Individual Economists

Lindsay Clancy Jury Deadlocked Again; Insane Karen Arrested For 'Aggravated Intimidation' Of Jurors

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Lindsay Clancy Jury Deadlocked Again; Insane Karen Arrested For 'Aggravated Intimidation' Of Jurors

The jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial is once again deadlocked over whether the former mother of three should be given a pass due to hysteria and hormones. 

The indecision followed five days of deliberations and two notes from jurors saying they could not agree. On Wednesday, Judge William Sullivan gave the panel a Tuey-Rodriguez instruction, Massachusetts' last-resort charge telling a deadlocked jury to reach a verdict or else it's an automatic mistrial.

Clancy, 36, a former labor-and-delivery nurse, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the January 24, 2023, deaths of her children - Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months - at the family's home in Duxbury. She has not disputed that she killed them. The question for the jury of nine women and three men was whether she was criminally responsible.

The killings

Evidence at trial showed Clancy spent part of that morning on ordinary errands of motherhood, including a pediatrician visit for Cora and playing in the snow. She then asked her husband, Patrick Clancy, to leave for takeout and a pharmacy run. While he was gone, she strangled the three children with exercise bands in the basement. She cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window. The fall left her paralyzed from the waist down; she has appeared in court in a wheelchair.

Patrick found her injured in the yard, then found the children. Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead that day. Callan died days later. All three deaths were ruled ligature strangulation. Clancy later said a voice told her it was her last chance: kill the children so she could kill herself.

What the jury was asked to decide

Prosecutors conceded she was mentally ill, but is still responsible for the killings. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors Clancy planned the killings, sent her husband out of the house, and checked how long the errands would take. They pointed to her functioning that day as proof she could form intent. Sprague called the killings "a choice." First-degree murder in Massachusetts can rest on deliberate premeditation, extreme atrocity or cruelty, or both. That conviction is life without parole.

Defense attorney Kevin Reddington argued she lacked criminal responsibility because of postpartum psychosis and bipolar illness, worsened by psychiatric medications and missed warning signs. Under Massachusetts law, the Commonwealth has to prove criminal responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Clancy had been hospitalized and discharged about three weeks before the killings.

Jurors heard more than 80 witnesses and saw more than 300 exhibits. For each child's death they could choose first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, not guilty, or not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Second-degree murder is life with the possibility of parole. A lack-of-responsibility finding typically means commitment to a state psychiatric hospital with periodic reviews and no fixed release date. As noted above, a hung jury would be a mistrial.

Arrest outside the courthouse

The deliberations themselves became part of the story. On Tuesday afternoon, as the jury left after reporting it could not agree, Massachusetts State Police arrested Dawn Light, 56, of Sutton, outside the Plymouth courthouse. She was charged with aggravated intimidation of a witness, juror, or person furnishing information in a criminal proceeding, and was arraigned Wednesday in Plymouth District Court, where she pleaded not guilty and was released on personal recognizance. Her attorney, Jennifer White, called the episode a complete misunderstanding and said Light had only wanted to see Clancy. The judge ordered Light to stay away from the courthouse, have no contact with jurors or witnesses, and release no photographs connected to the case.

Prosecutors said troopers were told someone may have been filming jurors in the courthouse parking lot. They found Light in a car parked in a restricted area and asked whether she was photographing anyone. "She was adamant she was not," Assistant District Attorney Nicole Piacentini said, according to NBC Boston. "She stated she was waiting to see if Lindsay Clancy would come out of the building." An initial search of Light's phone turned up nothing, investigators said, but the deleted folder held images of people later confirmed to be jurors, taken from her vantage point in the car.

Light told CT Insider she had been trying to record Clancy and lowered her phone when she realized the person on camera was not the defendant. She said a court employee asked for her license and phone; she handed over the license and refused the phone, and troopers were called. "That's the long and the short of it," she said. "I don't know how I intimidated anyone."

Light is a retired nurse with no prior criminal history. Before deliberations resumed Wednesday, Sullivan questioned each juror individually at sidebar about whether they had seen or heard anything that would affect their ability to decide the case fairly.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 05:44

UK Government To Fund School Forcing Seven-Year-Olds Into Hijabs

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UK Government To Fund School Forcing Seven-Year-Olds Into Hijabs

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A Labour-run London council has put an Islamic primary school that makes girls as young as seven wear the hijab onto the public payroll.

From 1 September, Barnet Hill Academy in West Hendon stops being a fee-paying independent and becomes a voluntary-aided school - almost entirely funded by the taxpayer, legally free to pick every pupil and every teacher by religion, and still listing a white hijab as compulsory from Year 3.

Barnet Council called the uniform "legally compliant" and the school's policies representative of "equality of opportunity." The National Secular Society called it appalling.

Barnet Hill Academy has operated as an independent Islamic day school since 2006, but until this week families paid more than £6,500 a year. Those fees will now vanish, as the Dedicated Schools Grant takes over.

Voluntary-aided status is the mechanism. The local authority maintains the school and pays the bills. The governing body keeps the religious character, employs the staff and sets the admissions rules. Faith designation lets a VA school give priority to 100 per cent of places on religious grounds and appoint teachers by faith.

The school's own uniform page is blunt. For girls in Years 3 and 4 a white hijab sits in the same list as the branded pinafore, black shoes and book bag. In Years 5 and 6 the hijab remains, with a jilbab or ankle-length skirt as the alternative lower garment.

Notes on the page state that full uniform is compulsory and the hijab must be "plain white ONLY." Year 3 in English primary schools is seven years old.

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, wrote to John Anthony, the council's executive director of children's services, stating "It is appalling that taxpayers are being asked to fund a school that forces girls as young as seven to wear the hijab. Women should be free to choose religious dress; young girls should not have it imposed upon them."

He added: "State-funded schools should bring children together, not divide them by faith and, by extension, ethnicity. The council must pause the implementation of this decision and subject this proposal to proper public and democratic scrutiny."

In the same letter he said the society was "deeply concerned both by the substance of this decision and by the procedure through which it was reached."

Barnet's reply is the standard diversity script. A spokesman said the borough prided itself on "the diverse nature of our school landscape" and that the uniform policy was legally compliant. The written judgment claimed there was "a very limited level" of state-funded Islamic primary provision across London, "unevenly spread and primarily concentrated outside of Barnet."

It added that the school's "inclusive policies" support the "elimination of discrimination" and the "advancement of equality of opportunity."

There are already 15 voluntary-aided Church of England schools in the borough. Barnet Hill will be the first VA Muslim school. The 2021 Census counted 47,700 Muslim residents in Barnet - just over 12 per cent.

The council's argument is that Islam was "not represented within the state-funded education sector" and that "Muslim families do not have the same opportunity as those of other faiths to access a school aligned with their religious ethos."

Evans responded that the NSS "failed to understand how a school very likely to be made up entirely of pupils from one religious background and which discriminates against pupils who don't share its faith can be considered 'inclusive'."

Campaigners have said for years that making primary-age girls cover their hair treats childhood as a prelude to sexual availability. The hijab, in the conservative reading the school is enforcing, marks modesty before men. Imposing it at seven is not a fashion choice. It is a theological statement paid for by people who never signed up to that theology.

NSS research in 2017 found the hijab compulsory in eight state-funded Islamic schools in England, three of them primaries. The Telegraph reported that a handful of state-funded schools still run the same rule in 2026.

Barnet is not a one-off experiment. It is the latest conversion of a private religious enclosure into a public one, with the dress code intact and the admissions sieve intact.

The classroom numbers around that enclosure have already flipped. A Telegraph analysis of the school census found White British children are now the minority in one in four schools in England. In 72 schools the census recorded no White British pupils at all.

In 454 they were under 2 per cent. In every London borough except Bromley, White British children are a minority; in Newham the figure was 5 per cent, in Harrow 7 per cent.

The same paper has shown White British pupils down to 46 per cent of grammar-school rolls and White students in the minority at 27 universities.

That is the country into which Barnet has just poured a faith-selective, hijab-compulsory primary and told the rest of the borough to call it inclusion.

Meanwhile, in yet another example of the parallel society of the UK now, Cardiff Council has spent more than £2 million of council-tax money over recent years translating and interpreting for people who do not speak English.

The five-year bill published by GB News came to £2,047,975: £1.14 million on pre-booked interpretation, £506,000 on instant interpretation, £396,000 on document translation, across more than 60 languages. Arabic alone accounted for £314,446.

The 2025/26 year logged 13,000 instances of support. A council spokesman said Cardiff is "a proudly diverse, multicultural and multilingual city" and that translations help residents "access essential council services."

Conservative councillor Calum Davies asked why a city "running out of money under Labour" was "frittering away millions on translation and interpretation, indulging a broken immigration system and failing integration policy." William Yarwood of the TaxPayers' Alliance said ratepayers face record bills "yet councils continue to subsidise foreign families that don't bother to learn the language."

The same state that will not require English will require a seven-year-old girl to cover her hair if she wants a desk in the new VA school. The same state that lectures the native majority about cohesion builds the institutions that make cohesion optional.

The pattern extends to other areas of society. In July the Home Office was shown to have handed Skilled Worker sponsorship powers to Islamic bookshops stocking Sayyid Qutb's Milestones - the text that argues for toppling secular governments by "physical power and jihad" - alongside works flagged for antisemitism and Bilal Philips's The Fundamentals of Tawheed, which UK prison inspectors ordered out of jails in 2016 over wife-beating guidance.

Reform UK's Lee Anderson called it "a perfect illustration of 14 years of Tory failure: rather than doctors and engineers, we brought in staff for Islamic shops selling books on jihad."

In March, Labour-run councils in Leeds, Calderdale, Oldham, Wakefield, Sefton and Tameside circulated "Sharing the Journey" guidance warning schools that children's drawings of human figures or prophets "could be blasphemous" under some Islamic interpretations.

Music, dance, drama and mixed PE were listed as potential flashpoints. The text told staff it was "very important that the school understands this and is also careful not to ask its students to reproduce images of Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam."

The same week Whitehall urged schools to monitor and report "anti-Muslim hostility" under a new non-statutory definition. Communities Secretary Steve Reed said the definition gave "a clear explanation of unacceptable prejudice, discrimination and hatred targeting Muslims, so we can take action to stop it."

Critics including Jonathan Hall KC and the Free Speech Union warned it would chill legitimate criticism of Islamism. An "anti-Muslim hostility tsar" was promised for schools and universities.

The leaked social-cohesion draft that sat behind that drive branded the Union Flag and the St George's Cross as potential "tools of hate" the "extreme right" had tried to turn from "symbols of pride." Reform's Richard Tice called the paper "divisive nonsense that should be consigned to the bin."

By late August the two-tier was no longer a draft. Birmingham City Council sought a High Court injunction against "unauthorised" England and Union flags on lampposts, with breach carrying unlimited fines and up to two years in prison.

Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Palestine flags were confirmed as exempt. Palestinian flags had flown for months after 7 October 2023 without an injunction. Raise the Colours co-founder Ryan Bridge said he would carry on: "If I go to jail for it, so be it." Robert Jenrick called it "blatant two-tier bias against the British people."

The state will now bankroll a school that sorts children by mosque attendance and covers girls at seven. It will translate council forms into sixty languages so nobody has to learn English. It will license bookshops that sell jihad primers to sponsor visas. It will tell teachers a child's drawing might be a blasphemy incident. It will build a snitch channel for "anti-Muslim hostility." And it will treat the national flag as a hate exhibit and leave foreign flags on the lampposts.

If this isn't evidence of a completely hostile cultural takeover, then what on earth is?

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Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 05:00

EU's Kallas Says No Progress On Zelensky's Cash Infusion For Patriot Missiles

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EU's Kallas Says No Progress On Zelensky's Cash Infusion For Patriot Missiles

On Wednesday EU leadership revealed that the Zelensky government has formally asked the European Commission to provide several billion euros from the EU’s €90 billion ($105 billion) support loan to purchase US-made Patriot air defense missiles.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced just ahead of a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, "It is worth several billion euros and would cover Ukraine’s air defense needs, including high-end PAC-3 air defense systems."

via EU Council

At the same time, the EU’s top foreign affairs official, Kaja Kallas, is coming off a meeting of the bloc's defense ministers wherein she cited no progress made on the Patriot funding plan.

"There were calls and talks about these missiles but there was, unfortunately, no concrete success today regarding this," the EU top diplomat had spelled out Tuesday. "Patriot missiles about to expire [by Nato standards] should be sent to Ukraine."

Looking back further, the last time that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in the White House, he pleaded with President Trump for a "winter package" of 300 Patriot missiles. 

Zelensky has long been warning that cities remain largely unprotected against Russia's more advanced ballistic missile arsenal - a problem that only mass supplies of Patriots can remedy.

Ukraine's supply have run dry, with batteries sitting in some locations, unable to be fired.

In mid-August, here's what a CNN team observed on the ground in Ukraine:

CNN was the first media outlet to be given access to a Patriot on Ukrainian territory so Ukrainian officials could reveal one fact: the country has pretty much run out of interceptors. CNN agreed not to reveal details of the Patriot model or its location.

The 16 tubes of the system that CNN saw show signs of regular use, but its chief engineer in Ukraine, who gave only his first name Dmytro for security reasons, said he had not seen a Patriot launcher fire for six weeks. Ukraine has been reluctant to specify exactly how many interceptors, if any, it has left – President Volodymyr Zelensky says the country needs 5% of the US stockpile to survive the winter, but currently only has 1%.

There have notoriously been immense backlogs when it comes to Patriot production, and there's said to be great global demand among US allies, especially given depletions which have come as a result of the Iran war.

Taking it back? Trump earlier talked about giving Ukraine a license to make Patriot systems...

Trump had announced in July that Washington would give Ukraine "the right to make Patriots" - after Zelensky had for at least six months been relentless in requesting this, framing it as urgent and for the protection of cities and civilians. But such local production would take years to tool and set up, with the reality of a nightly air war making the prospect daunting.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 04:15

The Two Lineages Of Liberty

Zero Hedge -

The Two Lineages Of Liberty

Authored by Philippe Lemieux via Mises Institute,

Liberty's history is often presented as a direct consequence of the Enlightenment: inherited authority was subjected to reason, persecution gave way to toleration, monarchy to constitutional government, and privilege to individual rights. In this account, classical liberalism leads naturally to Austrian economics and modern libertarianism. That sequence is useful but incomplete.

Liberty developed through the convergence of two lineages. The first is the modern lineage of Enlightenment criticism, which required political power to justify itself before reason. The second is an older realist tradition, running from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas through the School of Salamanca, Richard Cantillon, Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. These thinkers did not form a single school, nor did they agree on every question. What connects them is a shared orientation: reality has an intelligible order, human action has a structure, and political power cannot be abolished either by command.

The relevant difference is not between the Enlightenment as a whole and an older tradition, nor between reason and faith. Important currents within the Enlightenment, especially the Scottish Enlightenment, recognized that custom, law, money, and markets could arise without deliberate design. The deeper conflict is between a constructivist current within modern thought and an older causal-realist approach to social order. Friedrich Hayek identified the pinnacle of this constructivism as the "fatal conceit," the erroneous belief that man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes. The realist tradition emphasizes the intelligibility and causal structure of social phenomena, while the constructivist tendency places greater confidence in deliberate organization and direction.

The danger appeared when criticism of inherited institutions hardened into confidence in consciously-designed ones. Locke was not Marx, and constitutional government was not socialism. The continuity lies in method: once social order is treated primarily as an artifact of design, political disagreement increasingly turns on the identity of the designer, the objective of the plan, and the permitted range of control. This tendency appears in social planning, price controls, central banking, licensing, regulation, and the administrative management of economic life.

The older lineage begins from a different premise. Aristotle started with beings as they are and the ends toward which they tend. Human beings choose, deliberate, employ means, form households, exchange goods, and enter associations. Thomas Aquinas carried this realism into law and politics. A command does not become just simply because a ruler issues it. Human law derives its normative order from principles that political authority does not itself create.

Many late Scholastics, particularly the Spanish Scholastics associated with Salamanca, extended this framework to property, exchange, money, and political authority. They increasingly identified the just price with common estimation, shaped by utility, scarcity, and market conditions, rather than with an objective measure of production costs. By situating economic phenomena within moral agency and commutative justice, they placed limits on the arbitrary exercise of political authority in economic life. Within this tradition, thinkers such as Juan de Mariana also articulated strong limits on taxation, confiscation, and monetary debasement.

Richard Cantillon advanced this analysis by placing entrepreneurship, uncertainty, production, and market-price formation near the center of economic life. Merchants and retailers bought at known or fixed prices and later sold at prices they could not foresee, while farmers committed themselves to fixed rents without knowing what their output would command. Profit, loss, and bankruptcy therefore arose from judgment under changing conditions of demand, competition, weather, and consumer preference.

Carl Menger marked a decisive transition within the Austrian tradition. Much of British classical economics, especially in the Ricardian tradition, explained long-run exchange value primarily through labor and production costs. Menger instead began with human needs and with the economizing individual's knowledge of, and command over, goods capable of satisfying those needs. Value was not a substance stored inside an object; it arose from the relation between an individual, his needs, and the goods available to him. Market phenomena therefore had to be traced to individual judgments, choices, and exchanges. Prices, money, and other social institutions could emerge from economizing activity even when no one intended the resulting order.

Böhm-Bawerk extended the analysis to capital and time. For him, social or productive capital consists of intermediate goods used in time-consuming processes of production before final consumer goods become available.

Mises generalized the Austrian insight through praxeology, making economics part of a broader science of human action. The starting point was not an aggregate, a class, or a governmental objective; it was the acting individual employing scarce means to attain chosen ends. Exchange, prices, profit, loss, money, capital, and production are intelligible only within this structure of purposeful conduct. Mises presented praxeology as an a priori science grounded in the category of human action, with implications that could be developed through deductive reasoning independently of particular historical experience.

The extent to which this epistemology should be understood as Kantian, however, is contested. Jörg Guido Hülsmann has argued that Mises is better understood as a representative of Aristotelian realism. Although Mises employed the language of the a priori, Hülsmann points to the method of Mises's actual economic analysis, which repeatedly seeks to identify the nature and necessary relations of economic phenomena. Hülsmann therefore places him within the broader Austrian realist tradition of Menger and Böhm-Bawerk, arguing that his affinities with Kant should not be overstated. On this reading, Mises occupies an intermediate position within the lineage developed here: his epistemological vocabulary is partly Kantian, while the substance of his economic analysis retains an important Aristotelian-realist character.

Mises's critique of socialism demonstrated the practical consequences of this method. Socialist calculation does not fail merely because officials are corrupt, uninformed, or unintelligent. It fails because abolishing private ownership in the means of production eliminates genuine exchange in capital goods. Without exchange, there are no market prices through which planners can compare competing uses of resources by means of monetary calculation.

A planning authority may collect technical information, issue targets, and assign accounting figures. Such figures, however, are not exchange ratios generated by transactions among separate owners. A statistical table can describe quantities, but it cannot determine whether steel should be used for bridges, machinery, railways, or buildings in a way that responds to consumer demand and alternative costs. The defect is not located in the personality of the planner; it is built into the institutional structure of the system.

Rothbard brought this lineage to its most systematic political conclusion. He combined Austrian value theory, capital theory, and economic calculation with a broader theory of natural law, natural rights, property, and the state. His philosophical foundation differed from Mises's. Rothbard retained the praxeological method of deduction but interpreted the action axiom from an Aristotelian-Thomistic epistemological standpoint, grounding it in the nature of reality rather than in Mises's neo-Kantian conception of the action axiom as an a priori category of thought.

Rothbard also rejected the convenient story that economics began with Adam Smith and advanced in a straight line toward modern science. In his history of economic thought, he restored the Spanish Scholastics, Cantillon, the French liberal tradition, and other neglected thinkers to a central place, arguing that their contributions had been obscured by the later dominance of British classical economics.

The administrative state shows what happens when the emancipatory language of the Enlightenment is separated from the limits imposed by human action, scarcity, property, and economic calculation. It speaks the language of rights while turning rights into permissions. It recognizes property and permits markets while reserving the power to direct their use through zoning, licensing, taxation, monetary policy, and regulation. It preserves elections while transferring decisions to agencies, central banks, and experts. The system remains liberal in vocabulary and managerial in operation. Failure is treated not as evidence of institutional limits but as proof that the machinery requires another adjustment, a new rule, a larger staff, or a wider jurisdiction.

The history of liberty, therefore, is not the story of one Enlightenment becoming more consistent, but of two converging lineages. One challenged inherited authority; the other emphasized the limits that human action, causality, property, and economic calculation impose on deliberate construction. Austrian economics stands where they meet. Social order emerges through individual action, exchange, calculation, and cooperation under conditions that no central authority can fully command.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 23:25

Man Accused Of Trying To Set Portland Record Store On Fire After They Wouldn't Buy His Records

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Man Accused Of Trying To Set Portland Record Store On Fire After They Wouldn't Buy His Records

A dispute over a record sale escalated into threats and an alleged attempt to set a Portland record shop on fire, according to prosecutors.

Adrian Orange, 40, is accused of confronting the owner of Vinyl Resting Place in St. Johns on Aug. 27 after the store declined to purchase records he brought in, according to KATU ABC. Court documents say Orange threatened the owner, calling him a “dead man.”

Investigators say Orange later returned after the door had been locked, placed newspaper beneath the entrance, poured lighter fluid on it and ignited it.

A woman from a neighboring business intervened and extinguished the flames after Orange walked away. Authorities say he threatened her as well.

The KATU report says about 15 minutes later, Orange allegedly returned and kicked the store’s door while making additional threats, including, “One way or another, I’m getting to you.”

Police later located Orange outside a nearby bar. He acknowledged visiting the record shop earlier to sell records and had a lighter with him when officers found him.

Orange was arraigned on attempted arson, two burglary counts, coercion and menacing. A judge ordered him held without bail pending a preventive detention hearing.

Afterward, the store owner wrote on social media about his frustration with the broader mental health crisis, saying he felt he had exhausted his options for dealing with the problem.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 23:00

Qatar And UAE Turn To Rare LNG Ship Transfers As Hormuz Crisis Drags On

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Qatar And UAE Turn To Rare LNG Ship Transfers As Hormuz Crisis Drags On

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Three LNG carriers loaded from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf have transferred their cargoes onto other vessels outside the Strait of Hormuz in the past month, a move that’s highly unusual for LNG cargoes but one that could raise the crippled LNG shipments from the region.

LNG traffic at the Strait of Hormuz nevertheless remains at a standstill, even though oil flows are estimated to have rebounded in recent weeks.

However, unlike crude oil, it’s much more difficult to shuttle-ship LNG through Hormuz and then reload it via a ship-to-ship (STS) transfer as Persian Gulf producers, including Qatar, have been doing in recent months to ship oil to customers.

The UAE and Qatar appear to have done this with three LNG cargoes in August, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing vessel-tracking data from Vortexa and Kpler.

The three LNG carriers in question include Greek-owned GasLog Shanghai, which was involved in an “incident” in the Strait of Hormuz at the end of July, and transferred its cargo onto GasLog Savannah offshore Oman outside the Strait in late August.

Qatar-owned Al Rekayyat, hit by a projectile near the Strait of Hormuz in early July, also conducted an STS transfer with Qatar-owned tanker Tembek in mid-August, according to the data compiled by Reuters.

The cargo on the Tembek was delivered to India on August 31.

ADNOC’s Mraweh LNG carrier also made an STS onto LNG Enugu outside the Strait offshore Oman in the middle of August, and is en route to deliver the cargo to Japan, according to the data.

The lack of meaningful recovery of LNG flows from the Persian Gulf and Qatar’s extended force majeure on deliveries combined with the U.S.-Iran re-escalation to hike Asia’s spot LNG prices to a five-month high and Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices to a three-and-a-half-year high this week.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 22:35

Xi In Rare Egypt Visit Blasts 'External Interference' In Mideast, As Iran War Drags On

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Xi In Rare Egypt Visit Blasts 'External Interference' In Mideast, As Iran War Drags On

Chinese President Xi Jinping in a rare trip to the Cairo told his Egyptian counterpart on Wednesday that "external interference" in the Middle East should be opposed, Chinese state media reported.

Talks in the Egyptian capital between Xi and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi were a first in a decade. Interestingly, Xi at one point pledged Beijing was willing to help protect maritime shipping - though it's anything but clear what specifics would look like, or what bodies of water he had in mind.

via Reuters

"China stands ready to work with countries in the region to safeguard the security of international shipping lanes, advance development cooperation… and eliminate the breeding grounds for conflict," Xi said as quoted in Xinhua.

Ironically the 'offer' comes months after President Trump urged international powers to do just that, but which was met by resounding silence, even among European leaders. Naturally they don't want to get bogged down in yet another US foreign adventure, especially when there's been lack of strategy coupled with repeat contradictions along the way.

As for his remarks about non-interference, Xi clearly had in mind the still-raging US-Iran war, which has turned into a bit of a quagmire for the US, having hit the six-month mark just this week:

"We must uphold the principle that the people of the Middle East are the masters of their own affairs, oppose external interference [and] support regional countries in strengthening dialogue on peace and security."

The other irony on display is that Egypt's is essentially a military government which is bought and paid for by the United States to the tune of around $2 billion or more in bilateral foreign assistance each year. This goes back to the historic peace with Israel, and the Egyptian 'deep state' has been closely cooperative with US intelligence ever since.

Along with talk of how to advance diplomacy related to the Iran war, the two sides signed a significant Suez Canal investment deal:

The talks covered the six-month US-Iran conflict, with both presidents urging "diplomatic solutions" to reach a "comprehensive agreement to end the war", according to a statement from Sisi's spokesperson.

Sisi's office also said the two BRICS members signed an agreement to launch the third phase of the Egyptian-Chinese industrial zone at the Suez Canal, which officials say already hosts 200 companies and investments worth around $4 billion.

The new investments – for which Egypt has not announced a figure – give Beijing even greater influence in the canal zone, a critical artery of global trade, as conflict in the region chokes other conduits.

Regarding the White House's Economic D-Day sanctions on Iran, Beijing last month rejected cooperation with the policy meant to strangle the Islamic Republic.

Egypt stays committed to 'One China'...

China has been pushing back against Trump administration pressure to be part of the "toughest sanctions in history" which has marked a new phase of conflict focused on extended economic warfare, as a military solution has proven increasingly unrealistic and unlikely.

"Regarding the Iran issue, sanctions and pressure do not help resolve the problem," Reuters quoted a representative of the Chinese Embassy in Washington as saying in late August. The White House's recent plan hinges on on external countries imposing extreme isolation on the Islamic Republic.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 22:10

ICE Arrests More Than 120 Illegal Immigrants At Memphis Nightclub

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ICE Arrests More Than 120 Illegal Immigrants At Memphis Nightclub

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Federal immigration officers arrested 121 illegal immigrants on Aug. 30 at a Memphis nightclub during a targeted multiagency enforcement action, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.

New Orleans field office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) led Operation Corral Light at the El Corralon nightclub, in which officers executed federal and state warrants, DHS said in a statement on Sept. 1.

The DHS said that those taken into custody included people with criminal histories involving larceny, drug possession, domestic violence, driving while intoxicated, assault, child endangerment, and prostitution.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin tied the arrests to broader efforts to fight crime in the Tennessee city.

"Thanks to President Trump's leadership, crime in the city of Memphis has plummeted. A big part of that success comes from arresting and deporting illegal aliens in the city," Mullin said.

"Through Operation Corral Light, ICE arrested more than 120 illegal aliens in a single day, including child abusers, drug traffickers, and violent assailants."

Scott Ladwig, acting field office director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in New Orleans, described the effort as a priority.

"This criminal enforcement operation to arrest illegal aliens and eliminate drug activity in our community is part of the highest priorities of this administration," Ladwig said.

"Our officers remain committed to enforcing the law professionally, protecting the public, and upholding the trust placed in us by the American people."

Among those arrested were Ricardo N. Rodriguez Arteaga, a Honduran national with a conviction for larceny and an arrest for commercial sex involving homosexual prostitution. Sergio Vieyra Torres, from Mexico, faced prior arrests for child endangerment and driving under the influence of liquor. Maryari Pamela Lopez Urivina, also from Honduras, had an arrest for aggravated assault. Jeronima Giron Cisneros, another Honduran, was arrested for domestic violence. Miguel Galeas Rodriguez, from Honduras, had a conviction for cocaine possession.

The operation fits into ongoing federal work in Memphis, where the Memphis Safe Task Force, established after a presidential memorandum in September 2025, has tackled the city's high violent crime rates.

FBI data for 2024 showed Memphis with the highest per-capita violent crime rate among all major U.S. cities. The task force had reached 10,000 arrests by June, with more than 1,700 illegal firearms recovered. The group's responsibilities include immigration enforcement alongside other public-safety measures.

The city had a violent crime rate roughly six times the national average in 2024.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 21:45

MIT Student Claims To Make One Of The World’s Deadliest Chemicals, Sparking HAZMAT Response

Zero Hedge -

MIT Student Claims To Make One Of The World’s Deadliest Chemicals, Sparking HAZMAT Response

A potentially dangerous laboratory incident at MIT triggered a hazmat response last week after a graduate student told medical personnel he believed he had created dimethylmercury, a highly toxic mercury compound, according to the NY Post.

The student, who has not been publicly identified, went to a local emergency room and reported the possible synthesis. That claim was serious enough to prompt MIT to close Building 18, part of its chemistry complex, while emergency crews and university officials assessed the situation.

MIT later said the student was not authorized to work with dimethylmercury and that the substance was unrelated to his approved research.

As a precaution, the university also took steps outside the laboratory. Shared spaces in the student’s residence hall were professionally cleaned, while the student’s own room was sealed during the investigation.

The NY Post writes that by Saturday, however, the situation had become less clear. MIT said new information had raised doubts about whether dimethylmercury had actually been produced. The university also said the student’s first blood test showed no evidence of mercury exposure, although the student remained under medical observation.

Testing and investigative work continued through the weekend, with Building 18 remaining closed through Sunday.

Dimethylmercury is considered an exceptionally hazardous substance because even a very small exposure can be deadly. The chemical is perhaps best known for the 1997 death of Dartmouth chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn, who was exposed when a tiny amount reached her hand despite the gloves she was wearing.

The compound has also surfaced in at least one criminal case. It was reportedly used in the 2012 killing of a German labor union official.

MIT has not yet said definitively whether the student succeeded in making the chemical, leaving the central question of the incident unresolved even after the emergency response and cleanup.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 21:20

Trump's New Foundry School Aims To Train America's Manufacturing Workers Of The Future

Zero Hedge -

Trump's New Foundry School Aims To Train America's Manufacturing Workers Of The Future

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Trump administration will launch Foundry School on Thursday, a national training program meant to prepare entrepreneurs, engineers, technicians, and industrial leaders for a rebuilding of U.S. manufacturing.

Vice President JD Vance is set to headline the event, according to a State Department press release. Foundry School falls under Pax Silica, the department's multilateral effort to lock down trusted supply chains for technologies expected to shape the coming decades.

Officials say President Donald Trump's reindustrialization push has already drawn trillions of dollars in investment to American soil. Foundry School's focus will be to convert that capital into actual employment.

American manufacturers will need an estimated 3.8 million skilled workers by 2033 across semiconductors, defense, energy, and related fields, according to the press release. The program is designed to put American workers first by giving them the skills to bring those jobs home and build careers in sectors tied to economic security.

The launch starts at 8:20 a.m. at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington. Senior administration officials, university leaders, and industry executives are scheduled to speak.

Foundry School was first announced as a Pax Silica project by Under Secretary Jacob Helberg at the Pax Summit on June 25. It is structured as a workforce partnership with Stanford University, which developed the core advanced manufacturing curriculum for American students.

Keystone lectures will come from seven other universities that collaborated with Stanford. They are Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, Penn State, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Kansas, and Vanderbilt.

Across the eight campuses, the program will run 17 sessions. Founders and CEOs from advanced manufacturing firms will teach. Those leaders will come from the United States and from Pax Silica partner countries such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and India.

The sessions are meant to cover everything required to build and run a top-tier manufacturing operation. Officials describe it as a single course aimed at making sure the American workforce shares in the industrial expansion.

"The entire Trump economic agenda is about making it easier to do business in America, to create jobs in America, to hire American workers, and to build your factories here in America, not in China, or any other country," Trump said in April 2025.

Studies have shown a skills shortage in the United States. A 2024 Deloitte study estimated 3.8 million new manufacturing positions would open by 2033, with only about half likely to be filled without major training efforts.

The jobs of the future in the modern manufacturing sector are expected to include highly technical and specialized roles, such as in robotics, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing. Experts say that the young generation of workers lack the skills to perform these tasks.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 20:55

Take-Two Slides Into Correction As Grand Theft Auto Leak Investigation Intensifies

Zero Hedge -

Take-Two Slides Into Correction As Grand Theft Auto Leak Investigation Intensifies

Take-Two Interactive, whose Rockstar Games studio is developing Grand Theft Auto VI, was hit by a series of leaks last month ahead of the fall release. Bank of America analysts described the leaked footage as "impressive, but unlikely to surprise," while TTWO shares have tumbled into a correction since the leaks surfaced online.

The leaked clips reportedly expose plot details, character scenes, and gameplay mechanics, prompting Rockstar Games to call the leaks "gut-wrenching" and warn that some of the game's surprises may have been spoiled.

According to the Dutch news publication TorrentFreak, TTWO has intensified its search for the person who leaked GTA VI, asking a federal court to seal its latest demand for Discord user data, as the company describes its investigation as "rapidly evolving."

The new filing came Friday, one day after Rockstar Games streamed an extended GTA 6 preview on Netflix and months before the blockbuster title's planned November 19 release.

In mid-August, an account named "Cyberleek" began circulating the leaks. TTWO responded with takedown notices and a series of Digital Millennium Copyright Act subpoenas targeting Discord, Microsoft, X, and YouTube.

Unlike a conventional lawsuit, a DMCA subpoena allows a copyright holder to seek identifying information from an online platform before suing the alleged infringer.

In the new subpoena, filed Friday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, TTWO said its "investigation of the infringement at issue is rapidly evolving and ongoing," adding, "Take-Two has identified one additional Discord user and obtained additional identifying information for a previously identified Discord user, as well as additional information concerning the community servers identified in its prior subpoena for which it now seeks more targeted information."

On Monday, the SDNY granted the subpoena request. Last month, Take-Two requested four subpoenas seeking information from Discord, Microsoft, Google, and X as the GTA VI leaks went viral on social media.

TorrentFreak pointed out that TTWO withdrew its YouTube request after facing pushback from a judge.

US technology publication PCMag reported that the leaker, CyberLeek, "has gone silent after posting what appears to be the prologue to GTA 6."

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 20:30

OpenAI Hits Back At Apple In Trade Secrets Lawsuit

Zero Hedge -

OpenAI Hits Back At Apple In Trade Secrets Lawsuit

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

OpenAI has pushed back against Apple's accusations that it stole the iPhone maker's hardware secrets, blaming the dispute on Apple's own handling of departing employees.

In a court filing on Monday, OpenAI asked a federal judge to deny Apple's request for a preliminary injunction, which would bar the ChatGPT maker and two former Apple employees from accessing, using, or disclosing alleged trade secrets while the case proceeds.

"This dispute is a mess of Apple's own making, and it is trying to blame everyone else," OpenAI said in the filing.

Apple sued OpenAI in July in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The company accused OpenAI and former Apple employees Tang Tan and Chang Liu of misusing confidential information related to hardware design, manufacturing, and supply-chain operations.

Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple and previously served as vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch, is now OpenAI's chief hardware officer.

Liu, a former senior systems electrical engineer at Apple, now serves on OpenAI's technical staff.

In its complaint, Apple alleged that Tan used confidential project code names during interviews. It also claimed he asked at least one candidate to bring "actual parts" they had worked on at Apple for a "show and tell" session.

Apple further alleged that Liu continued to access company files after leaving by exploiting what it described as a "rare, previously unknown authentication bug."

OpenAI has denied those allegations.

In Tan's case, OpenAI said he returned Apple prototypes before leaving and kept only nonconfidential material.

It also said any components brought to interviews were either old or publicly available and were used only as "demonstration aids."

OpenAI also defended Liu, saying any Apple files he accessed after leaving were retrieved at the request of former colleagues.

According to OpenAI, those employees contacted him for help locating documents or answering questions about his previous work.

The Epoch Times has requested comment from Apple regarding OpenAI's latest filing.

Apple Cites New Evidence

Earlier on Monday, Apple submitted what it described as new evidence against Liu as it sought expedited discovery in the case.

Apple alleged that Liu accessed Apple's confidential "power-converter circuit" schematic while working at OpenAI, and that he used proprietary Apple information to train an AI agent in March.

Apple said the evidence emerged from a MacBook that OpenAI provided to the company on Aug. 21 as part of the legal proceedings. Much of the underlying evidence remains redacted from public view.

"The MacBook represents the very limited information Defendants provided so far (and only after weeks of delay), and shows Apple is not conducting 'fishing expeditions' but that its trade secrets are being used and evidence is being destroyed," the filing states.

OpenAI, however, said the episode only shows Apple's own shortcomings when it comes to offboarding.

According to OpenAI, Apple encourages employees to use personal iCloud accounts for work, making it more difficult to separate personal and company files when they leave.

The company also argued that Apple's practice of immediately escorting some departing employees from its offices can leave little time to return devices, transfer files, or hand over responsibilities.

"Apple blames employees who left the company for taking their personal accounts with them - even though Apple encouraged them to use personal accounts for work," OpenAI said.

The competing filings mark the latest escalation in a lawsuit that could provide an unusual look inside the two tech giants.

As the case moves deeper into the discovery phase, both sides could be required to disclose more details about how they recruit talent, develop hardware, and control who has access to what level of secrets.

From AI Partners to Hardware Rivals

There have been days when Apple and OpenAI enjoyed a less contentious relationship.

The two announced a partnership in June 2024 that brought ChatGPT into Apple products, allowing Siri and other Apple Intelligence features to tap into OpenAI's chatbot for some requests.

But OpenAI has since expanded aggressively into consumer hardware.

In May 2025, OpenAI acquired io Products, a hardware startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive.

The deal, valued at $6.5 billion, brought Ive and his team into a close partnership with OpenAI as the company sought to develop a new generation of AI-powered devices.

Tan left Apple before joining io and later became OpenAI's chief hardware officer. Apple's lawsuit does not name Ive individually as a defendant.

Apple, meanwhile, has broadened its own AI partnerships.

In January, the company struck a multiyear deal to use Google's Gemini models as the foundation for future Apple Intelligence features, including its revamped Siri.

The legal fight erupted in July, when Apple accused OpenAI of using former Apple employees to obtain confidential information that could help it develop competing consumer hardware.

Apple has also alleged that OpenAI approached some of Apple's business partners using confidential information.

OpenAI has denied wrongdoing and portrayed the lawsuit as Apple's attempt to slow a potential competitor and discourage employees from leaving.

It said in Monday's filing that roughly 400 former Apple employees have joined its hardware efforts.

The ChatGPT maker argued that California law allows workers to move freely between competing companies, and that Apple cannot characterize ordinary employee departures as unlawful just because they join a rival.

"Apple cannot stop the next 400 employees from leaving by filing baseless lawsuits," OpenAI said.

"They can leave a company like Apple that has struggled to adopt AI and move to an exciting startup that builds innovative products," it continued.

"Apple may not like those choices. But it cannot claim those choices are unlawful."

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 20:05

Russia Accused Of Helping Iran Develop Carrier-Killing Supersonic Cruise Missiles

Zero Hedge -

Russia Accused Of Helping Iran Develop Carrier-Killing Supersonic Cruise Missiles

Yet another major allegation against Russia has emerged this week in the pages of the London-based Financial Times, which says that Moscow has been helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles, in a clandestine program that has been ongoing throughout the war with the US and Israel.

Early in the conflict, it was widely reported that advanced and ultra-fast weapons were used against Israel, which might help explain why the small Mediterranean country suffered so much damage.

The FT cited as part of its journalistic investigation internal Russian evidence it has uncovered including correspondence, travel records and military patents.

The secretive program is being described as "one of the most significant known transfers of strategic military technology from Moscow to Tehran."

At the center of the new reporting is Russia’s state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, overseeing a project codenamed "C430L" - and also involving the US-sanctioned NPO Mashinostroyenia, a rocket design company.

Officials from both entities reportedly started frequently traveling to Iran in 2023, with the program having continued into June 2026 - though it's unclear whether the war with the United States has paused or halted it.

The missile reportedly under development would fly at multiple times the speed of sound, and could be an 'aircraft killer'. It should be noted there are entire Reddit threads focused on questions like: Is there any realistic way for a carrier to destroy a super-sonic “carrier killer” cruise missile?

Jim Lamson, a former CIA military analyst focused on Iran, issued a statement to FT explaining, "For the Iranians, this would give them a qualitatively new strategic weapon system that could threaten US Navy vessels."

Another interesting insight is from Fabian Hinz, a senior analyst with Conflict Armament Research. "This is the transfer of a highly strategically sensitive military technology from Russia that the Iranians have wanted to acquire for decades," he told the FT.

"A program like this would require political clearance from the very top in Russia," he added.

There of course remains the looming question of whether this is all propaganda, designed to put even more Western pressure on so-called 'rogue' actors Moscow and Tehran. It could be, but sharing such technology would also be consistent with recent defense and economic pacts the two sides have inked. This part has been no secret. They are also already deeply involved in drone transfers.

Already Russia witnessed a many years-long push to topple the Assad government in Syria, leading to a broad Russian troop withdrawal from the Levant, and certainly the Kremlin doesn't want to see US-imposed regime change in Tehran as well.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 19:40

Dallas Police To Shut Down Hundreds Of Flock Cameras

Zero Hedge -

Dallas Police To Shut Down Hundreds Of Flock Cameras

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The police department in Dallas has announced it will shut down hundreds of Flock cameras due to a funding pause, making it another U.S. city to remove the controversial camera system.

Two Flock Safety cameras in a neighborhood in Jessup, Md., on Aug. 26, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The department said in a social media post on Sept. 1 that it received a notice that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive ending funding for Flock camera use.

Flock cameras are artificial intelligence (AI)-driven, automated license plate reader systems that capture vehicle details and license plates, with more than 120,000 cameras found throughout the United States. They have drawn online controversy over concerns regarding data privacy, surveillance overreach, and their potential misuse.

"These cameras remain an important investigative tool and are used daily by detectives and officers to develop leads, identify vehicles associated with criminal activity, and assist in solving crimes," the Dallas Police Department said on X.

It added that it will "continue evaluating available resources and technology to ensure our officers and detectives have effective tools to support investigations and enhance public safety."

Dallas Police officials said that 321 Flock cameras supported by grant funding will no longer be eligible, meaning they will be canceled effective Sept. 15. After the move, the department "will continue to have more than 300 Flock cameras operating throughout Dallas," according to its X post.

Last week, Abbott's office ordered all state agencies to pause funding to Flock camera systems, his spokesperson confirmed to the Texas Tribune.

"To the extent that cities get any funding for those cameras, most of it comes from the federal government. To the extent any funding comes from Texas agencies, those agencies are clarifying that those funds cannot be used for Flock cameras," Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris told the outlet.

Aside from Texas, Florida said on Monday that it would stop allowing Flock cameras on state highways. Meanwhile, two Arizona cities, Tempe and Cave Creek, said days before that they were canceling their Flock contracts.

Will Watts, chief operating officer of the Florida Department of Transportation, sent a memo on Aug. 31 stating that the state agency would revoke approvals for license plate readers, including Flock cameras.

Watts noted there was a "recent exponential increase" in deployments of law enforcement cameras and "concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes" associated with those systems, according to the one-page memo.

Regarding the decision in Tempe, a Flock spokesperson told The Epoch Times in a statement last week that the company respects "the City's decision, even though Tempe has acknowledged that Flock helped officers do their jobs and found no improper use by its own police department."

"Flock has built the most accountable tool in police technology, and our technology gives communities control over how their systems are used, including the ability to adopt shorter data retention periods, strong access and auditing policies, and safeguards specifically designed to catch potential misuse," the spokesperson added.

More than 100 jurisdictions have canceled contracts with Flock and other automated license plate reader providers, according to a database from the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm that says it aims to end government abuse of power.

The Epoch Times contacted Flock Safety for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 19:15

US Mint Starts Selling $1 Trump Coins

Zero Hedge -

US Mint Starts Selling $1 Trump Coins

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Mint has started selling a $1 coin bearing President Donald Trump's image to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

A new $1 coin features President Donald Trump's image. Treasury Department/AP Graphic

The U.S. Mint stated in an X post on Sept. 2 that the Trump coins would be available for purchase starting at 12 p.m. ET on Sept. 2.

"These coins are also in circulation, so check your pocket change. Collect them today," the agency said in an X post.

On one side is an image of Trump with the text, "LIBERTY," "1776-2026," and "IN GOD WE TRUST." The other side has a seal with the writing, "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA," "250," and "E PLURIBUS UNUM," which is Latin for "out of many, one."

The U.S. Mint website initially had a message saying, "due to extraordinarily high traffic, we are using a virtual waiting room" with an estimated waiting time listed. It took an Epoch Times reporter more than 20 minutes to access the website initially, but the waiting time declined to two minutes later in the day.

A 25-coin roll is listed at $61, and a 100-coin bag, "currently unavailable" on Wednesday, costs $154.40.

"Whether you collect modern dollars, commemorative issues, or milestone coinage, the Semi-Quincentennial $1 coin represents an important chapter in United States numismatic history," the Mint's website said. "Own a piece of American history."

The coins are composed of 5 percent zinc, 3.5 percent manganese, 2 percent nickel, and the rest is copper, according to the web page.

Last October, Treasury officials announced plans to include Trump's image on a $1 coin.

The new coin is intended "to honor the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism," wrote Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a post on X earlier this year. "Featuring President Trump, it celebrates the strength of American values, and the promise of a nation dedicated to preserving freedom for all."

The Treasury Department also announced in March that it would be putting Trump's signature on all new U.S. paper currency.

"Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate, but also well deserved," said U.S. Treasurer Brandon Breach in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Treasury stopped producing pennies for general circulation last November after 230 years of coinage. Officials said that it costs around 4 cents to manufacture a single penny and that stopping production would save taxpayer dollars.

Although new pennies won't be made anymore, the Federal Reserve will continue to recirculate about 114 billion pennies for as long as possible, the Treasury said on its website.

"How long existing pennies remain in circulation depends largely on consumer behavior," the department stated last December.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 18:25

Brazil's Socialist President Sees Lead Evaporating, New Poll Shows

Zero Hedge -

Brazil's Socialist President Sees Lead Evaporating, New Poll Shows

Brazilian socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's lead over right-wing Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro continues to narrow, according to new polling data released early Wednesday. The latest polling extends the trend we highlighted last week, showing that the narrowing margin between the two candidates has transformed October’s presidential election a coin toss.

Lula (Left); Bolsonaro (Right)

According to a Quaest poll commissioned by TV Globo, Lula leads Bolsonaro 42% to 41% in a potential runoff. The one-point gap is within the survey’s two-point margin of error and marks a decline from Lula’s three-point advantage in the previous poll released in mid-August.

A separate BTG Pactual/Nexus poll published at the start of the week also placed Lula ahead by only one point. An AtlasIntel survey conducted for Bloomberg showed the president leading by 4.5 points, although that advantage narrowed slightly from July.

The shrinking gap comes as federal authorities investigate allegations of corruption and influence peddling involving Lula’s son, Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, known as Lulinha. The probe focuses on cannabis programs linked to Brazil’s Health Ministry.

Lulinha has denied wrongdoing. Lula has not been implicated and has said he will not shield his son from investigators, although he believes Lulinha is innocent.

AtlasIntel’s findings show that the corruption probe has inflicted political damage on the socialist president, threatening to turn the election into a coin toss.

Last Friday, Alexandre de Ázara, a managing director and chief economist for Brazil at UBS, told clients that “the gap is closing” in Brazil’s presidential race as Bolsonaro pulls within striking distance of President Lula.

Polymarket odds show that Bolsonaro is closing in on Lula.

A Flávio Bolsonaro win in October would not start a right turn in South America. It would effectively close it.

By mid-2026, South America had already flipped. Argentina (Milei), Chile (Kast), Colombia (de la Espriella), Peru (Keiko Fujimori), Ecuador (Noboa), Bolivia (Paz), and Paraguay (Peña) sit on the right.

The remaining large left-wing governments are Brazil and Uruguay. Brazil accounts for about half of South America’s GDP and population. If Brazil goes right, the region would be entirely aligned with the Trump administration and would be on track to rid itself of nation-killing socialism and other failed progressive experiments.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 18:00

Another ActBlue Official Pleads Fifth In House Probe of Alleged Foreign Donations

Zero Hedge -

Another ActBlue Official Pleads Fifth In House Probe of Alleged Foreign Donations

Authored by AG News Staff via American Greatness,

Another senior figure at Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue invoked the Fifth Amendment during congressional testimony Tuesday as House Republicans investigate allegations of fraudulent and foreign political donations.

Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a member of ActBlue's board of directors, invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination while appearing before the House Administration, Judiciary and Oversight committees, according to sources familiar with her testimony.

Kimberly Peeler-Allen, pictured second from the left, attending the 35th Annual Celebrating Women® Breakfast at New York Marriott Marquis Hotel on May 11, 2022, in New York City. Peeler-Allen pleaded the Fifth Amendment on Sept. 1, 2026, during a probe into Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, for which she is a member of the board of directors. (Monica Schipper/Getty Images for The New York Women's Foundation)

Her decision follows similar moves by other ActBlue officials.

ActBlue co-founder Matt DeBergalis invoked the Fifth during a closed-door deposition Aug. 20, while CEO Regina Wallace-Jones asserted the same right during congressional questioning in June.

The House Administration Committee began investigating ActBlue in 2023 following concerns that the fundraising platform's fraud-prevention procedures were inadequate to prevent illegal foreign donations.

Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., has focused in part on ActBlue's previous practice of not requiring donors to provide credit card CVV security codes.

"We have an entity here with ActBlue, that has raised roughly $20 billion since its creation," Steil told Fox News.

"We want to make sure that they have the fraud prevention protocols in place to make sure that foreign funds are not coming into U.S. elections."

Steil acknowledged that witnesses have a constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment but said their refusal to answer questions has frustrated lawmakers seeking information about ActBlue's operations.

The investigation intensified after The New York Times reported in April that ActBlue's attorneys had warned internally that Wallace-Jones may have provided Congress with a misleading description of the organization's procedures for detecting foreign donations.

Wallace-Jones had described ActBlue's screening system as "multilayered." According to the Times, however, the organization's attorneys warned that ActBlue did not always follow the procedures she described, creating what they characterized as "a substantial risk for ActBlue."

Republicans have denied accusations that the investigation is politically motivated, arguing that foreign money entering American elections would present a serious threat regardless of which party benefits.

ActBlue has denied wrongdoing and has previously said it maintains safeguards against fraudulent and foreign contributions.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 17:40

$150 Trillion Global Economy (2030)

The Big Picture -

 

 

I am a sucker for infographics like these:

In 2025, Global GDP hit an all-time high of $118.4 trillion — about $14,406 per person worldwide.

To reach $150T by 2030 — 26.7% higher than where we are now — would require 4 years of gains averaging 4.86%. Any combination of nominal growth plus inflation gets us there. 3% annual GDP growth with a 2% inflation rate hits $150T in 2030.

China, which was half of the US GDP not too long ago, is now 68.9% of our economy’s size; Europe, at $37 trillion, is about the same size as the United States’ economy.

$150 trillion is not a reach, and at current growth and inflation rates, if sustained, the world would reach $300 trillion sometime in 2044…

 

 

 

Source:
World Economic Outlook via Visual Capitalist

 

The post $150 Trillion Global Economy (2030) appeared first on The Big Picture.

Apple Maps Changes Name Of Lake Ontario To Lake America

Zero Hedge -

Apple Maps Changes Name Of Lake Ontario To Lake America

Update (1700ET): President Trump has voiced his approval of this change as "complete, ratified, and binding"...

As Kimberly Hayek detailed earlier for The Epoch Times, Apple has changed the name of Lake Ontario to "Lake America" on the web version of its Apple Maps service, following an executive order from U.S. President Donald Trump that renamed the body of water located on the U.S. - Canada border.

The update appeared Sept. 1 for users in the United States. It came days after Alphabet's Google Maps made a similar switch for U.S. users late Aug. 29.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Aug. 31 that Trump had contacted Apple directly about the change.

"I know that the president reached out to Apple directly," Burgum said on Fox Business. "So I'm sure that we may be seeing that change coming up soon to Lake America."

Apple updated Apple Maps so that people in the United States now see the Great Lake labeled Lake America, after the U.S. Geographic Names Information System recorded the new official name.

Users in Canada still see Lake Ontario. Everyone else sees both names. Apple used the same country-based labeling after the Gulf of Mexico was renamed the Gulf of America.

Trump signed the executive order on Aug. 27, directing the Interior Department to update the U.S. Geographic Names Information System. The move came amid collapsed trade talks with Canada and new tariffs on both sides.

"Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after signing the order. "Even the military ... You know, we defend Canada for nothing. We don't get anything."

He added that Canada doesn't "pay for anything" but wants to be treated like a state, though "it's not a state."

The lake, one of the five Great Lakes, sits halfway along the border of New York state and Canada's province of Ontario. Its name dates to the 1640s, long before either nation formed, and inspired the province's name in 1867.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the renaming the same day Trump signed the order.

The lake's historic name is Lake Ontario and will remain the same "then, now and always," Carney said in a statement. He noted it comes from the Wendat word "Ontari'io," meaning "the lake is beautiful, the lake is big."

"The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America," Carney said. "We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford holds a similar view. He unveiled a lakeside sign in Winona, Ontario, reading "Lake Ontario, Now and Always" in English and French.

"President Trump can call it whatever he wants, but I can tell you, the rest of the world will always call it Lake Ontario," Ford told reporters.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also declined to adopt the new name on state maps.

"New York won't be calling it that," she posted on X.

Google explained its update in a weekend statement, saying it follows official government sources such as the Geographic Names Information System. U.S. users now see "Lake America." Canadian users continue to see "Lake Ontario." Users elsewhere see both, it also explained.

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment when the request was first reported. The company previously updated Apple Maps for the Gulf of America after Trump's 2025 order renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

MapQuest, a free online mapping service owned by California-based System1, an AI-powered customer-acquisition company, has refused the change. "We're not changing it," the company posted to X. It surged to the top download on the U.S. Apple App Store charts upon its announcement.

Some Ontario government websites briefly displayed "Lake America" after Google's update because they pulled map data from the service. Hydro One, Metrolinx, Infrastructure Ontario, and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario sites showed the new label.

Officials corrected them quickly. Ontario minister of public and business service delivery and procurement Stephen Crawford said the province was reviewing all sites "to make sure they all identify Lake Ontario by its correct name: Lake Ontario."

The trade talks between the countries collapsed on Aug. 21. The United States imposed 50 percent tariffs on nearly $20 billion of Canadian goods. Canada announced matching retaliatory tariffs set to take effect Sept. 8. Trump also announced plans for 50 percent tariffs on Canadian vehicles and auto parts beginning in 2027.

Burgum ordered the Interior Department to implement the name change for the lake on Aug. 27 and posted, "Make the Great Lakes Great Again!"

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 17:00

Pennsylvania Data Center Project Offers Residents $10,000 "Benefits Package" For Community Rebuilding

Zero Hedge -

Pennsylvania Data Center Project Offers Residents $10,000 "Benefits Package" For Community Rebuilding

With half of all proposed data centers unlikely to materialize amid mounting local resistance, potentially amplified in some cases by foreign influence operations, and intensifying power-grid constraints, developers are adopting more creative strategies to secure community support.

In Pennsylvania, one proposed data center campus is offering $10,000 payments to residents, alongside broader investments to rebuild local communities, strengthen public services, and reduce household costs.

Local outlet PennLive recently reported that NorthPoint Development is offering $10,000 to every eligible Hazle Township household to help revive the 1,300-acre data center project, which was rejected last November.

The $10,000 grants are part of a $165 million offer made by NorthPoint Development to establish a township police department, lower garbage-collection bills, fund community programs, and pay residents directly, the local outlet reported.

Residents would receive the money after the first data center building secures an occupancy certificate, potentially by late 2027.

"The $165 million community-benefits commitment represents an unprecedented level of direct financial investment in a Pennsylvania municipality," Missouri-based NorthPoint said in a recent press release.

Our latest note on the data center revolt from earlier this year showed that nearly half of the nation's planned 16 gigawatts of capacity is at risk of cancellation or delay, while only 5 gigawatts are currently under construction. This comes amid surging negative sentiment toward these facilities.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll finds that nearly half of all Americans think data centers are bad for communities...

... prompting developers to adopt community-benefits packages to appease nearby residents:

The gold standard for data centers moving forward will most certainly be direct payments to residents and investments in rebuilding communities.

Tyler Durden Wed, 09/02/2026 - 16:40

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