Zero Rss

ASU Just Made 'Influencing' A College Major

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

Arizona State University has decided the path to success runs straight through TikTok dances, personal branding, and "strategic storytelling."

The school's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is now offering a full Bachelor of Arts in Content Creation, explicitly designed to turn students into influencers who can "thrive in the rapidly evolving creator economy."

The program's description states that students will learn content planning, video and podcast production, global perspectives, and personal branding. They will analyze performance metrics, experiment with content strategies, and complete a capstone where they pick a platform - TikTok, Instagram, YouTube - and spend a semester growing an actual audience with measurable results.

Arizona State University is now offering a 'Content Creation' major for students wanting to become social media influencers.

Students in the program will learn how to "market themselves."

"The Bachelor of Arts program in content creation prepares you to become an influencer and... pic.twitter.com/wnqdeA2C7H

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 24, 2026

By graduation they are supposed to walk away with a real online following and "proof they've successfully built a digital brand."

Just an inkling, but Walter Cronkite would probably never have wanted to be associated with this.

Jessica Pucci, senior associate dean at the Cronkite School, insisted the curriculum goes far beyond ring lights and dance challenges. She told local media the program delivers "professional-level guidance from faculty dedicated to helping students succeed in the rapidly evolving creator economy."

It does just look like TikTok dancing though, lets be honest.

Students, she said, will leave with something more tangible than a diploma: a following, published content, and data-driven proof of brand-building.

Critics on social media were less impressed. One commenter noted they learned the same skills in their bedroom at 14 for free on YouTube.

Another fully supported parents who refuse to bankroll this particular "education."

A third accused the university of simply cashing in on a trend without teaching anything of lasting value. Even some who saw potential in the creator economy wanted the program to include basic adult skills - mortgages, savings, taxes - before handing out the degree.

This is the latest shiny product from a higher-education industry that has spent decades converting campuses into ideological finishing schools while loading students with debt for credentials the market treats as optional at best.

Clay Travis recently cut straight to the economic root of the resulting rage.

"These highly educated young far-left Democrats hate capitalism because they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on degrees the country DOES NOT value," Travis said. "They spent $200,000 on a women's studies degree [meanwhile] plumbers and electricians are driving better cars and making MORE money. They're furious the world is valuing other people's labor more than their own. They should take a lesson... GET USEFUL SKILLS."

An influencer major fits the pattern perfectly. Four years, six figures of tuition and living costs, and the graduate emerges prepared to compete in an attention economy already saturated with teenagers who figured out the algorithm without a single student-loan payment.

The university collects the money either way. The student is left holding the resentment when the market declines to subsidize their "brand".

That resentment does not stay private. It becomes the fuel for the radical politics that now dominate so many campuses. Universities have become propaganda factories that manufacture disturbed leftists who treat practical competence as suspect and identity politics as the highest form of knowledge.

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a required first-year education course for future teachers pushed extreme ideology on immigration, race, and gender. Leaked slides urged "humanizing language," framed border enforcement as white supremacy, and trained students to resist ICE rather than master classroom fundamentals. A whistleblower reported the class spent its time on activism while ignoring how to actually teach math or reading.

Kent State University displayed student "art" depicting President Trump's severed head on a pike with the caption "We only have to get lucky once." Administrators initially defended it as protected expression before public pressure forced its removal.

Princeton hunger strikers camping for Gaza complained the university was not monitoring their vital signs and accused officials of deliberately weakening them. One insisted, "They are not keeping track of our vitals. They are not at all taking care of us," while another claimed the group was "literally shaking" and "immunocompromised."

Joe Rogan described the broader phenomenon without restraint. Universities, he said, have become "cult camps" where students get locked into identities and try to sound profound without life experience.

"If I was going to try to destroy the country, that's how I would do it... I would radicalize the kids, give them the stupidest ideas... Boys can be girls. Girls can be boys... 'Queers for Palestine.' Death to the Jews." He added: "You guys are doing nonsense. You go to cult camp. You're indoctrinating people."

At Columbia, occupiers who had broken into campus buildings demanded food and water as "basic humanitarian aid," comparing themselves to refugees. PhD student Johannah King-Slutzky asked, "Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even if they disagree with you?" The performance collapsed under mockery once the NYPD cleared the building.

The ideological capture reaches the sciences. A survey of 200 UK university scientists found only 58 percent would say sex is binary; 42 percent refused. Nearly two-thirds said gender is fluid.

Language itself is rewritten. The University of the Arts London erased "woman" from maternity and menopause policies, declaring the processes apply "irrespective of gender" and that "not all pregnant people are women."

The University of North Carolina issued an inclusive language guide that discouraged "mother" and "father" in favor of "guardian" and purged words containing "man."

Stanford's "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative" proposed adding "American" to its blacklist as too U.S.-centric, recommending "U.S. citizen" instead.

Stanford University has deemed the word "American" to be harmful language.

pic.twitter.com/gclBOoE8Sn

— Ian Miles Cheong (@ianmiles) December 21, 2022

These are not isolated excesses. They are the logical output of institutions that treat useful skills as secondary to political formation.

Students graduate with expensive credentials that signal ideological reliability rather than competence, then discover the economy does not share their self-assessment.

The resulting bitterness is redirected at capitalism, borders, biological reality, and anyone still willing to call a woman a woman.

ASU's content-creation major is simply the newest exhibit. It packages the attention economy as an academic discipline, charges premium tuition for skills freely available online, and sends graduates into a labor market that will judge them by results rather than feelings.

When those results disappoint, the university will have already collected its fees and moved on to the next cohort of future radicals. The rest of the country is left paying the social cost of an education system that prioritizes 'branding' over building anything of lasting value.

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Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 15:10

"Now Taking Reservations For 2031 Delivery": GE Vernova Gas Turbine Backlog Climbs To 116 GW

By Brian Martucci of UtilityDive

GE Vernova posted double-digit revenue and order growth in the second quarter, driven once again by continued strong performance in its Power and Electrification business segments. Those segments, respectively, produce and service gas, hydro and nuclear power generation equipment; and commercial electrical equipment such as transformers and switchgears.

GE Vernova’s beleaguered third segment, Wind, saw orders fall sharply amid persistent softness in U.S. demand for onshore wind turbines and blades.

“We remain focused on what we can control,” CEO Scott Strazik said on a Wednesday morning earnings call, alluding to the economic, regulatory and legal challenges facing its wind business.

By the numbers -- GE Vernova Q2 2026

• $176B: Order backlog across all three major business lines, up from $129 billion in Q2 2025
• 116 GW: Gas turbine order backlog, up from 100 GW in Q1 2026
• $41B: Order backlog in Electrification segment, up 69% year over year
• 40%: Year-over-year decline in wind equipment orders

Strazik said GE Vernova expects its combined backlog of gas turbine orders and slot reservations to reach 125 GW by the end of the year. The company shipped 3 GW of turbines and signed 20 GW of orders and slot reservations, more than half of which are for the hulking HA-class turbines that customers typically run at higher capacity factors, he said.

Strazik said those customers are increasingly diverse, spanning about 100 entities in 26 countries. About 80% are “traditional” customers like utilities and 20% are data center customers, he said. 

Like Siemens and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, its main competitors in heavy-duty gas turbine manufacturing, GE Vernova continues to book reservations four to five years out. 

GE Vernova is taking reservations for 2031 deliveries now and is on track to “be more than halfway contracted [for 2031] by the end of the year,” Strazik said. But despite “healthy discussions” with customers about potential 2032 bookings, “I would say we need more time before we can articulate the timing of contracting in ’32,” he added. 

Strazik alluded multiple times on the call to “strong” pricing for GE Vernova’s gas power equipment. Though he did not give specific figures for turbines sold in the second quarter, an analysis shared in a Wednesday note by Moses Sutton, senior analyst with BNP Paribas Equity Research, estimated about $790/kW for heavy-duty turbines, $950/kW for HA-class combined-cycle turbines and $1,800/kW for aeroderivative turbines.

Most investors would read Strazik’s 125-GW year-end backlog guidance as conservative “given management’s track record of under-guiding and over-delivering,” Sutton said. In December, Strazik said GE Vernova expected to end 2025 with an 80-GW gas turbine backlog; the actual figure was 83 GW.

For 2026, the market is likely looking for an actual year-end backlog of 130 GW to 140 GW, Sutton said.

As for GE Vernova’s plan to expand annual turbine manufacturing capacity to 30 GW by 2030, up from 20 GW today, Sutton said “the jury’s out.” Strazik’s suggestion that the company needs more time to firm up its 2032 pipeline may be a sign of “peak momentum emerging” in the company’s gas growth story, he said.

‘Early stages of a multi-decade growth opportunity’

Continuing a trend from recent GE Vernova earnings calls, Strazik sounded enthusiastic about the Electrification segment’s prospects amid what he called “this electricity investment supercycle.”

“The long-cycle electric power industry is in the early stages of a multi-decade growth opportunity and we are well positioned to create substantial value,” Strazik said.

Company figures show its overall Electrification backlog has broken above $40 billion, helped along by the completion of its acquisition of the remaining stake in GE Prolec, formerly a joint venture with Xignux, a Mexican industrial conglomerate. The merger was a factor in the company’s booking of around $800 million in U.S. transformer orders this quarter, Strazik said.

Broad-based load growth, utilities’ and data center customers’ increasing awareness of the need for grid-stabilizing equipment, and national security imperatives are all driving demand for GE Vernova’s electrical systems and components, Strazik said.

In a Wednesday investor note on GE Vernova, Julien Dumoulin-Smith, an equities analyst with investment bank Jefferies, said the company’s ongoing development of solid-state transformers and uninterruptible medium-voltage transformers set it up to benefit from anticipated data center demand for those cutting-edge electrical components.

But in a separate Wednesday note covering a range of companies in the power and electricity sector, Dumoulin-Smith cited community opposition and labor shortages as key dampeners of data center-related load growth that “place the integrity of the power supercycle into question.” Jefferies’s base case remains that data center energization accelerates in the coming years, “but not without hiccups,” he said.

Possible green shoots for wind despite ongoing industry troubles

Though the U.S. wind power industry remains under pressure from the Trump administration’s trade and energy policy, Strazik said the administration’s forthcoming guidance on Section 232 tariffs could provide more “order clarity” in the second half of 2026. At the moment, tariff-related uncertainty is impacting onshore wind development, Strazik said.

Independent energy analysts are cautiously optimistic that the sector will rebound in the years ahead. Wood Mackenzie boosted its five-year outlook for U.S. greenfield wind development by 5% this month as developers raced to capitalize on expiring federal tax credits and contracted corporate demand for clean energy surged.

“Large technology companies are turning to wind power as an additional energy source to meet their growing needs,” Wood Mackenzie said in a July 20 note.

Wood Mackenzie and Strazik both said a coming repowering cycle — owners of aging wind farms replacing older turbines with more powerful units — would support demand for wind power equipment well into the 2030s.

“In our install base in the U.S., there are approximately 10 gigawatts of units with repowering potential — projects that have already qualified for the new production tax credits,” Strazik said.

Strazik did not directly mention an ongoing legal dispute between his company and one of its wind customers, the 800-MW Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast. 

GE Renewables, a GE Vernova subsidiary, threatened to walk away from the nearly-complete project after Vineyard Wind withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to offset what it called “catastrophic injury” stemming from a 2024 blade break. Vineyard Wind sued GE Vernova in April to block it from exiting its supply agreement.

In a regulatory filing this week, GE Vernova said it had “successfully completed the installation of all remaining wind turbines at the Vineyard Wind project” and has moved into the commissioning phase. 

“As we work through the final stages of the project, we are working with our customer to resolve outstanding claims and counterclaims,” the filing said.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 14:00

Hawaii's Lieutenant Governor Indicted In "Biggest Bribery Scandal In State History"

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, a Democrat, was indicted by an Oahu grand jury on Friday on charges of criminal conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, and falsifying candidate committee reports. The charges stem from an alleged 2022 scheme, dating to her time as a powerful state lawmaker, to steer state money toward COVID-19 testing contracts during the pandemic. Hawaii News Now reported that legal experts are calling it the biggest bribery scandal in state history.

Luke was one of five people named in the 12-count indictment. The others: Ryan Yamane, a former state representative and ex-director of the Department of Human Services; Tobi Solidum, a businessman and lobbyist; Ford Fuchigami, a Transportation Department official; and Leo Asuncion, a former chair of the state Public Utilities Commission. Luke turned herself in Friday afternoon; her bail was set at $80,000.

Gov. Josh Green did not wait for the case to develop. "The Lieutenant Governor needs to consider formally resigning to address this matter and so that the state of Hawaiʻi can move forward," Green said in a statement Friday.

The Steakhouse Meeting

According to the indictment, Solidum was working as a lobbyist and consultant to the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii, which held a state contract to run community COVID-19 testing sites. With those contracts set to expire and dependent on the state approving emergency funding, prosecutors allege, Solidum set out to buy influence.

On Jan. 20, 2022, Luke - then chair of the powerful House Finance Committee and running for lieutenant governor - met Solidum and others in a private dining room at Morton's Steakhouse. Prosecutors allege Solidum arranged for two $5,000 checks, both made out to "Friends of Sylvia Luke," to be handed to her in an envelope she placed in her handbag. The pair discussed COVID-19 testing funding and union support for her campaign, according to the indictment - as reported by the NYT.

"By next week, we'll have 35 - so it will be halfway to our 70," Solidum told Luke, according to the filings, allegedly referring to an eventual $70,000. "Oh wow," Luke replied. "That's terrific." The day after the dinner, the indictment states, Luke ordered a House committee chair to set up a meeting with government officials to discuss emergency appropriations to the state health department.

Here the fuller record matters. The written indictment makes no direct reference to $35,000 actually changing hands, according to Honolulu Civil Beat - it alleges Solidum promised $35,000 as the first half of the $70,000. And the cash allegations in the case attach not to Luke but to two of her co-defendants: Hawaii News Now reported the indictment does not allege Luke took cash, while Yamane and Fuchigami allegedly took cash payments from Solidum.

That distinction is central to Luke's defense. She has consistently denied wrongdoing. Luke previously said she did not take "$35,000 in a paper bag," and acknowledged accepting the two $5,000 checks while denying she ever accepted a $35,000 donation - a sum that would exceed Hawaii's legal limit for campaign contributions. In a statement months ago, she said she had "never granted special favors to a contributor" and had "prized integrity and honesty above all" throughout her career.

The Informant, And The Missing Millions

The state case was built on a federal one. Ty Cullen, a former state legislator, was arrested by federal officials in 2021 on bribery charges, then began cooperating with the FBI - wearing a wire and recording meetings, including the 2022 Morton's dinner, as Honolulu Civil Beat has reported. Earlier federal sentencing records described that interaction and identified the recipient of the $35,000 figure only as an "influential" state lawmaker, without naming anyone. The same federal probe previously sent Cullen and former state senator J. Kalani English to prison.

On Jan. 16 of this year, the U.S. Department of Justice handed Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez evidence about the unnamed legislator. Four days later, Lopez announced a state investigation. Six months on, that investigation produced Friday's indictments.

Prosecutors were pointed about who they view as the center of the scheme. "If we're looking at the most culpable individual, factually, we believe it's Ryan Yamane," said David Van Acker, a deputy attorney general, per KHON2. Yamane drew the highest bail at $150,000.

And the man who allegedly orchestrated it all is gone. The indictment states Solidum "has been continuously absent from the State of Hawaiʻi," so no bail was set for him. According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Solidum is separately under federal investigation after bankruptcy filings alleged he made off with at least $7 million from the COVID-19 testing contracts - the same contracts at the heart of the bribery case.

A Fall From Grace

The charges mark a stunning reversal for Luke, who spent more than two decades as a state representative, including 10 years running the House Finance Committee, where she oversaw the state budget and built a reputation - as Honolulu Civil Beat put it - for holding others accountable. She had been widely seen as a leading contender for governor.

Luke took an indefinite, unpaid leave of absence in April after receiving a target letter, was replaced by an acting lieutenant governor, and abandoned her re-election bid. As the state investigation unfolded, several Hawaii labor unions released statements in her support.

The political class read Friday's news through the lens of one-party control of the islands. "It goes to show that the system that's been in control of the state for so many years is following through with the perception that the public has had for so many years," said state Rep. Diamond Garcia, a Republican. A government watchdog was blunter about the puzzle at the center of the case. "If you know Sylvia's lines of power," said Camron Hurt of Common Cause Hawaii, "it's weird that she made this type of mistake."

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 13:25

Catherine Herridge Uncovers Shocking Revelations About The Biden Family

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge has uncovered records pointing to Chinese blackmail efforts targeting the Biden family - documents that sat in plain sight for the legacy media, the FBI, and the CIA, only to be met with willful blindness.

In a recent appearance discussing declassified materials related to China's 2020 election influence operations, Herridge described finding references to blackmail by China that were prepared for inclusion in the president's daily brief.

"I found these records which are talking about blackmail by China," Herridge explained, adding "It was for President Biden's daily brief. I can conclude, I think, that it was probably about targeting his family."

BOMBSHELL 🚨 Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge says she found evidence that Joe Biden's family was being blackmailed by China (and shows the documents) and our mainstream media ignored the evidence "What we saw in the release of the records, which I'm afraid I think in... pic.twitter.com/FJe5dYBL6g

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) July 25, 2026

She noted that the findings, along with broader evidence of suppressed intelligence on Chinese influence, were ignored and buried in order to protect Democratic power, stating tghat "in the media or legacy media there was kind of a willful blindness. They didn't want to look at the records. All you had to do was spend a couple of hours."

Full segment:

These findings come in the wake of President Trump's primetime address to the nation last week, announcing newly declassified intelligence detailing China's massive compromise of U.S. voter data and the intelligence community's efforts to bury it.

Herridge, a veteran Emmy-winning investigative reporter, has previously pursued stories on the Hunter Biden laptop, the Biden family's foreign business dealings, and related corruption allegations - reporting that put her at odds with CBS leadership and the broader media consensus.

In February 2024 she was among those laid off in a round of cuts. CBS then seized her reporting files, including materials involving confidential sources. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Herridge described the seizure in stark terms: "When my records were seized I felt it was a journalistic rape."

She added that "CBS News' decision to seize my reporting records crossed a red line that I believe should never be crossed by any media organization" and that "When the network of Walter Cronkite seizes your reporting files, including confidential source information, that is an attack on investigative journalism."

She has maintained that she simply "reported out the facts of the story. I called balls and strikes." The network eventually returned the files under pressure from the House Judiciary Committee and her union.

Earlier, during the 2020 campaign, the Biden team had already labeled her a "partisan, rightwing hack." Her treatment fits a pattern of institutional pushback against journalists who refused to look away from the Biden family's financial ties.

Those ties have been documented for years. House Oversight Committee investigations, led by Chairman James Comer, obtained bank records and witness accounts showing Chinese Communist Party-linked money flowing to Biden family members.

Comer stated that the documents demonstrated the family had received funds from CCP-connected entities and that family members "attempted to sell access & influence around the world."

Biden family members attempted to sell access & influence around the world.@GOPoversight has communicated with multiple witnesses & continues to follow the Biden money trail. We will be transparent & provide the facts for the American people. @MariaBartiromo @SundayFutures pic.twitter.com/EYfQn8WEXB

— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) March 12, 2023

A subsequent memorandum detailed more than $10 million in foreign money linked to Biden family members and associates, including previously undisclosed Romanian payments and millions tied to CEFC China Energy and related entities.

Republicans highlighted wires that reached multiple family members and questioned what services, if any, were provided in return. Comer accused the White House of running interference rather than correcting the record.

IRS whistleblowers later provided additional detail on Joe Biden's proximity to Hunter Biden's China deals. One text message from Hunter to a Chinese businessman read in part that he was "sitting here with my father" and demanded fulfillment of a financial commitment, warning of consequences involving "the man sitting next to me."

Business associate Rob Walker told the FBI that Joe Biden had stopped by a CEFC-related lunch at Hunter's request to bolster the deal. Whistleblowers described DOJ restrictions that limited questions about "the big guy" or "dad," blocked certain warrants on optics grounds, and produced a far softer outcome than the felony charges the IRS had recommended for millions in unreported foreign income from China, Ukraine, and Romania.

House Ways & Means Chair Jason Smith details multiple felony charges whistleblowers say the IRS recommended against Hunter Biden, covering "$2.2 million in unreported tax on global income...from Ukraine, Romania, and China." Instead, Biden's DOJ gave Hunter a sweetheart deal. pic.twitter.com/8SdMkWgaaT

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 22, 2023

Newsmax's @JamesRosenTV reads the entire text Hunter Biden sent to a Chinese businessman which stated Joe Biden was "in the room" in an effort to get him to pay them. Kirby refuses to answer and then walks away from the podium pic.twitter.com/MsstdH4dWH

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 23, 2023

President Trump highlighted the same material in 2023, declaring that "Crooked Joe Biden Is Compromised, Owned By China." He quoted the Hunter text and noted the rapid transfer of millions from Chinese sources, arguing that Beijing understood the leverage it held.

Further evidence of parallel communication channels emerged when investigative journalist Peter Schweizer revealed that Hunter Biden paid for a secret AT&T global "burner" phone used by Joe Biden during his vice presidency.

When journalist John Solomon dialed the number, Joe Biden answered before hanging up. Schweizer shared the account details with the House Oversight Committee in hopes of obtaining records that could illuminate contacts with foreign executives.

Joe Biden had a private global phone with ATT that he used for Bribery deals. Impeach the SOB. pic.twitter.com/1sTeQD5sh5

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) June 26, 2023

John Solomon is an American treasure. Busts Joe Biden on his secret global burner phone. pic.twitter.com/CfvFnq460t

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) June 28, 2023

Taken together, the pattern is consistent: large foreign payments, documented proximity of the then-vice president and later president to the deals, internal efforts to limit scrutiny, and a media apparatus that treated the most serious questions as radioactive.

Herridge's latest examination of the declassified China records simply adds another layer - references to blackmail pressure that reached the level of the president's daily brief - yet once again the institutional response has been to look away.

The American people were told for years that these matters were conspiracy theories or Russian disinformation. The bank records, the texts, the whistleblower testimony, the phone, and now the intelligence product references say otherwise.

Accountability still matters. The full scope of foreign leverage over the Biden family remains a question of national security.

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 12:50

US One-Way Attack Drone Found Adrift In Hormuz Offers New Look At Western Capabilities

A suspected US-made LUCAS one-way attack drone was reportedly recovered by fishermen after it was found drifting in the Strait of Hormuz in recent days. The discovery comes as US forces have expanded their use of the Iranian-style drone during the multi-month conflict, even publicizing a recent swarm attack involving explosive-laden unmanned boats against Iranian targets.

🔴غير عادي
عثر صيادون إيرانيون على طائرة مسيّرة أمريكية من طراز لوكاس (LUCAS) في مياه الخليج، بعد العثور عليها طافية، وقد سحبوها وسلموها للسلطات وقالوا إنها في حالة سليمة.

لم يعرف بعد سبب سقوطها! pic.twitter.com/ZcxA7mZ7YJ

— الصين بالعربية (@mog_china) July 17, 2026

LUCAS stands for Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System. The first indication that the drones had been deployed came just days into Operation Epic Fury. On March 3, US Central Command announced on X that, "for the first time in history," the US military had deployed "one-way attack drones" in combat.

CENTCOM's Task Force Scorpion Strike - for the first time in history - is using one-way attack drones in combat during Operation Epic Fury. These low-cost drones, modeled after Iran's Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/VYdjiECKDT

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) February 28, 2026

LUCAS Drone

The drones have been so successful for the US that the Department of War's fiscal year 2027 procurement request for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG) has surged 243-fold to $54.6 billion; a clear acknowledgment that ongoing conflicts across Eurasia have produced one important lesson: cheap kamikaze drones are reshaping the modern battlefield.

Earlier this month, CENTCOM boasted on X about a swarm of Saronic Corsair one-way attack sea drones that struck Iran's Bandar Abbas Naval Base. The attack appeared to take a page directly from Ukraine's maritime warfare playbook against Russia.

Yesterday, using multiple one-way attack surface drones, CENTCOM forces successfully struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. Three Corsair unmanned surface vessels hit the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, marking the first time American forces have employed sea… pic.twitter.com/bOM2kmgRxz

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 13, 2026

The world is witnessing the opening phase of robotics and autonomous warfare on the modern battlefield. One-way attack drones and unmanned vessels are precursors to what comes next: humanoid combat robots potentially entering battlefield testing in Ukraine later this year (read here).

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 12:15

US State Department Issues Travel Advisory For Belgium

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of State has updated the travel advisory for Belgium, warning about risks to American travelers due to terrorism, crime, and unrest.

Police's forces blocked the area around the parliament at a protest gathering of teachers in front of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels parliament in Brussels, on June 4, 2026. Emile Windal/Belga Mag/Belga/AFP via Getty Images

Outfits inspired by terrorist organizations "are intent on attacking U.S. citizens abroad," including in Europe, the department said in a July 23 update. Belgium had been designated with the "Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution" classification earlier, with the latest update retaining the classification, while adding in risks of crime and unrest.

Terror operatives can use knives, vehicles, and firearms to target crowds. They typically aim their attacks at vulnerable and unprotected targets, such as places of worship, schools, shopping malls, public transportation systems, hotels and restaurants frequented by tourists, and high-profile public events, according to the advisory.

Low-level street crime, such as purse snatchings, robberies, and pickpocketing, is common, especially in major cities, trams, train stations, at the Brussels metro at night time, and in public areas such as restaurants, the department said. Criminals may operate as teams, targeting people by bumping or shoving into them, especially in crowds, the advisory said, while warning Americans to remain alert to distractions.

Theft from vehicles is also common, while theft of bags from trains has increased, especially along the Brussels-Amsterdam route, according to the advisory. The department asked Americans visiting Belgium to avoid wearing expensive jewelry and watches, and to carry only a minimal amount of cash and credit cards.

As for unrest-related risks, the department warned that demonstrations occur frequently in Belgium. It advised U.S. citizens to avoid areas around demonstrations and protests. Such activities can end up disrupting transportation and other essential services.

For instance, a demonstration in June against Belgium's education reforms turned violent, with clashes breaking out between protestors and police in the capital city of Brussels.

Another protest back in December, headed by farmers against an EU trade agreement, also turned violent, with Belgian police firing tear gas against the protestors.

Other European countries for which the State Department issued travel advisories include France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. All four have been given a "Level 2-Exercise increased caution" designation since May 2025, warning about various risks including terrorism and unrest.

In May 2025, the United Kingdom's travel advisory was updated, citing the risk of terrorist violence.

Meanwhile, the State Department issued a "Worldwide Caution" security alert on July 22 for U.S. citizens due to heightened tensions in the Middle East. The security environment remains complicated, with a potential for "unforeseen escalation."

America's diplomatic facilities, both within and outside the Middle East, have been targeted by rivals. Iran and groups supportive of the Iranian regime may target other U.S. interests overseas. Targets can also include locations linked to the United States and Americans anywhere in the world, including U.S. businesses and institutions, the department said.

"Americans currently in the Middle East should exercise caution and heightened vigilance and should be prepared for flight cancellations, periodic airspace closures, and potential travel disruptions," the alert said.

"Some airlines in the region have postponed resumption of earlier flight schedules; others have cancelled some routes," the alert said. U.S. citizens outside the Middle East were asked to reconsider travel through and to the region.

The alert advised Americans planning to travel in or through the Middle East to check with their air carriers and ensure that flights are still scheduled. It advised people to monitor for consular and embassy security alerts.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 11:40

France Recorded 5,000 Excess Deaths During Heat Wave: Officials

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

France recorded more than 5,000 more deaths than normal during a heat wave that started on June 17, the country's public health agency said on July 22.

Children cool off under a misting system on the Champs Elysees during a severe heat wave in Paris, France, on July 14, 2026.Djoudi Hamani / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images

Public Health France estimated that 5,764 excess deaths from all causes occurred from June 17 to July 2. More than half took place between June 25 and June 27, and people aged 75 and older accounted for two-thirds of the estimated death toll.

Temperatures broke records on multiple days, including reaching nearly 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.8 degrees Celsius) in Saintes and 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40.1 degrees Celsius) in Paris, during the heat wave.

The excess mortality was higher in regions with higher temperatures, according to Public Health France. Nearly 2,000 were recorded in Île-de-France, which includes Paris.

The estimate was drawn from administrative data and did not include information on the cause of death.

"This excess mortality from all causes underscores the health impact linked to the remarkable intensity and duration of the population's exposure to heat across mainland France, although it did not reach the levels of 2003," Public Health France stated, referring to a heat wave that killed an estimated 14,802 people.

"These data constitute an initial estimate of the heat wave's impact on all-cause mortality, compiled and published three weeks after the end of the heat wave, and are therefore preliminary. They will need to be confirmed by more detailed analyses of the end-of-summer monitoring period report in the autumn."

EuroMOMO, a network that monitors mortality across participating European countries, recently reported that more than 10,000 excess deaths were recorded across Europe during the heat wave. Some 90 percent of the deceased were 65 years of age or older.

The organization, which is supported by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said that no other factors appeared present besides the extreme heat that would account for the spike in deaths.

During the last week of June, France and Belgium logged very high excess mortality, the organization said, while Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands noted moderate excess mortality and England, Wales, Italy, and Germany reported low excess mortality.

Sciensano, Belgium's public health institute, said recently that 1,747 more people died than expected during the heat wave, including some younger adults.

Alpinists train in the shade on the side of an exposed portion of the Mer de Glace glacier during a Europe-wide summer heat wave near Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France, on June 27, 2026. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 10:30

Meet Britain's New Cabinet Of Fakers, Fraudsters And Hangers-On

Authored by Bruce Newsome The New Nuisance,

Britons are struggling to characterize their new Cabinet, following the arrival of a new prime minister on Monday. The Cabinet is not as northern or female as Andy Burnham signaled. Most members have certainly changed. Most are not loyalists to Keir Starmer, even less so to Tony Blair. Like Burnham, many hark back to a mythical golden age of socialism in the 1970s. Like him, most are alarmingly deficient in popular mandate, external qualifications, and even political trust for their new responsibilities.

Let's start with Burnham himself, a man born in Liverpool who pretended to be Mancunian to win the mayoralty of Manchester. He claims to represent the north but has not lived north or east of Manchester. At best, he represents a narrow part of west-central England, just north of the Midlands.

Burnham has always looked south while talking up the north. Burnham was most newsworthy for agitating for changes in national government, despite sharing a party with Starmer.

As Starmer continued to trip himself up with both feet, Burnham was one of the Labourites who prevailed on ministers to brief against their PM. After Starmer blocked Burnham's candidacy for an accidental by-election in February, Burnham prevailed on a local MP to resign from Makerfield to force a by-election in June, which Burnham won easily, to return to Parliament, which would allow him to challenge Starmer for the leadership (less than two years into Starmer's five-year term). Starmer initially vowed to fight on but announced his intent to quit this month. No MP stepped up to challenge Burnham's presumptive run.

Thus, Burnham has no popular mandate to be PM, even within the party, except in the form of pledges by more Parliamentary partisans in support than against. Opposition parties rightly called for a general election to confirm his premiership, but the constitution does not oblige him.

Burnham's supporters pretend that his easy rise proves the strength of his candidacy. In reality, it proves the weakness of his party. It could not find a new leader within its own MPs, despite a whopping majority. It triggered an expensive by-election and a more expensive mayoral election to reach outside of Parliament. Meanwhile, Burnham unwittingly poured scorn on that same Parliamentary party by criticizing normal politics and the London elite. (Since then, he has aired the idea of moving the Cabinet from London to Manchester. His current plan is to spend at least one day per work week there. That's neither efficient nor effective.)

In the many weeks that Burnham enjoyed as rising PM, he remained vague about his Cabinet and his policies.

On Monday, he spent hours appointing just the highest roles in the Cabinet. The other appointments look set to continue for days.

Of the first day's picks, I must start with the only selectee who can be coded as qualified and mandated (although not loyal).

John Healey becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second most powerful position in government. He had quit as defense secretary six weeks ago, over Starmer's procrastination on filling a hole in defense spending. Healey said that Britain should spend 3 percent of GDP on defense by 2030, which means he will need to find a couple dozen billion pounds per year. Previously, he advocated issuing "war bonds," but who would buy them when the government is running record debt? He will need to cut other departments or raise taxes (probably both). On Monday, Healey said "fiscal control" would be his "first duty." You could see the markets' confidence decline immediately.

Healey's resignation suggests a certain loyalty to Burnham, but otherwise they barely know each other. More usefully, he was a minister in the Treasury under Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Yes, Healey is actually qualified by experience! This is remarkable given that his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, falsified her CV, couldn't add, and quickly became the most U-turn-prone and hated chancellor ever, as well as the most tearful.

Healey remains constrained by record government debt and his party's suicidal unwillingness to cut spending. Remember that Starmer increased spending on welfare and benefits, after backbenchers rejected his proposal to cut them. (That was within Starmer's first year of premiership.)

Burnham is an out-and-proud socialist who had already signaled that his government would spend and tax more. By Tuesday, his administration revealed plans to cut VAT (a sales tax) on electricity, to be funded by cutting the Starmer administration's planned digital ID. But the minister responsible for that plan, Darren Jones, revealed, after being fired by Burnham, that digital ID was never funded. So Burnham is either ignorant or dishonest. This . . . doesn't . . . bode . . . well.

In any case, scrapping VAT on electricity doesn't make much difference to a household electricity bill in which most of the pricing goes to fund green initiatives, debt, stealth taxes, and administration.

Burnham already looks unprepared and unreliable.

Confirmation comes in the form of his deviation from his team's prior briefings that he would appoint either Ed Miliband or Shabana Mahmood to the Treasury.

Red Ed goes to the Foreign Office, for which he is woefully unqualified and an undoubted liability. He infuriated the U.S. (and most Britons) as energy secretary, with his absolutism about reaching net-zero carbon by 2030, at whatever cost to the consumer. Ed also, by the way, reminds everybody of the weakness of the party's leadership selection. He was leader from 2010 to 2015, when he literally and metaphorically stumbled at every election husting. Yet Burnham thinks Miliband is the best person to articulate British interests abroad? This won't last long.

Miliband is already hurt. He has been denied the job he wanted, even though he was the first senior minister to call for Starmer to go, and he helped Burnham with an economic plan. (Some plan: it remains as vague as ever, except for the Soviet-style time horizon of 10 years.)

Meanwhile, Mahmood stays at the Home Office. Under-informed (or biased) souls read this as confirmation of her competence in pushing through controls on illegal immigration in the face of majority opposition from civil servants and backbenchers. In fact, she is hurdling a low bar after decades of government failures to control immigration, despite popular demands and almost every party's commitments to lower net immigration.

Worse, Mahmood is duplicitous. She tells the right wing that her tweaks to the benefits and the timeline of asylum applications will dramatically control immigration. She tells the left wing that she will make the refugee route easier (which is the route by which almost all illegal immigrants get residency, with more privileges than citizens). Also concerning is Mahmood's long history of Islamocentrism, which is bizarrely ignored by mainstream media. She tars normative Britons as racists (whites and Jews in particular: isn't that racist?), campaigned against Israel, played up her status as the first Muslim home secretary, promised that her promotion would serve "her" community, and railed against supposedly routine experiences of racism in her hometown of Birmingham, where her demographic is the largest.

I doubt Mahmood will last much longer than Miliband within Team Burnham. He favors the left of the party, which has characterized her (ridiculously) as a Nigel Farage in Labour colors. For now, Burnham needs to be seen to reward her, if only because one of her allies in Parliament, Josh Simons, was the MP who resigned from Makerfield to make way for Burnham.

So the highest three officers in the land will not last as long as normal, in my estimation. Burnham's administration will not bring the stability that Britons crave, let alone the competencies that the markets and foreign governments crave.

Talking of high ministers who won't last long, we must go next to Wes Streeting, who had resigned as health secretary (the poisoned chalice of all ministerial appointments anyway), to build support for a challenge against Starmer. Yet after the by-election, Streeting said he wouldn't run against Burnham, who now must reward him. Streeting becomes defense secretary. During the weekend's rumor mill, the former chief of the British Army, Lord Dannatt, said that Streeting "knows the square root of nothing about defence." Indeed. He's one acquisition scandal away from a sacking. And that sort of scandal leaks every few months from Britain's MOD.

From a turncoat Starmerite, we now turn to the loyal Starmerites who remain in government on borrowed time.

The highest-profile survivor is Pat McFadden, who will remain as work and pensions secretary - which is strange given that the government has decreased neither worklessness nor liabilities. Excuses abound for his early dismissal. And since Burnham is committed to the so-called triple lock on pensions and to increasing welfare (he talks about social care as the neglected component, but he's not talking about cutting anything), McFadden has no obvious options except to increase spending. That's the vicious cycle that these monkeys refuse to see, hear, or speak.

Jonathan Reynolds was Starmer's chief whip, a role that Burnham talks about deleting (he must think that everybody will love him forever without whipping). Reynolds will take over the merged departments for Science and Technology, and Business and Trade. Burnham has a short-term interest in Reynolds. Reynolds was an ineffective whip, but in his previous role, as business secretary, he temporarily solved the collapse of British Steel by forbidding more foreign ownership and investing in government ownership. Burnham has always liked public ownership of heavy industry and transportation and has already confirmed a policy to fully nationalize British Steel. But once that process is complete, Reynolds-the-Starmerite won't be needed. The backbenches are full of untested socialists who think closer to Burnham on public ownership.

For similar short-term reasons, Burnham kept Heidi Alexander as transport secretary and kept Lisa Nandy as secretary of state for digital, culture, media, and sport. The latter is one of the departments with its own unit for countering "disinformation" (i.e., criticism of government) by spreading disinformation. It's also led the lawfare to punish social media companies for "harmful" content, to restrict children under 18 years of age from accessing social media (an age that makes a mockery of the same government's plans to lower the voting age to 16), to restrict everybody's access to VPNs, and to censor information during election season. Burnham supports such authoritarianism. His hopes for the general election in 2029 depend on it.

Yvette Cooper has been demoted from foreign secretary to health secretary, which seems designed to set her up for further failure. Ironically, she is the most qualified minister by experience, having served through the Blair and Brown administrations, but that experience is to the right of Burnham's ideological bent. (Always strange to describe a Labourite as to the right of anything.) She already has a reputation for indecisiveness, invisibility, and foot-in-mouth disease. She must immediately deal with yet more strikes by medical unions unless exorbitant demands for pay raises are met. These have been going on for years. She won't last years.

Another poisoned chalice is the Ministry of Justice, given mainstream recognition of two-tier justice, increasing political violence, and overcrowded prisons (to be relieved in September by, er, releasing prisoners early, including murderers and rapists). The new justice secretary is Alex Norris, who spent a year as minister for border security. And look how border security improved.

Bridget Phillipson has been sacked as education secretary, having decimated private schools by abolishing their charitable status (one liability is VAT, at 20 percent). She keeps her job as minister for women and equalities, but I don't expect that to last long. At some point she must be sacrificed to protect the administrative state from its foot-dragging over decades of rapes of mostly white children by gangs of mostly Muslim immigrants and second-generation immigrants (with the awareness and sometimes participation of local police, social workers, and politicians, mostly from the Labour Party).

So let's get to high offices that will last, despite lack of qualifications. Get this one. The effective deputy PM goes by the titles of first secretary of state and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Burnham gave the titles to Louise Haigh. She is a strong Burnham ally, which isn't a compliment in my book, although it is some justification for deputizing. Her penchant for dyeing her hair blood-red perhaps helps. Otherwise, she isn't qualified. Her highest prior role was transport secretary, which Burnham loves (he's always banging on about subsidizing public transport and has already announced a cap on bus fares). But she held that role for just a few months in 2024, before resigning after revelations that she was convicted of fraud in 2014. Funny she hid that history on the campaign. (The irony.) So the effective deputy PM is a convicted fraudster. She's also privately educated but opposed to private education. Only in Britain … and other tinpot democracies.

We're not done with (alleged) fraudsters in government. Angela Rayner is back as housing, communities, and local government secretary, having resigned from the same role when she failed to pay a tax ("stamp duty") on her third house. It was an oversight, she said . . . even though she was the minister administering the tax.

Another promotion is Lucy Powell, the new education secretary. Does she claim any expertise in education? No. Except that she is female, which is qualification enough for most progressives of our time, and she is a close ally of Burnham, and she is from "the north" (self-declared). See the pattern?

Alas for her, the Titanic education secretaryship is heading for an iceberg that few in government are willing to admit: blowback for the government's manipulation of safeguarding doctrine to hide information (such as transgender dysphoria) from parents whom teachers think won't be supportive enough, and for a new policy of screening boys for the pre-crime of violence against women and girls, and for decades of politicized, racialized indoctrination of children, at the expense of real knowledge and skills. Is it any wonder that one in six Britons aged 16 to 24 years is not in employment, education, or training? Well, it's still a wonder to the government, conveniently.

A sort-of-incumbent is the new energy secretary. Miatta Fahnbulleh had served as Miliband's undersecretary before she quit in late 2024 when Starmer's administration cut payments to most pensioners for their winter fuel expenses. (Starmer U-turned but didn't recall her to government.) Don't expect her to permit drilling for North Sea oil and gas. Do expect her to stick slavishly to net-zero madness. The inflationary effects on the Consumer Price Index alone are enough to guarantee the defeat of this government in 2029.

In a related portfolio, Dame Angela Eagle is the new secretary of state for environment, food, and rural affairs, coming from the Home Office. Should you have heard of her? No. Her claim to fame is challenging Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership back in 2016, which gives her sort of centrist standing. Anyway, she failed. She withdrew to support Owen Smith - who also failed. It's an inspiring bench.

A surprisingly relevant portfolio to this government's failed economics is Wales. Let me explain. Burnham has asked Stephen Kinnock to replace Jo Stevens as Welsh secretary. Stephen's qualifications are: he is Welsh, and he is the son of Neil Kinnock, who led the Labour Party through general election defeats in 1987 and 1992 and yet is Burnham's ideal of the prime minister we should have had.

Stephen is the exemplar to end with - the exemplar of the terminal mess the Labour Party has got itself into:

• inherited glory within a party that rails against privilege;
• failed politicians lauded as greats;
• doubling down on an unadmitted socialism that has already been rejected by the public multiple times, across nearly half a century;
• the appointment of professional politicians to roles for which they have few non-political qualifications;
• the promotion of ministers based on political ideologies and loyalties rather than functional merits; and
• the retention of incumbents for short-term political purposes, to the neglect of long-term stability.

Strap in: the Burnham administration will be even more calamitous and self-defeating than the Starmer administration.

The silver lining is that it will be entertaining, so far as you can look on the funny side of outcomes that will be very bad for most Britons and catastrophic for some (such as the thousands being imprisoned for tweets, or raped or knifed to death by illegal immigrants).

Yes, Britons must suffer through three years of a premiership even worse than Starmer's before they get a chance to vote it down.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 09:30

Two Drones Shot Down Over NATO Airspace In Less Than 24 Hours

This week has witnessed more dangerous Ukraine war spillover aerial activity in Eastern Europe. In a fresh instance, Romania's defense ministry is reporting that two drones entered the country's airspace in less than 24 hours.

The military said that radar systems had earlier picked up a drone "operating in the vicinity of the Ukrainian border" Saturday morning - after which F-16 fighter jets were scrambled and successfully shot it down.

Source: Romanian Air Force

The NATO member state's defense ministry continued by describing that two of the F-16s "safely shot down in an unpopulated area near the border."

A very similar situation played out Friday over an unpopulated area near Padina, northeast of the capital, Bucharest. In that case a pari of Italian air force Eurofighter Typhoon jets were deployed and shot it down.

Authorities did not immediately identify the drone's origin but that are pointing to the Russian military. Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta was cited in national media as saying "the impact site and the drone wreckage are currently being analyzed" but that "the pattern is consistent with previous confirmed flights by Russian drones."

Early indicators say these were likely Shahed-type drones used by Russian forces; however, there have also been past instances of Ukrainian projectiles entering friendly neighboring countries' airspace.

These types of breaches have been happening with increasingly regularity over the past couple years. In prior incidents, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of deliberately orchestrating provocations against NATO countries.

He previously said on X during a past incident, for example, that "The Russian military knows exactly where their drones are headed and how long they can operate in the air. Their routes are always calculated."

In prior recent instances of drones entering neighboring airspace, particularly in Baltic countries and also Poland, NATO jets were scrambled - and in some cases drones are safely brought down via electronic intercept means.

But each instance creates new tensions between Russia and NATO, and the typical accusations and threats then fly. The Kremlin has of late been especially alarmed at the Trump administration transferring 5,000 US troops from Germany to Poland, near Russia's doorstep.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 09:00

France Orders Largest Peacetime Evacuation Since WWII As Wildfires Rage

Thousands of firefighters are battling fast-moving wildfires spreading across Spain and France as extreme heat and strong winds forced more than 300,000 people to evacuate or shelter in place near Madrid, Valencia and Bordeaux.

Via @PCarterClimate

Socialist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said fires burned about 20,000 hectares over the past 24 hours, with more than 105,000 people affected and two deaths reported so far. France evacuated more than 220,000 people in the Gironde region and mobilized 1,500 troops as roughly 30 fires spread near Bordeaux.

FRANCE: France has evacuated more than 220,000 people as the country’s largest wildfire continues to spread across the southwest, threatening Bordeaux. Officials said the blaze in Gironde has become so intense that it is generating its own winds. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez…

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 26, 2026

Europe is burning. France + Spain: 250,000+ people evacuated this weekend alone. France: 98,000 hectares destroyed, a new national record. Worst wildfire crisis in the country’s history.

Even the Tour de France had to cut its final stage. When wildfires cancel the Tour de… pic.twitter.com/DOXFbJj8bZ

— France Safety Travel (@francesafetytra) July 26, 2026

CNN reporter Max Saltman spoke with wine expert Nicolle Croft, who said the 2026 vintage across Bordeaux is safe for now, but there are mounting concerns.

Saltman continued:

As wildfires burn west of Bordeaux, one of France's most famous wine-producing regions, concerned oenophiles have called wine expert Nicolle Croft to voice concern over the fate of 2026 vintage.

"A lot of people are contacting me from around the world hearing all these terrible stories, but actually the vineyards are not impacted at the moment," Croft, a tour guide based in Bordeaux, told CNN. "But we're all very upset because there are people losing homes."

Croft said at this time of year, the grapes aren't yet large enough to absorb wildfire smoke – a phenomenon known in winemaking as "smoke taint."

"We won't be harvesting until the beginning of September," Croft said, "so there's still time."

Dr. Phil Crews, a winemaker and chemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explained that unripe grapes aren't as vulnerable to smoke taint. Young grapes lack sugars that would otherwise bind with bitter-tasting phenols in wildfire smoke.

Fire Map

 

CNN noted, "Forecasts also indicate no rain in fire-ravaged areas, as officials in France mount the largest peacetime evacuation since WWII."

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 08:35

Russia Blasts Ukrainian Drone Mass Casualty Attack On Holiday Camp In Zaporizhzhia

Russia has blamed Ukraine for a mass casualty event at a 'holiday camp' in the partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia region on Saturday.

Local Russian officials overseeing Zaporizhzhia have said twelve people were killed and at least 19 more wounded due to a major Ukrainian drone attack. Ukraine did not immediately issue any statements acknowledging the deadly strikes.

Via Sputnik 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that "Striking civilians is the method used by terrorists" in a press briefing.

ABC News later reported that "Four children were among 11 people killed in the attack on the resorts in Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-installed regional head, said, adding that 16 others were wounded." Russia's RT in an update stated the official number at 12 deceased.

Pro-Russian regional Governor Evgeny Balitsky was cited in Russian media as saying:

“The enemy knew exactly who they were targeting and deliberately struck civilians,” Balitsky said in a statement on Max. “This is a blatant crime and a hallmark of the Ukrainian regime. Unable to confront us on equal terms, they instead target civilians – women and children.”

He said that among the wounded being treated by emergency medical teams are five children.

Zaporozhye Region came under formal Russian control in September 2022, after a 'popular referendum' - following the Russian military ground onslaught across eastern and parts of southern Ukraine.

Overnight, Russian drones unleashed death in Ukrainian towns as well:

Sumy regional head Oleh Hryhorov said on Saturday three people were killed when a large fire broke out after a Russian drone struck a “civilian facility,” adding that the victims were drivers for private Ukrainian postal and courier service Nova Poshta.

Russia’s defense ministry said it attacked a “storage and launch site” for Ukrainian drones in the Sumy region.

Footage of the aftermath shows extensive damage and destruction at the camp:

❗️Consecuencias del ataque ucraniano a campamentos turísticos rusos

12 personas murieron y 19 resultaron heridas en un ataque de las Fuerzas Armadas ucranianas contra campamentos turísticos en la provincia rusa de Zaporozhie. pic.twitter.com/yJQVsaqBQY

— RT en Español (@ActualidadRT) July 25, 2026

Russian regions bordering Ukraine have also been coming under heavy attack from Ukraine, including Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk. These oblasts have frequently been targeted throughout the years-long war.

Currently, Ukraine has been especially targeting not only energy sites deep inside Russia, but logistics hubs and warehouses of the large company Wildberries, which is often called the 'Amazon of Russia'.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 07:35

UK Cities Roll Out More Diversity Barriers; Vehicle-Ramming Threat Now The Norm

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A family summer beach event in the UK city of Nottingham now sits behind portable anti-ram steel barrier, the latest admission that open borders have turned public spaces into soft targets.

Local authorities across Britain are quietly installing more of what critics now call "diversity barriers" - heavy portable steel devices designed to stop vehicles being driven into crowds.

The annual artificial "Nottingham Beach" event opened this week behind a line of bright red Husson H-Stop units.

Meanwhile in the UK Local authorities are installing more and more 'Diversity Barriers'. Why? Because as regularly seen throughout Europe - Radical Islamist Terrorists like to murder innocent people by driving their vehicles into crowds of people. pic.twitter.com/hq7tRKYcbW

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) July 22, 2026

About 15 of the barriers now block the four main entrances. They tip upward on impact, changing a vehicle's trajectory and generating enough friction to halt a three-and-a-half-tonne truck travelling at 30 mph.

Councillors and organisers insist the move is simply a precaution. The multi-agency safety group that approved them included counter-terrorism officers.

Councillor Neghat Khan, leader of Nottingham City Council, described them as an "additional safety measure" installed "following advice from the multi-agency events safety advisory group, which includes counter-terrorism colleagues."

Event organiser James Mellors was more blunt: "I don't think they look very pretty. But the Market Square is a very high footfall area. It's not always about how things look, it's about keeping people safe."

A regular visitor, Amanda Hose Hawley, said she was "not surprised" and called the barriers "a sign of the climate we live in."

The language is careful, the justification technical. Yet the reason these barriers exist is no mystery.

Before uncontrolled mass immigration we did not need diversity barriers.

— Edward Oakenfull (@EdwardOakenfull) July 22, 2026

Across Europe, radical Islamists have repeatedly turned vehicles into weapons against ordinary people gathered in public spaces. Britain is simply catching up with the physical reality already visible on the Continent.

Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a country where the problem got resolved rather than putting in precautions for the problem!

— Kate leigh 86 (@KateLee86) July 22, 2026

Last winter German towns were forced into even more extreme measures. In the small Bavarian community of Külsheim, officials resorted to recycled anti-tank barriers pulled from old military barracks.

Four massive concrete blocks, each 1.4 metres wide and weighing several tonnes, were painted red and white and placed around the Christmas market.

The town's mayor, Simone Hickl-Seitz, explained the grim arithmetic: "They know exactly that all cities need this. But the coffers are empty."

Bollards that once cost €800 had risen tenfold in price because demand had exploded. The anti-tank relics saved the town €30,000.

That was not an isolated improvisation. Security spending on German Christmas markets rose 44 percent in three years, according to the Federal Association of City and Town Marketing.

Some towns simply cancelled their markets rather than meet the new requirements. The pressure intensified after the December 2024 Magdeburg attack, in which a Saudi national living in Germany for nearly two decades drove a vehicle through a Christmas market, killing six and injuring hundreds.

AfD politician Ulrich Siegmund cut through the official euphemisms: "Why do we need to protect Christmas markets? Go to Czech Republic, Poland - they haven't opened borders... We are losing our freedom bit by bit."

The same pattern has been documented in footage that circulated widely at the time. One widely viewed report showed Berlin's markets ringed by the same style of heavy concrete barriers once intended to stop invading armies, not shoppers buying Glühwein.

Britain's new portable barriers are lighter and more mobile, but they serve the identical purpose. Hostile vehicle mitigation has become standard guidance from the National Protective Security Authority.

Official documents now list crash-rated bollards, vehicle barriers and stand-off distances as core measures against "vehicle as a weapon" attacks.

Maybe enforcing the barriers called BORDERS and keeping the terrorists out of the country would be the more intelligent effort.

— Renomanz (@Renomanz) July 22, 2026

The threat is no longer theoretical. In October 2025 a man who pledged allegiance to Islamic State used a vehicle and a bladed weapon outside a Manchester synagogue, killing three. Other plots and attacks across Europe have followed the same method: low-skill, high-impact, directed at soft civilian targets.

The Nottingham installation is being described as a trial. Organisers say there was no specific intelligence of an imminent attack. That claim misses the larger point.

Permanent or semi-permanent barriers are appearing at markets, festivals, high streets and public squares precisely because the background risk has become chronic.

Before the era of mass, uncontrolled immigration from regions where Islamist ideology remains mainstream, British towns did not need steel ramps that can stop a truck.

Children played in squares without negotiating "filter" gaps between anti-ram devices. Christmas markets did not require military surplus concrete painted in festive colours.

Now the physical landscape of everyday life is being redesigned around the assumption that someone may try to drive a vehicle into a crowd of shoppers, holidaymakers or beachgoers. The barriers are painted bright red and labelled H-STOP so no one can claim they are invisible. Their very visibility is the admission.

The cost is not only financial. Every barrier is a quiet confession that the post-1990s experiment in open borders has produced a security environment European cities once associated with conflict zones.

Politicians continue to speak of "community cohesion" and "diversity as strength" while the practical response is to harden every public gathering against the most predictable form of attack.

Nottingham's beach will close at the end of the summer and the portable barriers will be stored away. The underlying problem will not. The same devices, or heavier permanent versions, will reappear at the next festival, the next market, the next Christmas period.

Local authorities are not inventing a threat; they are reacting to one that has already left bodies in European streets and forced democratic societies to turn festive spaces into fortified zones.

The choice facing Britain and the rest of the West remains the same one German politicians have already faced: continue importing the conditions that make these barriers necessary, or finally reverse the policies that created the danger in the first place. Concrete and steel can stop a truck. They cannot restore a country that no longer feels safe enough to gather without them.

Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 07:00

The United Nations Has Run Out Of Alibis

Authored by Pierre Rehov via The Epoch Times,

Institutions built to prevent atrocities eventually face the question of what they actually protect. For the United Nations, voting patterns, internal investigations and its own decisions this year no longer support the fiction of neutrality. An UNRWA school in Gaza sat above a Hamas tunnel shaft and three anti-tank positions, and its own principal was on the payroll of both institutions at once - a fact that American investigators, not the UN, brought to light.

Israeli soldiers inspect the entrance to a Hamas terror tunnel directly outside an UNRWA compound in Gaza City on Feb. 8, 2024. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

The pattern is old: during the oil-for-food scandal, a mid-level program director faced US prosecution while the officials who managed the program from above kept their positions. When UN failures surface, line staff absorb the exposure. The people who set the policy rarely do.

The arithmetic alone dismantles the pretense of balance. In 2025 the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted 15 resolutions targeting Israel, and only 11 addressing the rest of the planet combined - a tally covering North Korea, Iran, Myanmar, Russia and the United States together. From 2015 through 2024, the total reached 173 resolutions against Israel, compared to 80 for all other member states combined. The UN Human Rights Council has run comparable numbers since 2006, adopting 112 resolutions against Israel compared to 45 against Syria, despite a civil war there that killed hundreds of thousands.

On Nov. 20, 2025, the UNGA's Fourth Committee passed six resolutions condemning Israel while producing not a single resolution on Sudan, where fighting has killed more than 150,000 people and driven 12 million from their homes. The bloc that commands the UNGA's automatic majority sets these priorities; the scale of actual human suffering has nothing to do with it.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) supplies the starkest illustration. After October 7, the agency's own internal review found that nine employees may have taken part in the massacre - a figure that American investigators have since made look negligible. According to USAID:

"The USAID Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG), a statutorily independent law enforcement and oversight entity, has referred for suspension/debarment consideration the names of 101 current or former staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for participation in the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and/or affiliation with the military wing (al-Qassam Brigades) of Hamas. Among the individuals referred were UNRWA school principals, teachers, security personnel, attendants, psychosocial counselors, and medical professionals, including:

- A deputy school principal serving as an al-Qassam deputy company commander in the Ain Gallout/5th infantry battalion.
- A deputy school principal serving as squad leader for the Khan Younis Brigade/2nd infantry battalion.
- A teacher serving as squad leader in Hamas' military security department/intelligence unit who tracked assignment of explosive devices.
- A teacher serving as a platoon commander of the Central Brigade/Al Quds 2nd Battalion.
- A math & computer teacher with ties to an al-Qassam intelligence squad.
- A teacher with expertise as a sniper for Hamas.
- A teacher and Hamas soldier with orders to bring two anti-tank missiles to a prescribed location during the October 7 terror attacks.
- A deputy school principal serving as a platoon commander in Hamas' Nuseirat battalion with communications responsibilities on October 7th.
- A school principal assigned to the chemical department of a Hamas military manufacturing unit whose school had three anti-tank positions and a tunnel shaft located under the facility."

One of those referred, Hafez Mousa Mohammed Mousa, coordinated with fellow operatives during the Oct. 7 massacre while running an UNRWA school, and became the first person affiliated with a UN humanitarian agency ever debarred by the US government for terrorism. Under mounting pressure, UNRWA itself dismissed 70 staff linked to terrorist organizations in Gaza in the weeks before the referral was published, an admission that followed the release of evidence rather than the agency's own vetting. Groups tracking UNRWA's personnel put the true scale of Hamas penetration considerably higher, closer to 1,500 employees still drawing a UN salary.

The reckoning caught up with the agency in public on July 1, 2026, when the "Board of Peace," the body now overseeing Gaza's postwar administration, announced that UNRWA "has no place in the new Gaza" and described continued dependence on the agency as an obstacle to recovery rather than a form of relief.

Washington's ambassador for UN reform, Jeff Bartos, told the annual pledging conference the same day that member states funding UNRWA had spent years choosing incitement, terrorism and stagnation over an alternative, and warned that history would remember the choice. Within hours, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League rejected the announcement and insisted that UNRWA's mandate cannot be dissolved by an administrative statement.

Whatever the outcome of this dispute, an institution long marketed as irreplaceable is being dismantled in real time by the very coalition managing the territory it was built to serve.

This state of affairs is not new behavior wearing new language. The UN's largest financial scandal, the oil-for-food program, saw then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein extract $1.8 billion in kickbacks starting in 1996, with help from more than 2,000 companies, while the Volcker inquiry found that weak UN oversight and Security Council paralysis had made the scheme possible. The program's own director was later indicted in the United States for bribery; senior UN officials mostly walked away untouched.

UN peacekeeping missions have produced a smaller, steadier version of the same pattern: a procurement task force documented more than $630 million in tainted contracts and two dozen confirmed corruption schemes, only to be shut down in 2008 after member states with implicated nationals refused to renew its mandate.

Sexual exploitation by peacekeepers followed an identical script, with nearly 2,000 allegations accumulated over 12 years and only a fraction of the accused ever serving prison time.

The historical ledger is worse than the bureaucratic one. In 1994, UN representatives and peacekeepers watched as more than 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda over roughly 100 days, while its own commander in the field begged for reinforcements and was refused. A year later, the UN declared the Bosnian town of Srebrenica a protected zone, then denied the air support its peacekeepers requested as 8,000 men and boys were murdered under the UN flag. In Haiti, UN peacekeepers introduced cholera into a country that had been free of the disease for a century; nearly 10,000 people died before the organization admitted any responsibility - six years after the outbreak began. The zero-tolerance policies announced afterward changed little about how missions were run or how misconduct was punished.

Rwanda, Bosnia, Haiti and Gaza share the same organizational reflex: investigate quietly, discipline the lowest-ranking staff available, and leave the people who set policy in place.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council after October 7 that the Hamas attacks "did not happen in a vacuum," a formulation he has since echoed on UNRWA's failures - careful language built to avoid naming the agency's own culpability.

The United Nations was founded to make atrocities costly for those who commit or enable them. It has instead built a machine that absorbs those costs internally, so long as the people responsible sit inside the institution or represent the states that control its votes.

Even the coalition now running Gaza's transition has concluded that one of the UN's flagship agencies does not belong there. This verdict came from the "Board of Peace," the body tasked with cleaning up what the war left behind - not from Jerusalem or from Washington's harshest critics of the UN. The record speaks plainly enough on its own. What remains open is how much longer the rest of the world intends to keep paying for it.

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute. Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 23:20

Platner's Replacement May Not Be Eligible For Nomination

Maine Democrats gathered in Bangor on Saturday to select a replacement for Graham Platner, whose Senate campaign collapsed under allegations of sexual assault - which he denied - that surfaced after his June primary win. Former Senate President Troy Jackson formally won the nomination. He will face Republican Sen. Susan Collins in one of the nation's most closely watched Senate races, a race that Democrats have deemed critical if they hope to win the majority in the Senate.

Troy Jackson at a candidate debate earlier this month in Portland, Maine. Credit...Ryan David Brown for The New York Times

However, one inconvenient detail threatens to complicate Jackson's coronation: a Republican state lawmaker says Jackson may not be legally eligible to accept the nomination at all.

State Rep. James White (R-Guilford) sent a letter to Secretary of State Shenna Bellows asking her office to determine whether Jackson, or any candidate who lost a primary for a different federal, state or county office in June, qualifies as a replacement nominee under Maine law. White wanted the question settled before Bellows certifies whatever comes out of Saturday's convention, but that didn't happen, which could be a problem.

Rep. James White has sent a letter to Shenna Bellows suggesting that Troy Jackson is not legally allowed to become the Senate nominee:

"The apparent justification for Mr. Jackson's eligibility depends entirely on treating the June primary and November general election as… pic.twitter.com/NnTS3bSxFp

— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) July 24, 2026

According to White, Jackson's own ballot history might make him legally ineligible. Jackson ran for governor earlier this year, lost that Democratic primary in June, and became his party's Senate nominee through a replacement process rather than a primary vote of his own.

Under Title 21-A, Section 331 of Maine election law, "a person may not file, whether by primary election or nomination petition, as a candidate for more than one federal, state or county office at any election." He also points to Section 351, which imposes similar restrictions, and Section 363, which requires that a political committee filling a nomination vacancy "shall choose a qualified person to fill the vacancy."

Whether Jackson still counts as a "qualified person" after losing a statewide primary is the crux of White's argument. "The Department should resolve this question before accepting or certifying any replacement nomination," he wrote.

White reaches back to 1974 for precedent, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Storer v. Brown, which described primary elections as "an integral part of the entire election process." His argument is that treating June's primary and November's general election as two separate contests cuts against both the Court's reasoning and the Legislature's stated intent to keep candidates from seeking more than one office "at any election." White's letter frames this as standard sore loser logic. Laws of this type exist across the country to stop a candidate who loses one race from reaching the general election through a side door.

Maine has no explicit sore loser statute on the books, unlike several other states that spell out the prohibition in plain language. White's position is that the existing patchwork of Title 21-A provisions accomplishes the same result even without a dedicated clause. Maine law does allow parties to replace nominees who withdraw after winning a primary, which is how Democrats find themselves in this position following Platner's exit, but the statute never quite addresses what happens when the proposed replacement lost a separate statewide primary of his own.

Reasonable election law observers could land on either side of this question, and if a legal challenge follows Jackson's nomination, according to The Maine Wire, a court may end up settling the matter, and depending on how that plays out, could put Democrats in a real bind.

The Secretary of State's office did not issue a public response to White's letter before the convention, and it remains unclear whether Bellows intends to produce a formal legal opinion. And Bellows is no neutral arbiter here: she was herself a candidate in this very Senate race, one of the contenders who dropped out and cleared the path for Jackson in the days before the convention. Regardless, Bellows, a Democrat, wouldn't rule against her own party's interest anyway, but clearing Jackson's candidacy, especially now, won't end the matter, since a court challenge could still follow.

If such a challenge were to proceed, and in the unlikely event it were to prevail, disqualifying Jackson would upend the Democratic Party's effort to field any candidate against Collins with barely four months remaining before Election Day, a scramble that could pave the way for Collins to win in November easily.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 22:45

Beijing Blacklists 14 EU Firms After Brussels Targets Chinese Companies In Latest Russia Sanctions Package

Via The Cradle

Beijing prohibited 14 EU companies from obtaining Chinese dual-use goods on Friday, targeting Europe's defense industry shortly after the EU included 14 Chinese and Hong Kong firms in its 21st sanctions package against Russia.

Announcing the measures with immediate effect, the Chinese Commerce Ministry called the bloc's conduct "egregious" and demanded the EU "immediately correct its wrongdoing, eliminate the egregious impact, and safeguard the overall interests of China–EU relations with concrete actions."

AFP/Getty Images

The restrictions cover dual-use items, goods, software, and technology with both civilian and military applications, including rare earth elements used to build drones and chips. 

Parties outside China are also barred from transferring Chinese-origin dual-use goods to any listed entity, though exporters may request permission in exceptional cases or when a shipment is deemed "truly necessary."

Rheinmetall leads the list, alongside Polish electronics producer Vigo Photonics, Italian electric motor manufacturer Lafert, French drone developer Cavok UAS, Czech truckmaker Tatra, Dutch naval engineering firm IHC Merwede, and several optics and laser companies. 

Germany and France each have three entries, Italy and Poland each have two, and the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Lithuania each have one.

China's mission to the EU lodged a formal protest, voicing "strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition" to the measures and rejecting attempts by the bloc to place responsibility for the war in Ukraine on Beijing. It added that China "firmly opposes the EU's unwarranted listing and sanctioning of Chinese companies and citizens."

The 21st package subjected 51 entities to tighter export curbs on dual-use goods and technologies over their support for Russia's military and industrial complex. Companies based in India, Turkey, and the UAE were listed alongside those from mainland China and Hong Kong.

Brussels targeted small trade and logistics operators in port cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dalian, while Beijing focused on Europe's defense industry.

🇨🇳🇪🇺 China just blacklisted the companies arming Europe.

14 EU firms lost access to Chinese dual-use exports overnight, payback for the EU's latest sanctions over Russia.

The list hits artillery makers, drone builders, targeting systems, military trucks and lasers.

All of them… pic.twitter.com/EpKTSoqnTj

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 24, 2026

Cui Hongjian, a former diplomat who heads European studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the South China Morning Post (SCMP) that the disparity does not make the response any less reciprocal from Beijing's perspective, noting that successive EU packages have named far more Chinese firms overall than China has named in return. 

"Since this whole episode arose from the Russia-Ukraine war, I think it's understandable that China is now pointing its retaliation at Rheinmetall," Cui said. "From Beijing's point of view, if it's going to retaliate, the retaliation has to bite."

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 22:10

19 Million Eggs Pulled As Salmonella Outbreak Sickens 98 Across 17 States

The FDA and CDC have tied a growing Salmonella outbreak to eggs produced by Texas-based Midwest Poultry Services, which recalled roughly 1.5 million cartons - more than 19 million eggs - after the contamination surfaced. As of July 24, 98 people across 17 states had been sickened, according to the FDA, which said the recalled eggs are "a likely source of illnesses in this outbreak" and that its investigation is ongoing.

The recall itself went out through an FDA notice on July 22, before the illness count was attached. The eggs may be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis, a subtype that can cause serious and occasionally fatal infections in young children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised.

"Midwest Poultry Services identified the issue on its two Texas farms through proactive environmental monitoring practices and root cause analysis," the company said, adding that it "is not distributing fresh eggs produced on its Texas farms at this time." The company said it began diverting eggs to a breaking plant, where they would be pasteurized to kill any pathogens, and characterized the recall as precautionary. It did not respond to a request for more detail on how it detected the possible contamination.

There is a wrinkle worth noting. The recalled eggs were produced between June 6 and July 3, but the outbreak's illness onsets stretch from Nov. 21, 2025 all the way to June 30, 2026 - a seven-month span far wider than the production window. That is why the FDA is describing the eggs as a likely source "in part" and says it is still investigating whether other foods are involved.

How To Check Your Carton

The eggs carried "sell by" or "best by" dates ranging from July 20 to Aug. 17. The recalled cartons carry an identifying code of P-1950 or 0840962 with a Julian date between 157 and 184, printed in date-coding ink on the side of the carton. No other Midwest Poultry Services products are affected.

The eggs were available at Kroger stores in Louisiana and Texas and Brookshire Grocery stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as smaller retailers not named in the notice. They were also shipped to foodservice customers in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Kroger and Brookshire Grocery did not respond to requests for comment.

People who bought the eggs can return them for a full refund. Salmonella infection typically sets in 12 to 72 hours after exposure, with symptoms - diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps - usually lasting four to seven days.

Full list of recalled eggs:

• Kroger Large 12 eggs
• Kroger Large 18 eggs
• Kroger Large 60 eggs
• Kroger Extra Large 12 eggs
• Kroger Medium 12 eggs
• Kroger Medium 30 eggs
• Kroger Jumbo 12 eggs
• Simple Truth Cage Free Medium Brown 12 eggs
• Simple Truth Cage Free Large Brown 12 eggs
• Simple Truth Cage Free Large Brown 18 eggs
• Simple Truth Cage Free Large Brown 24 eggs
• Brookshire's Large 6 eggs
• Brookshire's Large 12 Eggs
• Brookshire's Large 18 Eggs
• Brookshire's Large 36 Eggs
• Brookshire's Large 60 Eggs
• Brookshires Extra Large 18 Eggs
• Brookshire's Jumbo 12 Eggs
• Country Morning Large 12 Eggs
• Country Morning Large 18 Eggs
• Country Morning Large 2 ½ Dozen
• Country Morning Extra Large 12 Eggs
• Country Morning Medium 12 Eggs
• Country Morning Jumbo 12 Eggs
• Sunups Medium 2 1/2 Dozen
• Grade AA Large Bulk X 30 DOZEN
• Grade A Large Bulk X 15 DOZEN
• Grade A Large Bulk - TICTAC
• Grade A Large Bulk - BROWN - TICTAC
• Grade A Medium Bulk X 30 DOZEN
• Grade A Medium Bulk X 15 DOZEN
• Grade A Extra Large Bulk X 15 DOZEN
• Grade A Jumbo Bulk 20 eggs

h/t Epoch Times 

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 21:35

Young Middle-Income Buyers Frustrated As US Home Costs Rise Faster Than Incomes

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

Stealers Wheel's 1973 hit "Stuck in the Middle with You" could well become the theme song for today's middle-income, first-time home buyers who don't qualify for affordable housing programs yet cannot afford market-rate homes.

The current housing shortage suggests pent-up demand is building among young homebuyers. Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock

The household income required to purchase a starter home, currently priced under $350,000 in the United States, has surged more than 80 percent to $78,000 from $43,000 in 2019, according to a July 20 report from Realtor.com.

By contrast, the median household income was $83,730 in 2024, representing an increase of under 22 percent from $68,703 in 2019, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates.

This gap in growth between home prices and household incomes has made it increasingly difficult for even middle-income households to own a home, real estate professionals, economists, and recent research say.

Caught In The Middle

Vlora Sejdi, an associate broker with HomeSmart in White Plains, New York, recently told The Epoch Times about the challenges her young clients face in buying a home.

She is currently working with a childless couple under 40 who are living with parents while saving for a down payment on a home in Westchester County, an affluent suburb north of New York City, which had a median home price of $867,398 in May, according to Redfin.

"Home prices here just keep going up and up," she said. "It's a seller's market and people who can afford to buy are willing to go above and beyond. We're still seeing bidding wars."

"They're very unhappy with the current situation, and I think there's also a shock factor for what their monthly payments will be with mortgage, taxes, and insurance," she said.

Sejdi said another of her clients, a woman in her 20s, also from Westchester County, is currently renting while searching for a co-op, a type of housing in which residents purchase shares in a cooperative corporation that owns the building, rather than own individual units, according to Apartments.com.

Co-ops tend to be much less expensive than condos or single-family homes. According to OneKey MLS, in Westchester County, the median sales price for co-ops was $223,750 in May, compared with $576,500 and $1,200,000 for condos and single-family homes, respectively.

However, these properties are controlled by a co-op board of directors that can set stringent financial requirements for anyone seeking to purchase an apartment.

"My client actually had one accepted offer, but the board would not approve her, despite the fact that she now pays significantly more in monthly rent than she would for monthly maintenance at the co-op," Sejdi said.

Sejdi will continue to search for other possibilities but admits the journey has been challenging for both of them.

"There's definitely a lack of attainable housing for the middle class in Westchester," she said. "These are people who make too much money to qualify for affordable housing, but don't have enough to afford market-rate homes."

Sejdi's clients requested anonymity.

The Pew Research Center classifies households earning between 67 percent and 200 percent of the overall median household income, adjusted for household size, as "middle-income" households.

Based on the Census Bureau median of $83,730, this means those households had annual incomes of between $56,100 and $167,460.

In Westchester County, the median household income was $118,596 in 2024.

According to Westchester County government documents, the county's affordable housing programs include developments for households earning up to 120 percent of the area median income (AMI), though the income limits vary by development.

The current 120 percent AMI income limits for one-person and two-person households in the county are $162,800 and $142,450, respectively.

The situation is not limited to high-priced markets like New York. Middle-income, first-time buyers in more affordable areas, such as Texas, also face affordability challenges.

"North Texas is still considerably more attainable than markets like New York or California, but affordability has become one of the biggest challenges facing first-time buyers here as well," Johnny Mowad, associate broker with Ebby Halliday Realtors in Dallas, told The Epoch Times.

At the end of May, Redfin reported that the median sales price was $498,702 in Dallas and $337,798 in Fort Worth.

As in many other parts of the country, Mowad noted that wages have not kept pace with housing costs, and the demand in Northern Texas remains high as more people relocate to the area.

"That puts more pressure on inventory," he added.

Housing Mismatch

A joint May report by NAR and Realtor.com indicates that the much-needed housing recovery is not reaching the people who are most likely to restart the market.

"Buyers earning about $75,000 can afford only 23 percent of active listings nationwide," the report states. In a balanced market, they would be able to access about 44 percent.

The report notes that the gap represents about 311,000 missing listings priced below their maximum purchase point, which is estimated at $261,000.

"Too much of the inventory available today remains concentrated at higher price points, leaving a shortage of options for entry-level and middle-income buyers," Nadia Evangelou, NAR principal economist, said in the report.

According to a June 24 Pew Research Center survey, 89 percent of America's adults younger than 40 said it's harder for them to own a home than for their parents' generation.

The report attributes the perception primarily to rising housing costs and a challenging job market, which have made homeownership feel out of reach for many young adults.

The Harvard Joint Center's June 17 State of the Nation's Housing report states that, with a nationwide median price of about $417,400 for new single-family homes in 2025, most new housing was unaffordable for median-income households based on the standard affordability threshold of 30 percent of income.

Existing homes were less attainable. With the median price rising 54 percent since 2020 to $419,300, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), a typical single-family home sold at five times the median household income in 2025, the Harvard report notes. By contrast, the report said the average price-to-income ratio was 3.2 in the 1990s.

The median existing home price rose further to $440,600 in June, reaching an all-time high, the NAR said on July 9.

Using first-quarter data, a May 12 analysis by HSH Associates, a private mortgage and housing finance information company, found that U.S. households needed an annual income of $103,419 to afford a median-priced home. The calculation assumed buyers obtained a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 20 percent down payment, while taking into account principal, interest, property tax, and insurance payments.

Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas analyzed, only 12 had required incomes below the national average for buying a median-priced home, the report shows. For high-priced markets such as San Jose, California, and New York City, the required incomes were $477,409 and $197,521, respectively. The median home prices of these cities were $2,030,000 and $750,000, respectively. In Dallas, households needed $105,798 to afford a median-priced home, according to the HSH Associates report.

Millions Of Adults Living At Home

With housing costs and a challenging job market, the Harvard report says, "Many young adults cannot afford to form new households, instead doubling up or living with family."

The report shows that household growth, a primary driver of housing demand, slowed for the third straight year to 1.1 million in 2025, down from an average annual growth of 2.0 million in 2020 and 2021.

A mid-June report from Realtor.com indicates that one in three adults under the age of 35 - about 25.2 million people - lived with their parents in 2025, as they were priced out of the housing market.

"The adults living with their parents today are largely employed, and many hold college degrees. What's holding them back isn't a lack of qualifications, but rather, at least in part, a lack of housing they can actually afford," Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones said in the report.

The data show that about nine in 10 adults aged 25 to 34 living with parents have never been married and about one in three aged 25 to 29 hold a four-year college degree. Men comprise the majority of this group at every age level.

Meanwhile, according to a June 25 report from the Census Bureau, the nation's fertility rates have dropped almost every year since 2007, although they have risen in certain counties throughout the country.

The Year Of 'Starter Homes'

Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), recently told Siyamak Khorrami, the host of EpochTV's "Market Insider," that a decade and a half of underbuilding, especially of entry-level housing, is a key factor contributing to the housing affordability issue Americans are facing.

While Realtor.com estimated in March that the United States was short by about 4.03 million homes in 2025, NAHB put the number at about 1 million using different methodology.

Dietz said the current housing shortage suggests pent-up demand is building among young homebuyers - there are just not enough homes on the market that fit their budgets.

"One really interesting data point that we track is the number of young adults who live with their parents. Right now, one out of five of those 25- to 34-year-olds live with their parents. Back 20 years ago it was one out of 10, so that share has doubled," he said, citing a May NAHB analysis.

A northern California-based developer, Chris Duffy, founder and CEO of Hummingbird Development, agrees that the nation needs more entry-level housing, but providing that is very difficult due to rising construction costs.

"The cost of construction has gone up so much over the past 20 years," he told The Epoch Times. "With land, materials, labor, permits, architect costs, and other regulatory fees, the economics of building less expensive homes just doesn't work. Most new developments have to go with luxury housing to make a profit."

Duffy noted that depending on where they decide to build, it can take years to jump through all of the local government regulations.

In the organization's July 9 report, NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun warned that home prices could accelerate if housing inventory continues to stagnate.

The solution, noted Dietz, is to build more housing of all types, including single-family and multifamily for both sale and rent. He noted that construction of more multifamily options can help builders adapt to the challenges of creating more affordable homes.

"For example, we've seen a big rise in townhouse construction," he said. "These are homes that are connected; they require less land."

In its June 30 Housing Market Indicators report, the American Enterprise Institute called 2026 "the Year of 'Starter Homes' and 'Small Lot, Small Lot, Small Lot.'"

The institute said 188 housing bills had been introduced so far this year, including 26 pending, enacted, or passed bills in 15 states that align with the AEI Housing Center Playbook. The Playbook outlines policy recommendations to increase the supply of naturally affordable housing.

AEI projects that enacted, passed, and pending bills aligned with the Playbook's three policy options - smaller lots for new homes, greater flexibility on existing residential lots, and more housing near jobs and amenities - could add about 281,000 homes annually.

Because land prices are more affordable in the Sun Belt and Midwest, Dietz said new home construction has experienced growth in those areas. Demand for lower-entry-home price points continues to be strong throughout the nation, he said.

Mowad said while home purchasing remains challenging for younger buyers, starter homes do come up in the market, though they may not represent someone's dream home. He noted that younger, middle-income buyers who are determined to make a purchase may start with a condo or townhome.

"While affordability has certainly tightened over the last several years, I'd much rather be a first-time buyer in Dallas than in many coastal markets," he said. "In many parts of the Northeast, buyers are competing against housing costs that simply don't align with middle-income salaries."

Mowad said the region has been attracting many new residents due to a lower cost of living relative to other major metropolitan areas, a large concentration of Fortune 500 company headquarters, and no state income tax.

"People aren't just moving here for cheaper homes; they're moving here for careers and long-term opportunities," he said.

Meanwhile, Sejdi is serving on the newly created Westchester County Board of Legislators' Affordability and Economic Development Task Force that will address how to bring more affordable and middle-income housing into one of America's most expensive areas.

"We are hopeful that together we can develop some solutions that will help people in the lower and middle-income brackets be able to afford to make their homes here," she said.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 21:00

India's Education Minister Resigns, Delhi Protests End As Modi Caves To 'Cockroach' Youth Movement's Demands

India's education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, resigned on Saturday and the government agreed to every demand raised by youth demonstrators, bringing weeks of protests - the gravest political crisis of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term - to a jubilant close.

Pradhan's exit was the core demand of the self-styled Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the youth movement that has camped at Delhi's Jantar Mantar since late June over the leak of medical school entrance exam papers. The May leaks forced the cancellation of results and a retest for some 2 million students, and have been linked to several student suicides.

Word of the resignation set off celebrations at the protest site, where thousands of young people danced, chanted victory slogans and handed out sweets as the national anthem played over loudspeakers. "We have done it," CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke told the crowd. Roads around the neighbouring Connaught Place business district were shut as revellers poured in.

In a post on X announcing his decision, Pradhan said he had sent his resignation to the prime minister so that forces hostile to the country could not take advantage of the situation, and voiced deep respect for the aspirations and legitimate expectations of India's young people.

Supporters of India's Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) celebrate after India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned following days of protests demanding his resignation over National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) examination paper leaks, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, July 25, 2026. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavi

Hours later, Health Minister J.P. Nadda and Jitendra Singh, a junior minister in the prime minister's office, held a joint press conference with CJP representatives following a further round of talks. Nadda confirmed the government had accepted the movement's full list of demands, which included an overhaul of the examination system, the withdrawal of police cases filed against protesters, and compensation for the families of students who died by suicide after the leaks.

CJP spokespeople formally declared the agitation over and urged supporters across the country to head home peacefully.

The settlement prompted a swift unwinding of the security clampdown that had paralysed parts of central Delhi through the week. Mobile data services around the protest site - which the government had ordered telecom companies to switch off, leaving shopkeepers, vendors and restaurants unable to take digital payments for much of the week - were restored on Saturday. The 16 Delhi Metro stations shut in and around the area, closed for most of the past four days, reopened.

The outcome amounts to a rare climbdown for Modi, who is known for standing firm under public pressure. Pradhan, 57, the son of a veteran Bharatiya Janata Party politician and himself a senior figure once floated as a possible party president, had held the education portfolio since 2021. He is just the second minister in Modi's 12 years in power to leave office amid a scandal, after M.J. Akbar stepped down as junior foreign minister in 2018 during India's #MeToo movement.

The protests were the biggest youth revolt Modi has faced since taking office in 2014, and they had intensified sharply over the past week. Tens of thousands marched on parliament on Monday, where police responded with tear gas and cane charges; on Wednesday night, a crowd of more than 10,000 gathered at Jantar Mantar and some protesters pelted police with stones and bottles. Solidarity rallies spread to cities including Ranchi, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Kolkata, while opposition parties, echoing the students' demands, held up the monsoon session of parliament all week.

Modi's first public attempt to calm the unrest - a pledge on Thursday to create special courts to try those behind paper leaks, alongside his declaration on X that "Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth!" - was dismissed by the CJP, which countered that punishing culprits after the fact did nothing to address why papers keep leaking in the first place.

Beyond the exam scandal, the movement tapped deeper frustration among young Indians over scarce jobs and official accountability - discontent that carries echoes of the youth uprisings that toppled governments in neighbouring Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh in recent years. With young voters a key constituency for the BJP and major state elections due next year, the political stakes for Modi were considerable.

Among those marking the moment was activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had spent 26 days on hunger strike in support of the students and hailed the outcome as proof of what peaceful persistence can achieve.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 20:25

US To Resume Mexican Cattle Imports After Yearlong Screwworm Ban

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The United States said on Friday it will end a ban on imports of Mexican cattle implemented more than a year ago to combat the New World screwworm (NWS), a flesh-eating livestock pest that has already made it into Texas and New Mexico.

Cattle are herded in a stable in Hamilton, Texas, on June 5, 2026. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

In its announcement, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it would coordinate a phased reopening of southern cattle ports beginning Aug. 24.

USDA officials said the United States will first start taking Mexican cattle again at Douglas, Arizona, with two more ports in New Mexico to follow.

The reopening will be staged and depends on Mexico sticking to its New World screwworm control plan. Officials called the move safe to begin now.

Ports in Arizona and New Mexico sit farther from the heaviest infestations in Mexico, livestock traders noted, which lowers the immediate risk compared with Texas crossings.

"Every animal entering the United States through these ports will undergo a full USDA inspection to ensure it is free of any signs of New World screwworm (NWS)," the USDA said.

The United States suspended imports of live Mexican cattle and related livestock on May 11, 2025, as part of efforts to curb the spread of the parasite.

Also on Friday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that she had directed local authorities to speed preparations for the reopening.

"I have instructed that we accelerate our work and collaboration with the United States even further to have everything ready as soon as possible to restart the movement of cattle," she said in a post on X.

"Exports will resume starting in the last weeks of August through Agua Prieta, Sonora, followed shortly thereafter by two additional points in the state of Chihuahua."

The USDA said it has identified Sonora and Chihuahua as the lowest-risk Mexican states for New World screwworm due to their strong, well-established inspection programs and their geographic distance from southern Mexico, where most cases are concentrated.

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins said, "The closure of the Southern ports of entry for the last year has been a tough but necessary action to control the spread of NWS in Mexico and protect the American livestock industry."

The New World screwworm is a parasitic fly whose females lay eggs in open wounds or mucous membranes of any warm-blooded animal. The hatched larvae burrow into living flesh and can kill the host if left untreated.

The pest has pushed north through Central America. It appeared in June on Texas farms and in New Mexico, representing the first confirmed U.S. cases since 2017. One early case involved a 3-week-old calf in south Texas, with others found in goats, calves, and a dog.

Beef Industry In Turmoil

The United States typically imports more than 1 million head of cattle from Mexico each year, roughly 5 percent of the animals that go through American processing plants. Those calves usually head to U.S. feedlots for finishing, and prices spiked.

The decision also comes after domestic cattle supplies in the United States fell to a 75-year low. Beef prices rose to records this year, with meat processors struggling; Tyson Foods closed a large processing plant in Nebraska in January, and JBS said it would shutter one in Pennsylvania in mid-August.

The $100 billion U.S. beef industry contracted most sharply in Texas, the nation's top cattle state.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called the reopening the right thing for ranchers and consumers, though he said it should have happened earlier.

"While I'm pleased to see this important trade relationship restored, the prolonged closure has already taken a toll on producers, disrupted supply chains and created uncertainty that could have lasting consequences for the cattle industry," Miller said.

He added that while action has moved in the right direction, "the pace and scale of the screwworm response have not gone far enough."

USDA has invested in sterile-fly production, which is the main tool used to push the pest back in past decades. It has renovated facilities in Mexico and activated dispersal sites in Texas.

Yet production remains under the hundreds of millions of sterile flies needed weekly to push the infestation south, as the pest entered the country despite the ban.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 19:50

War Zones Converging? Zelensky Says Ukraine Hit Ship "Transporting Military Cargo" From Iran

Ukraine has rapidly expanded its one-way attack-drone campaign from the Sea of Azov into the Black Sea, claiming strikes against more than 180 vessels and maritime targets around the Crimean region over the past three weeks, according to Reuters. The widening maritime offensive follows a summer campaign in which Ukrainian drones struck dozens of Russian energy assets, warehouses and logistics hubs.

The risk of the Russia-Ukraine conflict merging with the US-Iran conflict seems plausible, but remains low at this point, despite overnight signals from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X that Ukrainian forces had hit "military cargo shipments involving Iran."

Zelensky noted, "We also have very good results from long-range strikes in the waters of the Caspian Sea. In particular, these are vessels that were involved in transporting military cargo from Iran, and a warship."

In August 2025, Ukraine struck the Russian cargo ship Port Olya-4 at a Caspian Sea port, saying it was loaded with Iranian Shahed drone components and ammunition.

An Estonian-born blogger on X, who goes by "WarTranslated," cited Iranian Telegram channels claiming that Tehran is "threatening ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine after Zelensky said they hit a military vessel carrying cargo between Russia and Iran."

Iranian Telegram channels are threatening ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine after Zelensky said they hit a military vessel carrying cargo between Russia and Iran. pic.twitter.com/t6TXWAaoUQ

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) July 25, 2026

The Ukrainian drone strike on the Iran-linked vessel points to deeper Russia-Iran military cooperation, likely centered on Tehran's transfer of Shahed drone technology, components and munitions to Moscow.

More or less, this is just noise from both sides. Still, the two Eurasian war zones remain connected through Russia-Iran military cooperation, creating an ongoing risk that any escalation could cause the conflicts to converge into a broader confrontation. That risk remains low, but it cannot be dismissed.

Tyler Durden Sat, 07/25/2026 - 19:15