Zero Rss

UK Regulator Targets Data-Center Land-Grab On The Power Grid

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Britain’s energy regulator, Ofgem, on Wednesday launched a consultation on a proposed commitment fee for data center projects as part of broad reforms to ensure network capacity is used for projects that are ready and able to connect.

The proposal includes a new Data Centre Commitment Fee, which would be paid by large data center developments when accepting a connection offer, Ofgem said in a statement.

The fee would be refunded when the project reaches grid connection status and forfeited if the project exits the grid queue early.  The fee would be set within a proposed range of £237,500 to £712,500 per megawatt (MW), equivalent to around 2.5% to 7.5% of average project costs.

“The proposals are aimed at tackling speculative projects from securing scarce network capacity without any firm intention to connect, ensuring the queue enables investment ready, viable projects,” Ofgem said.

Plans for a commitment fee for data centers were drawn up after the UK saw a surge in connection applications in the past two years, driven largely by demand from data center projects.

“Ofgem is concerned that a significant number of projects in the queue may not ultimately proceed, potentially delaying viable developments and creating misleading signals about future network investment needs,” the regulator said.

Last year, Ofgem approved an investment program of $32 billion (£24 billion) to maintain essential gas distribution networks and expand the power grid in a move to boost energy security and allow more renewables to enter the electricity system.

However, demand and applications for connections have soared over the past year, mostly driven by plans for data centers.

“The connections system must work for consumers and for the projects that are ready to invest, build and connect,” said Eleanor Warburton, Ofgem’s Director for Energy System Design and Development.

“Where speculative projects take up space in the queue, they can delay other schemes and create uncertainty about future network needs,” the official added.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 05:00

Got Wood? These Are The World's Biggest Lumber Producers

From home construction and renovations to furniture and shipping pallets, lumber is one of the world’s most widely used building materials.

This graphic ranks the world’s biggest lumber producers by sawnwood output in 2024, using data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The World’s Top 30 Lumber Producers

The United States produced roughly 2.7 billion cubic feet of lumber in 2024, making it the world’s largest producer.

RankCountryCubic Feet (2024)Global Share 1🇺🇸 U.S.2.7B17.0% 2🇨🇳 China2.1B13.7% 3🇷🇺 Russia1.3B8.4% 4🇨🇦 Canada1.2B7.9% 5🇮🇳 India847M5.4% 6🇩🇪 Germany820M5.2% 7🇸🇪 Sweden632M4.0% 8🇫🇮 Finland388M2.5% 9🇧🇷 Brazil344M2.2% 10🇦🇹 Austria343M2.2% 11🇹🇷 Türkiye333M2.1% 12🇯🇵 Japan281M1.8% 13🇫🇷 France271M1.7% 14🇨🇱 Chile249M1.6% 15🇲🇽 Mexico241M1.5% 16🇻🇳 Vietnam203M1.3% 17🇹🇭 Thailand198M1.3% 18🇨🇿 Czechia167M1.1% 19🇧🇾 Belarus162M1.0% 20🇵🇱 Poland148M0.9% 21🇳🇿 New Zealand147M0.9% 22🇷🇴 Romania138M0.9% 23🇦🇺 Australia133M0.8% 24🇦🇷 Argentina132M0.8% 25🇺🇦 Ukraine113M0.7% 26🇬🇧 UK113M0.7% 27🇱🇻 Latvia105M0.7% 28🇳🇴 Norway95M0.6% 29🇪🇸 Spain92M0.6% 30🇮🇩 Indonesia78M0.5% --🌐 World total$15.7B (Market Value)100%

China ranked second with 2.1 billion cubic feet, followed by Russia and Canada. India rounded out the top five with nearly 847 million cubic feet.

Together, the top five producers account for more than half of global lumber output. Their scale reflects extensive forest resources, large sawmill industries, and steady demand from construction and manufacturing.

Europe has a deep bench of major lumber producers, with Germany, Sweden, and Finland leading the region. Sweden and Finland benefit from extensive managed forests and export-oriented sawmill industries, while Germany’s timber resources support its construction and manufacturing sectors.

Austria and France also rank among the world’s top 15, underscoring Europe’s importance to the global lumber supply.

China’s Lumber Industry Has Tripled Since 2004

Although the United States remains the world’s largest producer, China has recorded some of the fastest long-term growth.

Since 2004, the country’s lumber production has more than tripled as rapid urbanization fueled demand for housing, commercial buildings, and infrastructure. China has also become the world’s largest processor and consumer of wood products, supplying everything from furniture to engineered wood used in manufacturing.

A Critical Global Building Material

Lumber demand is closely tied to housing construction, infrastructure spending, and manufacturing activity. As countries continue investing in new buildings and industrial capacity, a relatively small group of producers will remain central to the global wood supply.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the world’s 4.1 billion hectares of forest by region.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 04:15

Germany's Migrant Crime Crisis Explodes

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Germany's federal government just dropped numbers that should end every soft-border talking point still circulating in European capitals.

Of the 1,087 suspects identified in 751 recorded gang rapes last year, 53 percent were foreign nationals.

Non-Germans make up less than 17 percent of the population. The 772 victims were overwhelmingly German: 619 of them, or 80 percent, including 565 women.

New figures released by the German federal government show that 53% of the 1,087 suspects in 751 recorded gang rapes last year were foreign nationals, despite non-German citizens making up less than 17% of Germany's population.

The cases involved 772 victims, of whom 619 (80%)... pic.twitter.com/GdvbKeNMvh

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 27, 2026

The largest national groups among suspects were Syrians (110), Afghans (64), Iraqis (46) and Turks (44). Seventy-two percent of the solved cases involved people already known to police.

The same pattern holds in the prison system. Foreign nationals accounted for around 45 percent of Germany's prison population in 2025 while representing roughly 17 percent of the registered population.

Germany's latest federal prison statistics show that foreign nationals accounted for around 45% of the country's prison population in 2025, despite making up roughly 17% of Germany's registered population by the end of that year. pic.twitter.com/skTZnR5O6l

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 28, 2026

Between 2015 and 2024 nearly 938,000 people were registered as victims of suspects holding the nationalities of ten major asylum-origin countries. Syrian nationals alone were linked to around 136,000 German victims.

Nearly 938,000 people were registered as victims of suspects holding the nationalities of 10 major asylum-origin countries in Germany between 2015 and 2024, according to German police statistics.

In absolute numbers, Syrian nationals were linked to around 136,000 German victims,... pic.twitter.com/E5VX4mxxNg

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 27, 2026

These are not abstract statistics. They are the measurable result of a decade-plus experiment in mass low-skill migration from regions whose cultural and religious norms clash hard with European legal and social norms.

The latest proof arrived on the streets of Berlin.

This past weekend, a white rental van driven by 21-year-old Abdul Ballut, a German 'citizen' of Lebanese origin, plowed into participants at the Christopher Street Day Pride event in Tiergarten. One woman was killed. Thirty-one others were injured.

A video recorded on the day of the attack was recovered from Ballut's phone. In it a masked man, identified by prosecutors as the attacker, pledges allegiance to the Islamic State.

Ballut had already tried to join ISIS in 2025, traveling to Lebanon, making contact with presumed members of the group, and serving a short sentence there before being returned to Germany.

In May 2026 a Berlin juvenile court convicted him of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and of distributing Islamic State propaganda. He received a suspended sentence, was ordered into a deradicalization program he barely attended, and walked free.

?? The terrorist who attacked the Pride parade in Berlin pledged allegiance to the Islamic State before the attack

A video was found on the phone belonging to terrorist Abdul Ballut in which he swears allegiance to the Islamic State. The video was recorded on the day of the... pic.twitter.com/cUDbaCY7u9

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 28, 2026

German security services had counted nearly 30,000 Islamists in the country, of whom 450 are classified as potential terrorists. Around 9,100 are considered violence-oriented. Berlin alone hosts roughly 2,600 Islamists, more than 900 of them prone to violence, including hundreds of radical Salafists and supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Ballut was already known to the services and under surveillance. That did not stop the attack.

?? Germany has counted nearly 30,000 Islamists, of whom 450 are potential Islamist terrorists. Among them was the Berlin Pride terrorist.

Around 9,100 are classified as violence-oriented. Berlin alone has roughly 2,600 Islamists, more than 900 of them prone to violence,... pic.twitter.com/US9ZebQJuU

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 28, 2026

New reporting has now revealed the depth of the family network. Two of Ballut's cousins fought for ISIS. His aunt was married to Omar Bakri Muhammad Fustuq, the Syrian-born Islamist who helped build Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK, founded the later-banned Al-Muhajiroun, praised the 9/11 attacks, and was eventually excluded from Britain in 2005 as "not conducive to the public good."

After moving to Lebanon he became a regular on Al Jazeera and was later sentenced there on terrorism charges before his 2023 release.

It turns out that the Lebanese Islamist who carried out the car-ramming attack against the Berlin Gay Pride Parade had 2 cousins who fought for ISIS.

According to Zeit, his aunt had married the infamous Islamist leader Omar Bakri Muhammad Fustuq.

Born in 1958 in Aleppo, he was... pic.twitter.com/wUWRvAEEsD

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 28, 2026

The institutional left's response followed a familiar script. Berlin Pride organizers warned against using the attack "for political ends," declaring that "People are trying to divide our society and set some people against others. As the CSD in Berlin, we will not allow this."

A speaker at a related vigil admitted the first thought after hearing of the car attack was "Hopefully it's not a Kanake... hopefully it's a Christian white person."

When the facts refused to cooperate, the pivot to intersectionality and protection of the migration system was immediate.

Online, left-wing activists rushed to deflect blame onto Western conservatives and "whiteness" rather than the ideology that produced the attacker.

Meanwhile the comment sections under Al Jazeera's coverage filled with celebration: "Alhamdulillah," "Jihad," "Thank God," laughing emojis, and calls for more of the same.

That reaction is the predictable product of importing large numbers of people whose religious and cultural framework treats homosexuality as an abomination punishable by death, then expecting rainbow flags and counseling sessions to paper over the contradiction.

The pattern is now too clear to ignore. Known radicals with prior ISIS contact, propaganda convictions, and family ties to jihadist networks are released into the same cities that host Pride parades, Christmas markets, and open public squares.

Steel barriers go up. Soft targets are redesigned. Officials issue statements about coexistence. And the political class that created the conditions continues to treat naming the ideology as the greater threat.

Germany's own data on gang rape, prison populations, and cumulative victim counts from asylum-origin nationalities show the scale of the failure.

Western societies that refuse to confront cultural and religious incompatibility will keep paying that cost in blood while the defenders of open borders insist the real problem is anyone who notices.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 03:30

Where Tourists Outnumber Locals

The world’s busiest tourist destinations are not always the countries with the highest number of visitors per resident. In smaller nations, annual arrivals can exceed the local population many times over.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Gabriel Cohen, ranks the 25 countries with the highest number of international tourist arrivals per resident, using the latest available data from UN Tourism via Our World in Data and population figures from the World Bank. Territories have been excluded.

Andorra: The Tourist Playground

Andorra stands in a league of its own. The country welcomes roughly 4.2 million international visitors annually despite having only about 82,000 residents, resulting in 51 tourist arrivals per resident—more than five times Monaco’s second-place ratio.

Sandwiched in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, Andorra receives many visitors from its two larger neighbors. In recent years, the country has also attracted growing numbers of visitors from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States.

RankCountryInternational Tourist Arrivals per Resident 1🇦🇩 Andorra50.86 2🇲🇨 Monaco9.01 3🇲🇹 Malta6.26 4🇮🇸 Iceland5.58 5🇵🇼 Palau5.28 6🇦🇱 Albania4.83 7🇧🇸 Bahamas4.66 8🇧🇭 Bahrain4.17 9🇭🇷 Croatia3.97 10🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda3.52 11🇲🇪 Montenegro3.26 12🇸🇲 San Marino3.20 13🇲🇻 Maldives3.20 14🇨🇾 Cyprus2.97 15🇱🇮 Liechtenstein2.91 16🇦🇹 Austria2.90 17🇸🇨 Seychelles2.77 18🇵🇹 Portugal2.71 19🇬🇷 Greece2.67 20🇧🇧 Barbados2.49 21🇩🇰 Denmark2.40 22🇸🇮 Slovenia2.38 23🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates2.28 24🇮🇪 Ireland2.20 25🇸🇬 Singapore2.16

Despite having no airport, Andorra has become a major tourist destination. Tourism accounts for roughly four-fifths of its economy.

Visitors are drawn to its ski resorts, spas, and mountain scenery, particularly around the capital, Andorra la Vella. The country’s long-standing duty-free status is another major attraction.

Island Nations Draw Millions

While Andorra is landlocked, many of the other countries near the top of the ranking are islands. Nations across the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific depend heavily on foreign visitors.

Malta, for example, welcomes 6.3 tourists for every resident, placing it just ahead of Iceland at 5.6.

The Bahamas leads the Caribbean at 4.7 tourists per resident, followed by Antigua and Barbuda at 3.5 and Barbados at 2.5. In the Indian Ocean, the Maldives and Seychelles receive 3.2 and 2.8 tourists per resident, respectively.

Larger Countries Also Make the List

The ranking is not limited to microstates and island nations. Portugal, Austria, and Croatia each have populations in the millions yet still receive more international tourists than residents each year.

Portugal welcomes 2.7 tourists per resident and has emerged as a major tourist destination. Visitors are drawn to historic cities such as Lisbon and Porto, along with the beaches of the Algarve.

Further east, Austria receives 2.9 tourists per resident, while Croatia receives 4.0. Their historic architecture, coastal scenery, and picturesque towns attract travelers from across Europe and beyond.

Wondering how these countries compare with the world’s most-visited destinations? Check out France is the Most Visited Country, With Over 100 Million Tourists per Year on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 02:45

The End Of Freedom - The Last Breath Of A Dying Continent

Authored by Milan Adams via Preppgroup,

They are killing us slowly.

Not with bullets or blades, but with spreadsheets and algorithms, with policies drafted in climate-controlled rooms by people whose children will never shiver through a winter night without heat, whose pantries will never echo empty, whose futures remain secured behind gates we cannot approach.

In 2026, 333 million Europeans—more than the entire population of the United States—have fallen into energy poverty, a euphemism that cannot conceal the raw human suffering it describes, a bureaucratic term that sanitizes the screams of families watching their lives dismantled piece by piece.

Since 2021, utility costs have surged 47%, while wages stagnate in a cruel arithmetic that reduces families to penury. The numbers do not lie, even when governments do. Behind every percentage point stands a human being with a name, with memories, with children who ask why the heat does not work. Behind every data point lies a tragedy that statistics cannot capture—the sound of teeth chattering beneath thin blankets, the smell of cheap candles burning down to nothing, the silence of a home where conversation has stopped because speaking requires energy that hungry bodies cannot spare.

Look at these figures and understand that they represent flesh and blood. In Greece, 40% of households now face the impossible choice between heating and eating—a statistic that translates to grandmothers wrapping themselves in newspapers, to children doing homework by candlelight, to parents skipping meals so their sons might have warmth for one more night. The Greek winter of 2026 brought temperatures that dropped to -8°C in regions where insulation remains a luxury, where families huddle in single rooms wearing every garment they own, where the decision to turn on a heater for one hour means skipping dinner for three days.

Germany, once the industrial titan of Europe, now bleeds 15,000 manufacturing jobs each quarter, its factories darkening like dying stars. The Rhine Valley, which hummed with production for generations, now echoes with the footsteps of workers carrying boxes of personal effects, of security guards locking gates that may never reopen, of communities watching their purpose drain away like water into cracked earth. Energy bills now exceed rent payments by 23% across twelve member states, a reversal of economic reality that breaks families before they even begin, that ensures the poor remain poor and the middle class joins them in descent.

In Portugal, elderly citizens have begun collecting firewood in public parks, risking fines and arrest to secure warmth their pensions cannot purchase. In Poland, organized crime networks now control the black market for coal, selling inferior product at extortionate prices to desperate families who know that burning treated wood releases toxins but choose poison over freezing. The European Commission reports these trends as “energy market adjustments,” as if describing the migration of birds rather than the collapse of human dignity.

But the economic strangulation serves merely as prelude to a more comprehensive destruction. Step into any supermarket in Milan after 7 PM and witness the new normal: empty shelves where fresh produce once stood in abundance, security guards monitoring cooking oil purchases as if guarding gold reserves, elderly women weeping quietly beside discount bins where bruised vegetables wait for hands brave enough to claim them. The Italy that exported culinary culture to the world now imports 60% of its grain from nations that view food as geopolitical leverage, as a weapon more effective than any missile.

Since 2020, grain prices have exploded 89% above official inflation metrics—a divergence that suggests manipulation rather than market forces, that indicates the invisible hand not of economics but of design. Dutch farmers, whose families worked the same soil for twelve generations, face mandatory livestock culls of 30%, their herds destroyed while industrial shipping emissions remain conveniently exempt from the regulations that destroy their livelihoods. The nitrogen crisis, they are told, requires sacrifice—yet the sacrifice falls always on the small, never on the large, always on the many, never on the few.

One in four European children now experiences food insecurity, a phrase that cannot capture the hollow eyes of a seven-year-old who has learned not to ask for seconds, who has learned to hide hunger behind smiles, who will carry the developmental scars of malnutrition into adulthood where they will manifest as reduced cognitive function, compromised immune systems, shortened lifespans. We are not merely impoverishing the present; we are devouring the future, consuming generations yet unborn to feed the insatiable appetite of a system that demands perpetual growth from finite resources.

In France, the breadbasket of the revolution, bakeries now close on alternating days because electricity costs make continuous operation impossible. The smell of fresh bread, which once defined French morning, becomes a luxury available only to those with means. In Spain, the olive harvest of 2025 failed catastrophically, not from drought as officially reported, but from a combination of policy-induced fertilizer shortages and the abandonment of farms that families could no longer afford to maintain. The trees that survived Roman invasions and Moorish conquests now die from spreadsheets, from regulations, from the cold mathematics of a globalized economy that values efficiency over existence.

The pattern transcends incompetence. It reveals intention. In the winter of 2023, three blood moons appeared over European skies—a celestial alignment that agricultural calendars have associated with famine since Babylonian times, that medieval manuscripts connected to periods of profound transformation and upheaval. Each occurrence coincided with major policy announcements: nitrogen restrictions on farming that reduced output by design, digital currency frameworks that promised convenience while delivering surveillance, biometric identification expansions that normalized the scanning of human bodies as if we were inventory rather than souls.

Modern observers dismiss these correlations as superstition, as primitive attempts to explain phenomena that science now understands. Yet the timing defies probability, defies coincidence, defies the comfortable explanations that allow sleep at night. The fourth blood moon of 2024 marked the introduction of programmable money trials in twelve member states—currency that expires if not spent according to algorithmic criteria, wealth that exists only at the pleasure of invisible systems, savings that can be frozen, redirected, or erased with the stroke of a bureaucratic key.

Ancient wisdom warned that when the moon weeps blood four times in succession, the hidden hands reveal themselves. And so they have. Not as conspirators in smoke-filled rooms—that image serves only to discredit—but as something far more terrifying: a consensus among the powerful that the masses must be managed, must be reduced, must be brought to heel through mechanisms that appear natural, appear inevitable, appear as the unfortunate but necessary consequences of progress and planetary survival.

Beneath the visible governance, a parallel architecture operates with mathematical precision that would impress any engineer. Digital ID systems have penetrated 89% of the population, harvesting biometric data at unprecedented velocity—fingerprints, iris patterns, facial geometry, gait analysis, voice signatures. The human body itself has become the password, the key, the identifier that cannot be forgotten or stolen because it cannot be separated from the person. Twelve nations currently run Central Bank Digital Currency pilots, and in three—Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands—cash transactions above minimal thresholds have been effectively criminalized, forcing participation in systems that record every exchange, every preference, every relationship.

The average European appears on surveillance cameras 300 times daily, a density of one lens per thirteen citizens that renders privacy obsolete, that ensures the watched internalize the gaze, that transforms free citizens into self-policing subjects who no longer require external control because they have built the prison within their own minds. Social credit architectures have advanced beyond theory into implementation; your carbon footprint, vaccination status, social media sentiment, and political expression now determine access to housing, travel, banking, and employment in ways that newspapers report only after the fact, only when resistance has become impossible.

In China, the system was explicit, overt, acknowledged. In Europe, it arrives wrapped in sustainability, in public health, in security, in the language of care and protection that disarms opposition because who can argue against safety, against health, against the planet? Yet the result converges: the individual subordinated to the collective, the collective defined by algorithms, the algorithms controlled by entities that answer to no electorate, no constituency, no human being at all.

The psychological occupation proves equally devastating as the material one, perhaps more so because it attacks the will to resist before resistance can form. Mental health pharmaceutical prescriptions have increased 340% since smartphone saturation achieved critical mass in 2015, the curve of consumption matching the curve of adoption with correlation coefficients that statisticians cannot dismiss. Youth suicide rates in high-surveillance nations now exceed those of countries recovering from active warfare, suggesting that the destruction of privacy and autonomy kills more efficiently than bombs.

The human attention span has collapsed 67% since 2010, precisely as social platforms achieved dominance—a cognitive destruction that prevents focus, prevents resistance, prevents hope by ensuring that the populace exists in perpetual distraction, in fragments of engagement too brief to sustain coherent thought, too scattered to organize collective action, too fragmented to remember what freedom felt like before the devices arrived to save us from the boredom they themselves manufactured.

When survival requires navigating digital bureaucratic labyrinths that change weekly, when sustenance demands protocol compliance that shifts unpredictably, when warmth itself becomes contingent upon behavioral standards that no one fully understands, the will to liberty atrophies like an unused limb. The muscle memory of freedom fades. The imagination of alternatives dies. The acceptance of domination becomes not merely practical but psychological, a preference for the known cage over the unknown wild.

Yet the human spirit persists in spaces beyond measurement, in cracks the algorithms cannot seal, in moments the cameras cannot capture. In Romanian villages where electricity remains intermittent, grandmothers still hang garlic against evil eyes and track planting by stars their ancestors named millennia ago, maintaining knowledge that predates the nation-state by centuries. Spanish shepherds navigate mountain passes using oral traditions that have survived Roman occupation, Moorish rule, fascist dictatorship, and now digital colonization—knowledge that exists in bodies rather than databases, in relationships rather than networks, in the spaces between words rather than the words themselves.

These practices represent what the architects of control fear most: connections deeper than data, loyalties beyond programming, souls that refuse digitization, communities that persist despite rather than because of the systems imposed upon them. When the shepherd knows the mountain without GPS, when the grandmother knows the plant without app, when the child knows the story without screen, the project of total information remains incomplete, the vision of total management remains unrealized, the dream of total control remains frustrated by the stubborn persistence of organic life.

The blood moons have passed, but their warning remains etched in memory, encoded in stories that survive despite educational systems designed to erase them. Control revealed loses power to persuade. The moment the prisoner recognizes the cell, the bars become intolerable. The European soul, ancient and stubborn, remembers freedom even when taught to forget, carries the genetic memory of resistance even when conditioned for compliance, preserves the capacity for outrage even when numbed by entertainment and pharmaceuticals.

Reclamation requires not revolution but reconstruction—the patient rebuilding of human scale against the crushing weight of globalized abstraction. Community gardens planted in defiance of zoning codes that mandate grass over sustenance. Barter networks operating outside taxable surveillance, exchanging eggs for bread, labor for teaching, care for companionship. Children taught to navigate by stars and identify edible plants alongside their coding lessons, maintaining parallel competencies that ensure survival when the systems fail.

Each act of organic creation resists the mechanized future planned for us. Every conversation held face-to-face rather than through monitored platforms reclaims territory from digital occupiers. Every meal grown rather than purchased, every skill shared rather than outsourced, every relationship maintained through presence rather than proxy—these constitute the insurgency of the real against the virtual, the biological against the synthetic, the human against the machine.

The statistics will worsen before they improve. The winter of 2026-2027 promises to be the harshest in decades, with meteorological predictions converging with economic collapse to create perfect conditions for mass mortality among the vulnerable. The food shortages will deepen as Ukrainian grain remains blocked by conflict, as climate manipulation experiments produce unpredictable weather patterns, as supply chains designed for efficiency over resilience continue their inevitable fragmentation. The surveillance will tighten as artificial intelligence achieves capabilities that render human discretion obsolete, as predictive algorithms identify potential dissent before it forms, as pre-crime prevention moves from fiction to policy.

Yet liberty endures in silence beyond camera reach, in spaces between transactions, in moments of genuine connection that cannot be commodified or controlled. It waits only for the courage to claim it, for the recognition that safety purchased with freedom becomes its own prison, that comfort secured through submission becomes its own torture, that survival at the cost of humanity becomes its own death.

The architects of this system believe they have accounted for all variables, modeled all outcomes, predicted all resistance. They have not accounted for the human heart, which persists in loving despite betrayal, in hoping despite evidence, in fighting despite certainty of defeat. They have not modeled the moment when a mother, watching her child shiver, decides that compliance costs more than resistance. They have not predicted the cascade that follows when enough individuals make this calculation simultaneously, when the illusion of consent dissolves, when the machinery of control encounters the immovable object of human dignity.

The blood moons have passed, but they will return. The hidden hands have revealed themselves, and in that revelation lies our opportunity. For power that operates in shadow depends upon the acquiescence of the ignorant; power exposed to light invites the resistance of the informed. We are no longer ignorant. The question that remains is whether we will act upon our knowledge, whether we will pay the price that freedom demands, whether we will reclaim the liberty that is our birthright or surrender it forever for the temporary warmth of chains.

The choice remains ours—while choice remains possible. The window narrows with each passing season, each new regulation, each additional digit of surveillance. The future being constructed around us is not inevitable; it is being built by human hands that could be stopped by human hands. But the stopping requires recognition, requires courage, requires sacrifice that the comfortable find difficult to contemplate and the desperate find impossible to avoid.

In the end, the question is simple: will we live as men and women, with all the risk and responsibility that freedom entails, or will we exist as managed resources, with all the security and servitude that submission provides? The answer will determine not merely our own fates but the trajectory of human civilization for centuries to come. The blood moons watch and wait. History holds its breath. The moment of decision approaches, and with it, the reckoning that delayed justice always demands.

Tyler Durden Thu, 07/30/2026 - 02:00

'We Have Special Forces': Netanyahu Unfazed By Global Threats Of Arrest

Via Middle East Eye

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on Tuesday that he was not too bothered by the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrant for him, because Israeli special forces would protect him should any country try to take him into custody. 

"It scares me in this sense. For you, you travel internationally, God forbid you had a medical emergency, and you need to land, and you're about to land in a country that recognizes the ICC. It could complicate things. Do you worry about that?" Fox News pundit and decades-long personal friend to Netanyahu, Sean Hannity, asked during the interview. 

"Yeah, I think about it," Netanyahu responded. "You know, we have special forces around. I served for five years."

"The IDF is pretty tough," Hannity said, referring to the Israeli army. "Yeah. Let's give them a new task," Netanyahu replied. 

Netanyahu flew through the airspace of several ICC member states this week on his way to Washington, prompting critics to accuse those governments of aiding an internationally wanted leader.

Netanyahu left Israel aboard the official government aircraft known as the “Wing of Zion” on Monday, ahead of talks with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. Flight-tracking data showed the aircraft passing through the airspace of Greece, Italy and France before crossing the Atlantic, while a widely shared map of the journey indicated that it also entered Canadian airspace on its approach to the US. 

Greece, Italy, France and Canada are all parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC.

The Hague-based court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on 21 November 2024, saying there were reasonable grounds to believe that he bore criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts in Gaza. "It's the corruption of the international system. It's an unelected bureaucracy that sits in The Hague that could arrest American soldiers because you don't recognize this corrupt body any more than we do," Netanyahu told Hannity.

"And they could say that the president of the United States is a war criminal. That American soldiers valiantly fighting next to us, shoulder to shoulder against the tyranny in Tehran, that they're war criminals. They could pick them up."

The prime minister said he would be coming to New York City for the United Nations General Assembly in September, regardless of what legal avenues, if any, mayor Zohran Mamdani decides to pursue.

"This just hate-spewing elected official [is] pitting one group of New Yorkers against the others. He's turning them against New York Jews. I mean, what are we, in the 1930s? What is this?" Netanyahu said.

Mamdani has repeatedly said he would protect the right of all Jewish New Yorkers, but Israel has accused him of antisemitism for calling on the federal government to arrest Netanyahu on account of the ICC warrant. 

'Wall of granite'

Netanyahu spent just under 90 minutes with Trump at the White House on Tuesday before both leaders headed to the Washington National Cathedral for the funeral for South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch and vocal supporter of Israel, and potentially the loudest in Trump's ear. 

The Israeli prime minister told Hannity the visit with Trump was "one of the best meetings that we've had", but he had also indicated to the Israeli press on Tuesday that it was a meeting among several senior officials, meaning he did not get a private one-on-one with the president. 

Such a decision would suggest Trump's advisers did not want Netanyahu to influence the president one way or another. "I always hate to disappoint our would-be critics who are trying to find cracks in our alliance, and what they find, like today, is a wall of granite," Netanyahu told Hannity.

🚨MUST- WATCH: PM Netanyahu was asked what would happen if he were forced to land in a country that recognizes the arrest warrant against him; his answer was wild: “We have IDF special forces in the area” pic.twitter.com/qw7p3T2nsB

— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) July 29, 2026

Trump himself has sounded less than pleased with Netanyahu's behavior of late, telling Fox News earlier on Tuesday that Netanyahu wants him to keep attacking Iran when he may no longer want to.

"We have a common commitment. We don't want to see this fanatic regime in Tehran have nuclear weapons to threaten every American and to threaten the peace of the world and to threaten the existence of Israel," Netanyahu said. "So we have a common goal, and it's going to be achieved either through diplomatic means or other means. But we're both committed to that."

However, Netanyahu has made it clear he is no fan of those diplomatic means. 

Not long after the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding in June, Israel intensified its attacks on southern Lebanon, all the way up to the capital Beirut. 

A key part of the agreement was for Israel to cease hostilities in Lebanon, where it says it's going after its Iranian ally, Hezbollah.  Trump then told reporters he believed Israel's attacks were disproportionate and were killing too many civilians. "Do you believe there are moderates that would like a deal and a better Iran?" Hannity asked. "I'm skeptical about the deal, and I say it openly," Netanyahu said.

"But the only way it would be achieved is if Iran understood these various factions. They're not ideological factions as much as they differ on the assessment of how tough we are," he added. "I think at the end, it's our resolve. It's our common resolve to make sure that Iran doesn't get nuclear bombs to threaten every American with."

The US intelligence community, under the Trump administration, had assessed that there was no imminent threat from Iran before the US and Israel launched their joint war on 28 February - so much so that the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned within hours of the first missiles being launched. 

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 23:30

Trump Admin Set To Ban Chinese Robots In "Economic Security" Push

The Federal Communications Commission is planning to unveil a series of new trade restrictions on Tuesday afternoon that will ban imports of Chinese humanoid and quadruped robots, as well as connected power inverters. This announcement comes ahead of the expected boom in physical AI.

Chinese company Unitree reveal their "all terrain" wheeled robot.

The military potential for this technology is obvious.

Europe is so far behind China, its scary. pic.twitter.com/DcXnmj6Knx

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) July 24, 2026

Reuters was first to report the story: 

The Trump administration on Tuesday plans to unveil new bans that target imports of the latest Chinese robots and power inverters, seeking to protect the U.S. AI buildout from national security threats and reshore key industries slated for explosive growth, U.S. officials said.

There is no exact timing for when the FCC is expected to unveil the trade restrictions this afternoon. Officials said the Chinese-linked technologies could expose U.S. power grids, data centers, and AI infrastructure to disruption, data theft, and cyberattacks.

"The President has made clear that the United States must have independent and secure supply chains for critical and emerging technologies like robotic devices and power inverters," said an anonymous Trump administration official.

"Economic security is national security, and the Trump administration continues to implement a nuanced and multi-faceted policy agenda to reindustrialize America," the official added.

The trade restrictions on Chinese robots and power inverters come as new analysis from Citi's Robotics & Physical AI Leadership Conference assesses where the US stands in the physical-AI cycle as robots move closer to mass production. Read the full report here.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 23:05

America's Murder Problem Is Smaller Than It Looks

Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics,

World Cup visitors discovered something many Americans already know: The United States does not feel like the dangerous place they've been led to expect. That's because America's murder problem is not spread evenly across the country. Does the United States have a higher murder rate than its peer countries? Yes - but new research shows that statistic obscures how murders in the U.S. are extremely concentrated in very tiny areas.

In 2025, the U.S. murder rate fell to just under 4 murders per 100,000 people. During the first six months of 2026, data compiled by the Council on Criminal Justice shows that murders in the nation's 30 largest cities declined by another 18%. If that decline reflects the national trend, and that is likely, the U.S. murder rate will fall to approximately 3.25 per 100,000 people this year.

Even at that level, the U.S. murder rate would remain about 70% higher than Canada's 2024 homicide rate of 1.91 per 100,000 people and Australia's approximately 2 per 100,000.

Nevertheless, the United States has recently made remarkable progress. Since national recordkeeping began in 1900, the country has never recorded a murder rate this low. The previous record low was approximately 4.5 murders per 100,000 people, and the rate stood at about 5.0 per 100,000 in 2024.

At the same time, focusing solely on the national murder rate paints an incomplete picture. Murders in the United States are extraordinarily concentrated in a small number of places, while the nation's overall violent crime victimization rate remains below that of many other developed countries.

The research by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I head, finds that 31 counties with the highest murder rates - just 1% of all U.S. counties - contain about 20% of the nation's population but account for 41% of all murders. Expanding the analysis to the 63 highest-rate counties (2% of counties) captures 30% of the population but 54% of all murders.

The concentration does not stop at the county level. Within these counties, murders cluster into remarkably small geographic areas. Roughly two-thirds of all murders in the worst 2% of the counties occur within about ten-block neighborhoods, whose populations represent only a tiny fraction of their counties' residents. Much of this violence is associated with street gangs and repeat offenders rather than random acts committed throughout the broader community.

Most of the country experiences very little murder. Fifty-three percent of U.S. counties record no murders in a typical year, and another 16% record only one murder. Together, these 69% of counties account for just 3% of all murders nationwide.

Media coverage often leaves the impression that murderers are ordinary people who suddenly lose their tempers. The evidence tells a very different story. Murder offenders overwhelmingly have extensive criminal histories. About 90% of murderers already have criminal records, and some portion of the remaining 10% almost certainly committed crimes before the homicide but had not yet been caught.

Criminologists have long recognized that violent crime is committed by a relatively small group of chronic offenders. Research has consistently shown that 5% of the criminals account for most crime. Marvin Wolfgang's landmark Philadelphia birth cohort studies found that roughly 6-8% of offenders accounted for the majority of serious violent crime, including about 71% of murders, 73% of rapes, 82% of robberies, and 69% of aggravated assaults. Subsequent research has repeatedly confirmed that a small fraction of chronic offenders commit a disproportionate share of violent crime.

Who commits murders also differs dramatically across demographic groups. In 2020, black men made up about 6.0% of the U.S. population but accounted for 49.7% of known murder offenders - about 8.3 times their share of the population. Black women accounted for 5.5% of murder offenders while making up 6.43% of the population, or about 0.85 times their population share.

By comparison, white men (including Hispanics) comprised 30.3% of the population but 35.7% of murder offenders. White women accounted for just 6.1% of murder offenders despite making up 31.3% of the U.S. population. Asian men and women had the lowest rates of murder offending, accounting for only 0.43 times and 0.06 times, respectively, their shares of the U.S. population.

Many look at these numbers and say this proves the criminal justice system is racist. Many Democrats think the share of blacks in prison shouldn't exceed their share of the population (see also here and here). For example, in 2020, the Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee complained, "Black Americans made up 33% of the sentenced prison population in 2017, despite comprising only about 13% of the U.S. adult population. The vast disparity in incarceration rates is driven substantially by the unequal application of U.S. laws."

The problem is that these discussions ignore the race of the victims. Ninety percent of black murder victims are murdered by other blacks. If you make it so there is little or no penalty for murdering blacks, you ensure that more blacks will be murdered.

The lesson is straightforward. Although the United States has a higher national murder rate than many peer countries, murders are extraordinarily concentrated among a small number of repeat offenders operating in a tiny number of neighborhoods. If you avoid hanging around people with violent criminal records and those places, you are very unlikely to become a victim.

Yet many Democrats draw the wrong conclusion from these data and advocate policies that will increase the number of black murder victims.

John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He served as the senior advisor for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice during 2020-21.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 22:40

Cuba Expands Market Reforms As Socialist Economy Buckles Under Trump Pressure

Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba's Central Committee, reported Wednesday that Havana is easing restrictions on private businesses and self-employed workers as it attempts to stabilize an economy battered by decades of failed socialist policies and renewed pressure from the Trump administration.

"The updated regulations eliminate restrictions, broaden the scope of business activities for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and cooperatives, and incorporate new opportunities in commerce, transport, industry, and services," Granma wrote in the announcement.

Under Decree 160, the government removed 46 of 125 previously restricted activities and modified another 35, opening more of the manufacturing, energy, transportation, trade, health, and education sectors to non-state participation.

Cuba now has more than 15,600 private small and medium-sized businesses, a figure the government expects to top 16,000 by the end of August.

The reforms mark a slight pivot toward market-oriented activity, even as Cuban officials insist the opening does not represent privatization or a transition to capitalism.

"This opening does not imply a privatization process," Lázara Mercedes López Acea, president of the National Institute of Non-State Economic Actors, told the local outlet, "but rather the strengthening of the national business system, maintaining the socialist state enterprise as the main actor, while expanding the participation of other economic actors to contribute to the growth of the economy and a better supply of goods and services for the population."

López Acea said the new measures respond to "the tightening of the economic, commercial, financial, and energy blockade imposed by the United States government."

This development comes after Cuba passed its broadest economic overhaul since the revolution, seeking to loosen state control as U.S. sanctions compound fuel shortages, prolonged blackouts, and a deepening financial crisis. The economic collapse was already well underway before President Trump launched his maximum-pressure campaign.

Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of former President Raúl Castro, recently said Cuba must diversify its economy, business practices and investment channels while pursuing a distinctly Cuban development model.

Rodríguez Castro told USA Today in a recent interview that he is willing to negotiate Cuba's future with President Trump.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 22:15

US & Global Reliance On Fossil Fuel Unchanged In 25 Years

Authored by Edward Ring via American Greatness,

So far this century, worldwide energy use is up nearly 60 percent, and, as anyone living in Western industrialized nations knows all too well, we have spent trillions of dollars to “decarbonize” our economy. And guess what? Our dependence on fossil fuels is unchanged.

To make this assertion, we may cite the world’s most authoritative source for comprehensive information on global fuel consumption, the Statistical Review of World Energy. For more than 75 years, an updated annual report has been released, and with the 2026 issue now available, we have the latest information on what forms of energy are most critical for maintaining human civilization. And in 2025, 86 percent of global energy came from fossil fuels: 33 percent from oil, 25 percent from natural gas, and 28 percent from coal. Nuclear power added 5 percent, hydroelectric power added 3 percent, and all renewables—biomass, biofuel, geothermal, wind, and solar combined—contributed 6 percent.

What’s most remarkable about these statistics is how little they have changed in 25 years. The Statistical Review reported that total fossil fuel consumption in 2000 represented, get ready, 87 percent of the total. Our global civilization’s reliance on fossil fuels has declined by 1 percent over the past 25 years. That’s not even a rounding error.

In the United States, the shift is greater, but not anywhere close to the trajectory demanded by the net-zero lobby. In 2000 we relied on fossil fuels for 89 percent of our total energy, and in 2025 that percentage was still 83 percent. More notable, perhaps, was that total energy consumption in the United States actually dropped slightly, from 95.8 exajoules in 2000 to 93.8 exajoules in 2025.

As the table shows, there are many additional, and very big, nuances to this story. Perhaps the biggest is the contrast between trends describing energy use in the United States compared to what happened in the world over the last quarter-century. To begin with, as noted, even though the U.S. population grew from 282 million to 343 million and U.S. GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars nearly doubled from $13.9 trillion to over $24.1 trillion, total energy consumption actually dropped.

Overall, total world GDP increased from an estimated $79 trillion in 2000 to roughly $180 trillion in 2025, more than doubling, while global population grew by 33 percent, from 6.2 billion to 8.2 billion. At the same time, global energy consumption is up 58 percent in the past 25 years, from 381 exajoules to just over 600 exajoules. But where is this energy coming from?

In the U.S., while total energy use declined slightly, the energy mix changed significantly. Consumption of oil stayed about the same, only dropping 3 percent from 37.6 to 36.4 exajoules. But use of natural gas jumped by 35 percent, while coal consumption dropped by a precipitous 63 percent. In 2000, coal and natural gas contributed almost equally to U.S. energy consumption, at 24.4 exajoules and 23.7 exajoules, respectively. By 2025, the contribution of natural gas to total U.S. energy jumped to 32.9 exajoules, while the use of coal plummeted to 8.7 exajoules. Also during the previous quarter century, nuclear energy in the U.S. actually grew a bit, from 7.5 to 9.0 exajoules, while hydroelectric power generation fell dramatically, from 2.6 exajoules in 2000 to only 0.9 in 2025. Hydroelectric power generation, however, is volatile because it depends on annual rainfall and snowpack.

Which brings us to renewables, which in the U.S. grew from virtually nothing in 2000 to supply 6 percent of the energy used in 2025.

For renewables to go from 0 to 6 percent is impressive, but the big story here is the persistence of fossil fuels. In the U.S., while we reduced our use of fossil fuels a bit, as noted, from 89 percent to 83 percent, for the most part we just flipped sources. We replaced coal with natural gas. But worldwide, the consumption of fossil fuels as a percentage of total energy didn’t change at all, barely dropping from 87 to 86 percent, while in absolute terms the use of fossil fuels exploded. And how the total world mix of fossil fuels changed tells a very different story from what happened in the U.S.

Worldwide consumption of oil dropped in percentage terms, from 39 to 33 percent, but the industry logged huge increases in actual production. In 2000, oil was the dominant source of energy in the world at 147.3 exajoules, and in 2025 it retained that distinction with ease, with consumption rising to 201 exajoules. In absolute terms, the use of gas and coal also grew sharply. Natural gas consumption jumped from 90.3 exajoules in 2000 to 150.7 in 2025, an increase of 67 percent. Coal experienced even greater growth, increasing 79 percent from 92.8 exajoules in 2000 to 166 in 2025.

These are a lot of numbers, but they tell an unequivocal story. If we regard the basic proportions that matter, fossil fuels power human civilization as much in 2025 as they did in 2000, despite trillions of dollars invested in renewables. Compared to fossil fuels, everything else combined is still relatively insignificant. Worldwide, as noted, nuclear power offers 5 percent of global energy; hydroelectricity offers 3 percent, and all renewables combined add another 6 percent.

It is pertinent to wonder how renewables, all of them, can possibly be poised to rapidly replace fossil fuels. Over the past 25 years, renewable sources of energy altogether went from zero to delivering to humanity 35.4 exajoules of energy. During that same 25 years, just the increase in fossil fuel consumption was 187 exajoules; that is, it went from delivering 331 exajoules in 2000 to delivering 518 exajoules. As human population moves toward its predicted peak of 10 billion people around 2050, we are going to need more energy to ensure a prosperous civilization, even if our capacity to efficiently convert energy into wealth improves even more than the U.S. was able to do over the past few decades.

These basic proportions are undeniable and lead to an inescapable conclusion. Fossil fuels are indispensable and are going to be with us for a very long time.

It’s important to recognize that the growth in renewable energy, particularly solar (photovoltaic) electricity, has been impressive. The gains have been exponential. Worldwide photovoltaic output—converting terawatt-hours to exajoules—increased from 1.76 exajoules in 2024 to 2.32 in 2025. Photovoltaic energy output is eleven times greater today than it was only ten years ago. But do we have the resources to accommodate another few decades of exponential growth?

Equally pertinent, total global battery storage capacity, despite 60 percent per year growth over the past ten years, is still, as of 2025, only equal to 1.2 terawatt-hours (ref. page 65 in the 2026 Statistical Review, “Grid-scale battery energy storage systems”). In the context of world energy, that’s nothing. It takes 278 terawatt-hours to equal one exajoule. It’s worth reflecting on this fact.

It means that even if we increased our photovoltaic output by another two orders of magnitude—roughly what would be required to even begin making a replacement-level contribution to global energy production—could we also increase our electricity storage capacity by four orders of magnitude from what it is today? Even multiplying today’s worldwide storage capacity by ten thousand would equal only 45 exajoules. Notice those battery farms going in all over? Imagine 10,000 of them where one of them now stands. That’s what it will take, at a minimum, if the world’s energy economy electrifies and does it while relying on intermittent energy sources. Does the earth have the resources to sustain such growth, and what would be the environmental impact?

These are questions everyone must ask who advocates for a net-zero future. There may be answers to these questions, but to date we don’t know what those answers are. Continuing to develop renewable energy has to take into account its own environmental impact. Biofuel cannot possibly grow much beyond current production unless we want to convert millions of square miles of farms and forests into monocultures of sugar cane and oil palm plantations. Wind energy as well is problematic; it’s a resource hog, a visual and auditory nuisance, and it wreaks havoc on the local environment. Hydroelectric power generation also has limited potential to add much more to our energy mix. Geothermal is a wild card. There are other paths, but they will take time—advanced nuclear fission, artificial photosynthesis, space-based power, fusion.

Meanwhile, policies designed to rapidly phase out fossil fuels are based on wishful thinking, and everyone familiar with basic energy statistics knows this. If proponents of net-zero cannot moderate their position against using fossil fuels, then we must justifiably question their motives.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 21:50

US Measles Cases In 2026 Highest In 35 Years

The number of measles cases this year has become the highest since 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on July 24.

Forty-five states have confirmed 2,318 cases through July 23, the CDC said this week.

That’s up from 2,289 cases in 2025 and the highest since 1991, when 9,643 cases were recorded.

Outbreaks are ongoing in central Virginia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, some doctors said the jump in cases stems from lower numbers of people receiving vaccines against measles.

“High vaccination coverage has protected even the un- and undervaccinated because of herd protection, keeping measles at bay for the past few decades,” Dr. William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a statement. “But in communities with pockets of susceptible individuals across a broad age range, measles has been able to take hold, infecting those who are susceptible and spreading rapidly.”

“Measles vaccines are extremely safe and effective,” said Moss, whose center helps build “knowledge and support for the value of vaccines,” according to its website, and partners with vaccine manufacturers.

“Getting you or your child vaccinated is the best way to protect against disease.”

The measles vaccination rate among kindergartners in 2024 and 2025 was 92.5 percent, down from 95 percent in 2019 and 2020. Rates for some states that have seen outbreaks in 2026, such as South Carolina, are less than 90 percent.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during a hearing this week that the high number of measles cases was “due to deliberate attempts to undermine faith in traditional public health measures by those who know nothing but push their ignorance as fact.”

Of the patients this year, 93 percent either were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status, according to the CDC. The agency has not responded to requests for separate percentages for the categories.

Another 3 percent had received one dose of a measles vaccine, and another 4 percent had received two doses.

About half of the cases occurred among people aged 5 to 19, and another 31 percent were in adults aged 20 and older.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email that Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. “has been clear that vaccination remains the most effective way to prevent measles infection” and that the CDC continues to recommend two doses of a measles vaccine.

“Under the Secretary’s leadership, HHS has mounted an aggressive outbreak response, providing more than $8.5 million to states and local partners, expanding technical assistance, and surging CDC personnel and resources to support containment efforts where needed most,” the spokesperson said.

“Currently, U.S. measles incidence remains below that of several peer countries. As of July, Canada’s measles incidence was 3.9 times higher than the U.S., Mexico’s was 13.8 times higher, and the United Kingdom’s was 1.9 times higher,” the spokesperson said. “HHS focused its response where it can have the greatest impact: rapidly supporting affected communities, strengthening state and local response efforts, and communicating the ways in which measles transmission can be slowed, including through MMR vaccination, and ways that measles can be treated.”

Seven percent of the patients have been hospitalized. No deaths have been recorded.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 21:25

Russia Charges Telegram Founder Pavel Durov With Aiding Terrorism, Issues Arrest Warrant

Authored by Guy Birchall via The Epoch Times,

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on July 29 that it had charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with facilitating terrorist activities and issued an international warrant for his arrest.

Pavel Durov in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Aug. 1, 2017. Tatan Syuflana/AP Photo

The FSB Public Relations Center said in a statement that "Telegram's head of administration, P. Durov, has been charged as part of an ongoing criminal investigation on suspicion of an offense under Part 1.1 of Article 205.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, concerning assistance in terrorist activities. He is being placed on an international wanted list."

The FSB added that the charges related to Telegram's failure "in violation of Russian law," to remove "numerous channels, chats, and bots of this messenger, which are actively used by Ukrainian special services, terrorist, and extremist organizations to prepare and coordinate acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass murder, and cyber-fraud in the Russian Federation, the consequences of which have resulted in numerous human casualties, including women and children, as well as material losses amounting to billions."

Specifically, the FSB said that it had "identified and documented numerous instances of Ukrainian intelligence agencies using the popular youth chatbot 'Dayvinchik/Leo - Dating, Chat, and New Friends' on the Telegram messenger to lure Russian citizens into sabotage and terrorist activities through deception and psychological manipulation."

The intelligence service said that as a result of joint operations with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Investigative Committee of Russia, it had identified and detained "46 Russian citizens aged 12 to 22 years" who had been using the chatbot and, subsequently, "committed armed attacks on law enforcement officers, arson attacks on transportation, energy, communications, and credit and financial system facilities," on the orders of the Ukrainian special services.

The detainees had also "acted as couriers delivering funds from defrauded citizens to crypto exchange points for crediting to enemy-controlled accounts," the FSB added, saying Ukrainian intelligence officers used the Telegram "Dayvinchik" dating bot, posing as women, to contact young Russian men, persuading them to share geolocations of meeting places (often shopping centers or key facilities) and pay for tickets or gifts via phishing links.

Later, individuals posing as Russian law-enforcement or Rosfinmonitoring (Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service) officers contacted the victims through other apps, claiming the money had funded Ukrainian forces and the coordinates had been used for missile or drone strikes, according to the FSB, then used threats of prosecution and psychological pressure to coerce them into committing armed attacks or arson under the guise of anti-terrorism checks or fake operational tasks.

The Epoch Times contacted Durov and Telegram for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Telegram's official X account posted an image of Durov making an obscene gesture shortly after the arrest warrant was announced on July 29.

The move by the FSB comes after Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor began limiting voice and video calls for Telegram users in Russia in August 2025 and, in February, announced it "will continue to impose successive restrictions in order to ensure compliance with Russian legislation and ensure the protection of citizens," on Telegram and other messaging apps not observing Russian law.

At the time, Durov said his app remains committed to freedom of speech and user privacy "no matter the pressure."

Telegram, an encrypted messenger app, says it has more than 1 billion users, and is widely used on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war, including by the Kremlin.

Third-party compiled data estimates there are around 35 million Telegram users in Russia - one of the largest national user bases globally.

While trying to restrict Telegram's use in recent years, Russia has promoted its own state-backed MAX messenger service. Critics have said MAX is a surveillance tool, a claim Russian authorities deny. The app integrates various government services, and the Kremlin says it is designed to simplify and improve citizens' lives.

Critics have said MAX is a surveillance tool, a claim Russian authorities deny. The app integrates various government services, and the Kremlin says it is designed to simplify and improve citizens’ lives.

Durov, who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but now holds Emirati and French passports, founded Russia's Facebook equivalent, VKontakte, before selling his remaining stake in 2014 amid pressure from Russian authorities. He founded Telegram in 2013.

French authorities are also investigating Durov over allegations that Telegram failed to adequately prevent criminal activity on the platform and did not sufficiently cooperate with law enforcement requests. Durov denies any wrongdoing.

A general view of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's main security agency, in Moscow on March 23, 2021. Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 21:00

Red Sea Redux: Saudis Call For 'Coalition Of The Willing' To Protect Shipping From Houthis

Here we go again... after months ago President Trump urgently pushed for an international naval alliance to 'open' the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran war, which was met with at the time with a collective cold shoulder from European allies, the Saudis are newly pitching the same to open up the Bab al Mandab Strait.

"Saudi Arabia is seeking to build an international coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks, say two people familiar with the deliberations," Reuters reports Wednesday.

March 2024: Maxar Technologies image shows the sinking Belize-flagged ship Rubymar in the Red Sea after being attacked by the Houthis.

"The composition of the coalition has yet to be finalized and remains under discussion with dozens of countries, the sources add," the report continues.

The conflict has just hit the first day of month six of a 'little excursion' what the White House all the way back in February and March insisted would be a swift, limited, and successful action.

Fast-forward and now a key American regional ally pleads for a new 'coalition of the willing' focused on safe Red Sea passage as the Houthis take shots at Saudi vessels.

But these calls are again likely to merely fall on deaf ears, given few countries will likely want to send their navies up against an entrenched Houthis movement in Yemen which hasn't yielded after well over a decade at war with the Saudis, Emirates, and Israelis.

Also, Washington's global allies have likely long ago lost confidence in American 'plans' for reopening Hormuz and bringing the Iran war to a close. They don't see an articulated exit strategy, but instead a continual escalation ladder broken up for brief pauses and talks which have obviously collapsed.

The fact that Riyadh is now scrambling to find safe passage through the Red Sea for its ships speaks to the widening scope of this war. We earlier featured analysis from former MI6 intelligence official Alastair Crooke, whose words are apt here:

By adopting such uncompromising Manichaean language, Trump effectively has severed himself from any prospective diplomatic solution. By widening the war (Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq) he has severely complicated any diplomatic track. All elements are interrelated, yet they also have separate agendas. Thus a solution involves a complex matrix of issues, rather than a binary dispute between the US and Iran alone. 

Likely Washington will jump on board these Saudi calls for international patrols in the Red Sea. But the US is unlikely to lead the way or even directly participate, given this was already tried before in the context of the Gaza war, when the Houthis previously imposed a naval blockade.

"Although the Iranian stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz is a key contributor to increasing prices, there is now a second pressure point – a new threat posed by Houthi rebels to shipping in the Red Sea." Read this excellent piece from Nathan L. Owen, Colonel, U.S. Air Force… pic.twitter.com/D93FIpB3S4

— VoteVets (@votevets) July 29, 2026

Despite many rounds of major US and Israeli bombing campaigns over Yemen, the Houthis maintained their ability to target ships in regional waters, and the most advanced militaries and navies in the world seem powerless.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 20:35

Secret Service Agent Arrested In Hazing Incident

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

Secret Service agent Marquez Pinder was arrested and charged Sunday with five felony counts in a near-fatal fraternity hazing incident that occurred this spring, according to court documents.

RealClearPolitics first reported in June that the agent was put on administrative leave while local authorities in Miami investigated him in connection with an April hazing incident that caused severe damage to a fraternity pledge's kidneys. The victim is a law student at the University of Miami and was undergoing an initiation process to become a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, a prominent historically black fraternity.

Pinder, 29, who was booked in a Miami jail Sunday, faces felony charges of hazing, attempted manslaughter, and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Part of the hazing included paddling, which was allegedly so severe that the pledge's kidneys and skin were harmed, and he was rushed to the hospital.

Pinder's arrest marks the fifth known time this year that a Secret Service agent or Uniformed Division officer has run afoul of law enforcement.

• Last week, RCP reported that senior Secret Service agent Kenneth Premo, 50, who currently serves as a polygrapher, was arrested on July 6 and charged with a driving while impaired, assault on a law enforcement officer, and sexual battery in Virginia.
• In May, Secret Service Uniformed Division officer John Spillman was arrested in Miami after police responded to a complaint and found him naked and masturbating in a hallway.
• In March, Secret Service Uniformed Division officer Tristan Hale was arrested and faced charges for sending sexually explicit messages, images, and videos to a Lancaster County girl. Pennsylvania State Police charged Hale, 28, of Virginia with possession of child sexual abuse material, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of a minor, and disseminating sexual materials to a minor.
• A Secret Service agent on the vice president's detail had his home raided by the FBI late last year in a wide-ranging tax fraud probe first reported by RCP.
• In addition, a Secret Service agent serving on Vice President JD Vance's detail is under internal investigation for either purchasing or trying to sell drugs to an undercover police officer, according to multiple sources.
• On New Year's Eve, a new Secret Service agent recruit shot and killed his 16-year-old half-brother and may have been responsible for another bullet grazing a woman's face on New Year's Eve. The suspect has claimed self-defense while Florida police continue to investigate.

Many current and retired agents have argued that the agency's ongoing DEI issues and lowering of hiring standards, as well as manpower shortages in recent years, have weakened the agency's ability to prevent or respond properly to multiple assassination attempts against Donald Trump, and provide security for the president's cabinet and dozens of other protectees.

Last week, the Secret Service placed an agent on administrative leave who was suspected of leaking complaints about manpower issues on Vice President JD Vance's detail.

Michael Townsend, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Miami Field Office, where Pinder is assigned, said the agency "takes seriously any criminal misconduct allegations involving one of our employees."

"We are fully cooperating with the investigation," Townsend said in a statement. "The Secret Service remains committed to accountability, professionalism, and integrity, and any misconduct will be addressed swiftly and appropriately upon completion of the investigative and judicial process," he added.

The Secret Service safely protected a heavily fortified rescheduled White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Friday. Agency leadership instituted several new security measures and checkpoints never before used for that particular event, along with a scaled-back guest list of 700 compared to the usual 3,000 attendees.

The dinner, which President Trump also attended, was rescheduled after the original event ended abruptly early in the evening when would-be assassin Cole Tomas Allen shot past a security checkpoint and a magnetometer that was being dismantled at the dinner. Besides Trump, guests at that dinner included several Cabinet members and dignitaries, including Erika Kirk, who fled the dinner in tears while other guests hid under tables and an elite group of trained Secret Service agents pointed guns at the ground, searching for any additional suspects.

Secret Service agent Victor Gonzales, who was honored at Friday's White House Correspondents' dinner, shot at Allen five times but missed. Allen tripped before he was apprehended by the Secret Service 45 yards from the stairs leading to the ballroom where the dinner was being held.

Gonzales was hit in his protective vest by buckshot from Allen's gun, according to the Secret Service. The White House Correspondents Association on Friday presented Gonzales an award for exceptional service to its members and guests.

Shortly after the original WHCA's jarring episode, Secret Service officers shot and hit a soldier visiting Washington D.C. with his family while agents were trying to stop another man firing at them outside a White House checkpoint.

Army Private Benjamin Del Real, 25, is on leave from the military and says he plans to sue the Secret Service. He was hit in the abdomen and critically wounded during the May incident. He's still recovering after two surgeries. The Secret Service has yet to publicly admit to shooting Del Real.

While he was recuperating at Walter Reed National Medical Center, Del Real told NBC News that a high-ranking Secret Service official visited him in the hospital to see how he was doing. Del Real's attorney, Joseph Murphy, said he has respect for the Secret Service. Yet, he said, the agency has "dropped the ball here over the last few years in terms of protecting many dignitaries, including the president at the correspondents' dinner."

"It seems to happen more frequently than it ever has in the past, and it's time to take a serious look at what's going on inside the Secret Service," Murphy added.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn sent Secret Service Director Sean Curran a letter demanding a full, immediate audit of the Secret Service following the string of embarrassing incidents, including the Allen incident at the White House Correspondents' dinner.

Citing RealClearPolitics' reporting, the Tennessee Republican demanded an immediate audit of every employee on the agency's payroll, demanding that the agency "root out the rot." In her letter to Curran, Sen. Blackburn said, "It is blatantly clear that the Secret Service needs to be cleaned up."

"Unless you root out the rot, our nation will suffer the consequences," Blackburn warned.

Law enforcement experts, including Fox News contributor Paul Mauro, who served 24 years with the New York City Police Department, have questioned why the Secret Service didn't provide more details sooner about the May exchange of fire near the National Mall and the suspect's injuries. Federal prosecutors charged 45-year-old Michael Marx of Midland, Texas, with assaulting federal officers with a dangerous weapon, among other crimes.

"A press conference over this recent mysterious shooting in D.C. wouldn't be a bad idea either," Mauro remarked in an X.com post. "USSS involved in more shooting incidents than NYPD these days. And that's ... new."

Former veteran Secret Service agent Rich Staropoli said the string of arrests for serious criminal charges shows that the agents "who are supposed to be elite investigators have shown an inability to police themselves - allowing things to fester until outside police or intel entities get involved and bring incidents into the public forum."

"The place needs a house-cleaning at all levels," he said. "This agency will do better with people who truly are worthy of trust and confidence even if it means dumping half the personnel."

Staropoli places a lot of the blame on previous Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden and was forced to resign after the Butler assassination attempt on Trump.

"[Cheatle] followed the same DEI policies that the Biden crime family pushed - she bought into it as much as she bought into her own ability to actually do the job," he said.

The alumni and other senior fraternity members performing the paddling in the Florida hazing incident allegedly involving Pinder are referred to as NUPEs, which stands for "Negro Under Pressure Excelling," an acronym that Kappa Alpha Psi, a prominent historically black fraternity, has popularized. According to sources familiar with the fraternity scene the term refers to how diamonds are formed under pressure. Kappa Alpha Psi has championed the acronym as praise for black scholars, artists, and leaders who have responded to highly pressurized or historically restrictive environments by achieving "excellence" or success in their various fields.

Kappa Alpha Psi officially prohibits all forms of hazing. Nonetheless, several chapters have faced disciplinary action and suspensions from universities nationwide following allegations of physical and psychological abuse over the last 30 years.

In 2001 a Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University band member was beaten so severely his kidneys shut down, resulting in a $1.8 million lawsuit. In 2013, a Stevenson University student who became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi at Coppin State University-Powell claimed he was caned, paddled, and beaten so badly he needed days of hospital care, filing a $4 million lawsuit. A University of Mississippi chapter was suspended through 2025 after a student alleged repeated hazing incidents from spring 2019 through spring 2020.

Neither the Secret Service nor Kappa Alpha Psi's national headquarters responded to a request for comment.

The hazing incident underscores the continuing problems of college hazing. Earlier this year, three fraternity members at Northern Arizona University were charged in connection with the death of an 18-year-old student during a rush event. This month, Ohio State University revoked a fraternity chapter's status when a student was hospitalized after a hazing incident.

In 2019 Florida State University student Andrew Coffey died during an episode of fraternity-related drinking. Pinder was charged under a Florida law passed after Coffey's death that makes hazing a felony if it results in serious injury or death.

"Among some, fraternity hazing might be seen as a tradition creating a sense of belonging and brotherhood, but since 2001, hazing in Florida has killed Chad Meredith, Robert Champion and Andrew Coffey while seriously injuring others," Fernandez Rundle said in a written statement. "This case, with the victims requiring hospitalization, provide[s] clear-cut examples of hazing's danger. In Florida, hazing is abuse, and it is a crime," she said. "Its victims too often lie in their graves and in hospital beds."

Pinder's attorney, Justin Beckham, told the New York Times that his client was "grossly overcharged."

Also facing charges in the Miami hazing case are two other men whom authorities allege helped carry out the beatings. They are identified as Jared Lamar James, 26, and Elijah Delano Dyous, 29.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 20:10

California Democrats Attempt To Sabotage Voter ID Initiative

In November, California voters will have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 39. The measure, officially the Voter Identification, Citizenship Verification, and Registered Voter List Administration Initiative, would require Californians to show identification when they vote and force state officials to clean up the voter rolls and verify that the people on them are eligible citizens.

All signs suggest it will pass. A poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found in May that 71% of Californians support requiring proof of citizenship for first-time voter registration, and 54% want it required before every election. However, Attorney General Rob Bonta is trying to make sure it doesn't pass.

His latest move came on July 21, just months before the November election, when Bonta rewrote the official ballot title for Prop 39, replacing the language he himself approved last year with a new title that proponents say is engineered to make voters reject it.

The original ballot title for the bill, approved by Bonta last year, read:

ESTABLISHES ADDITIONAL VOTER IDENTIFICATION AND CITIZENSHIP VERIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. This measure would amend the California Constitution to further require that voters present government-issued identification at the polls or the last four digits of a government-issued identification number when voting by mail; the State provide voter identification cards on request; and elections officials annually report percentage of each county's voters whose citizenship they have verified.

That language sat on every petition that more than 1.3 million voters signed over a year of circulation to qualify the measure for the ballot.

Bonta's revised version reads:

PROHIBITS CITIZENS FROM VOTING UNLESS THEY PRESENT GOVERNMENT-ISSUED IDENTIFICATION. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Invalidates mail ballots that do not have last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope. Prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.

Carl DeMaio, the Republican state assemblyman who chairs Reform California and serves as one of Prop 39's official proponents, called the rewrite a "blatant attempt to rig the November election."

"California politicians know that a supermajority of California voters support Prop 39's bipartisan solution for Voter ID - so now they are corruptly trying to rig the election by putting a biased and dishonest title on this common-sense measure," DeMaio said.

He also pointed out what he called the tell in Bonta's timing. "When Rob Bonta didn't think we could get the signatures on Prop 39, he provided a relatively fair ballot title - but now that the citizens have forced Prop 39 on the ballot, he decides at the last minute to corruptly try to rig the election against Prop 39 by changing the ballot title to a biased and dishonest one," DeMaio said.

Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, speaks Monday, March 2, 2026, outside the Riverside County Registrar of Voters at a news conference by backers of a voter ID measure for the November 2026 ballot. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)

On Friday, DeMaio announced he is filing a lawsuit against Bonta "to force him to restore a FAIR ballot title to our Prop 39 Voter ID Initiative!" He concedes the effort is a long shot, since politician-appointed judges have blessed this sort of title manipulation for years.

Bonta's office rejects the accusation, calling the change routine and legally required. A spokesperson said the office is reviewing the lawsuit and takes seriously "our duty to prepare a title and summary and ballot label," adding, "we are confident the court will agree we have faithfully executed that duty here." The office notes that California elections code expressly allows a measure's ballot title to differ from its circulating title, and that this year all nine voter-proposed initiatives that qualified had their titles changed, not only Prop 39.

Word Games

In 2018, then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is now running for governor, rebranded Proposition 6, the Gas Tax Repeal Initiative, as "Eliminates Recently Enacted Road Repair and Transportation Funding." Support collapsed from 65% to 45%, the repeal failed, and Californians now pay the highest gas prices in the country. The lesson Sacramento learned from that episode, critics say, was that word games work, and there is no penalty for playing them.

DeMaio still expects Prop 39 to pass in November. "We expected corrupt politicians like Rob Bonta to try to deprive voters of a fair election on Prop 39 - but this biased and dishonest ballot title takes election rigging to a whole new level even for California," he said. "These corrupt politicians are showing every voter why we need to enact Prop 39 to implement a bipartisan solution to Voter ID."

Despite his confidence, the California Democrats have shown they are willing to ignore the will of the people. When California voters passed Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure, by an overwhelming margin in 2024, the Democrat-controlled legislature refused to fund it, effectively sidelining the will of the voters.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 19:45

Chinese University Accused Of Sending Students To Factory Jobs Under Mandatory Labor Program

Authored by Michael Zhuang via The Epoch Times,

A Chinese university has come under scrutiny after an alleged internal safety agreement surfaced online alongside claims from a self-identified graduate that students were required to work on farms and in food-processing factories as part of a mandatory academic program while being denied basic workplace protections.

A seeder working a cotton field in Tumushuke, Xinjiang region, China, in an aerial photo taken on March 24, 2021. STR/CNS/AFP via Getty Images

The controversy centers on Xinjiang Agricultural University, which allegedly has for years required students to participate in a "Rural Support Labor Practice Course."

According to the graduate, students were sent to farms, state-run agricultural settlements, and tomato-processing plants for weeks of manual labor as part of their coursework.

Documents circulated alongside the online allegations appear to show an agreement between workers and a tomato-processing company stating that workers must assume full responsibility for workplace accidents, waive the right to seek compensation from the company, and acknowledge that the employer has no obligation to provide social insurance.

Critics interviewed by The Epoch Times said the arrangement raises questions about whether educational programs are being used to supply businesses with low-cost seasonal labor while shielding employers from legal liability. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

Safety Agreement Raises Labor Concerns

On July 25, someone claiming to be a graduate of Xinjiang Agricultural University posted on Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer platform, describing the university's long-running labor practice program.

According to the post, second-year students typically suspend regular classes for about 20 days at the beginning of the academic year before being transported by the university to farms, agricultural units operated by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which has been sanctioned by the United States since 2020 due to its human rights abuses.

The Epoch Times could not independently verify the online allegations or the authenticity of the leaked documents.

Students allegedly perform seasonal work including harvesting cotton, peppers, grapes, and tomatoes, as well as operating on production lines in tomato paste factories.

Among the materials shared online was what appeared to be a safety management agreement between workers and a tomato processing plant. The agreement lists an employment period from July 28 to Oct. 30, 2024, with positions including packaging, material handling, and boiler assistance.

Those jobs are part of the factory's production process and involve industrial equipment, heavy lifting, and high-temperature working conditions, rather than short-term educational observation or training activities.

According to the agreement, workers must disclose any health conditions before beginning work. If they conceal medical information, the company may terminate the agreement without compensation.

Another provision states that the relationship is a "temporary labor service relationship rather than an employment contract," adding that the company bears no obligation to provide any insurance coverage.

The agreement also states that if a workplace accident occurs during the employment period, the worker "shall bear full responsibility" and may not seek compensation from the company in any form.

It further provides that the company may terminate the agreement without compensation if the worker violates company rules, safety regulations, or management directives.

A sociologist from Xinjiang University told The Epoch Times that the agreement appears inconsistent with Chinese labor regulations and reflects an imbalance of power between universities, employers, and students.

"Universities control students' coursework, academic credits, disciplinary records, and graduation eligibility," the sociologist said. "When a university assigns students to these placements, they have little practical ability to refuse."

He said the agreement characterizes factory work as an educational practice while transferring workplace risks onto students.

"The company determines wages, while students are expected to bear responsibility for workplace injuries," the sociologist said. "Educational authority is effectively being used as a tool to supply businesses with inexpensive labor."

He added that although the agreement requires workers to follow company management and safety rules, it places responsibility for accidents, medical costs, and compensation entirely on the individual worker.

"The company controls job assignments and has the authority to terminate the agreement, while workers are effectively required to waive their right to seek compensation in advance," the sociologist said. "These standard contract terms clearly reflect unequal bargaining power."

Questions Over University's Labor Program

The agreement does not identify Xinjiang Agricultural University or specify the worker's identity. However, the company named in the document, the factory positions described, and the seasonal employment period correspond with the graduate's account of students being assigned to tomato-processing plants.

The materials have prompted questions about the safety arrangements, compensation, and relationship between the university and participating companies.

According to information published on Xinjiang Agricultural University's website, the school says it has organized more than 80,000 students and faculty members to participate in agricultural work-study programs over the past 25 years. The university says those programs have generated nearly 4 billion yuan ($591 million) in direct economic benefits.

The disclosure has renewed debate over the relationship between labor education and commercial interests.

In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has expanded labor education requirements in schools, promoting manual work as part of collective education, character building, and social practice.

A Xinjiang resident told The Epoch Times that he believes requiring students to perform production work through academic requirements resembles what he called a "Xinjiang education camp."

"In Xinjiang, schools, businesses, and local authorities all hold power over students," he said. "Schools place great emphasis on obedience. Students who repeatedly fail to comply with school requirements can face expulsion."

The resident alleged that many businesses seek partnerships with schools to gain access to low-cost labor.

"If you go online and expose unfair treatment in Xinjiang, it's not just a matter of having your account suspended," he said. "Police may summon you for questioning."

The allegations have drawn particular attention because they come from Xinjiang, where Beijing has faced years of international scrutiny over the use of coerced labor. Since 2017, the CCP has detained large numbers of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in what the CCP described as "vocational education and training centers."

As of publication time, Xinjiang Agricultural University had not publicly addressed whether it assigned students to work at the factory identified in the circulated agreement, whether financial arrangements existed between the university and the company, or how participating students were compensated for their labor.

The Epoch Times reached out to Xinjiang Agricultural University for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 19:20

Jack Reacher Star's Latest Movie Flops After Unhinged Anti-Trump Rant

The Jack Reacher series, launched in 2022, received widespread acclaim for avoiding most of the woke tropes slathered all over the majority of streaming series and movies at the time.  For those with short memories, in 2022, the idea of a project featuring a 6'3" 240 pound white guy as the main protagonist seemed impossible.  The series felt like a refreshing callback to the 1980s and the action/thriller apex era of Stallone and Schwarzenegger.

Solving big problems with unfiltered masculine violence is something audiences love, but Hollywood usually hates.  If the hero is not a 90 pound wheelchair-bound minority lesbian boss babe kicking patriarchal ass, Tinsel Town usually isn't interested.  It was a miracle that Reacher was greenlit.     

That said, just because an actor plays a cool character on screen does not mean they're also a cool person in real life.  

Enter Alan Ritchson, who smartly kept his mouth shut through most of the filming for Jack Reacher.  Unfortunately, Hollywood has a way of energizing people's worst impulses and a lot of actors feel compelled to loudly virtue signal in order to stay in the good graces of industry elites.  Ritchson has been increasingly unhinged in recent months and his latest rant went off the deep end into violent territory when it comes to Trump and conservatives.

Alan Ritchson has decided the best use of his time is to attack Trump, and to throw a few jabs in at Catholics for some reason😂

You’d think he’d be smart enough to keep his mouth shut because fans of Reacher happen to also be right-wing. But nope. pic.twitter.com/JNCwgRRziU

— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) July 28, 2026

Ritchson now attacks Trump and MAGA voters regularly on issues ranging from immigration to the Epstein Files, and falsely accused Trump of assaulting a 13-year-old girl (an anonymous and baseless accusation that conveniently popped up in 2016 just as Trump was beginning his campaign for the presidency). 

But where was Ritchson's steroid fervor during the Biden years?  Where was the big, tough actor back then when it came to the trans grooming of children or Biden's bizarre hair sniffing habit?  It's fascinating that celebrities only seem to find the voice to speak up when Democrats are out of power. 

Ritchson was raised Catholic and voted Republican in his early years, until, he says, he had an "awakening" on the "black and white" nature of the church.  Catholicism as an institution has also been overrun with progressive ideology in recent decades (nearly 50% of Catholics vote Democrat, 60% support legalized abortion rights and 75% support "trans rights", for example). 

This would explain Ritchson's position that abortion is "spritiually wrong" but he still supports legalization.  It also explains his argument that Christians who oppose immigration are going against the Bible.  Being raised Catholic definitely doesn't ensure a conservative mindset. 

It is a common tactic of progressives within the church to assert that conservative policies are "anti-Christian"; as if open borders, transgender acceptance, pacifism and killing babies are Biblical requirements.  At bottom, the spread of these concepts would effectively mean the death of the Christian West, but hey, they're the good guys because they're "empathetic".  

Some critics argue that Ritchson's continued affiliations with Christianity are a ploy to keep his large conservative audience intact, but if that's the case, then he has failed miserably.  The actor has been on a tour of interviews to promote his latest movie "Motor City" and Reacher Season 4, but his comments have alienated a huge portion of his fans.  Motor City opened last week to resounding crickets. 

Although it was released in over 1600 theaters, Motor City grossed a dismal $1.6 million in its debut. Its per-screen average was a only $1,015, placing it 18th in the per-screen-average derby.  Motor City’s production budget alone was $30 million, there is no reported information on the marketing budget (likely around $10 million).  In any case, the film is a financial disaster.  

Get Woke, Go Broke prevails again.

As for Ritchson, the collapse of his latest film suggests a dwindling fan base for future projects.  When will Hollywood celebrities learn to shut up and keep their Reddit inspired political opinions to themselves?  Probably never, but at least it's easier than ever for movie goers to figure out who and what these people are before spending their hard earned cash.    

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:55

xAI Sues Minnesota Attorney General Over Anti-Deepfake Law

Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times,

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence platform is challenging a Minnesota law that says companies can be held liable if users "nudify" real people by altering an existing photograph or video.

The screen shows Grok app in this photo illustration. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times

Musk's company xAI, maker of the popular Grok AI tool, is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to block the law, which is set to kick in on Aug. 1. Violators can be fined up to $500,000 for each image.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, approximately 117 million people had used Grok as of March 1 this year. If 100 of those users violated Minnesota's law, it could cost the company $50 million in fines.

xAI said it would disable Grok's image-editing feature for Minnesotans. Ellison said he will "see X in court."

"There are plenty of worthy debates to have about AI. This is not one of them. AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and could cause them immense harm on many levels," Ellison responded to the lawsuit in a social media post on July 28.

Grok's terms of service already prohibit users from "nudifying real persons, or otherwise altering a real person's image or likeness to depict them in an intimate or sexual context."

But xAI's lawyers argue that the language of Minnesota's law is too vague, and companies may be on the hook for pictures that are harmless.

The complaint stated that the law "punishes AI platforms that allow users to alter images of real people to depict an 'intimate part.'" According to Minnesota law, that includes things such as the inner thigh, or part of a breast or buttock.

In its court filing, the company references a viral AI-generated photo posted by President Donald Trump to his Truth Social account on May 1. The photo depicts Trump, Marco Rubio and JD Vance, along with an unidentified woman, sitting in the Washington Memorial Reflecting Pool, which was undergoing renovation ordered by the president at the time. All are wearing bathing suits.

"People routinely wear shorts in public that expose some or all of their inner thighs; men may go shirtless in public, exposing their breasts; a woman's swimsuit may expose some or all of her inner thigh; men and women wear Speedos, bikinis, or other types of swimsuits or apparel that expose their breasts and buttocks, at least in part," the complaint said.

Aside from being overbroad, xAI argues, the law violates the company's First Amendment free speech rights, and those of its users. Other laws also make the new statute unnecessary.

"Minnesota law and the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act already prohibit and provide remedies for the knowing, nonconsensual dissemination of deepfakes" showing nudity, the complaint says.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:30

MSFT Spikes After Leaving CapEx Outlook Unchanged

Update (1800ET): As this evening's conference call went on, we finally got to the meat of the matter as Microsoft kept its CapEx forecast unchanged on Wednesday, ...becoming one of the first hyperscalers to hold the line on the market's insatiable AI spending spree.

Against expectations to spend $190 billion on capital expenditures this calendar year, Microsoft tonight maintained this spending outlook (due to an accounting change, this CapEx guidance is now $175 billion, but, in reality, Microsoft is keeping its AI capex plan the same for this year).

This is a major step for the AI trade. MSFT is up 8% on the comment...

Given the after hours spike, and if it continues, then other hyperscalers may be forced to hold/cut their CapEx as it is clear that investors are willing to give credit to that idea.

And with that the hyperbolic narratives underpinning the entire compute shortage edifice.

*  *  *

Microsoft walked into tonight's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report carrying the most bearish positioning it has seen in more than a decade, and it does so on an afternoon when the Fed - now run by a chairman who has made a point of telling markets nothing - triggered significant volatility in stocks and bonds.

The positioning data tells the story first. According to S3 Partners data reported by CNBC, roughly 92 million Microsoft shares are now sold short, or 1.27% of the public float - the highest short interest as a percentage of float since May 2015, and the largest short-interest build anywhere in the Magnificent Seven. More telling than the level is the behavior: S3 says there has been virtually no short covering into the print, which means the bears are not taking profits on a stock that is already down more than 18% year-to-date and, as GeekWire notes, sitting near a one-year low despite consistently beating estimates. They are holding, and they are holding into the report.

The reason is not mysterious to anyone who watched last week.

Alphabet delivered what would once have been a triumphant quarter - revenue up 24%, cloud up 82% - then raised its 2026 capex forecast by roughly $15 billion to as much as $205 billion, and for its trouble watched the stock fall 7% the next day and slip below its prior $4 trillion valuation.

Crucially, the lesson from GOOGL is that the market has stopped rewarding hyperscalers for spending money, which is inconvenient for companies whose entire strategic posture is spending money.

"Alphabet's capex boost increases the odds of similar behavior" from Microsoft and Amazon, Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney wrote in a client note last week, which is precisely what the shorts are betting on.

And so, with all that in mind, what did MSFT report?

The headline is a strong top-line beat out of the gate:

• Microsoft Q4 Revenue was $90.01 billion, up 18%, and better than the consensus $87.7 billion.

• Q4 diluted earnings per share jumped 23% (on a non-GAAP basis) to $4.74 (but this is not entirely comparable to the $4.25 consensus thanks to $3.2billion gain from their investment in Anthropic and 7c/share loss from OpenAI's investment)

Under the hood, MSFT's cloud unit posted a larger-than-expected increase in sales, suggesting that the company’s computing infrastructure and artificial intelligence services continue to make inroads with businesses.

Azure cloud-computing revenue increased 43% during the fiscal fourth quarter, the company said Wednesday in a statement. That exceeded analysts’ average growth estimate of about 40%. 

Nadella highlighted progress on the “cost-to-outcome curve” and noted two major milestones

“We are advancing the frontier on the cost-to-outcome curve, ensuring every customer can turn tokens into business results," said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft.

“This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI transformation.”

All units beat on revenues:

• Microsoft Cloud Q4 revenue $59.3 billion, estimate $58.71 billion, up 27% YoY

• Intelligent Cloud revenue $39.31 billion, estimate $38.17 billion

• Productivity and Business Processes revenue $37.85 billion, estimate $37.27 billion

• More Personal Computing revenue $12.85 billion, estimate $12.17 billion

Net income was $35.8 billion and increased 31% on a GAAP basis, and was $35.3 billion and increased 22% on a non-GAAP basis

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, Capital expenditures (including assets acquired under finance leases) increased 70% to $41 billion in the quarter, which is notably less than the $42.5 billion expected, on track to meet their roughly $190 billion annual guidance, but Capital-spending details on the conference call are more important, given the metric exceeds 50% of calendar 2026 sales.

Following an afternoon of pain (thanks to Warsh), MSFT shares are bouncing modestly after hours - up around 3%...

Tonight closes the books on a fiscal year in which Microsoft guided capital expenditures and finance leases to roughly $190 billion - up 61% from the prior year - including, per CFO Amy Hood's April guidance, a $25 billion hit from higher component prices as the global memory crunch feeds straight into the cost of building AI infrastructure.

The forward-looking problem is worse: BNP Paribas analysts are already penciling in $262 billion of capex for fiscal 2027. Cloud gross margin, guided to roughly 64% for the quarter, has been grinding lower as data-center depreciation piles up, meaning the spending is now visibly eating into the earnings it was supposed to eventually justify.

Along those lines, Bloomberg's Brody Ford reports that Microsoft added more than $130 billion in new data center leases in the past quarter, signaling an accelerating pace of spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The company’s total commitments for leases that have not yet commenced were $329.1 billion as of the quarter ended June 30, Microsoft said Wednesday in a regulatory filing. That’s up from $196.6 billion in the prior period.

“That’s really a signal of the continued demand strength that we see,” Jonathan Neilson, Microsoft investor relations chief, said in an interview.

“These leases are going to be there to serve demand for many many years.”

The future costs, which come on top of active leases, won’t appear on Microsoft’s balance sheet until it begins making payments on them. The company said they are “primarily” for data centers and some are “subject to certain contractual conditions being met.”

This represents Microsoft’s largest quarterly jump in data center leasing by far.

The software giant continues to be held back by a lack of data center capacity after taking a pause on its leasing activity through much of 2025.

However, as we detailed earlier, simply put, until MSFT demonstrates some more tangible progress in AI (Copilot progress, proprietary LLM, proprietary chip, etc. as OpenAI potentially steals institutional share), it will likely remain on the battleground.

Microsoft will give its sales outlook for the current quarter, its fiscal Q1, as well as details on actual FY2026 CapEx on the conference call with analysts tonight.

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:10

Guess Who's Funding Barricades And Porta-Potties At Madison's Marxist-Antifa Encampment

Far-left foot soldiers linked with Black Lives Matter and Antifa have established a two-block autonomous zone along Williamson Street in Madison, Wisconsin, following the death of 38-year-old Corey Durrell Ruiz.

Good morning from Madison, where an encampment at Willy and Baldwin Sts is in its 7th day. pic.twitter.com/iR4kVl1hCQ

— Laura Schulte (@SchulteLaura) July 29, 2026

Ruiz, who had reportedly been released from prison (read report) shortly before the incident, was approached by police while riding a bicycle after allegedly attempting to enter several vehicles. Far-left activists have since designated the occupied area the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone, or CRAZ.

The encampment appears designed to demonstrate control over public space while creating conditions in which any police intervention could be framed as state repression. However, reporting from local media and anti-communist commentator Karlyn Borysenko suggests the local government is accommodating, and potentially enabling, the occupation rather than moving to dismantle it.

"So who's funding the barricades and the porta-potties in the BLM/Antifa autonomous zone (the CRAZ) in Madison, Wisconsin? You're not going to believe the answer. And I provide the receipts to prove it," Borysenko wrote on X.

Borysenko pointed to reporting from local outlet WMTV 15 News that says the municipal government is funding part of the CRAZ.

So who’s funding the barricades and the porta-potties in the BLM/Antifa autonomous zone (the CRAZ) in Madison Wisconsin?

You’re not going to believe the answer.

And I provide the receipts to prove it. https://t.co/LkGZRaz91S pic.twitter.com/UMz5dGD1vm

— Karlyn Borysenko, anti-communist cult leader (@DrKarlynB) July 29, 2026

Here's more color :

District 6 Alder Davy Mayer said he has heard from more than 100 constituents in recent days. He said the city has been working on basic services, including a plan to use city salt trucks as street blockades in place of the seized trash cans. The city has also placed portable restrooms in the area.

Mayer said a homeless population has also moved into the zone, adding to disruptions.

"There certainly have been poor interactions like that," Mayer said. "There's also a large number of our homeless neighbors have come in and have been taking up living in this area too. That's something that causes disruption."

Mayer said the group has implemented some self-regulation, including a 10 p.m. curfew for children and overnight quiet hours. He said he could not offer a timeline for a resolution.

"I don't think the city wants to see a permanent takeover of this intersection," Mayer said. "But we also don't want to see a violent clearing of it either. So it's working with all these parties to find a resolution, which is difficult, which takes time."

Mayer said he hopes the city can begin pushing barricades back to reopen parts of the street, but said planning is being done hour by hour. He also said he went door to door to nearly all homes in the area on the first day of the closure and has posted updates to his blog. Some residents said they have not received communication.

New as of yesterday afternoon, the city has placed a few trucks to help shield the intersection. pic.twitter.com/VtYRgjhPKY

— Laura Schulte (@SchulteLaura) July 28, 2026

Borysenko: "So who is funding CRAZ and the leftist takeover of several city blocks? The city, the taxpayers..."

Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:05