Under Intensifying US Pressure To Reach Deal, Zelensky Explodes: No Time “For All This S**t” Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has increasingly made his frustrations with the Trump administration public, but he may have just crossed the line with the US President, who Zelensky admits can be tough and unbending. Zelensky has newly complained amid the latest Geneva trilateral talks that the US delegation could pressure him to make […]

Has America Reached Peak Idiocracy? Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, We live in a lowest common denominator society. For the last several decades, virtually every major institution in our society has become less civilized, and that is because our entire population has become less civilized. 20 years ago, a film entitled “Idiocracy” was released. It was about an average American that was selected […]

Core Durable Goods Orders Surge For 9th Straight Month US Durable Goods Orders dropped 1.4% MoM in preliminary December data (slightly better than the 2% decline expected) but well down from the +5.4% MoM surge in November… Source: Bloomberg The headline orders print was restrained by a decline in orders for aircraft. Boeing said it received more orders for its planes in December than a month earlier, but the data don’t […]

Oil Surges On Report Warning US-Iran War Is Far Closer Than Americans Realize Axios’ Barak Ravid, a journalist very close to the Israeli government, writes Wednesday that the Trump White House is now “closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.” The sources he spoke to, which could be American or Israeli, say that such an operation would be a “massive” campaign at least weeks in […]

Global “Everything Rally” Pushes US Futures HIgher As “AI Disruption” Fears Fade US equity futures trade near session highs, after rising much of the overnight session amid muted volumes. Yesterday, US stocks recovered their early losses starting just after the EU close and that momentum has carried through to global markets today with what appears to be re-grossing in EU and continued momentum in the Japan trade. As of 8:15am ET, […]

New Mexico Launches Probe Into What Happened At Epstein’s ‘Zorro Ranch’ Until now, the public’s visualizations of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal have largely centered on his Caribbean Island and his seven-story New York townhouse, but a new setting is poised to take greater prominence, as the New Mexico legislature just launched a wide-ranging investigation into what took place at Epstein’s “Zorro Ranch” about 30 miles south of Santa […]

“Pressure Is Enormous”: Nestle CEO Faces Mounting Scrutiny Amid Infant Formula Crisis Nestlé SA CEO Philipp Navratil is feeling the heat after the world’s largest food company recently carried out the biggest recall in its history, pulling infant formula off supermarket shelves after a contaminated ingredient was discovered early last month. Shares have taken a beating, and scrutiny of the recall is intensifying, with […]

Package-Food Stocks Sink After “Most Downbeat” Consumer Conference, General Mills Guidance Woes A fresh reminder that the K-shaped economy remains a very big problem emerged Tuesday at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference, where top U.S. packaged food executives struck a sour tone about persistent consumer softening and unease over elevated food prices. General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening told the audience at […]

It Begins: Mamdani Plans First NYC Property Tax Hike In Decades To Plug $5 Billion Hole New York City property owners are set to ‘enjoy’ the first property tax hike in more than two decades as part of a proposed solution by Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fill a roughly $5 billion budget gap, Bloomberg reports. “He’s put a pretty extreme option on the table, which is a combination of raising property taxes and taking money from […]

Peru Removes President After Scandal Tied To Chinese Contractor Peru’s Congress voted on Tuesday to remove President Jose Jeri from office following a series of undisclosed late-night meetings at a Chinese restaurant with a Chinese state contractor, setting off a political scandal dubbed “Chifagate”, a reference to the country’s Chinese-Peruvian fusion cuisine. According to SCMP, lawmakers voted 75-24, with three […]

Average Tax Refunds Jump By Nearly 11%, Early IRS Data Show Authored by Rob Sabo via The Epoch Times, The Internal Revenue Service is taking longer to process tax refunds than it did a year ago, but the average size of refund checks that have already been issued to taxpayers is up by nearly 11 percent from those received through the same period in 2025. Early individual taxpayer refunds are moving sluggishly because of the PATH […]

Rise Of Europe’s “War Unicorns” As Goldman Maps The Defense-Startup Ecosystem The “war unicorn” startup boom we pointed out the other week isn’t just an American story. It’s happening across the West, as defense startups built around dual-use technology could become the next hot bubble. Goldman analysts, led by Sam Burgess, told clients on Tuesday that European defense is seeing a “rise of the startups,” which could reshape an […]

German Public Broadcaster Ran Fake AI-Generated Clip Of ‘ICE Troops’ Arresting Migrant Family Via Remix News, The German public broadcaster ZDF has admitted to a significant editorial oversight after its flagship news program, Heute Journal, aired AI-generated images featuring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arresting an immigrant family. After uproar on social media over the fake news segment, which […]

Kremlin Mocks European ‘Illusions’ For Wanting Own Nuclear Umbrella Currently France and Britain are in talks to potentially extend their nuclear arsenals to protect Europe as a defense ‘umbrella’ – at a moment some officials have questioned the United States commitment to leading NATO. Politico wrote in the aftermath of the Munich Security Conference, “Multiple European countries are publicly backing talks on a homegrown nuclear […]

White House Voices Strong Support For Hungary’s Orban Ahead Of Elections Via The Libertarian Institute  Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced strong support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán is seeking a fifth term as leader in the April election. “I’m going to be very blunt with you. The prime minister and the President have a very, very close personal relationship and working relationship,” Rubio said in a […]

More “Secret Investments” By Adani Family Associates Revive Market Manipulation Allegations In early 2023, as scrutiny mounted around India’s Adani Group, two close associates of the Adani family acknowledged to their bankers that they controlled billions of dollars in the conglomerate’s shares through hedge funds. The admission — found in records reviewed by OCCRP, who called them “secret investments” in a new investigative […]

18 Ways To Reverse EU’s Immigration Crisis And Give Power Back To Member States Via Remix News, Due to years of uncontrolled mass migration, many Europeans are asking what concrete options there are to reverse course, with many feeling that the situation is hopeless and cannot be significantly reversed. However, a new report titled “Taking Back Control from Brussels: The Renationalization of the EU Migration and Asylum […]

EU Investigates Shein Over ‘Addictive Designs’ And Sales Of Childlike Sex Dolls Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), The European Union has opened an in-depth investigation into online fashion retailer Shein over the sale of illegal items and what it calls the Chinese-owned platform’s “addictive design.” A Shein pop-up store at a mall in Singapore, on April 4, 2024. Edgar Su/Reuters The probe, announced […]

WEF Rocked As CEO Faces Investigation Over Ties To “Davos Concierge” Epstein The World Economic Forum (WEF) quietly launched an independent review earlier this month into its CEO, Børge Brende, over his past interactions with Jeffrey Epstein, Bloomberg reports. Files released by the Department of Justice show Epstein and Brende had three dinners in 2018 and 2019, and exchanged various text messages. One dinner occurred in […]

Google Warns Chinese And Russian Hackers Are Targeting US Defense Companies Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times, An analysis released by Google this month showed that the U.S. defense industrial base—a network of public and private entities used to develop or maintain military weapons systems—has sustained cyberattacks from groups and criminal organizations from China, Russia, and North Korea in recent months. The […]

Kansas Woman Jailed For Fabricating Claims That Astronaut Hacked Her Bank Account From Space A Kansas woman has been sentenced to federal prison after admitting she fabricated claims that astronaut Anne McClain accessed her bank account from orbit, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Summer Heather Worden, 51, of Sedgwick County, Kansas, pleaded guilty on November 14, 2025, to making false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements to […]

Winter Storm Fern Proved Coal Is Still the Power Grid’s Reliable Backbone Authored by Emily Arthun via RealClearEnergy, When Winter Storm Fern swept across much of the United States in mid-January 2026—bringing snow, ice, and sustained sub-zero temperatures from Texas to New England—millions of Americans braced for power outages. In some areas, those fears were realized. Tennessee alone reported more than 245,000 customer […]

Stephen Colbert Throws Tantrum After CBS Blocks Interview Over Equal Time Concerns Stephen Colbert threw a tantrum Monday night after CBS lawyers pulled the plug on his planned interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, citing concerns about the FCC’s equal time mandate. The late-night host, who has built his late-night career on partisan snark, was not happy about it. Colbert told his audience that Talarico […]

Judge Orders ICE Not To Re-Detain Abrego Garcia Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times, A federal judge has blocked U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) from re-arresting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, one of the men at the center of the Trump administration’s deportation battles. The Salvadoran national’s case attracted attention across the country, including widespread protests, after the federal government […]

Steam Deck Handheld Gaming PC “May Be Out-Of-Stock” As Great Memory Crunch Deepens The high-bandwidth memory (HBM) crunch is finally being noticed by mainstream consumers. It’s not just soaring HBM prices; the availability of certain consumer electronics is now being affected. Valve’s popular handheld gaming PC is reportedly out of stock in some regions – an early warning that other consumer electronics may soon face similar […]