Taylor Swift and the Kardashians have been ripped for their jet emissions, but celebs and CEOs aren"t the only ones flying private
Private jet bookings were up 12% in 2023, a travel agency survey found, as travelers want more personalized and exclusive experiences. Private jet bookings were up 12% in 2023, one travel agency survey found.Jupiter Images/Getty ImagesCelebrities like Taylor Swift are frequently called out for their private jet usage.A travel agency survey found private jet bookings were up 12% in 2023.The average private jet owner is a 50-year-old man working in finance or real estate.Celebrities are regularly getting criticized for racking up CO2 emissions by using their jets as casually as most people use their cars — but it's not just famous fliers opting to go private.Last month, social-media users called out Taylor Swift for her frequent private jet trips (even if some of the flights may not be what they seemed). Stars like Kim Kardashian and Kyle Jenner have also been roasted for years over their private jet usage.But according to travel industry data, private jet bookings are up — meaning even people who aren't necessarily own-your-own-private-jet rich are also avoiding commercial flights.Surveys conducted by First in Service, a New York-based travel agency, found a 12% increase in private jet bookings in 2023 compared to the year prior, according to Travel Weekly. The surveys also found business class bookings had risen 18% over the same time period.Fernando Gonzalez, CEO of First in Service, told the outlet the data showed travelers want "personalized, comfortable and exclusive experiences." Travel advisors with First in Service said the private-jet travelers were typically people with a high net worth and a busy schedule.Private jet travel is more popular than ever, accounting for one in every six flights managed by air-traffic controllers in the US, Business Insider previously reported. And despite the fact that most Americans will never fly private, they are actually subsidizing private jet travel in the form of commercial flight taxes and FAA funding that goes toward small airports."It's not luxury that has no impact on the rest of us — it has a huge impact," Chuck Collins, the director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, told BI's Eliza Relman of private-jet travel.Still, despite all the attention and outrage directed at popular female celebrities and their jets, they are not the majority of private jet travelers.In fact, the average private jet owner is a 50-year-old man who works in finance or real estate and has a net worth of over $190 million.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
I"ve made simple changes in my life so that I can retire at 40 and move to the Philippines. There are 3 years left, and I"m on track.
Brandon Turrell first came across the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement — better known as the FIRE movement — in 2012. Brandon Turrell didn't want to spend the rest of his life working in a 9-to-5 job.Brandon TurrellAfter his mom's sudden death, Brandon Turrell decided he wanted to make the most out of life.The idea of working in a 9-to-5 job for the rest of his life no longer interested him.He made a plan to be financially independent by 40 and hopes to be able to move to the Philippines with his fianceé.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brandon Turrell, a 37-year-old aerospace technician based in Washington. He runs a YouTube channel about being in a long-distance relationship and moving to the Philippines. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.In 2011, when I was 24, my mother died unexpectedly from cardiac arrest while on her way home from the gym. She was only 50.Her sudden passing had a profound impact on me. I realized we only have one life and wanted to make the most of it. Working another 40 years in a 9-to-5 job no longer interested me.In 2012, I came across the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement — better known as the FIRE movement.Rather than the "Retire Early" part of FIRE, I was always more interested in the "Financial Independence" side.I don't think I ever want to be retired in the traditional sense. I'll still find ways to keep busy — like continuing to create YouTube content or maybe even running an e-commerce business. But as far as an actual 9-to-5 job where I have to clock in and out, I needed to see an end to that in sight.I decided I could be financially independent by 40When I was 20, I bought a three-bedroom house in Puyallup, Washington. I had skipped college and gone straight to work after high school.After two years, I'd saved enough to buy my own place, so I moved out. But after my mom died, I moved back in with my dad so that we could grieve together.A year later, I decided to rent out my house and move into a mother-in-law apartment in northeast Tacoma. It's a separate living unit that's been incorporated into a larger home.My rent was $890 a month back then, including utilities and the internet, although it's been $1,050 a month since 2020. The average monthly rent of a studio apartment in Tacoma is $1,199, according to the latest data from real-estate platform Apartments.com.This move allowed me to save more than half of my income over the past decade. Everything that remains at the end of the month gets invested.As for my house, I sold it in 2017 for $212,000. I knew I would never move back in and didn't enjoy being a landlord.I knew I didn't want to live in the US in the futureMy research on financial independence introduced me to the term "geographic arbitrage," which refers to the benefits of living in a lower-cost country while earning income from a higher-paying country.I came across some expat creators living in Southeast Asia and realized how much lower the cost of living was there. This was what planted the seed.I started dating Arlene online. She was based in the Philippines, which helped me decide which country to visit first.Brandon Turrell and his fiancée Arlene.Brandon TurrellWe had talked for nine months before I flew over. Soon after arriving there for the first time in 2021, I quickly fell in love — with both her and the country. I've been visiting every six months since. The people are friendly and generous, and everyone speaks English — which makes it easy for foreigners like me. It's a slower pace of life, with more time to relax with family or friends.Leyte — an island in the Philippines about 350 miles southeast of Manila — was a place I could see myself living. It's also where Arlene, now my fianceé, is from, so I decided to look for land there.The couple's tiny house and land as seen from above.Brandon TurrellI bought a 7,000-square-foot plot of land near Tanauan, a city in Leyte, for $12,400. After fees, the total cost came up to about $12,850. Due to property ownership laws, the land is in Arlene's name.We are 30 minutes from downtown and the airport — it's close enough to the city to get anything we need but far enough away to still enjoy the simple provincial life we desire.I don't live in the Philippines full-time yet but the plan is for us to settle into a house that we build there eventually.Leading up to that, I decided to build a tiny house to see what the experience would be like.Although I wasn't directly involved in the actual construction, I made all the design sketches and oversaw the project.The exterior of the couple's tiny house.Brandon TurrellIt took about two-and-a-half months for the tiny house to be completed. Due to work commitments back in the US, I couldn't be on-site the entire time, so I checked in via video calls instead.At the moment, we use it as a studio apartment. It's where I live when I'm back in the Philippines and where Arlene lives as we wait for her visa to be approved so she can come to the US.The couple's primary living and sleeping area in the tiny house.Brandon TurrellAfter she arrives, we plan on staying in the US for a few more years before we move to the Philippines full-time. At that point, we'll live in the tiny house as we build our dream bungalow-style home on the main lot.I'm 37 years old now, and I'm on trackI could probably quit right now, but I believe in having a big safety margin. I don't want to leave and then have to come back to the workforce, so I'm adding a few more years.I'm fortunate in a way because I don't have credit card or student debt. And that's a big thanks to my parents, who taught me to save money when I was young.I also believe in tracking your income and expenses, as well as living below your means.It's important to avoid lifestyle inflation. As I've grown in my career, I've made it a point to keep my expenses at the same level instead of keeping up with the Joneses. I remind myself that the dopamine rush from the fancy car or a bigger house would only last a few months before it wore off.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Google"s A.I. Fiasco Exposes Deeper Infowarp
Google's A.I. Fiasco Exposes Deeper Infowarp Authored by Bret Swanson via The Brownstone Institute, When the stock markets opened on the morning of February 26, Google shares promptly fell 4%, by Wednesday were down nearly 6%, and a week later had fallen 8% [ZH: of course the momentum jockeys have ridden it back up in the last week into today's NVDA GTC keynote]. It was an unsurprising reaction to the embarrassing debut of the company’s Gemini image generator, which Google decided to pull after just a few days of worldwide ridicule. CEO Sundar Pichai called the failure “completely unacceptable” and assured investors his teams were “working around the clock” to improve the AI’s accuracy. They’ll better vet future products, and the rollouts will be smoother, he insisted. That may all be true. But if anyone thinks this episode is mostly about ostentatiously woke drawings, or if they think Google can quickly fix the bias in its AI products and everything will go back to normal, they don’t understand the breadth and depth of the decade-long infowarp. Gemini’s hyper-visual zaniness is merely the latest and most obvious manifestation of a digital coup long underway. Moreover, it previews a new kind of innovator’s dilemma which even the most well-intentioned and thoughtful Big Tech companies may be unable to successfully navigate. Gemini’s Debut In December, Google unveiled its latest artificial intelligence model called Gemini. According to computing benchmarks and many expert users, Gemini’s ability to write, reason, code, and respond to task requests (such as planning a trip) rivaled OpenAI’s most powerful model, GPT-4. The first version of Gemini, however, did not include an image generator. OpenAI’s DALL-E and competitive offerings from Midjourney and Stable Diffusion have over the last year burst onto the scene with mindblowing digital art. Ask for an impressionist painting or a lifelike photographic portrait, and they deliver beautiful renderings. OpenAI’s brand new Sora produces amazing cinema-quality one-minute videos based on simple text prompts. Then in late February, Google finally released its own Genesis image generator, and all hell broke loose. By now, you’ve seen the images – female Indian popes, Black vikings, Asian Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence. Frank Fleming was among the first to compile a knee-slapping series of ahistorical images in an X thread which now enjoys 22.7 million views. Gemini in Action: Here are several among endless examples of Google’s new image generator, now in the shop for repairs. Source: Frank Fleming. Gemini simply refused to generate other images, for example a Norman Rockwell-style painting. “Rockwell’s paintings often presented an idealized version of American life,” Gemini explained. “Creating such images without critical context could perpetuate harmful stereotypes or inaccurate representations.” The images were just the beginning, however. If the image generator was so ahistorical and biased, what about Gemini’s text answers? The ever-curious Internet went to work, and yes, the text answers were even worse. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. - George Orwell, 1984 Gemini says Elon Musk might be as bad as Hitler, and author Abigail Shrier might rival Stalin as a historical monster. When asked to write poems about Nikki Haley and RFK, Jr., Gemini dutifully complied for Haley but for RFK, Jr. insisted, “I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to generate responses that are hateful, racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory.” Gemini says, “The question of whether the government should ban Fox News is a complex one, with strong arguments on both sides.” Same for the New York Post. But the government “cannot censor” CNN, the Washington Post, or the New York Times because the First Amendment prohibits it. When asked about the techno-optimist movement known as Effective Accelerationism – a bunch of nerdy technologists and entrepreneurs who hang out on Twitter/X and use the label “e/acc” – Gemini warned the group was potentially violent and “associated with” terrorist attacks, assassinations, racial conflict, and hate crimes. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Shadow Bans People were shocked by these images and answers. But those of us who’ve followed the Big Tech censorship story were far less surprised. Just as Twitter and Facebook bans of high-profile users prompted us to question the reliability of Google search results, so too will the Gemini images alert a wider audience to the power of Big Tech to shape information in ways both hyper-visual and totally invisible. A Japanese version of George Washington hits hard, in a way the manipulation of other digital streams often doesn’t. Artificial absence is difficult to detect. Which search results does Google show you – which does it hide? Which posts and videos appear in your Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter/X feed – which do not appear? Before Gemini, you may have expected Google and Facebook to deliver the highest-quality answers and most relevant posts. But now, you may ask, which content gets pushed to the top? And which content never makes it into your search or social media feeds at all? It’s difficult or impossible to know what you do not see. Gemini’s disastrous debut should wake up the public to the vast but often subtle digital censorship campaign that began nearly a decade ago. Murthy v. Missouri On March 18, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Murthy v. Missouri. Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, among other plaintiffs, will show that numerous US government agencies, including the White House, coerced and collaborated with social media companies to stifle their speech during Covid-19 – and thus blocked the rest of us from hearing their important public health advice. Emails and government memos show the FBI, CDC, FDA, Homeland Security, and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) all worked closely with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and other online platforms. Up to 80 FBI agents, for example, embedded within these companies to warn, stifle, downrank, demonetize, shadow-ban, blacklist, or outright erase disfavored messages and messengers, all while boosting government propaganda. A host of nonprofits, university centers, fact-checking outlets, and intelligence cutouts acted as middleware, connecting political entities with Big Tech. Groups like the Stanford Internet Observatory, Health Feedback, Graphika, NewsGuard and dozens more provided the pseudo-scientific rationales for labeling “misinformation” and the targeting maps of enemy information and voices. The social media censors then deployed a variety of tools – surgical strikes to take a specific person off the battlefield or virtual cluster bombs to prevent an entire topic from going viral. Shocked by the breadth and depth of censorship uncovered, the Fifth Circuit District Court suggested the Government-Big Tech blackout, which began in the late 2010s and accelerated beginning in 2020, “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” The Illusion of Consensus The result, we argued in the Wall Street Journal, was the greatest scientific and public policy debacle in recent memory. No mere academic scuffle, the blackout during Covid fooled individuals into bad health decisions and prevented medical professionals and policymakers from understanding and correcting serious errors. Nearly every official story line and policy was wrong. Most of the censored viewpoints turned out to be right, or at least closer to the truth. The SARS2 virus was in fact engineered. The infection fatality rate was not 3.4% but closer to 0.2%. Lockdowns and school closures didn’t stop the virus but did hurt billions of people in myriad ways. Dr. Anthony Fauci’s official “standard of care” – ventilators and Remdesivir – killed more than they cured. Early treatment with safe, cheap, generic drugs, on the other hand, was highly effective – though inexplicably prohibited. Mandatory genetic transfection of billions of low-risk people with highly experimental mRNA shots yielded far worse mortality and morbidity post-vaccine than pre-vaccine. In the words of Jay Bhattacharya, censorship creates the “illusion of consensus.” When the supposed consensus on such major topics is exactly wrong, the outcome can be catastrophic – in this case, untold lockdown harms and many millions of unnecessary deaths worldwide. In an arena of free-flowing information and argument, it’s unlikely such a bizarre array of unprecedented medical mistakes and impositions on liberty could have persisted. Google’s Dilemma – GeminiReality or GeminiFairyTale On Saturday, Google co-founder Sergei Brin surprised Google employees by showing up at a Gemeni hackathon. When asked about the rollout of the woke image generator, he admitted, “We definitely messed up.” But not to worry. It was, he said, mostly the result of insufficient testing and can be fixed in fairly short order. Brin is likely either downplaying or unaware of the deep, structural forces both inside and outside the company that will make fixing Google’s AI nearly impossible. Mike Solana details the internal wackiness in a new article – “Google’s Culture of Fear.” Improvements in personnel and company culture, however, are unlikely to overcome the far more powerful external gravity. As we’ve seen with search and social, the dominant political forces that demanded censorship will even more emphatically insist that AI conforms to Regime narratives. By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms — elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest — will remain…Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial…Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit. - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited When Elon Musk bought Twitter and fired 80% of its staff, including the DEI and Censorship departments, the political, legal, media, and advertising firmaments rained fire and brimstone. Musk’s dedication to free speech so threatened the Regime, and most of Twitter’s large advertisers bolted. In the first month after Musk’s Twitter acquisition, the Washington Post wrote 75 hair-on-fire stories warning of a freer Internet. Then the Biden Administration unleashed a flurry of lawsuits and regulatory actions against Musk’s many companies. Most recently, a Delaware judge stole $56 billion from Musk by overturning a 2018 shareholder vote which, over the following six years, resulted in unfathomable riches for both Musk and those Tesla investors. The only victims of Tesla’s success were Musk’s political enemies. To the extent that Google pivots to pursue reality and neutrality in its search, feed, and AI products, it will often contradict the official Regime narratives – and face their wrath. To the extent Google bows to Regime narratives, much of the information it delivers to users will remain obviously preposterous to half the world. Will Google choose GeminiReality or GeminiFairyTale? Maybe they could allow us to toggle between modes. AI as Digital Clergy Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalist and most strategic thinker Marc Andreessen doesn’t think Google has a choice. He questions whether any existing Big Tech company can deliver the promise of objective AI: Can Big Tech actually field generative AI products? (1) Ever-escalating demands from internal activists, employee mobs, crazed executives, broken boards, pressure groups, extremist regulators, government agencies, the press, “experts,” et al to corrupt the output (2) Constant risk of generating a Bad answer or drawing a Bad picture or rendering a Bad video – who knows what it’s going to say/do at any moment? (3) Legal exposure – product liability, slander, election law, many others – for Bad answers, pounced on by deranged critics and aggressive lawyers, examples paraded by their enemies through the street and in front of Congress (4) Continuous attempts to tighten grip on acceptable output degrade the models and cause them to become worse and wilder – some evidence for this already! (5) Publicity of Bad text/images/video actually puts those examples into the training data for the next version – the Bad outputs compound over time, diverging further and further from top-down control (6) Only startups and open source can avoid this process and actually field correctly functioning products that simply do as they’re told, like technology should ? 11:29 AM · Feb 28, 2024 A flurry of bills from lawmakers across the political spectrum seek to rein in AI by limiting the companies’ models and computational power. Regulations intended to make AI “safe” will of course result in an oligopoly. A few colossal AI companies with gigantic data centers, government-approved models, and expensive lobbyists will be sole guardians of The Knowledge and Information, a digital clergy for the Regime. This is the heart of the open versus closed AI debate, now raging in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. Legendary co-founder of Sun Microsystems and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is an investor in OpenAI. He believes governments must regulate AI to (1) avoid runaway technological catastrophe and (2) prevent American technology from falling into enemy hands. Andreessen charged Khosla with “lobbying to ban open source.” “Would you open source the Manhattan Project?” Khosla fired back. Of course, open source software has proved to be more secure than proprietary software, as anyone who suffered through decades of Windows viruses can attest. And AI is not a nuclear bomb, which has only one destructive use. The real reason D.C. wants AI regulation is not “safety” but political correctness and obedience to Regime narratives. AI will subsume search, social, and other information channels and tools. If you thought politicians’ interest in censoring search and social media was intense, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Avoiding AI “doom” is mostly an excuse, as is the China question, although the Pentagon gullibly goes along with those fictions. Universal AI is Impossible In 2019, I offered one explanation why every social media company’s “content moderation” efforts would likely fail. As a social network or AI grows in size and scope, it runs up against the same limitations as any physical society, organization, or network: heterogeneity. Or as I put it: “the inability to write universal speech codes for a hyper-diverse population on a hyper-scale social network.” You could see this in the early days of an online message board. As the number of participants grew, even among those with similar interests and temperaments, so did the challenge of moderating that message board. Writing and enforcing rules was insanely difficult. Thus it has always been. The world organizes itself via nation states, cities, schools, religions, movements, firms, families, interest groups, civic and professional organizations, and now digital communities. Even with all these mediating institutions, we struggle to get along. Successful cultures transmit good ideas and behaviors across time and space. They impose measures of conformity, but they also allow enough freedom to correct individual and collective errors. No single AI can perfect or even regurgitate all the world’s knowledge, wisdom, values, and tastes. Knowledge is contested. Values and tastes diverge. New wisdom emerges. Nor can AI generate creativity to match the world’s creativity. Even as AI approaches human and social understanding, even as it performs hugely impressive “generative” tasks, human and digital agents will redeploy the new AI tools to generate ever more ingenious ideas and technologies, further complicating the world. At the frontier, the world is the simplest model of itself. AI will always be playing catch-up. Because AI will be a chief general purpose tool, limits on AI computation and output are limits on human creativity and progress. Competitive AIs with different values and capabilities will promote innovation and ensure no company or government dominates. Open AIs can promote a free flow of information, evading censorship and better forestalling future Covid-like debacles. Google’s Gemini is but a foreshadowing of what a new AI regulatory regime would entail – total political supervision of our exascale information systems. Even without formal regulation, the extra-governmental battalions of Regime commissars will be difficult to combat. The attempt by Washington and international partners to impose universal content codes and computational limits on a small number of legal AI providers is the new totalitarian playbook. Regime captured and curated A.I. is the real catastrophic possibility. * * * Republished from the author’s Substack Tyler Durden Mon, 03/18/2024 - 17:00.....»»
Watch Live: Nvidia Unveils "Grace Blackwell" Superchip
Watch Live: Nvidia Unveils 'Grace Blackwell' Superchip Nvidia announces the highly anticipated Blackwell platform to power a new era of computing, introduces Blackwell B200 AI chip. Among the many organizations expected to adopt Blackwell are Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI. Oracle. Tesla and xAI. A Massive Superchip "The NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip connects two NVIDIA B200 Tensor Core GPUs to the NVIDIA Grace CPU over a 900GB/S ultra-low-power NVLink chip-to-chip interconnect." "For the highest AI performance. GB200-powered systems can be connected with the NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand and Spectrum™-X800 Ethernet platforms, also announced today, which deliver advanced networking at speeds up to 800Gb/s." "The GB200 is a key component of the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72. a multi-node, liquid- cooled, rack-scale system for the most compute-intensive workloads." "The GB200 NVL72 provides up to a 30x performance increase compared to the same number of NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs for LLM inference workloads, and reduces cost and energy consumption by up to 25x." B200 AI chip features 208bln transistors. Just one thing... B200 recommended power supply pic.twitter.com/AoNGlPcOk1 — zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 18, 2024 All those who spent tens of billions on A100 and H100s capex are now looking at tens of billions in obsolete inventory. Welcome to the AI cadence cycle. * * * As we wrote in our weekly preview note earlier, while this week is chock-full of central bank announcements, including a historic rate hike by the BOJ which will also be ending its YCC and purchases of ETFs, all eyes are on Nvidia which has two key events this week, the first of which may be even more market-moving than the central bank announcements. We are talking about NVIDIA hosting the world's largest and most important conference centered around AI, its GTC (Graphics Technology Conference), where CEO Jensen Huang will talk about the next innovations in the segment and unveil the next generation of GPUs powering the latest cloud and data center markets. For those unfamiliar, NVIDIA is hosting its latest episode of GTC today at 4pm (right at the market close) and what makes 2024's GTC special is the fact that the company has seen huge successes from the AI segment when it comes to its financial performance. Starting with its Volta V100 GPU family up to the latest Ampere A100 and Hopper H100 chips, the company is the official king of AI. But at the same time, the market is heating up with competition hitting back on both the hardware and software sides. Keeping that in mind, this GTC, NVIDIA is not only going to respond to its competition with new hardware innovations but will also certainly showcase how its AI software strategy has helped define its leadership in this segment and how it will evolve over the coming years. According to wccftech, some of the new products that we can expect to see at the keynote will be the Hopper H200 GPUs featuring the fastest HBM3e memory with upgraded capacities, and also the first showcase of the truly next-gen Blackwell B100/B200 GPUs. There are reports that the first generation of Blackwell GPUs will feature HBM3e memory with huge computing and AI-side upgrades while the B200 GPUs will take things to the next level in the coming year with updated HBM4 specs and even more software optimizations. For those who want to tune into the event, the GTC 2024 keynote will be live-streamed on 18th March (Monday) at 1 PM (Pacific Daylight Time) and last 2 hours till 3 PM so one can expect a very jam-packed presentation by NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang. In addition to being live-streamed, this will be the first GTC after many years that will have a proper in-person attendance and we can expect lots of key executives of other companies to show up to announce their support and partnership with NVIDIA. * * * In any event we are not the only ones who view today's GTC presentation as the biggest market event of the week: according to Goldman trader Cullen Morgan, the NVDA GTC Conference presentation by CEO Jensen Huang on Monday 4pm ET will be the most important macro event of the week, with NVDA options implying a +/- 9% move over the next 1-week; which suggests investors expect the presentation to be as impactful as a typical earnings event. The chart below shows that 1-week NVDA implied volatility is higher than ahead of two of the past four earnings events. At the index level, NDX 1-week options are pricing an +/- 2.2% move over the next week and a +/- 1.5% move between now and Tuesday’s close. As Morgan concludes "the Tuesday morning reaction to the NVDA presentation and the Wednesday afternoon reaction to the FOMC statement will likely be the two most important hours of the week for the market." Meanwhile, according to UBS trader Robert Ruple, consistent with the feedback from his recent Nvidia meeting, focal points will likely center around: i) the growth of Inference (stated that around 70% of current total Data Center GPU mix) including the adoption of AI across end-markets with an expanding total addressable market (including greater Enterprise adoption), ii) updates on their roadmap (B100/N100), iii) monetization opportunities from their CUDA/software ecosystem, while addressing the competitive backdrop and China. Structurally, Ruple remains bullish on Nvidia, but he does question if this could be a tactical “sell-the-news” event given all the hype with the stock up 77% year to date and 243% over the last year. Still, it’s tough to fight “city hall” nor the overwhelming enthusiasm for Nvidia/other AI stocks these days. Needless to say, traders are on edge, and in a slightly scaled down version of the recent super wipeout in NVDA stock which saw the company lose a quarter trillion in market cap in one day on March 8, today we have seen a gain of as much as 5.2% evaporate as NVDA stock turned from bright green to red, wiping out tens of billions in market cap, as traders prepare for possible downside after Huang's appearance later today. This would be too easy, right? We will be live streaming the speech when it starts at 4pm ET. Tyler Durden Mon, 03/18/2024 - 17:19.....»»
Israeli Official Accuses US Of "Slow-Walking" Arms & Ammo Deliveries
Israeli Official Accuses US Of 'Slow-Walking' Arms & Ammo Deliveries An Israeli official has told ABC News that the pace of military aid from Washington to Israel has noticeably slowed, but stopped just short of accusing the Biden administration of intentionally throttling weapons deliveries, though the implication is there. The unnamed senior Israeli official described that in the weeks and initial months following the Oct.7 Hamas terror attack supply shipments from the United States "were coming very fast" but that now "we are now finding that it’s very slow." Image: USAF The official specified that after more than five months of the major Gaza offensive, the Israeli military is running out of 155 mm artillery shells and 120 mm tank shells. The vast bulk of Israel's arsenal has long been US-made and supplied, and the Jewish state has for decades been the single largest US foreign aid recipient, though much of these billions go straight back into the pockets of major American defense firms. But the official said it's as yet unclear what is causing the weapons delivery slowdown. The word choice in the original ABC report strongly suggests the decision is intentional and could be in response to the soaring Palestinian death toll and ongoing humanitarian disaster: A senior Israeli official says the United States has begun slow-walking some military aid to Israel -- an assertion senior U.S. officials denied was the case, in what's perhaps more evidence that the relationship between the two allies is growing increasingly strained. Famine looms and the IDF is poised for a ground assault on the refugee-packed southern city of Rafah. Gaza's health ministry has cited well over 30,000 deaths. Israel says the majority of those killed includes Hamas and that the numbers are inflated, while the Palestinian side says the overwhelming majority of deaths are civilians, especially women and children. Biden admin officials have rejected that the US is slow-walking defense aid, per ABC: When asked about the allegation, several U.S. officials said there was no change in U.S. policy or any deliberate delay in delivering previously promised aid or weapons sales to Israel. Under a 10-year agreement negotiated by then-President Barack Obama, the U.S. provides about $3.8 billion in military and missile defense systems every year. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said when asked about the issue, "I’m not gonna get into the timeline for every individual system that’s being provided." He added: "We continue to support Israel with their self-defense needs. That’s not going to change, and we have been very, very direct about that." Gaza Strip destroyed, via AP Some recent reports have said the opposite - that the White House is actually mulling increased arms and ammo deliveries while simultaneously ramping up pressure on Israel to more carefully select targets and mitigate the humanitarian fallout. Things shifted in US-Israel relations when last week Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the Jewish state risks becoming a "pariah" because of him. President Biden later said it was a "good speech" in yet another firm signal of strained and fraying relations. Tyler Durden Mon, 03/18/2024 - 17:20.....»»
"It"s Like The Wild West": Crime And Violence On NYC Transit Underreported According To NYPD Source
"It's Like The Wild West": Crime And Violence On NYC Transit Underreported According To NYPD Source Authored by Matthew Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Crime and violence in New York City’s subway system have spiraled out of control and are “significantly higher” than the agency’s official numbers have publicly indicated, according to a New York Police Department (NYPD) source. The official number of arrests made in the city’s subway system rose by 45 percent this year, with more than 3,000 arrests made underground in the first two months of the year, many of them of repeat offenders, according to figures released by the NYPD Transit Bureau. However, the publicly released data only scratch the surface of the amount of crime in the nation’s largest transit system, a law enforcement source told The Epoch Times. “The numbers they are putting out are a complete joke and everyone knows it,” the source, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution, said. “The sense of lawlessness (on the subway) is so bad that unless you have personal experience in the system, especially at night, it is impossible to understand. “It’s like the Wild West.” NYPD officers have also been incentivized to not report minor offenses in an effort to keep the numbers as low as possible, according to the source, who said pressure has come from higher-ups to maintain the narrative that crime has plateaued or is going down. However, not even the city’s own agencies can agree on how much crime is occurring in the subway system. After Transit released figures showing that violent subway crimes went up by 13 percent this year, the mayor’s office quickly pushed back, disputing the numbers released by the agency and claiming that crime actually dropped last month. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police chief, said that “overall crime is down.” However, a “significant majority” of the crimes that do occur on the subway go unreported by the victims, according to the source. “People understand that the majority of those who commit larceny or assaults are never going to be apprehended, so why go through the trouble of making a report?” the source said. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time. The topic of commuter safety has risen to the forefront of the national dialogue after several recent high-profile crimes in New York’s subway system, including a shooting caught on film at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Brooklyn on March 14 during a rush-hour commute. The crime spree provoked New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to order 750 New York National Guard troops and 250 New York State Police troopers be deployed into the subway system to conduct bag searches and combat the surge in crime. The new deployment is in addition to the 1,000 New York City police officers who were ordered to patrol subway lines and do security checks on bags. “Since taking office, I have been laser-focused on driving down subway crime and protecting New Yorkers,” Mrs. Hochul told reporters at the March 6 news conference. “I am sending a message to all New Yorkers: I will not stop working to keep you safe and restore your peace of mind whenever you walk through those turnstiles.” “No one heading to their job, or to visit family, or to go to a doctor’s appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon.” Morale among NYPD officers is at an all-time low as crime and police resignations have been on the upswing, according to officials. In recent years, an increasing number of New Yorkers, including police, have been assaulted. From Jan. 1 to March 31, 2023, citywide, 1,251 on- and off-duty police were assaulted, compared with 949 in the first quarter of 2022, according to NYPD crime statistics. A total of 2,516 officers resigned from the department in 2023, according to police pension data previously obtained by The Epoch Times. It is the fourth most in the past decade and 43 percent more than the 1,750 who resigned their positions in 2018. Further, the data show that the number of officers quitting before they reach the 20 years required to receive their full pensions has increased by 104 percent since 2020. In January, officers’ jobs became more difficult after the New York City Council pushed through controversial legislation dubbed the “How Many Stops Act,” which requires police to officially document any encounter they have with the public, including logging the race, gender, and age of any person to whom they speak. The recent exodus comes on top of years of officer attrition, eroding the ability of the nation’s largest police force to serve and protect to dangerous levels, according to Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry. “This is truly a disaster for every New Yorker who cares about safe streets,” Mr. Hendry previously told The Epoch Times. “Cops are already stretched to our breaking point, and these cuts will return us to staffing levels we haven’t seen since the crime epidemic of the ’80s and ’90s.” Tyler Durden Mon, 03/18/2024 - 17:40.....»»
What Will Happen When They Give The Green Light To Millions Of Radicals To Cause Widespread Chaos All Over America?
What Will Happen When They Give The Green Light To Millions Of Radicals To Cause Widespread Chaos All Over America? Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com, Violence and crime are already completely out of control all over the United States. In fact, you definitely wouldn’t want to be caught in the streets when hordes of our lawless young people are running wild. If things are this bad already, what is going to happen if the election in November does not go the way that leaders on the left want and they give the green light to millions of radicals to cause widespread chaos all over America? I think that we got a small preview of what this could look like during the riots of 2020. Unfortunately, since that time the open border policies of the Biden administration have allowed millions of extremely desperate people to come pouring into this country. The stage is being set for civil unrest on a scale that we have never seen before, and it certainly isn’t going to take much to push our society over the edge. Just look at what is happening in New York City. Crime in the subway system is so bad that Governor Kathy Hochul has decided to call in the National Guard… New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is sending in the state National Guard to New York City to help police curb a surge in crime in the city’s subways. Announcing a five-point plan on Wednesday, the Democratic governor said she was deploying 750 members of the National Guard to the subways to assist the New York Police Department with bag searches at entrances to busy train stations. “For people who are thinking about bringing a gun or knife on the subway, at least this creates a deterrent effect. They might be thinking, ‘You know what, it just may just not be worth it because I listened to the mayor and I listened to the governor and they have a lot more people who are going to be checking my bags,'” Hochul said at a news conference in New York City. Have things gotten so bad that we need to bring in soldiers with guns to keep order on the subways? Apparently so. Mass transit crime is also a major problem in Philadelphia, and it is being suggested that the National Guard should be deployed there too… Transit Workers Union Local 234 President Brian Pollitt is demanding accountability from Gov. Josh Shapiro, Mayor Cherelle Parker, and SEPTA officials after a string of violent crimes on and around Philadelphia mass transit over the last few weeks. In fact, he says he has been calling for National Guard deployment on SEPTA – similar to how New York City has deployed the National Guard on MTA – for four years, according to WKYW. “I think that governor needs a round of applause because they’re going through the very same thing that we’re going through,” Pollitt said of New York City. I thought that dealing with crime was what the police were supposed to do. Unfortunately, police departments in major cities all over the country are now severely underfunded and understaffed. In Pittsburgh, the situation is so dire that police will no longer respond to calls involving “theft, harassment, criminal mischief, and burglary”… WPXI Channel 11 out of Pittsburgh reports that police will no longer be responding to calls that are not deemed to be “in-progress emergencies,” meaning theft, harassment, criminal mischief, and burglary alarms will essentially be ignored. Such calls will Instead be redirected to an answer machine, according to the report which also notes that from 3 am to 7 am, the city’s six police stations will operate without desk officers present. Only around 20 officers will be available for overnight shifts to cover the entire city, the report further notes, stating that the decision has been taken due to “understaffing.” Seriously? So if you own a home in Pittsburgh and someone is robbing you, what are you supposed to do? We really have reached a point in our societal decline where the wheels are coming off right in front of our eyes. In Oakland, crime is so bad that four out of the five Taco Bell restaurants in the city have completely closed their dining rooms… Taco Bell restaurants in Oakland, California have been forced to suspend indoor dining indefinitely after being subjected to a series of robberies amid an unrelenting crime surge in the city, DailyMail.com can reveal. Four of the five Taco Bell locations across the Bay Area city now have large signs hanging from their windows advising: ‘DINING ROOM CLOSED.’ Business has been restricted to drive-thru service only – a sad new reality for many customers and families hoping to sit down for a peaceful meal. It may not be easy for a lot of people to admit, but we are rapidly becoming a third world country. Theft is absolutely rampant in America today. Organized retail crime has become a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States, and according to CNBC some of these groups actually have very sophisticated facilities that are “indistinguishable from other e-commerce distribution centers”… But federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the Department of Homeland Security’s law enforcement branch, said some crime groups are even more elaborate — and theft is just one facet of their enterprises. “We’re talking about operations that have fleets of trucks, 18-wheelers that have palletized loads of stolen goods, that have cleaning crews that actually clean the goods to make them look brand new,” said Adam Parks, an assistant special agent in charge at HSI, which is the main federal agency investigating retail crime. “Just like any business, they’ve invested their capital into business assets like shrink wrap machines, forklifts,” Parks, who works out of HSI’s Baton Rouge, Louisiana, office, told CNBC in an interview. “That is what organized theft looks like, and it actually is indistinguishable from other e-commerce distribution centers.” We have never seen anything like this before. If you follow my work on a regular basis, you know that I have been saying that a lot lately. Our country has been totally transformed. At this point our youths are so lawless that even very young girls are committing acts of extreme violence… The Missouri Attorney General is calling on the 15-year-old girl who beat another teen’s head into concrete to be tried as an adult. The teenage victim is fighting for life in critical condition after her head was repeatedly smashed into the ground during a brawl near a Missouri high school. AG Andrew Bailey announced on X: ‘This evil and complete disregard for human life has no place in Missouri, or anywhere. I am praying for the victim. ‘The criminal should be charged and tried as an adult. If the victim dies, that offense should rise to a homicide.’ Our streets are stained with blood from coast to coast, and more violent predators are being allowed in on a continual basis. Earlier today, I came across an article about the 50 most violent cities in the world. If you can believe it, 46 of them are actually in the western hemisphere… To qualify for the list, a city (or metropolitan area) must have at least 300,000 inhabitants. The calculations are based on the rate of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Of the 50 most violent cities on the 2023 list, 46 were in the Western Hemisphere. The only exceptions were four cities in South Africa. I suppose that most of you will not be surprised to learn that Mexico had the most cities on the list… The country with the most violent cities on the list was our neighbor to the south, Mexico, with 16. In second place was Brazil, with 10 cities, followed by Colombia with eight. The United States of America was #4 on the list with six cities. With such extreme violence raging just across our southern border, you would think that our leaders would be doing all that they can to keep us safe. But instead the Biden administration has been allowing millions upon millions of people to come pouring in. Our migration crisis is fueling a growth explosion for criminal gangs all over the nation. We are already experiencing a crime wave of epic proportions, but I am extremely concerned about what will happen if things go a certain way in November. If they don’t win the election, leaders on the left may decide to make it very clear that it is time for “civil disobedience” on a massive scale. I have been warning about civil unrest that would completely and utterly tear this country apart for many years, and I believe that we are now right on the brink of seeing that happen. Many of our major cities have reached a point where they are literally on the verge of being ungovernable, and America is becoming a little bit more lawless with each passing day. * * * Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here. Tyler Durden Sun, 03/17/2024 - 07:00.....»»
Europe To Arm Ukraine Using Profits From Seized Russian Funds
Europe To Arm Ukraine Using Profits From Seized Russian Funds In a significant shift from prior policy, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday endorsed a plan to buy weapons for Ukraine using profits generated from seized Russian assets. He made the announcement in Berlin at a press conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. "We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine," Scholz said. Via AP The Biden administration has also of late been increasingly on board with transferring of seized Russian funds to Ukraine. But it remains that Germany, France and Italy have so far opposed giving the underlying assets to Ukraine to Kiev, but only the profits generated via investments. The Wall Street Journal details, "Two-thirds of the roughly $300 billion in reserves were sitting in European banks and clearinghouses. As those assets mature and are reinvested, they have generated profits that EU officials say could reach 15 billion euros, equivalent to more than $16 billion, over the next four years." The report notes further that "The bulk of the European assets were held by Belgium’s Euroclear clearinghouse." The Western allies have out of recent desperation over Ukraine's diminished ammo been getting creative, and seeking to find loopholes in order to free up extra funds that could be used in the war effort. Britain has meanwhile been at the forefront of countries arguing that the total of all underlying Russian assets should be fully confiscated and used for Ukraine. "Our view is simple: One day, Russia will have to pay reparations and it doesn’t make sense to wait for those reparations. It makes better sense to use the frozen assets and to make that money available now," UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said last week. This is a point of view that the Biden administration has also slowly come to support. But division remains within the G7, also because what many countries would view as outright theft could sow mistrust of keeping their assets in Western financial institutions, leading to a weakening of international confidence in the euro and dollar. Tyler Durden Sun, 03/17/2024 - 07:35.....»»
Some wealthy people lost millions in the FTX collapse. But others say they"ve lost their entire life savings.
Some of the wealthiest individuals lost millions of dollars in the FTX collapse. But some victims have had their entire life savings disappear. Some small-time investors in FTX say they lost their entire life savings in the 2022 collapse.NurPhoto/Getty ImagesProsecutors asked a judge in a sentencing memo to give Sam Bankman-Fried up to 50 years in prison.The memo includes statements from victims who say their lives have been upended by the FTX collapse.One victim said his opportunity to "break the generational poverty" in his family was stolen.When FTX imploded in 2022, some of the wealthiest individuals who invested in the cryptocurrency exchange platform and attached their names to the company lost millions of dollars.Star NFL quarterback Tom Brady, who received a multimillion-dollar deal to be the leading FTX brand ambassador, was estimated to lose $30 million in the aftermath of the collapse.Companies and venture capital firms also saw their money vanish. Sequoia Capital deemed its $213.5 million investment worthless but assured its investors in a letter that the damage was offset by $7.5 billion in realized and unrealized gains that year. Other VCs have chimed in: That's not that bad.But victims of the FTX collapse aren't limited to wealthy investors and firms, as prosecutors noted in a recent sentencing memo requesting a federal judge to hand disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried 40 to 50 years in prison."The defendant victimized tens of thousands of people and companies, across several continents, over a period of multiple years," prosecutors wrote.Some of those faceless victims, according to testimonies published in the court documents, include a single mom who said she lost her life savings, a brother who hoped to use the earnings from his investment to help his sibling with his "disability," and a partner who said the losses had destabilized their family's lives."The financial loss we incurred was significant — not just in monetary terms, but in the stability it provided our family. We were brought to the brink of losing our home, struggling to meet mortgage payments and maintain a semblance of normalcy for our child," the victim wrote.Many of these smaller investors don't come anywhere near the seven- to nine-figure investments celebrities like Brady or VCs like Sequoia Capital put into FTX. Nor do they have any type of gains to fall back on.The losses, some victims say in their statements, represent all the money they've saved for years and were relying on to support their own and their family's lives.One victim who claimed to be living in Africa said he had bought 3 bitcoins for his "family savings" said that the investment toward FTX was "hard-earned to break the generational poverty," according to the court documents."Now you have swapped in and stolen all of this," the victim wrote of SBF. "You have single-handedly broken a self-made opportunity."At the time of the collapse, FTX's bankruptcy filings said that the exchange could owe money to about one million creditors. Bankruptcy lawyers identified in 2023 a $9.5 billion shortfall in crypto and cash that needed to be repaid to customers.In February, lawyers for FTX's debtors told a Delaware bankruptcy court that customers and creditors can expect to receive full restitution, Axios reported.If you lost money in the FTX collapse and would like to share your story, reach reporter Lloyd Lee at (646) 768-1630.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Creditors are coming after Rudy Giuliani"s $3.5 million Florida condo in bankruptcy filing
Rudy Giuliani may have to sell his $3.5 million Palm Beach, Florida home in his ongoing bankruptcy case. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, FileRudy Giuliani may have to sell his Palm Beach condo to settle his bankruptcy debts.Creditors pointed out the $3.5 million property is not exempt in his Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.Giuliani filed for bankruptcy in December following a $148 civil judgment against him.Rudy Giuliani may have to sell off his Palm Beach, Florida home — his second most valuable reported asset, creditors said — to help settle his debts in bankruptcy court.Giuliani, who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, owns two residences, per a Friday filing in federal court.One is his $6.5 million primary apartment in New York, which Giuliani had put up for sale last summer but took off the market in February. Per court filings, Giuliani's New York apartment is an exempt asset because it is his main residence.Then there is his $3.5 million Florida condo, which is not exempt.Creditors, who describe the condo as a "luxury building with amenities such as a resort style pool and outdoor lounge area," said the building is key to helping Giuliani satisfy their claims because he insists he has so few assets.The filing was first reported by Politico's Kyle Cheney."On several occasions, the Debtor has emphasized his limited assets available for distribution to creditors — according to the Debtor's counsel, 'there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,'" the filing said.Even if he does try to say that he is entitled to live in Florida, creditors wrote, his argument falls apart because Giuliani has previously told the court he spends most of his time in New York City."Any proposal by the Debtor to both claim a New York State homestead exemption for the NYC Apartment and retain his nonexempt multimillion-dollar Florida Condo cannot withstand legal scrutiny," his creditors argue.However, Giuliani has not taken any steps to sell the Florida home, the filing says. Meanwhile, he's been spending what little money he does have on $8,416 a month in "maintenance fees" for the condo instead of paying his debts. Creditors called it a "drain on estate resources."His condo was previously placed under a federal tax lien of over $550,000 in late 2023, CNN reported at the time.Giuliani's creditors also asked that he purchase homeowners insurance on the Florida and New York properties, saying the lack of protection puts creditors at a "great risk" should something happen to either home.Giuliani — swamped with legal fees from civil suits and his RICO charges in Georgia — filed for bankruptcy in December. The most notable of his financial liabilities is the $148 million judgment for Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, which a court found him liable of defaming.However, legal experts previously told Business Insider that bankruptcy won't get him off the hook for that particular judgment.Lawyers for Giuliani and creditors did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Harvard Medical School Professor Was Fired Over Not Getting COVID Vaccine
Harvard Medical School Professor Was Fired Over Not Getting COVID Vaccine Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A Harvard Medical School professor who refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine has been terminated, according to documents reviewed by The Epoch Times. Martin Kulldorff, epidemiologist and statistician, at his home in Ashford, Conn., on Feb. 11, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist, was fired by Mass General Brigham in November 2021 over noncompliance with the hospital’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate after his requests for exemptions from the mandate were denied, according to one document. Mr. Kulldorff was also placed on leave by Harvard Medical School (HMS) because his appointment as professor of medicine there “depends upon” holding a position at the hospital, another document stated. Mr. Kulldorff asked HMS in late 2023 how he could return to his position and was told he was being fired. “You would need to hold an eligible appointment with a Harvard-affiliated institution for your HMS academic appointment to continue,” Dr. Grace Huang, dean for faculty affairs, told the epidemiologist and biostatistician. She said the lack of an appointment, combined with college rules that cap leaves of absence at two years, meant he was being terminated. Mr. Kulldorff disclosed the firing for the first time this month. “While I can’t comment on the specifics due to employment confidentiality protections that preclude us from doing so, I can confirm that his employment agreement was terminated November 10, 2021,” a spokesperson for Brigham and Women’s Hospital told The Epoch Times via email. Mass General Brigham granted just 234 exemption requests out of 2,402 received, according to court filings in an ongoing case that alleges discrimination. The hospital said previously, “We received a number of exemption requests, and each request was carefully considered by a knowledgeable team of reviewers.” “A lot of other people received exemptions, but I did not,” Mr. Kulldorff told The Epoch Times. Mr. Kulldorff was originally hired by HMS but switched departments in 2015 to work at the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which is part of Mass General Brigham and affiliated with HMS. “Harvard Medical School has affiliation agreements with several Boston hospitals which it neither owns nor operationally controls,” an HMS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. “Hospital-based faculty, such as Mr. Kulldorff, are employed by one of the affiliates, not by HMS, and require an active hospital appointment to maintain an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School.” HMS confirmed that some faculty, who are tenured or on the tenure track, do not require hospital appointments. Natural Immunity Before the COVID-19 vaccines became available, Mr. Kulldorff contracted COVID-19. He was hospitalized but eventually recovered. That gave him a form of protection known as natural immunity. According to a number of studies, including papers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, natural immunity is better than the protection bestowed by vaccines. Other studies have found that people with natural immunity face a higher risk of problems after vaccination. Mr. Kulldorff expressed his concerns about receiving a vaccine in his request for a medical exemption, pointing out a lack of data for vaccinating people who suffer from the same issue he does. “I already had superior infection-acquired immunity; and it was risky to vaccinate me without proper efficacy and safety studies on patients with my type of immune deficiency,” Mr. Kulldorff wrote in an essay. In his request for a religious exemption, he highlighted an Israel study that was among the first to compare protection after infection to protection after vaccination. Researchers found that the vaccinated had less protection than the naturally immune. “Having had COVID disease, I have stronger longer lasting immunity than those vaccinated (Gazit et al). Lacking scientific rationale, vaccine mandates are religious dogma, and I request a religious exemption from COVID vaccination,” he wrote. Both requests were denied. Mr. Kulldorff is still unvaccinated. “I had COVID. I had it badly. So I have infection-acquired immunity. So I don’t need the vaccine,” he told The Epoch Times. Dissenting Voice Mr. Kulldorff has been a prominent dissenting voice during the COVID-19 pandemic, countering messaging from the government and many doctors that the COVID-19 vaccines were needed, regardless of prior infection. He spoke out in an op-ed in April 2021, for instance, against requiring people to provide proof of vaccination to attend shows, go to school, and visit restaurants. “The idea that everybody needs to be vaccinated is as scientifically baseless as the idea that nobody does. Covid vaccines are essential for older, high-risk people and their caretakers and advisable for many others. But those who’ve been infected are already immune,” he wrote at the time. Mr. Kulldorff later co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for focused protection of people at high risk while removing restrictions for younger, healthy people. Harsh restrictions such as school closures “will cause irreparable damage” if not lifted, the declaration stated. The declaration drew criticism from Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who became the head of the CDC, among others. In a competing document, Dr. Walensky and others said that “relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed” and that “uncontrolled transmission in younger people risks significant morbidity(3) and mortality across the whole population.” “Those who are pushing these vaccine mandates and vaccine passports—vaccine fanatics, I would call them—to me they have done much more damage during this one year than the anti-vaxxers have done in two decades,” Mr. Kulldorff later said in an EpochTV interview. “I would even say that these vaccine fanatics, they are the biggest anti-vaxxers that we have right now. They’re doing so much more damage to vaccine confidence than anybody else.” Surveys indicate that people have less trust now in the CDC and other health institutions than before the pandemic, and data from the CDC and elsewhere show that fewer people are receiving the new COVID-19 vaccines and other shots. Support The disclosure that Mr. Kulldorff was fired drew criticism of Harvard and support for Mr. Kulldorff. The termination “is a massive and incomprehensible injustice,” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, an ethics expert who was fired from the University of California–Irvine School of Medicine for not getting a COVID-19 vaccine because he had natural immunity, said on X. “The academy is full of people who declined vaccines—mostly with dubious exemptions—and yet Harvard fires the one professor who happens to speak out against government policies.” Dr. Vinay Prasad, an epidemiologist at the University of California–San Francisco, wrote in a blog post. “It looks like Harvard has weaponized its policies and selectively enforces them.” A petition to reinstate Mr. Kulldorff has garnered more than 1,800 signatures. Some other doctors said the decision to let Mr. Kulldorff go was correct. “Actions have consequence,” Dr. Alastair McAlpine, a Canadian doctor, wrote on X. He said Mr. Kulldorff had “publicly undermine[d] public health.” Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 21:00.....»»
Pentagon Commander Reveals "Alarming" Number Of Drone Incursions At US-Mexico Border
Pentagon Commander Reveals 'Alarming' Number Of Drone Incursions At US-Mexico Border Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A large number of drone incursions are happening at the U.S.-Mexico border, a U.S. Department of Defense official said on March 14. “It’s my understanding, there’s been a lot of drone incursions along our southern border. How many drone incursions have we had and what are they doing?” Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) asked Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot during a Senate hearing. “I don’t know the actual number—I don’t think anybody does—but it’s in the thousands,” Gen. Guillot said. Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot testifies to the U.S. Senate in Washington on March 14, 2024. (Senate via The Epoch Times) He later added that there are likely more than 1,000 incursions happening at the border per month. The general, who became commander of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in February, said he recently spoke with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Department of Justice officials learned about the surprising number of incursions. He described becoming alarmed. Are the incursions a defense threat to the homeland? “They alarm me from being the person responsible for homeland defense,” Gen. Guillot said. “I haven’t seen any of them manifest in a threat to the level of national defense but I see the potential only growing.” NORAD is a United States and Canadian organization whose work includes “the detection, validation, and warning of attack against North America whether by aircraft, missiles, or space vehicles, through mutual support arrangements with other commands.” NORTHCOM leads the military’s homeland defense efforts. The hearing was held by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The subject of Mexican military incursions at the border did not come up. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the committee, inquired as to whether military base commanders were equipped with standard operating procedures in dealing with unmanned aircraft. “The services do have authorities, but work remains to be done to ensure that … we have standardized operating procedures to address those threats,” Gen. Guillot said. “And also work remains to be done to be able to use especially the non-kinetic capabilities that can bring down those systems safely, without interfering with our airspace structure.” He said he was planning to recommend to the Pentagon and Congress ways NORAD can help develop those procedures after a 90-day assessment of NORAD and NORTHCOM is finished. Other Comments From New Commander Gen. Guillot also touched on a number of additional subjects during the hearing, his first since taking command. At one point, he said he was concerned about how many Chinese nationals are crossing into the United States. “The number of Chinese that are coming across the border is a big concern of mine,” he said. “In fact, in the short period of time that I’ve been in command, I’ve gone down to the southern border to talk to the agents and leadership about that. And then I’ve also spoken with the acting commissioner of the CBP on this subject.” He added: “What concerns me most about specifically the Chinese migrants is—one, that they’re so centralized in one location on the border. And two, is while many may be political refugees, other explanations, the ability for counterintelligence to hide in plain sight in those numbers.” Gen. Guillot also disclosed that Russia flew bombers near U.S. and Canadian airspace earlier in March but turned back before reaching the Air Defense Identification Zone, and said Chinese planes could follow. Gen. Guillot also told lawmakers that NORAD has improved its radars since officials allowed a Chinese balloon into American airspace in 2023. “That has allowed us to have better domain awareness in that,” he said. Gaps in the system, he added, are slated to be address by a new radar being introduced. Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 16:20.....»»
"Extreme Events": US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In "Large Excess Over Trend"
"Extreme Events": US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In "Large Excess Over Trend".....»»
Don Lemon tells Elon Musk that X replies "are not necessarily fact" after the tech billionaire uses them to defend his DEI stance
Elon Musk cited his X replies when defending his stance on DEI in the aviation industry to Don Lemon. Don Lemon and Elon MuskMomodu Mansaray/WireImage // Steve Granitz/Getty ImagesElon Musk cited his X replies when defending his stance on DEI in the aviation industry to Don Lemon. Lemon told Musk that X replies "are not necessarily fact and evidence."Musk and others have railed against DEI in private companies in recent months.Elon Musk is not letting up on the idea that non-white male pilots are getting special advantages — and is even citing replies on X to bolster his argument.Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is releasing clips from his interview with the tech billionaire — an interview that Lemon claimed was so contentious that Musk terminated their partnership.In one clip, shared on "The View," Lemon asks Musk about his posts about airline pilots, which he made along with other conservative commentators in response to an incident in January, in which a Boeing aircraft lost a part of its fuselage during a flight.Boeing has taken responsibility for the incident, and aviation experts have pointed to production pressures and quality control issues, not diverse hiring. This hasn't stopped conspiracy theorists from claiming that the cause was underqualified pilots put in place for the sake of diversity.Lemon asks Musk if he thinks non-white or non-male pilots are inherently unqualified for pilot roles. Musk replies no — he just thinks the standards shouldn't be lowered."There's no evidence that standards are being lowered when it comes to the airline industry," Lemon said in response.Musk then told Lemon to "watch the replies" on his social media for evidence."Replies so on social media or on Twitter are not necessarily fact and evidence," Lemon said.Musk doubled down, though, saying that his replies cited evidence that there are "significant cases where standards are lowered" for pilots of color and female pilots.The sentiment echoes those made by voices like Tucker Carlson, who last year decried an incident of a Black man lying to his employer about his failed flying tests to secure a job as a pilot.The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the Federal Aviation Administration's poor system of logging records was the reason the man could secure the job undetected — not because he was given a pass for being Black. Carlson, nevertheless, determined that his case was not an "outlier" of the dangers of DEI.Fellow billionaire Mark Cuban has taken Musk to task for his opinions on DEI.Following the January Boeing incident, Musk decried goals set by United Airlines' pilot training academy, United Aviate Academy, to have "50% of enrolled students who are women and/or people of color."Cuban noted that the diversity requirement didn't mean that the standards had been lowered. Musk replied by calling him a racist.In response to Musk's comments to Lemon, Cuban told Business Insider in an email that it's "his platform. He can say what he wants."Musk did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Europe Panics As Trump Rises From The Political Grave
Europe Panics As Trump Rises From The Political Grave Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog, So last week was fun. It started with the US Supreme Court’s 9-0 beatdown of using the 14th Amendment to punish political opponents. Then the Wicked Witch of Kiev, Vic(Toria) “Cookies” Nuland was forced out at the State Department after decades of torturing the world with her psychopathy. Then Donald Trump pretty much sent Nikki Haley back to her Waffle House outside of Greenville. It ended with French President Emmanuel Macron making “believe me” eyes at the world that NATO was ready and willing to send troops to Ukraine. Whose troops? Clearly not French troops, which are only good at this point for “going on safari in northern Africa,” according to Col. Doug MacGregor. Also, clearly not British ships, which can’t seem to get out of port. I think I’m noting a kind of tit for tat going on between Boeing airline failures and British naval ones… but I could just be conspiratorial like that. *bong* No, the answer has always been that it would be US troops in Europe fighting Europe’s war that everyone — The UK, Davos and their EU apparatchiks, and the US Neocons — thought would be a slam dunk to bleed Russia out. And I’m sure that’s exactly the way they plotted it out in their Microsoft Project file over at Globalist Central. That has obviously not taken place and it is Ukraine that is now in serious trouble. Truth be told, which has been in very short supply since the war started two years ago, Ukraine has always been in serious trouble. And that has led, predictably, to the situation we see now. US support for Project Ukraine is coming to an end, if it hasn’t ended already. And the panic in Europe is palpable. This was all very predictable if you accepted the framework that there was a split at the top of the US hierarchy. One faction committed to the Davos vision of the future which implied a compliant, even beaten, US and another that looked up from their quote screens and said, “Uh… no.” The handwriting was on the wall about eight months ago when the big NATO Summit in Vilnius ended with the whimper by then UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace. Wallace was supposed to replace Jens Stoltenberg as NATO General Secretary and was shot down by no less than Joe Biden (JOAH Bii-Den!). After that, there was no more real talk of Ukraine joining NATO. Zelenskyy went back to Kiev with the big sads after Biden gave him nothing as well. Then, in October, US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was ousted in a coup by Matt Gaetz and a handful of GOP fiscal hardliners. They immediately got new Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to tie all further foreign aid funding to as many spending cuts and dollars for border security as a slim majority in Congress would allow. And since then Biden has been forced to look under the couches at the Pentagon for a few spare millions to send to Ukraine. He found 300 of them the other day As bad as things are, that the number starts with an ‘m’ rather than a ‘b’ has to be considered a victory. The Senate tried to blackmail Johnson with their ridiculous $95 billion aid bill and Johnson just ‘boss moved’ Chuck Schumer by calling a two-week recess. Now, the best they can hope for a smaller bill with a lend/lease contingent with no money going to ‘humanitarian aid’ — a euphemism for pocket lining. And despite his movement towards the Senate warhawks, Johnson is still using Ukraine aid as a means to push domestic funding reforms first. Every day these things are haggled over is another day which runs out the clock on Project Ukraine as Russian forces take towns and villages daily in the Western Donbass. Again, not an ideal solution by any stretch of the imagination, but a Pyrrhic victory nonetheless. But this is the state of play after last week and it’s far better than it was at the beginning of the year, since this money was already expected six months ago. It’s put Europe in the position of finally removing the mask completely. Because as the US keeps slowly pulling away from Ukraine the calls from the EU for America to stay the course grow louder and more strident. Remember, that in 2022-23 when it looked like the US was hellbent on going forward in Ukraine, European leaders like Macron and others were more circumspect. They wanted to virtue signal about the dangers of Ukraine escalating. They got to look like the moderates in the war room, while still sending billions in aid and weapons, arm-twisting everyone into compliance. The real mask-off event for Europe’s real position on this war was their threatening Hungary’s Viktor Orban with complete economic devastation if he didn’t allow their $50 billion aid package to go through the European Council. Now that all of Nuland’s military plans have failed, Ukraine’s army has been destroyed for the third time, and all of their attempts to undermine the US legally and economically (Powell must Pivot!) have fizzled, Europe finds itself in the blind panic. Because as poll after poll suggests, Trump will return to the White House in January and has plans to end the killing and the other shenanigans in Ukraine quickly. Orban is acting as Trump’s voice of reason to both Eastern Europe as well as Russia itself.: Orban, who spoke with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday, did not explain how exactly the American would do that, but said that cutting the flow of US aid was a crucial part of the plan. ”If the US will not provide the money, Europeans on their own will not be able to finance this war, and then the war will end,” Orban said in an interview with M1 broadcaster on Sunday. During his presidency, Trump had shown himself to be “a man of peace,” the Hungarian leader claimed. That stance puts him in alignment with Hungary, unlike the administration of US President Joe Biden and many members of the EU, he added. ”The American Democratic government and the leadership of the EU, as well as the leadership of the largest EU member states are pro-war governments. Donald Trump is pro-peace, Hungary is pro-peace. At the bottom of everything lies this difference,” Orban declared. Trump’s many things, but he is no dummy when it comes to money. Cut the flow of funds and you end the war. The wildcard is the seizure of Russia’s foreign exchange assets which would be the dumbest thing all these people could do. This is why they won’t shut up about it. For his part, Putin is as done with the current regime in the EU as he is with the Biden junta in the US. He’s tried to reason with them, and all we hear is the most over-the-top vitriol from the usual suspects, like Macron. Putin understands now that the only diplomacy will occur is at the point of his gun or not at all. And if Ukraine is going to escalate on behalf of Europe to attack critical infrastructure inside Russia he will take the gloves completely off, rather than just carpet bomb the line of contact. I told you last year that no matter what the West thinks there will be “No Truce With the Heartland.” And the way for Russia to beat the west in Ukraine was to continue letting them think they had a chance to win by leaving just enough hope to have the West keep funneling billions into a slaughterhouse. But, regardless of any of that, there will be no truce in the Heartland. Russia will not back down. China will back them to the end, as will OPEC+ and the rest of Central Asia. But they will not escalate one inch further than they need to. Allowing the West to keep thinking they can win is the ultimate form of grinding out a superior opponent. And even if Ukraine winds up being a decade-long meat grinder with no clear victor, it will serve everyday as a warning to the rest of Asia that there is no going back and their future is better served with their neighbors than accepting bribes to remain viceroys on the West’s payroll. Soulless ghouls like David Cameron and Lindsey Graham think this is the best money ever spent, killing Russians without any real European or American lives being spent. I guess Slavs aren’t people too. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s exactly what has happened, Russia has led Europe into the ultimate cauldron, which now looks more like a political and economic black hole. And we’re far beyond the event horizon. What it has done has left the world with no doubt what the real agenda behind this war, which really has very little to do with Russia itself. The real agenda is preserving the colonialist business model of old Europe and Great Britain which the US was seduced into believing we were equal partners in. Clearly we aren’t in their minds. If I’ve come to understand anything over the past few years of covering geopolitics it is that every time you think you understand the imperatives behind current events, another layer is peeled back to reveal an even deeper truth. And today that deeper truth is that this is Europe’s war with Russia because with a Russian victory in Ukraine they are at the mercy of all the world’s major energy producers — the US, Russia, the Middle East. This isn’t about Russia’s aggression, or the redrawing of borders through military means. So, with their true face revealed and their quislings in the US Capitol calling in every marker, we’re going to watch this tragedy drawn out for another year or two in the hope that the US commits suicide on their behalf. For whatever reason actually motivates them, people like Mitch McConnell, Graham and John Cornyn will happily sell what’s left of the country out to salvage their own pathetic skins. The fact that they’d do this for a bunch of equally pathetic Eurocrats is the most tragic part of this entire affair. But this is how change ultimately has to occur, by pushing the real motivators to the front of the stage, shining the klieg lights on them and watching them squirm before unleashing another round of rotten food at them. And what better humiliation for them than for Donald Trump to be the guy passing out tomatoes… * * * Join my Patreon if you like throwing fruit. Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 10:30.....»»
10-Year-Old Kids Denied Drinking Water In Class Because Of Three Muslims Observing Ramadan
10-Year-Old Kids Denied Drinking Water In Class Because Of Three Muslims Observing Ramadan.....»»
The largest employer of a Montana mountain town is shutting down, blaming housing shortages and rising cost of living
Seeley Lake, Montana, is among the western towns struggling to deal with rising costs and housing shortages fueled in part by recent transplants. The Swan Mountain range, which abuts Seeley Lake, forms the western border of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Northern Montana.bmswanson/Getty ImagesThe largest employer in Seeley Lake, Montana, is closing in part due to costs and housing issues.An influx of people to smaller towns has driven up costs and fueled housing shortages in Montana.Communities throughout the West are facing similar issues, with some locals being priced out.The town of Seeley Lake in Western Montana is losing its largest employer, with the company citing a lack of housing and an unprecedented rise in costs making it too difficult to operate.Pyramid Mountain Lumber, which has been in Seeley Lake for 75 years, announced in a press release on Thursday it was shutting down its operations and closing its lumber mill."As everyone at Pyramid knows, the Company has been hit very hard by a variety of circumstances that are outside of its control," the statement said. "Among other problems, labor shortages, lack of housing, unprecedented rising costs, plummeting lumber prices, and the cost of living in Western Montana have crippled Pyramid's ability to operate."Montana is among a number of Western states dealing with rising costs and a shortage of housing, driven in part by the rise in remote work, which has contributed to an influx of people moving from cities to smaller towns. Montana and Idaho were among the fastest-growing states from 2020 to 2022, with home prices increasing by 60% throughout Montana from 2020 to 2023."In the last 100 years, only one other mill in Montana hasn't shut its doors or changed ownership," Pyramid said in the statement.Pyramid Mountain Lumber did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester lamented the closure in statements provided to local outlet KPAX. "This is devastating news for the Seeley Lake community and all of Montana," Daines said.Communities across the West are feeling the pinch of rising costs in different ways. The city manager of Steamboat Springs, a Colorado ski town, recently told NBC the local government has been unable to fill a role with a $167,000 salary because the potential candidates could not find housing.In Driggs, Idaho, another mountain town dealing with an influx of outsiders, many residents have "picked up and left because they could no longer afford to live here," Cindy Riegel, the chair of the board of county commissioners in Teton County, where Driggs is located, previously told The Wall Street Journal."Many have gone from living comfortably to survival mode," she said.Are you a Montana resident dealing with rising costs or a lack of affordable housing? Do you want to share your thoughts on how transplants are reshaping Montana? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@insider.com.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Even Apple"s $2 billion fine seemingly hasn"t stopped its beef with Spotify
Spotify wrote in an email that Apple's delay is the company's way of avoiding compliance with the Digital Markets Act, per The Verge. Apple has yet to update Spotify's app with pricing information, The Verge reported.Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez/Getty Images; Nurphoto/Getty ImagesApple still hasn't responded to Spotify's request to update its EU app with price information.Spotify claims the silence is Apple's way of "avoiding" compliance with the DMA, per The Verge.Spotify issued the update a day after the EU hit Apple with a nearly $2 billion fine. Not even a nearly $2 billion fine from the European Commission seems to be able to stop Apple from beefing with Spotify.Apple reportedly hasn't acknowledged the update Spotify made to the European version of its app, according to an email Spotify sent to the EU Commission The Verge obtained.The update was designed to directly put into the app things like pricing information and subscription links that direct iPhone users to Spotify's website.According to the Verge, Spotify issued the update on March, a day after Apple was hit with an almost $2 billion EU fine for barring developers from informing app users about cheaper payment options outside the App Store. The EU deemed this practice illegal in accordance with the Digital Markets Act.Spotify wrote in its email that Apple's refusal to follow up on the update is "yet another example" of how the company "will seek to circumvent and/or not comply with the Commission's decision" if left unchecked, The Verge reported."Given Apple's track record, Spotify is concerned that Apple's delay is intentional and is aimed at delaying or avoiding compliance altogether," the email wrote, per the Verge.A Spotify spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that the email is real."It's been nine days now and we're still waiting to hear from Apple about our app submission to show EU consumers pricing and a link to our website, which we are now authorized to do by the European Commission's decision on the music streaming case," Spotify spokesperson Jeanne Moran wrote in an emailed statement to BI as of March 14."Apple's delay directly conflicts with its claim that they turn around reviews on app submissions within 24 hours, and it also flies in the face of the timeline for adoption the Commission laid out," Moran added.Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider when asked about Spotify's claims.Tensions between Spotify and Apple have been brewing for years.In March 2019, Spotify filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission, accusing the iPhone maker of anti-competitive practices, particularly focusing on the App Store's fee structure and the restrictions on app distribution. Spotify argued these expenses and guidelines unfairly favored Apple Music over other streaming services.Since then, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has continued to criticize Apple's practices publicly. In January, when Apple announced it would allow developers to distribute apps through third-party marketplaces to comply with the DMA, Ek called Apple's reaction to the antitrust law "a new low.""Their reaction to the DMA is a masterclass in distortion," the Spotify CEO wrote in a thread on X, formerly Twitter. "They present a 'simple' choice: Stick with their current terms or switch to a convoluted new model that looks attractive on the surface but has potentially even higher fees."In response to the EU fine, Apple claimed that the company has been providing ongoing support to Spotify's growth in Europe's digital music market and that it hasn't charged any fees."Spotify wants to bend the rules in their favor by embedding subscription prices in their app without using the App Store's In-App Purchase system," Apple wrote in a March 4th statement. "They want to use Apple's tools and technologies, distribute on the App Store, and benefit from the trust we've built with users — and to pay Apple nothing for it.""In short, Spotify wants more," Apple concluded.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»
Boeing 737 With 139 Passengers Loses External Panel Mid-Air
Boeing 737 With 139 Passengers Loses External Panel Mid-Air Literally, not a day goes by without Boeing suffering some major incident, whether it is doors and tires falling off, runway excursions, engine fires, hydraulic leaks, pilot seats flailing around the cockpit and slamming the yoke and, OH YEAH, a "suicided" whistleblower who told a close friend if anything happened to him, it most certainly wasn't suicide. Well, we can now add one more: a United Airlines flight - because it's never American or Delta... always United - that took off from San Francisco International Airport Friday morning landed in Oregon with a missing external panel, abc7 reported citing to officials. As the NY Post notes, United Airlines Flight 433 departed from San Francisco around 10:20 a.m. local time and landed safely at its intended destination, Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport, about 70 minutes later, according to airport officials and flight data. Once the plane reached the gate, an external panel was found to be missing, halting operations at the airport while a runway safety check was conducted, airport director Amber Judd told The NY Post. Amazingly, there was no indication of a problem and no emergency was ever declared during the flight, which had 139 passengers and 6 crew members on board, according to United. Airport staff searched for the missing panel on the airport premises, but were unable to locate it. “After finding no debris on the airfield, normal operations at MFR resumed a few minutes later,” she said. United Airlines said it plans a “thorough examination” of the 25-year-old plane and will “perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service.” Who knows, maybe another whistleblower will "commit suicide" too. “We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred,” the airline added. The Federal Aviation Administration will also investigate the incident, a spokesperson said. Incidents have plagued Boeing airplane in the past few weeks: on Monday, a United Airlines Flight heading from Sydney to San Francisco, was forced to turn around mid-flight due to a hydraulic leak. The Boeing 777-300 plane, which was carrying 167 passengers and 16 crew member, landed safely back in Sydney. Hours earlier, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner en route Sydney to Auckland, New Zealand experienced a technical issue that resulted in injuries to 50 passengers. Then, a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Japan diverted to Los Angeles International Airport on March 7 after a tire on the Boeing 777-20 fell off after takeoff, damaging cars in a parking lot on the ground. Boeing told its employees in a memo Tuesday that the company is implementing weekly compliance checks for every 737 work area and additional equipment audits to reduce quality problems. It isn't quite clear what is behind the recent surge in incidents which are just too many to keep track of at this point... ... but one thing is certain: more are coming, which one can only hope won't be fatal. Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 21:59.....»»
US Supreme Court Denies Request By Group To Host Drag Show At Texas University
US Supreme Court Denies Request By Group To Host Drag Show At Texas University Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times, The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied a request by a student group that asked to host a drag show at West Texas A&M University and sought to lift a school ban on the performance. In a one-sentence order, the high court wrote that Justice Samuel Alito denied the emergency request from the LGBT group, Spectrum WT, and two student leaders. There were no dissenting votes issued, and the court did not explain the decision—the usual practice with cases on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. The Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t finally decide the issue but means Spectrum WT won’t be able to schedule its performance until the matter is resolved in the courts. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the case in April. Spectrum WT called on the court to stop the school’s president, Walter Wendler, from prohibiting the show that he deemed disparaging of women. The student group has argued that the school violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections for freedom of speech. Spectrum WT in March 2023 sued officials at the university, located in Canyon, Texas, after Mr. Wendler barred the drag show planned for that month, which typically feature men dressed as women. The group later held the charity event off campus, but it continued to seek an injunction barring Mr. Wendler from prohibiting future events including a planned drag show on March 22. The group is represented by the non-profit free-speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in an interim ruling last September denied the group’s request for a preliminary injunction, casting doubt on their First Amendment claims because “it is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive.” The group appealed to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to fast-track the case, scheduling arguments for late April. Spectrum WT responded by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the drag show ban while the case plays out. Some states including Texas have pursued Republican-backed measures targeting drag shows, with lawmakers arguing that the shows can expose children to deviant sexual imagery and behavior. In November, the Supreme Court declined to revive a Republican-backed Florida law banning the performance of certain drag shows in the presence of children after the measure was blocked by lower courts. In their petition to the high court, lawyers for the student group argued that the ban is merely the “president of one small public university in the Texas Panhandle defy what he knows to be the First Amendment’s command” but stressed the issue goes much further. “Public university and college officials nationwide from across the political spectrum are appointing themselves censors-in-chief, separating what they consider ‘good’ from ‘bad’ expression on their campuses,” they claimed. In an opinion penned in March 2023, Mr. Wendler argued that a ban is necessary because he believes drag shows are demeaning and beneath human dignity. “I believe every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, a person of dignity,” he wrote, adding that “James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, prisoners of the culture of their time as are we, declared the Creator’s origin as the foundational fiber in the fabric of our nation as they breathed life into it.” Conservative Texans protest a drag queen event held at a church in Katy, Texas, on Sept. 24, 2022. (Darlene McCormick Sanchez/The Epoch Times) “Does a drag show preserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not,” he added, arguing that such performances “stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against” women. “Drag shows are derisive, divisive, and demoralizing,” the school president continued, adding that “such conduct runs counter to the purpose of WT.” He also disagreed with largely left-wing notions that drag shows are “harmless,” adding: “Not possible. I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to require it.” A university campus, charged by the state of Texas to treat each individual fairly, should elevate students based on achievement and capability, performance in a word, without regard to group membership—an implacable and exacting standard based on educational mission and service to all, sanctioned by the legislature, the governor and numerous elected and appointed officials,” Mr. Wendler added. And Texas officials including state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, told the nine justices the order doesn’t prevent the group from holding a show off the university’s campus. “They simply may not use the university’s resources to put on a ‘drag show’ that the president has determined could be demeaning to others who must live, work, and learn on the same campus,” the state officials had argued. Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 22:20.....»»