 2026, replacing Graham Kerr who would step down later that year after leading the company since its demerger from BHP.Daley would join the diversified miner as deputy CEO on February 2, 2026, before succeeding Kerr later in the year, the company said in a statement.
SHANGHAI, May 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Smartee Denti-Technology, a global leader in clear aligner manufacturing and digital orthodontic solutions, projects to reduce annual CO2 emissions by 209,370 kg through its newly operational rooftop solar installation at the Jiaxing smart factory—equivalent to the annual carbon absorption of 11,700+ mature trees. This initiative anchors its 2025 ESG strategy, integrating renewable energy, employee welfare, and agile governance to align business growth with sustainability goals.Environmental: Solar Leadership with Data-Driven ProjectionsSmartee's facility in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China, equipped with 20,000 sqm rooftop photovoltaic panels, which have a capacity of 2MW. The installation is sufficient to meet 50% of the factory's energy requirements. This initiative reduces CO2 emissions by 209,370 kg/year, equivalent to planting 11,700+ trees.Additionally, the facility ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
Asia stocks rise on US-China trade deal, Indo-Pak deescalation Investing.comStock futures rise after ‘substantial progress’ is made in US-China trade negotiations CNNAsian shares advance as details awaited on progress in China-US trade talks CityNews HalifaxAsia-Pacific as markets cheer India-Pakistan ceasefire and U.S.-China trade deal CNBCStock Market Today: Dow Futures Jump on Hints of Trade De-Escalation With China WSJ
Volvo and Cupra are both contemplating the sale of plug-in hybrids in the US, but tariffs had cultural challenges abound. The post Electrified Cars From Volvo & Cupra That May Or May Not Come To America appeared first on CleanTechnica.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — As gold prices soar to record highs resulting from global economic jitters, hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars’ worth of gold are circulating through the doors of the St. Vincent Jewelry Center in downtown Los Angeles...
At least 10 people in the U.S. have been sickened in a listeria outbreak linked to ready-to-eat food products, and a producer is voluntarily recalling several products, federal officials said.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Saturday that federal, state and local officials are investig...
At 17, this high school student earns a five-figure salary thanks to his very lucrative side hustle. Stewartville Star
Delray Beach, FL, May 11, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In terms of value, the Concrete Sealers Market size is estimated to be valued at USD 2.03 billion in 2024 and reach USD 2.95 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 6.4% between 2024 and 2030, as per the recent study by MarketsandMarketsTM. Concrete sealers are currently in high demand due to the advancements in sealer technology. Recent improvements in concrete sealer technology, including nanotechnology and eco-friendly formulations, are driving the market growth. Sealers with a nanotech base penetrate deeper into the concrete’s pores, creating a substantial barrier to moisture, chemicals, and abrasion.
What are the largest residential builders in Nashville? We ranked builders by number of single-family home permits issued in 2024.
The Changing Face Of Organized Crime In The United States Authored by Allen Stein via The Epoch Times,As the snow and icy rain began to fall on that early winter morning in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, something big was going down.They didn’t know it, but Jan. 20, 2011, was the beginning of the end for the Mafia.On that day, the largest law enforcement operation against America’s most infamous crime organization commenced. Hundreds of FBI agents, equipped with criminal warrants, began arresting mob suspects across three states.This operation was different from the many others that had been launched in the past. Authorities were going for not just the heart of the Mafia—the crime family bosses—but also individuals further down the hierarchy.By the end of the day, ‘made men’ like Luigi Manocchio, the former boss of the New England Mafia; Andrew Russo, the street boss of New York’s Colombo family; and his acting underboss, Benjamin Castellazzo were in custody.More than 125 individuals were arrested and charged with felonies including murder, extortion, and loan sharking.The FBI’s dragnet even captured several labor union officials suspected of collaborating with the Mafia.U.S. attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, said the FBI’s largest single-day operation, sent a “strong message” in the fight against traditional organized crime. And that wasn’t the end of it.Still reeling from the 2001 operation, the Mafia was hit again on March 12, 2015, when FBI agents arrested 10 members of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family on charges of murder and prostitution.In 2025, the seven traditional crime families known as La Cosa Nostra—meaning “This thing of ours”—are a shadow of their former selves.While the Mafia was mostly a homegrown threat, there is now a much larger danger facing the United States.Kristen Setera, spokesperson for the FBI’s Boston field office, said that the organized crime landscape has changed significantly since the late 20th century.Back then, crime was often organized around hierarchical “families” that operated within neighborhoods, cities, and states.Now, the United States is dealing with the rise of international criminal enterprises that possess multi-billion-dollar war chests and have a global reach.Outside of the Mexican drug cartels are the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the Salvadoran MS-13 gang.The most insidious of their crimes is the proliferation of illicit fentanyl and other opioids into American society, a flood that was responsible for almost 70 percent of the overdose deaths in the United States in 2024, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).In 2020, the FBI requested more than $137 million in program enhancements to combat transnational organizations and cartels. By 2024, that request increased to $196 million.In the first quarter of 2025, the DEA seized more than 13.5 million fentanyl pills.On Feb. 20, the State Department designated several Mexican cartels, as well as Tren de Aragua and MS-13, as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.The Department of Justice said the order marks a significant escalation in the United States government’s fight to eradicate drug cartels and foreign crime groups operating on domestic soil.“We must do more than try to mitigate the enormous harms these groups cause in America,” the DOJ said in a statement.“It is not enough to stem the tide of deadly poisons, such as fentanyl, that these groups distribute in our homeland.”In fiscal year 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) arrested more than 3,600 individuals linked to fentanyl seizures and seized 2,200 pill presses and more than 27,000 pounds of illicit fentanyl at the nation’s borders. The fentanyl alone was equivalent to more than 738 million doses.Salvatore Sammy "The Bull" Gravano meets with an Epoch Times reporter in Arizona on April 10, 2025. Allan Stein/The Epoch TimesA Bull in the FBI’s ShopSalvatore Sammy “The Bull” Gravano has been deeply entrenched in the inner circles of the Mafia machine and has survived.The former underboss of New York’s Gambino family sounds almost sentimental as he says, “The Mafia is nothing like it used to be—that’s for sure. They’ve boiled down to nothing. It’s not the same.”If his nostalgia is honest then it’s also ironic, considering he assisted the FBI in bringing down Gambino family leader, John Gotti.In 1991, Gravano—nicknamed “The Bull” after someone remarked that he fought like a bull in street fights—agreed to testify against Gotti, who was known as “Dapper Don” for his stylish appearance and “Teflon Don” for his remarkable ability to avoid criminal charges.For his cooperation, Gravano, now 80 years old, served one year of a five-year sentence in federal prison after admitting to his involvement in 19 murders that implicated Gotti, who died in prison on June 10, 2002, from laryngeal cancer.Gravano also confessed to participating in the 1985 unsanctioned killing of Paul Castellano, the former head of the Gambino family, before Gotti came to power.Gravano entered the federal Witness Protection Program in Colorado but left in 1995 and relocated to Arizona.How It All Came ApartGravano believes that advancements in surveillance technology, a concerted decades-long effort by the FBI, DEA, and other law enforcement agencies, and use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act ultimately brought down the organization.“I think all of them combined—in my era, in my time, [the FBI] combined everybody, all over the place—in New York, they were everywhere,” Gravano told The Epoch Times.“When you start sticking your finger in the FBI’s face and the government’s face, they’re gonna keep coming at you. So they joined forces—the FBI and the New York Organized Crime Task Force, the DEA,” Gravano said.“It was the enormous power of the government that came down on them in a big way, and they destroyed quite a bit of it. With the RICO law and the witness protection program, guys were flipping like pancakes. So, you add all of those things together and the Mafia—its era—has passed away.“They had teams on every family. All five [New York] families had a special team—14 to 16 agents working on each family. And ... they busted everybody,” said Gravano.The federal RICO Act of 1970 was aimed at combating organized crime by enabling its victims to seek recovery through civil lawsuits.RICO imposes a criminal penalty of 20 years in prison for convictions showing a pattern of racketeering by the accused.“It allowed for prosecution of organized crime in a way that had never been done before,” said Mafia expert Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas.“You did not have to prove that the boss of the family had actually pulled the trigger in a murder. He was involved in it because of his association. The burden of proof is reduced significantly.”James "Whitey" Bulger (R) is escorted from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to a waiting vehicle at an airport in Plymouth, Mass., on June 30, 2011. Stuart Cahill/The Boston Herald via APBigger Fish to FrySetera would not confirm if the FBI Boston field office had gone so far as to disband its organized crime squad and reassign its agents.She told The Epoch Times via email that the FBI Boston continues to allocate resources to combat transnational and regional organized criminal enterprises.“As a matter of general practice, and in keeping with longstanding policy, the FBI doesn’t discuss how it allocates personnel and resources to address today’s dynamic threat environment,” Setera said.She said disclosing such information could give criminals and foreign adversaries an advantage.“That said, every year, every field office across the FBI takes a hard look at the threats in their respective area of responsibility and adjusts resources assigned to mitigate those threats to ensure each one is adequately being worked. FBI Boston is no exception,” Setera said.The FBI’s Boston field office, responsible for large parts of New England, has played a central role in combating organized crime over the past 50 years.This includes significant efforts against the Patriarca crime family and the infamous Irish mobster James “Whitey” Bulger from South Boston.Bulger became an informant for the FBI but fled Boston in 1994 after receiving a tip that he was facing murder charges.After 16 years on the run, authorities caught up with Bulger, then 81, who was living in Santa Monica in 2011. He was tried and convicted and died in prison at the hands of a fellow inmate in 2018.FBI agents flank Vincent Asaro as they escort the reputed mobster from FBI offices in New York on Jan. 23, 2014. Charles Eckert/Newsday via APToday’s GangsGravano stresses that there are intrinsic differences between the Mafia and gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua–most notably, in the use of violence.“My captain always told me, ‘We can use violence, but as a last resort. In other words, you get into an argument, you gotta chill. Otherwise, you’re an animal,’” Gravano said.“These gangs are so [expletive] dangerous. They’ll rob a kid’s bike, kill the kid for the bike. You don’t see Mafia guys doing that,” he said.“These people are completely different.”Unlike modern crime syndicates, traditional organized crime families adhered to a specific code of conduct, Gravano said.Gravano said the sanctioned killing of a Mafia member is a serious and complicated matter; it requires planning and the approval of the family boss. Breaking the code often meant a death sentence.He sees a big difference between the Mafia and the Mexican cartels.Drug trafficker Waldemar Lorenzana Lima, related to the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested on April 28, 2011, in Guatemala City. Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images“They don’t have a code of honor. The Mafia did have a code of honor,” he said. “There’s a lot of us who broke the code of honor a number of times—I mean, I broke it myself. I took it out on a boss—killed a boss—Paul Castellano.Gravano said of the cartel and gang members: “These are people, like, if a guy cooperates [with law enforcement], they want to kill the wife, the kids—the rest” of their family.“We don’t kill kids. We don’t kill women. I mean, it happens once in a blue moon, but for practical purposes, we don’t do anything like that.”MS-13 has more than 10,000 members operating in at least 10 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Department of Justice. The department said thousands more are involved in gang activities, including theft, intimidation, and murder in Central America and Mexico.“MS-13 is organized by subsets known as ‘cliques,’ and each clique typically has one or more leaders, commonly referred to as ’shot callers,'” the Justice Department stated.Between 2005 and 2014, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested approximately 4,000 members of MS-13, which represents about 13 percent of the 31,000 gang members arrested nationwide, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research organization.Of those arrested with MS-13 affiliations, at least 92 percent were illegal immigrants and 16 percent of the individuals had illegally entered the United States at least twice.While MS-13 affiliates made up 13 percent of all gang-related arrests during that time period, they accounted for 35 percent of murderers arrested by ICE, the report noted.Down but Not OutWhile La Cosa Nostra may no longer have the cunning clout it once did, the FBI reports that it continues to pose a “significant threat” in the New York metropolitan area, New England, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit.Through its investigations, the FBI has created an organizational chart of La Cosa Nostra that resembles a corporate board or commission.At the top of the hierarchy is the crime family’s “boss” or don, along with his “consigliere,” who acts as an adviser.The “underboss” is second in command, followed by the “capo,” a ranking member in charge of a crew of “soldiers.”All these “soldiers” are “made men” who have taken an oath of silence.At the lowest level of the hierarchy are the “associates,” uninitiated crew members who participate in various crimes under the family’s protection and are entitled to a share of the profits.In 1988, John Gotti promoted Gravano to the position of consigliere after the latter had served as a captain for several years.Gravano believes that traditional organized crime is far less glamorous than it was in the last century.“Sooner or later, you got [law enforcement] people looking at you all the time. Sooner or later, you’re going to jail. And you’re going to do heavy time,” Gravano said.“I don’t know why a young guy would want to get into it any more—because it’s stylish, maybe. But it’s going to bring you nothing but headaches.”Gravano has seen other internal changes in “the life” of the Mafia that have undermined its once dominant role.The traditional code of conduct, once a matter of life and death during Prohibition, is fast losing its influence, he said.The Mafia code of silence, known as “omerta,” was a pillar of loyalty, Gravano said.Old-school mobsters facing jail time were less likely to “rat” on other members, Schumacher said.“Back in the day, these guys were willing to serve their time. They would not flip. That did change during the ‘70s and ’80s,” he said.“You started seeing pretty high-profile mobsters—including Sammy “The Bull”—becoming government witnesses. That’s devastating evidence.“He really was a big factor in taking down John Gotti.”That code died when mobsters testified against other mobsters during the 1990s and 2000s.The goal was to secure the best possible deal with the prosecution to obtain lighter jail sentences and avoid getting killed for cooperating with authorities, he said.“I see [the Mafia] disappearing more and more,” Gravano said. “And I think there’s a lot of money to be made legitimately. Why would I want to be in the Mafia today?”Times have changed, Gravano said.Once, the Mafia had control over the labor unions through which it gained access to lucrative construction projects in the cities.“You can’t get control of those unions now [with] 50 million phone cameras,” Gravano said. “Everybody’s taking pictures. You can’t get near the unions anymore.”The Sheriff and the MobsterAfter Gravano spent 18 months in the government’s witness protection program in Colorado, he moved to Arizona and became involved in the illegal trafficking of recreational narcotics in the late 1990s.In June 2001, he pleaded guilty in Maricopa County, Arizona, to state charges for the distribution of the street drug ecstasy. His sentence included 19 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. He was released in 2017 and remains on supervised parole for the rest of his life.Joe Arpaio, 92, served as a federal narcotics agent for 32 years before becoming the head of the DEA’s Arizona field office.In 1993, he was elected as the sheriff of Maricopa County and became known for his tough stance on crime and unconventional punishment methods.He reinstituted chain gangs, required inmates to wear pink underwear, and had them live in a tent city and eat bologna sandwiches. These moves earned Arpaio the moniker, “America’s Toughest Sheriff.”Gravano and Arpaio’s paths eventually crossed at a Trump support rally during the 2024 election.They also met twice after the election to discuss the realities of organized crime and the prison conditions that Gravano experienced in Maricopa County while Arpaio was the sheriff.Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio speaks at a news conference at the Sheriff's headquarters in Phoenix on Dec. 18, 2013. Ross D. Franklin/AP PhotoAs a former narcotics agent, Arpaio believes that the Mafia’s involvement in illicit drug trafficking—cocaine, heroin, and marijuana—was their “worst mistake,” one that brought the full weight of the DEA and FBI upon them.“That brought everybody down on them,” he said.Over the years, Arpaio has developed a perspective about the mob compared to their violent foreign counterparts.“The mob had their regulations, which were you didn’t kill kids. And you didn’t kill cops,” Arpaio told The Epoch Times. “The so-called Mafia [foreign gangs and cartels] today kill kids; they’re vicious, and they kill cops. So there’s a big difference.”Mafia expert Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas, said it’s a misconception that crime families shunned narcotics trafficking before the emergence of Mexican drug cartels.“You go back to the Prohibition era, and the Mafia was involved in drug trafficking,” he said.“There’s this myth that the Mafia wouldn’t touch drugs—that the bosses didn’t want anyone involved in selling drugs. While sometimes they would say that publicly, they were actively engaged in drug trafficking,” Schumacher said.“Today, I suspect the Mexican cartels have kind of a stranglehold on that.”A soldier stands guard inside a clandestine chemical drug processing laboratory discovered in Mexico on Feb. 9, 2012. Hector Guerrero/AFP/Getty ImagesWill the Mafia Ever Return?Arpaio said that the term “Mafia” will endure even after the crime families have disappeared.“The name of the Mafia isn’t disappearing,” Arpaio said. “You’ve got crime stories and all this having to do with the mob, the old mob. There’s only one Mafia.”Schumacher said that the five New York families—Bonanno, Columbo, Gambino, Genovese, and Luchese—are still active.They continue their involvement in illegal bookmaking, loan sharking, tax fraud, and stock market fraud, with a greater emphasis on white-collar crime.“There’s not much killing anymore—not much of that kind of stuff,” Schumacher said. “It’s more in finding illegal ways to make money.”“There are still remnants of the Mafia in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit. But it is fading fast.”ICE agents apprehend fugitive criminal aliens for alleged involvement in the illegal narcotics trade in Boston on Nov. 4, 2019. ICE‘Misplaced Fascination’Even as traditional organized crime is waning, the public’s fascination persists, Schumacher said.“We should never look at it as glamorous,” he cautioned. “There was almost nothing positive about it. It sold a lot of newspapers. I can say that.”“One of the reasons for nostalgia is that some of the mob bosses had charisma, personality, fueled by tabloid journalism and Hollywood.“We created this monster, if you will. There’s nothing wrong with studying history, learning it, being interested in it, as long as we maintain our perspective.”Gravano now focuses on his podcast ‘Our Thing with Sammy The Bull’ and his YouTube channel called ‘Salvatore Sammy The Bull Gravano’.He has chosen to live his life openly and share his story, and recognizes the risks that come with this decision.“I like the road, dealing with people—legitimate people.”In September 2024, he formally became a born-again Christian. He wears a solid gold and diamond pinky ring to signify his past life in the mob.“I changed when I left the life,” Gravano said.“I don’t miss the life. But when I think about it, everything I’ve done—the good, the bad, the ugly—has made me what I am today.” Tyler DurdenSun, 05/11/2025 - 22:25
In a bid to ease the ongoing tariff war, senior negotiators from the US and China have resumed high-level trade talks.What Happened: On Sunday US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are spearheading the discussions in Geneva. This marks the first publicized, face-to-face negotiations since the initiation of heavy tariffs by both nations.President Donald Trump characterized the talks as a “very good” meeting and expressed his wish for China to become more receptive to American business. US trade chief Jamieson Greer is also a part of the negotiation team.On Saturday in a post on Truth Social, Trump said a “great progress” was made. “A very good meeting today with China, in Switzerland. Many things discussed, much agreed to. A total reset negotiated in a friendly, ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. & DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 11, 2025--
Musk’s DOGE (“Department of Government Efficiency”) really has it all wrong. This group of non-federal employees insists that government waste is strangling the US economy, but the redistribution of funds isn’t actually making the US federal government more efficient — it’s benefiting the über wealthy with their insatiable appetite for ... [continued]The post More And More Questions Arise About The Supposed Efficiency Goals Of Musk’s DOGE appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Mark Cuban makes frightening inflation prediction for consumers TheStreetMark Cuban Issues Grim 4-Word Warning to Consumers Men's JournalMark Cuban Slams Trump's Silence On Small Businesses, Says 'Not A Single Word To Help The 33 Million Small Businesses In This Country' BenzingaCan't Get Tomatoes Or Avocados Because Of Tariffs? Mark Cuban Jokes That Twinkies And Ho-Hos Made In US Bakeries Are The Perfect Replacement Yahoo FinanceMark Cuban makes a harsh comment about tariffs TheStreet
NEW YORK, May 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Why: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, continues to investigate potential securities claims on behalf of shareholders of Backblaze, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLZE) resulting from allegations that Backblaze may have issued materially misleading...
MedicAlert introducing technology that will allow 911 dispatchers to access records CTV NewsView Full Coverage on Google News
Featuring Black-owned and wellness businesses such as doulas and a laundry/cafe, The Aux business hub opened in Evanston.
Number Of Jailed Journalists Remains High 361 journalists were imprisoned as a result of their work as of December 1, 2024, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Statista's Anna Fleck points out that this number was the second highest on record since the CPJ started collecting this data in 1992, following only after 2022 when at least 369 journalists were incarcerated. You will find more infographics at StatistaThese figures do not include those who were jailed and released throughout the year.At the end of 2024, China had the largest number of journalists held behind bars (50). This is likely a low estimate, according to a CPJ report, since censorship makes it difficult to determine the exact number of imprisoned journalists. The next top jailers of journalists were Israel (43), Myanmar (35), Belarus (31) and Russia (30).Together, these five countries accounted for more than half of the global total of imprisoned journalists (53 percent), as of the day of the census. Tyler DurdenSat, 05/10/2025 - 22:45
China has just solved one of the biggest problems with electric cars by launching batteries guaranteed to be fire and explosion-free. Farmingdale ObserverZeekr Becomes One of 1st NEV Makers to Pass CN New National Standard for Power Batteries AASTOCKS.comBloomberg Evaluates Car Chassis from China’s CATL Thailand Business NewsCATL electric vehicle battery achieves zero fire risk certification in China International Fire & Safety JournalChinese battery-maker becomes the first to meet ‘No Fire, No Explosion’ standard Interesting Engineering
China has covered a desert with solar panels and confirmed it could change the ecosystem forever. Stewartville Star(PDF) China's Green Power Experiment: Whither the Environment? ResearchGateMore than two-thirds of all clean tech investment last year was in China, report says Tech BrewAs China Cuts Gas Demand, Uzbekistan Eyes Renewables Opportunity The Times Of Central AsiaChina’s Quest to Become the World’s First Industrial “Electrostate” Microgrid Media
I am writing in response to the recent letter to the editor about Democrats and gang members [”Democrats and gang members,” April 24]. I agree with the writer that it is sad that no Democrats stood up to acknowledge the profound grief this woman is experiencing over the murder of her daughter. But I feel compelled to point out that the Republicans have time and again been uncaring towards victims of gun violence, in particular the mass shootings that have taken place in so many of our schools. I would also like to point out that it has not been proven that any of the men sent to the prison in El Salvador were gang members, indeed that there is no evidence that they are, regardless of what President Donald Trump and ICE officials have been saying. The fact that these men were denied due process means that no connection to gangs will ever be proven.
US-China tariff talks to continue Sunday, an official tells AP, as Trump touts 'great progress made'
President Donald Trump says “great progress” was being made in ongoing U.S.-China talks over tariffs menacing the global economy, and even suggested a “total reset" was on the table as tariff negotiations are set to continue Sunday in Switzerland. No...
Leaders in business, education, entertainment, public service, philanthropy, media, healthcare, sports, and the defense of the United States honored with the prestigious Ellis Island Medals of Honor During Gala on Ellis Island **** Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden, Receives Global...
The estate, across from the Wilmington Country Club, was purchased by E.I. du Pont in 1812. Here's a look inside the 10.5-acre property.
Canadians gleefully boycott $20B a year US industry... and hand cash to America's rival instead Daily MailOpinion: The U.S. wants Canadians to visit. Here’s why we shouldn’t The Globe and MailUS Border Towns Are Being Ravaged by Canada’s Furious Boycott BloombergMajority of Canadians say travelling to U.S. could be unsafe, unwelcoming: new poll National PostTravel insurance, trip bookings to U.S. plummeting at CAA Sudbury News
A Matter Of Faith For many people around the world, religion plays a prominent role in their everyday lives, while others embrace secular ideas. As Statista's Felix Richter reports, according to a Statista Consumer Insights survey, carried out between January 2024 and March 2025, many of the most religious countries in the world can be found in Africa and the Middle East. You will find more infographics at StatistaAmong the countries included in the survey, Pakistan, Egypt and Nigeria scored highest with 99 percent of all adults in the surveyed age group professing to a religion.The most secular country in the survey was China, with only 17 percent of the adult population saying that they followed a religion. The number is not surprising given the fact that religious faith was marginalized under Communism in the country. Other relatively secular places in Asia included Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.In Europe, Czechia (30 percent follow a religion) is the country with the fewest people who declare themselves believers – a fact that is in part tied to the country’s communist past, while tensions with and rejection of the Catholic Church started much earlier in the country. Further East in Europe, religion has not been stifled as much despite a socialist past – for example in Romania, Serbia or Lithuania. Poland, the home of famous pope John Paul II, also showed more religious tendencies than many of its Western European neighbors.In the West of the continent, Ireland was the most religious, while in Southern Europe, religion was most widespread in Greece, Italy and Portugal.Peru and Brazil were the only countries surveyed on the American continent with at least 80 percent saying they followed a religion. Most other countries here – with the exception of Canada – did nevertheless score consistently high on religious faith with little difference between North and South. Tyler DurdenSat, 05/10/2025 - 21:35
The popular retailer just revealed a major shift in shopper behavior.
The Republican lawmaker said a budget bill with a SALT deduction cap as low as $30,000 would not get her support.
President Donald Trump has expressed a readiness to drastically cut U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, hinting at a potential 80% tariff as the new rate.What Happened: President Trump is considering a significant reduction in tariffs on Chinese goods. This move is interpreted as an effort to advance in the ongoing trade war, sparked by Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.The existing tariffs have notably influenced Wall Street and have sparked worries about a possible U.S. recession. They have also negatively impacted Trump’s approval ratings.Trump, in a post on Truth Social, proposed that an 80% tariff on China seemed fitting. This would substantially lower the import tax on Beijing's goods from the current 145%. “80% Tariff on China ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
Function Health, the rapidly growing health-tech startup on a mission to help people live 100 healthy years, announced in a statement on Monday a game-changing acquisition that's already turning heads in Silicon Valley and Hollywood alike.The Austin-based company, known for offering over 160 advanced lab tests through its membership platform, has officially acquired Ezra, a New York startup offering full-body MRI scans powered by AI, according to CNBC.Don't Miss:Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – Many are rushing to grab 4,000 of its pre-IPO shares for just $0.30/share!Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — this is your last chance to become an investor for $0.80 per share.A Landmark Deal Backed by CelebritiesThe deal, revealed in the company's statement, signals a major move in the consumer longevity space. According to Fierce Healthcare, the startup is backed by big-name celebrities including Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Kevin Hart, Jay Shetty, Zac Efron, Blake Griffin, Colin Kaepernick, and investor Ari Emanuel.Function is now rolling out a 22-minute full-body MRI for just $499, with the company saying in its statement that it’s a third of the price of Ezra's previous $1,500 scan. Function co-founder and CEO Jonathan Swerdlin told CNBC, "What labs aren't covering, scans can ...Full story available on Benzinga.com
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested Friday for allegedly trespassing at a federal immigration detention center in his city. The Trump administration said that more New Jersey Democratic elected officials involved in the clash could face criminal charges. House Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver dispute DHS’s characterization of the incident outside the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark.The Trump administration suggested Saturday that New Jersey Democratic lawmakers involved in a clash a day earlier with authorities at a federal immigration detention center that led to the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka also could face criminal charges.“There will likely be more arrests coming,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN in an interview on Saturday.“We actually have body camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting these ICE enforcement officers, including body slamming a female ICE officer,” McLaughlin said.She later tweeted a video of the chaotic incident outside the Delaney Hall Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark.“We will not tolerate assault against our ICE law enforcement agents. By members of Congress or anyone else,” McLauglin wrote in the post on X.Alina Habba, the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, in an interview on Fox News on Saturday, said, “I’m not going to get into the weeds about other things that may or may not be coming.”The three lawmakers at the scene — Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver — sharply dispute DHS’s characterization of the incident. Why Pope Leo chose his name: AI, workers’ rights, new Industrial RevolutionIndia and Pakistan agree to immediate ceasefireNewark mayor arrested for alleged trespass at New Jersey ICE detention facilityUSPS board taps FedEx director David Steiner for postmaster generalRobert Prevost is first American pope: Leo XIVTrump backs tax hike on rich, but says GOP ‘should probably not do it’Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter dies at 85Menendez accused the Trump administration of spreading “lies and misinformation.”“As Members of Congress, we have a legal right to conduct oversight at any DHS facility without prior notice, as we have already done twice this year,” Menendez said in a statement Friday.“This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I am shocked and disturbed that something like this happened in our community,” he added.But McLaughlin accused the Democrats of a “bizarre political stunt.”“Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities,” McLaughlin said on Friday.She said it was “an evolving situation,” keeping the door open to further action.Video shows an altercation between the lawmakers and apparent protesters with law enforcement by a security gate at the detention center.Coleman said on X that the scuffle occurred after the lawmakers entered the facility. “We entered the facility, came BACK OUT to speak to the Mayor, and then ICE agents began shoving us,” she said.Axios first reported that DHS was considering additional arrests. CNBC confirmed the plans.Baraka, who is running for governor of New Jersey, was released without bond Friday evening. He was charged in Newark federal court with one count of trespassing.Habba, the interim New Jersey U.S. Attorney, accused Baraka of committing “trespass and [ignoring] multiple warnings” from DHS officials “to remove himself from the ICE detention center.”
The mating ritual of grunion is an odd sight -- they come out the ocean and onto the sand.
This Restaurant Customer's Tariff-Induced Meltdown Perfectly Captures How Misinformed People Are buzzfeed.com
The legendary tech founder and philanthropist is in full focus after some unexpected news.
President Trump's Stake In Europe's Mauling Of Apple Authored by Robert Bork, Jr, via American Greatness,The European Commission’s half-a-billion-euro fine slapped on Apple—and a €200 million fine on Meta—is a reminder that protectionism is a global trend, not just an element of the Trump agenda. Worse than the magnitudes of these fines is the message that they send: the European Union is determined to enforce its Digital Markets Act (DMA) to outlaw the basic business models that made Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon America’s most innovative companies. They are now explicitly targeted by this law as digital “gatekeepers” in need of wholesale restructuring.At home, the Trump administration’s antitrust regulators continue complaints left over from the previous administration against these same companies. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Department of Justice Antitrust Chief Gail Slater are perhaps expressing the current administration’s residual desire to punish big tech companies for their past censorship of conservatives. The massive fine imposed on Apple by the EU should put antitrust in a new context for the administration. If Europe wins, the American tech sector will be broken.If this sounds hyperbolic, consider what the DMA actually does. Apple has invested more than $100 billion in the last five years to produce products that are seamlessly and safely linked, providing levels of security and privacy valued by consumers worldwide. Central to Apple’s success is the willingness of developers to create new apps with powerful capabilities for Apple customers. But Apple enforces conditions on developers. They are granted a degree of access to Apple systems, but not so much that they can steal Apple’s proprietary algorithms or—most importantly for antitrust—access and exploit user data.For example, when developers create apps that rely on sound, Apple requires them to ask users for their permission before accessing their microphones. If developers want to record audio, they also must get explicit permission. Similar guardrails are in place for apps used for banking, gaming, and a variety of content and services. Developers can access Apple’s Touch ID, but they cannot access data in the Secure Enclave inside the iPhone. Apple is like a bank that will allow access to a safe deposit box but won’t allow rifling through other people’s boxes.Taken literally, the law’s demand for “interoperability” with developers and competitors would force Apple to expose consumers’ most sensitive data. The EU mandate would allow access to consumers’ communications over iMessage—whether 6-digit codes texted by banks, Wi-Fi passwords, or personal communications. Also at risk is data on AirPlay, CarPlay, and Siri. Every message, email, phone call, image, and calendar will be potentially exposed to myriad developers, sure to be exploited and likely to be resold on the international market. Thus, Europe, in the name of protecting consumers, will force the exposure of users’ data, commoditizing it in the name of interoperability. It is a virtual certainty that some buyers will be cut-outs for China. As the FBI has warned, China “uses elaborate shell games” and overweight voting rights to control companies without tipping off its real ownership.Why is Europe doing this? It seems to be out of a mixture of progressive thinking and anti-Americanism. The largest seller of smartphones in Europe is Samsung, with 37 percent of the market. Add to that China’s Xiaomi market share, and the two Asian giants have a combined 53 percent share of the European smartphone market. And yet it is Apple’s 22 percent share that somehow defines it as a “gatekeeper” in need of radical restructuring. These latest fines for violating the DMA are eye-popping, but they continue an anti-American trend that has resulted in roughly $8 billion in fines imposed on another top American innovator, Google, over the past decade.Europeans might be forgiven for feeling whipsawed. The DMA and its companion Digital Services Act were drafted with the active encouragement of the Biden Administration and former FTC Chair Lina Khan, who was in constant dialogue with European regulators. But the attitude in America is now hardening. In a letter to EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wrote that the provisions of the Digital Markets Act “stifle innovation, disincentivize research and development, and hand vast amounts of highly valuable proprietary data to companies and adversarial nations.”Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, chair of the House antitrust subcommittee, noted that the fine “is a tax on U.S. companies operating in the EU. Any trade deal with the EU or its member countries must address the unfair targeting of our most successful companies.”Will President Trump let this happen? Or will he rise to the occasion to defend America’s most competitive companies? As President Trump engages the European Union in trade negotiations, he should seize this opportunity to stand up for American investors, innovators, and more than 5 million U.S. tech workers. Tyler DurdenSat, 05/10/2025 - 10:30
Shares jumped 28% on Friday, but Lyft still has a lot of growth ahead and could 10x through expansions in autonomy and simple multiple expansion.
Cryptocurrency analyst Michaël van de Poppe identified a potentially significant market signal Friday, noting that altcoins could be poised for a dramatic recovery against Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC).What Happened: “The bull market is the biggest reward of 4 years suffering. Within a window of a few months, your Altcoins can erase all the losses,” van de Poppe wrote on X. “The Altcoin market capitalization against Bitcoin is still massively bullish. The longest bullish divergence in history.”The analyst’s comments come as Bitcoin trades near $103,023, with a market capitalization of approximately $2.04 trillion. Meanwhile, the CMC Altcoin Season Index currently sits at 39/100, firmly in “Bitcoin Season” territory, which indicates Bitcoin has outperformed most alternative cryptocurrencies over the past 90 days, according to data from CoinMarketCap.The bull market is the biggest reward of 4 years suffering.Full story available on Benzinga.com
FDA issues urgent warning over supplement linked to sudden deaths after just three uses dailymail.co.ukFDA issues warning against tianeptine use, also called 'gas station heroin' USA TodayFDA warns against 'gas station heroin' banned in Ohio, citing severe health risks WSYXFDA issues warning against "gas station heroin" tianeptine CBS NewsFDA Warns of New “Gas Station” Heroin Lurking in Washington State NEWStalk 870
Where The Money Went: USG Funding To Counter-Mis/Disinformation Initiatives Authored by Andrew Lowenthal via The Brownstone Institute,Last week, my non-profit liber-net unveiled a new database of US government awards to mis-dis-and-malinformation (MDM) and other content control initiatives. A previous Network Affects post broke down where that money came from. This one details where the money went, specifically the countries, regions, topics, and activities, and the top organisations that took home the cash.The below graphs are based on 867 awards made between 2016-2024, out of nearly 1,100 that we reviewed from 2010 to the present day. You can review our process and methodology here. You can see all the graphs from the last post, this post, and a few more here.When it comes to MDM funding, the vast majority of the awards went to US-based initiatives. The graph below includes a contract totaling nearly $1 billion to military contractor Peraton, but even without it, US recipients received around $318 million, dwarfing the next country, Kazakhstan, at $20 million. Out of the nearly $1.5 billion spent across the 867 awards, around $187 million left the US from a roughly $6.7 trillion annual federal budget.The “US taxpayers are wasting money on foreigners” narrative isn’t the story here, at least not in the mis/disinformation space.When you zoom out, it looks like this:That said, when you look at the data by unique awards (individual grants and contracts made), American organisations are still the main recipients, though it isn’t quite as skewed – US organisations received 220 of the 867 awards made. Looking at unique awards is important in part because of the internal government resources and focus it represents. Giving out money costs money, whether it is $1,000 or $1,000,000.Below, we’ve broken the individual awards down by region. After the US, Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are the main focus areas, mostly as a counter to Russian influence.Here are the unique awards on a map:Another interesting view is which countries the “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” awards went to. These are awards where the organisation is not explicitly named (this can be for security justifications or a host of unknown reasons), though in some cases it is easy to deduce what the organisation is (e.g., through the awardee address that is sometimes referenced in the USAspending record).This is how the Misc. awards break down by country outside the US:You can view the Misc. awards in our searchable database.What topics did the money go to? The below outlines our analysis of the major themes. Note that while this is a pie chart, we’ve tagged individual awards with more than one topic as they were frequently combined, such as vaccine “misinformation” in minority communities.This is how it breaks down among the top eight funders:We have also classified the awards by the types of activities they entailed, such as conferences, research, or technology development. These were often a little harder to classify, but the general outline is still useful in understanding what “counter-misinformation” work looks like in practice.Lastly, who got most of the money? The two visualisations below detail the top 30 awardees by dollar amount and by the number of individual awards. The $80 million award to the CDC Foundation is a kind of internal transfer the CDC gave to a technically external (but heavily linked) 501(c)(3).And the unique awards which reveal some more familiar names and close government relationships. The number of awards doesn’t correlate too tightly with the overall funding received.You can find explore and find more in the database. Enjoy!Republished from the author’s Substack Tyler DurdenFri, 05/09/2025 - 22:35
Texas lawmakers have passed legislation that would significantly reduce small shareholders’ influence over corporations, potentially offering companies like Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) a shield from legal challenges that have plagued them in Delaware.What Happened: Two bills awaiting Governor Greg Abbott‘s signature – Senate Bill 29 and Senate Bill 1057 – would make it harder for shareholders to sue companies and raise requirements for bringing resolutions at annual meetings, reported Business Insider on Friday. Abbott has previously signaled support for SB 29.“How can you have confidence in Delaware judges?” said Eric Lentell, Archer Aviation‘s top lawyer, who testified in favor of ...Full story available on Benzinga.com