WORLD NEWS
Sri Lanka crisis live news: Protesters enter PM office
Anger against PM and acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe grows after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa flees to Maldives.
- The Sri Lankan prime minister’s office has confirmed that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has fled the country.
- Rajapaksa, 73, left for the Maldives hours before he was expected to resign amid widespread protests over his handling of a devastating economic crisis.
- Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has declared a state of emergency across the island nation, with the parliament speaker saying Wickremesinghe has been appointed acting president by Rajapaksa.
- Hundreds of protesters in Colombo stormed the prime minister’s office compound and took over a national television and radio facility.
- Protesters also continue to occupy the official residences of the president and the prime minister after both buildings were stormed on Saturday.
- Sri Lanka is facing a severe shortage of fuel and other essential supplies and is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
Dutch Farmers Rise Up Against Food System ‘Reset’
The Netherlands intends to halve its nitrogen and ammonia pollution by 2030. To reach that goal, the Finance and Agriculture Ministry now wants to reduce the number of livestock by 30%. As a result, many farmers will be driven out of business. As with current energy shortages, the resulting reductions in farming are said to be an “unavoidable” part of the Green Agenda to improve air, soil and water quality
Cattle are fed nitrogen in the form of crude protein. While protein is an essential nutrient for cows, nitrogen is not efficiently broken down by cattle, so a lot of it is excreted in the urine and feces as urea. When urine and feces get mixed together, the urea is converted into ammonia
Since the amount of ammonia produced is related to the crude protein the animals are fed, one suggested way to lower the ammonia is to reduce the amount of crude protein in the animals’ diet. A potential problem with that idea is that cattle have protein requirements just like humans do. If they don’t cut crude protein, they’ll have to downsize their herds, and if smaller herds aren’t financially feasible, they’ll have to shut down altogether
The decision to decimate cattle farming in the name of environmental protection rings hollow in the face of looming food shortages and potential famine worldwide. It appears they’re intentionally trying to make meat so scarce and expensive that regular people can’t afford it. They can then introduce synthetic meat alternatives and insect protein, both of which are part of The Great Reset’s food plan
While the notion of a pollution-free world is an attractive one, ultimately, the Green Agenda isn’t about the environment — it’s about creating a control system in which the world’s resources are owned by the richest of the rich, while the rest of the population is controlled through the allocation of those resources, and that includes the allocation of food
U.N.: India to Supplant China as World’s Most Populous Country this Year
The United Nations (U.N.) predicted on Monday that the world’s population, currently 7.942 billion, will grow to eight billion by November 15, with India expected to overtake China as the globe’s most populous nation by 2023.
“The world’s population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022,” the U.N. wrote in a report published on July 11 titled “World Population Prospects 2022.”
The U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, issues such a report each year on July 11 to coincide with “World Population Day.”
“India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country during 2023,” according to this year’s analysis.
Detailing China and India’s prominence as the two most populous countries in the world currently, the report stated:
In 2022, the two most populous regions were both in Asia: Eastern and South-Eastern Asia with 2.3 billion people (29 per cent of the global population), and Central and Southern Asia with 2.1 billion (26 per cent). China and India accounted for the largest populations in these regions, with more than 1.4 billion each in 2022.
John Wilmoth, who serves as the director of the Population Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, told reporters Monday that India’s chances of gaining permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council will likely increase should its population become the world’s largest by next year, as predicted.
“What is the significance of being the largest population in the world? I think you have certain claims on things. I wonder what will happen in terms of the discussion around … roles at the UN and the roles of the permanent five members of the Security Council,” the Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted Wilmoth as saying during a press conference on July 11.
“If India becomes the largest country, they may think that that gives them a claim that they should be part of … they’ve been claiming that they should be part of that group (permanent member of the Security Council) anyway. But, you know, it may strengthen their claim,” he stated.
“India has been at the forefront of the years-long efforts to reform the Security Council saying it rightly deserves a place as a permanent member of the Council, which in its current form does not represent the geo-political realities of the 21st Century,” PTI noted on Tuesday.
The U.N. Security Council is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations, which is an intergovernmental organization. The body’s responsibilities include making decisions that impact international security, such as authorizing military action. The U.N. Security Council consists of 15 member states (five permanent and ten elected). China, Russia, France, Britain, and the U.S. comprise the council’s current permanent members, which hold veto power within the body.
Hungary declares energy emergency
Budapest will ban exports and boost domestic production ahead of winter shortages
The Hungarian government declared a state of emergency over tightening energy supplies on Wednesday. Gergely Gulyas, an aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, announced that domestic gas and coal production will be stepped up and gas reserves filled ahead of winter in Europe.
With the EU cutting itself off from Russian energy imports, Gulyas told reporters that Europe will likely not have enough gas for this autumn and winter. In response to the supply crunch, he announced a seven-point plan, effective from August.
Hungary will increase domestic gas production from 1.5 to 2 billion cubic meters, while filling the country’s storage facilities with foreign gas. At present, Gulyas said that Hungary’s reserves are 44% full.
Meanwhile, his government will impose a ban on the export of firewood, while increasing domestic coal extraction. At the same time, the coal-fired Matra power plant will be restarted as soon as possible, having been partially shut down since January 2021.
U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
War On Carbon: California Cities Ban New Gas Stations To Fight Climate Change
Cities in California are banning the construction of new gas stations in an effort to fight climate change, despite record-high gas prices and the lack of scientific evidence that banning gas in California will have any effect on global temperatures.
The Los Angeles Times reported Monday:
“We didn’t know what we were doing, actually,” said Petaluma Councilwoman D’Lynda Fischer, who led the charge last year to prohibit new gas stations in the city of 60,000. “We didn’t know we were the first in the world when we banned gas stations.”
Since Petaluma’s decision, four other cities in the Bay Area have followed suit, and now, leaders in California’s most car-centric metropolis are hoping to bring the climate-conscious policy to Southern California.
It opens a new front in California’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and already is generating opposition from the fuel industry, which argues consumers would suffer.
In 2020 — just weeks after the state suffered rolling blackouts due to a lack of wind and solar power — California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state would ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles in 2035 in favor of electric vehicles alone.
Analysts warn that Newsom’s mandate could put gas stations, most of which are small businesses, out of commission, while destroying 32,000 jobs currently held by auto mechanics who work on traditional internal combustion engines. Moreover, recent investigations have found that one in four electric vehicle charging stations in the sympathetic San Francisco Bay Area are out of order, and an EV road trip by the Wall Street Journal from New Orleans to Chicago nearly ended in disaster.
School Board Accepts Grant for ‘Gender-Affirming’ Clothing for High School Students
Missouri’s Columbia Public Schools Board of Education this week accepted a $10,000 grant for the creation of what has been described as a “gender-affirming closet” to offer articles of clothing to high school students to assist them in affirming their chosen gender.
The $10,000 grant comes from the It Gets Better Project, a nonprofit organization that aims to “uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth around the globe,” according to its mission statement.
The grant, which the school board accepted on Monday, will establish the creation of an actual closet for students of Rock Bridge High School, which will feature articles of clothing to help teenagers find clothing to affirm their chosen gender. The specific articles of clothing it plans to provide remain to be seen, but the bulk of the grant, $8,000, will be used to purchase clothing. It remains unclear if the closet will contain items such as chest binders for young women or tucking underwear for young men.
The school’s forthcoming “gender-affirming” closet comes as parents across the country continue to battle over parental rights in the education sector as woke, leftist ideologies and agendas infiltrate classrooms across the country and proponents attempt to keep parents in the dark.
‘Very Unfavorable’ Political Scenario Appears to Be Taking Shape for Democrats
An unfavorable midterm election scenario is taking shape for Democrats as inflation and gas prices remain exceptionally high as some left-wing news outlets appear to be turning on the Biden administration, according to analysts and pollsters.
A recent New York Times survey posted on the paper’s front page Monday suggested that Democrat voters are turning against Biden. Only about 25 percent said they wanted him to be the presidential nominee in 2024. Meanwhile, the NY Times and other left-wing outlets have increasingly published articles suggesting that the president not run for reelection.
“Democrats haven’t done things they promised,” Connor Farrell, a strategist who founded the Democrat-aligned group Left Rising, told The Hill on Tuesday. “In this environment, the best general election candidates will be bold [ones] that can distinguish themselves from what we’re getting from the White House.”
“Democratic leadership should look no further than the fact that they need to wake up and step up to the plate,” Jon Reinish, managing director at the political strategy firm Mercury, told the website. He did not elaborate what that might entail.
Democrats, he added, are “not just losing Independents or you know, Never-Trump Republicans,” but “they’re losing their own voters. Democrats’ own voters don’t feel as if their leaders hear their concerns.”
“I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic, but I’m not holding out hope that Biden’s approval rating can improve all that much. Gas prices have started to drop, but inflation remains high, and survey after survey shows that Americans are principally concerned with their economic situation. Another [Federal Reserve] rate hike is on its way, which isn’t bound to make things better in the short term for voters,” Democrat strategist Jessica Tarlov told Fox News this week.
And an article released by pollster Gallup, citing its own polling data, declared that the 2022 election indicators suggest Democrats are facing a significant uphill battle.
“However, 2022 is not shaping up to be an average year. Rather, as of May, Gallup finds presidential job approval and three other key national mood indicators well below the historical averages measured in past midterm election years. On their own, those numbers would all predict a greater-than-average loss of seats for the Democratic Party this fall,” Gallup said last month.
Typically, the party of the president tends to lose seats in the midterm elections, and Democrats have narrow majorities in both the Senate and House.
A group of House Republicans, led by New Mexico Rep. Yvette Herrell, sent a letter Tuesday to President Joe Biden calling on him to commit to producing oil and gas in the U.S. They’re also asking the commander in chief to visit energy-producing regions of the U.S. and meet with Americans who work in the energy industry.
In the letter, first obtained by the Daily Caller, Herrell and 68 House Republicans express their concern with Biden over reports that he is considering asking Saudi Arabia and other countries to export oil to the U.S. The lawmakers slam Biden in the letter, saying just years ago the U.S. was producing more oil and natural gas than any country in the world and that his administration is hurting Americans by having to rely on authoritarian regimes.
“President Biden and the radicals in his administration seem hellbent on destroying American oil and gas, which have been a vital part of our economy and national security for decades. Now that reality has hit them in the face and prices skyrocketed due to their reckless policies, President Biden is going hat-in-hand to Saudi Arabia and foreign adversaries like Venezuela to beg for oil. The solution is clear to anyone not blinded by ideology: produce oil and gas in America NOW. It is good for our country and good for the free world,” Herrell told the Daily Caller before sending the letter.
Hispanic Group Fires Back After Jill Biden Compares Latinos to ‘Tacos’
First lady’s office later apologizes for the speech
First Lady Jill Biden received criticism from a Hispanic organization on Monday for comparing the Hispanic community to tacos, prompting her to apologize.
Biden made an appearance at a San Antonio event called the “LatinX IncluXion” luncheon, which uses the often-ridiculed term “latinx.”
“Raul helped build this organization with the understanding that the diversity of this community, as distinct as the bodegas of the Bronx, as beautiful as the blossoms of Miami and as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio, is your strength,” she said at the event, commenting on UnidosUS President Raul Yzaguirre’s work. Biden was also criticized for mispronouncing the word “bodega.”
At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Biden’s press secretary Michael LaRosa wrote on Twitter that “the First Lady apologizes that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community.”
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists on Monday responded and said her comment about tacos was inappropriate.
“We are not tacos,” wrote the organization in a statement, adding that it “encourages … Biden and her speech writing team to take the time in the future to better understand the complexities of our people and communities.”
And Janet Murguía, the head of UnidosUS, wrote that the group was “honored” to have Biden speak before saying: “She has been a great educator in, and a great amiga to, our community for years. Privileged to call her a friend.”
Some conservative figures also responded to Biden’s comments on social media, saying that the reaction to her remarks would have been stronger if she was a Republican.
“No wonder Hispanics are fleeing the Democratic Party!” wrote Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) on Twitter. “Imagine the regime media meltdown if a conservative called Hispanics ‘breakfast tacos’ like Dr. Jill Biden did at the Latinx Luncheon today. Democringe,” wrote Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Uber Had Access to Joe Biden During Obama Administration: Leaked Documents
President Joe Biden was among a group of world leaders that Uber had access to, when the ride-sharing company was aggressively expanding its global presence, according to leaked company files.
The Uber files—containing more than 124,000 emails, memos, text messages, company presentations, and other documents dating from 2013 to 2017—were leaked to British newspaper The Guardian. The outlet then shared the files with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners.
The person who leaked the files is Mark MacGann, Uber’s former chief European lobbyist.
According to an ICIJ report on the Uber files published on July 10, the files showed how Uber executives, including co-founder Travis Kalanick, lobbied and courted politicians around the world for favors, during its dramatic expansion.
In total, Uber executives held more than 100 meetings with public officials from 17 countries and the European Union, according to the report. Among those meetings, 34 were with European Union officials, and 9 were with European Commissioners. Twelve of the meetings with European Commission representatives had not been publicly disclosed.
Dismantling the Constitution: Police No Longer Have to Honor the Right to Remain Silent
Commentary by John Whitehead
We are witnessing the gradual dismantling of every constitutional principle that serves as a bulwark against government tyranny, overreach and abuse.
As usual, the latest assault comes from the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 6-3 ruling in Vega v. Tekoh, the Supreme Court took aim at the Miranda warnings, which require that police inform suspects that they have a right against self-incrimination when in police custody: namely, that they have a right to remain silent, to have an attorney present, and that anything they say and do can and will be used against them in a court of law.
Although the Supreme Court stopped short of overturning its 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona, the conservative majority declared that individuals cannot hold police accountable for violating their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
By shielding police from lawsuits arising from their failure to Mirandize suspects, the Supreme Court has sent a message to police that they no longer have to respect a suspect’s right to remain silent.
In other words, concludes legal analyst Nick Sibilla, “the Supreme Court has effectively created a new legal immunity for cops accused of infringing on the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.”
Why is this important?
In totality, the rights enshrined in the Fifth Amendment speak to the Founders’ determination to protect the rights of the individual against a government with a natural inclination towards corruption, tyranny and thuggery.
The Founders were especially concerned with balancing the scales of justice in such a way that the innocent and the accused were not railroaded and browbeaten by government agents into coerced confessions, false convictions, or sham trials.
Indeed, so determined were the Founders to safeguard the rights of the innocent, even if it meant allowing a guilty person to go free, that Benjamin Franklin insisted, “It is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer.”
Two hundred-plus years later, the Supreme Court (aided and abetted by the police state, Congress and Corporate America) has flipped that longstanding presumption of innocence on its head.
In our present suspect society, “we the people” are all presumed guilty until proven innocent.
With the Vega ruling, we have even fewer defenses for warding off government chicanery, abuse, threats and entrapment.
To be clear, the Supreme Court is not saying that we don’t have the right to remain silent when in police custody. It’s merely saying that we can’t sue the police for violating that right.
It’s a subtle difference but a significant one that could well encourage police to engage in the very sort of egregious misconduct at the heart of the Vega case: in which a police officer investigating a sexual assault isolated a suspect in a small, windowless room; refused him access to a lawyer or work colleagues; accused him of molesting a female patient; threatened him with violence; implied that he and his family would be deported; and terrorized him into signing a false confession dictated by the cop.
Although Terence Tekoh was eventually tried and acquitted, the Supreme Court refused to hold police accountable for browbeating an innocent man into making a false confession.
The Vega ruling threatens to turn the clocks back to a time when police resorted to physical brutality (beating, hanging, whipping) and mental torture in order to obtain confessions from suspects without ever informing them of their Fifth Amendment rights.
This was exactly the kind of misconduct that the Warren Court sought to discourage with its 5-4 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona.
Exclusive–New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Uses Taxpayer Funds for Baby Shower Decorations
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was caught on camera claiming to have never used taxpayer-funded money to pay for baby shower decorations, despite receipts uncovered by Breitbart News showing otherwise.
Lujan Grisham denied using the state’s discretionary fund for the purchase of baby shower decorations when she was asked by a bystander last week at an event in New Mexico if she had ever used state funds to pay for a baby shower.
“I didn’t use state funds to pay for a baby shower. Maybe you should do your facts better,” the governor said in response, later adding, “Nope. None.”
Following another bystander saying not to listen to what the first guy said, Lujan Grisham continued, “Oh, I know. Well, he should do better fact-checking his own self.”
However, receipts exclusively obtained by Breitbart News showed that in January 2020, $112.70 in taxpayer dollars was spent at Party City to buy pink baby shower decorations, such as pacifier charms and pink safety pin charms.
Federal Judge Blocks Arizona’s Personhood Law That Recognizes Life Begins at Conception
A federal judge on July 11 temporarily blocked Arizona’s personhood law that recognizes human life begins at conception, preventing it from being used to take legal action against abortion providers.
The legal drama came as states across the nation including Arizona are trying to adjust in light of the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision that there is no right to an abortion to be found in the U.S. Constitution, sending the regulation of abortion back to the states to work out for themselves.
Attorney Jessica Sklarsky, a lawyer at the Center for Reproductive Rights who argued the case, told The Associated Press that the federal district court “made the right decision today by blocking this law from being used to create an unthinkably extreme abortion ban.”
“The Supreme Court’s catastrophic decision overturning Roe v. Wade has unleashed chaos on the ground, leaving Arizona residents scrambling to figure out if they can get the abortion care they need.”
Brittni Thomason, a spokesperson for the office of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, said the state is centered on “bringing clarity to the law for Arizonans.”
“Today’s ruling was based on an interpretation of Arizona law that our office did not agree with, and we are carefully considering our next steps,” she told the media outlet.
Abortion providers reportedly stopped performing the procedure in Arizona after the high court spoke, fearing that a 1901 state law banning all abortions could place them in legal jeopardy. That law is currently blocked in Pima County, the state’s second-most populous county where Tucson is located.
About 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 reserve soldiers will be blocked from service for rejecting the COVID vaccines, U.S. Army officials said on July 8.
“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” an Army spokesperson told Military.com.
The deadline for the Defense Department’s vaccination mandate passed at midnight on June 30. The order cuts off pay and some of the military benefits to the 62,000 service members.
Retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general Tom McInerney criticized the Biden administration’s vaccination mandates.
“Why would the army do that when the survival rate of their age group is [extremely high]?” McInerney told The Epoch Times.
If those have yet to meet the deadline remain steadfast in their decision to reject the jabs, they might face more severe consequences.
“In the future, Soldiers who continue to refuse the vaccination order without an exemption may be subject to additional adverse administrative action, including separation,” the Army spokesperson further noted.
“We’re going to give every soldier every opportunity to get vaccinated and continue their military career,” Lt. Gen. Jon Jensen, director of the Army Guard, told the outlet. “We’re not giving up on anybody until the separation paperwork is signed and completed.”
Across all states and territories, only 23 permanent medical exemptions and 19 permanent religious exemptions have been issued by the U.S. Army, according to their vaccination data from July 8.
Woman faces homicide charge after deputies said she used meth during pregnancy
A woman in Alabama is accused of using methamphetamine during her pregnancy, according to the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office.
WSFA reports Faith Victoria Kemp was charged with child homicide after delivering a stillborn baby at Madison Hospital in May.
The stillborn delivery was reported to the sheriff’s office, which conducted an investigation that found Kemp was allegedly using drugs throughout her pregnancy.
Kemp was arrested May 16 on an outstanding controlled substance bond revocation and was already in jail when she was charged Wednesday with chemical endangerment of a child with homicide.
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
June Inflation Hits 9.1 Percent, New 40-Year High
The U.S. annual inflation rate climbed to 9.1 percent in June, topping the market estimate of 8.8 percent and May’s annual rate of 8.6 percent. This was the highest level since November 1981.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.3 percent month-over-month. The monthly inflation was also higher than economists’ expectations of 1.1 percent.
The core inflation rate, which removes the volatile food and energy sectors, eased to 5.9 percent. But this was higher than the forecasts of 5.7 percent. On a monthly basis, the core inflation rose at a higher-than-expected pace of 0.7 percent.
Food prices soared 10.4 percent, while the energy index advanced 41.6 percent.
Nearly every food item, except uncooked beef steak, was more expensive last month. Beef and veal rose 8.2 percent, pork surged 9 percent, chicken soared 18.6 percent, and ham increased 9.6 percent.
Eggs spiked 33.1 percent, milk rose 16.4 percent, fruits and vegetables jumped 8.1 percent, and coffee swelled 15.8 percent.
On the energy front, fuel oil exploded by 98.5 percent. Gasoline surged 59.9 percent, electricity costs picked up 13.7 percent, and propane and kerosene edged up 26.1 percent.
New vehicles surged 11.4 percent, used cars and trucks jumped 7.1 percent, apparel increased 5.2 percent, and shelter climbed 5.6 percent. Medical care commodities and services swelled 5.5 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively.
“Today’s shockingly high consumer price inflation number does not bode well for our country’s economic outlook,” Desmond Lachman, economist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Epoch Times in an email.
It makes it likely that the Fed will keep raising interest rates and decreasing its “bloated balance sheet” aggressively, he added.
“The Fed will likely do so despite the growing signs of economic and financial market weakness both at home and abroad. That has to raise the risk of a hard economic landing before yearend and further turmoil in the equity and bond markets.”
Five things to know about the next US housing crisis
High home prices, scarcity and global uncertainty may be the perfect recipe for a United States housing crisis, economists tell Al Jazeera.
As real estate in the United States remains strong despite rising interest rates, market analysts interviewed by Al Jazeera predict that the next housing crisis will centre around Americans locked out of homeownership.
“That’s our big problem going forward,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, a research firm based in New York City, told Al Jazeera. “It’s not going to be a crash in house prices; it’s going to be getting people into homeownership so they can build wealth. I think younger people are going to have a great deal of difficulty.”
The coronavirus pandemic sparked a home-buying frenzy as millions of Americans across the economic spectrum, working from home, set out in search of more space. Low interest rates fuelled the purchasing spree.
“You had very few homes and a lot of people that were going to try to buy them,” said Nicole Bachaud, an economist at Zillow, a tech real-estate marketplace company in Seattle, Washington.
Purchasing a home has become much more expensive recently as the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates to fight runaway inflation. Rates for a 30-year mortgage recently neared 6 percent, after dropping to 2.65 percent in January 2021.
And real estate agents say they are already seeing cracks in the housing market.
“We’re seeing price reductions a little bit more frequently than we had before,” said David Berger, real estate agent at Compass, a broker agency in New York. “We’re seeing listings stay on the market a little longer than a year ago, even six months ago.”
Inflation, a bear market on Wall Street after the S&P 500 dropped 20 percent, free-falling cryptocurrencies, war in Ukraine, and high fuel and food prices may evoke memories of the 2007-2008 real estate crash, but experts Al Jazeera spoke to said the market is very different this time. Here are five things to know:
- Don’t expect a housing crash like the one we saw in the 2007-2008 financial crisis
In 2005 and 2006, US banks lent money to “low-quality borrowers” with very low credit scores, Zandi of Moody’s explained. Borrowers signed up for two-year adjustable mortgages, which meant that their interest rates would rise after two years due to their poor credit. Fraud by mortgage brokers, appraisers and real estate agents to secure loans was also prevalent.
- No, housing prices will not plummet
According to Zillow, the price of the average home in the US is $350,000 – up 20.7 percent from a year ago.
“A lot of people are thinking, ‘We’ve seen so much growth, it has to come down from here,’” Bachaud told Al Jazeera. “But what we’re really seeing is that things are just starting to balance out a little bit faster than we might have expected if interest rates hadn’t risen so quickly.”
- People are going to be less willing to sell their homes now, too
Home price appreciation is expected to remain in the double digits at least until the end of 2022, experts said. Currently, annual home appreciation is at 17 percent, according to the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank based in Washington, DC.
“But a 10 percent home appreciation is going to feel a lot different than the 20 percent homeowners have seen in the last two years,” Bachaud added.
As a result, people may be less likely to sell their houses.
- The American dream of owning a home may be a pipe dream for young people
Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, are being locked out of homeownership due to a lack of available housing, price increases, wage stagnation, and skyrocketing student debt.
“Young people are having a hard time saving for a down payment, typically 5 to 20 percent of the purchase price,” Zillow’s Bachaud said.
And with today’s higher interest rates, a monthly mortgage payment is more than 50 percent higher than it was a year ago.
During the pandemic, when the government eased monetary policy and doled out trillions of dollars to encourage spending and keep the economy afloat, 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest rates fell as low as 2.65 percent.
“Just consider the difference between a 3 percent interest rate and a 6 percent interest rate on a $350,000 home,” Bachaud explained. “That’s an extra $500 in interest that homeowners are expected to pay every month.”
Young people simply cannot compete with cash-rich investors, both institutional and foreign, who do not need a mortgage and are purchasing rental properties.
Rents have soared across the US since the pandemic. For example, the median rent in Dallas, Texas is $2,045, up $420 in the last year. In Miami, Florida, median rents are $4,000, up $1,500 compared to last year.
- There is a lot of uncertainty right now
The S&P 500 entered a bear market in 2022, having suffered its worst first six months since 1970. Cryptocurrencies plummeted, with the world’s largest digital coin, Bitcoin, losing more than 55 percent this year.
The Stock Exchange of the Future Has Arrived – With a Very Dark Past
On May 4, 2020, while Jay Clayton was the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Trump administration, the SEC granted approval for a new national stock exchange called MEMX, whose Wall Street megabank owners have admitted to a collective nine criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice.
JPMorgan Chase accounts for five of those felony counts; Goldman Sachs and a subsidiary account for two felony counts; Citigroup and UBS account for one felony count each.
The other owners of MEMX include: Bank of America, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, E*TRADE, Fidelity Investments, Flow Traders, Jane Street, Manikay Partners, Morgan Stanley, TD Ameritrade, Virtu Financial, Wells Fargo, and Williams Trading.
The SEC’s letter approving MEMX as a national securities exchange stated that the SEC was confident that MEMX would “prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices, promote just and equitable principles of trade…”; “not permit unfair discrimination between customers, issuers, or dealers…” and that it would “protect investors and the public interest.”
The SEC included that language in its letter because that is what is demanded of a Self Regulatory Organization (SRO), which is a designation given to all national stock exchanges in the United States.
Allowing admitted felons, that have repeatedly engaged in market rigging, to self-regulate and run their own stock exchange is nothing short of breathtaking, especially since five of the owners of MEMX were previously charged with price fixing on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Costco CEO: A Lot of People Are Experiencing a Recession Right Now and ‘Just Trying to Survive’
Costco CEO Craig Jelinek has warned that although the middle class is doing OK financially, people with less discretionary spending are having a difficult time in the current economy.
In a July 11 interview for CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program, Jelinek said that while overall “the consumer is not doing bad,” and the unemployment rate is down significantly, many are struggling with sky-high gas prices and the cost of living steadily rising.
“For a lot of people, right now, they are in a recession because they’re just trying to survive with just buying gas and making their house payments, rent payments,” Jelinek said.
However, the CEO noted that people from higher-income households still have “discretionary income to buy goods,” adding that Costco’s member base is generally middle to upper-middle class households.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen three months from now. Interest rates have gone down … but right at the moment, we think things aren’t so bad,” Jelinek added.
Jelinek’s comments come as President Joe Biden’s administration continues to downplay the possibility of a recession in the United States.
In June, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that while she expects the economy to slow down, she does not believe a recession is “inevitable.”
Biden himself has repeated those claims, telling The Associated Press in June that the United States is “in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
‘CRISPR 2.0’ Used To Change Patient’s DNA For First Time
Scientists are rewriting the code of life with a new technology that promises to cure inherited diseases by precisely correcting genetic typos. Known as base editing, the technology empowers researchers to pick a single letter amongst the three billion that compose the human genome, erase it, and write a new letter in its place.
Base editing is an updated version of the gene editing tool CRISPR, which has revolutionized life sciences research and is making strides in treating genetic blood and liver diseases. But some scientists think base editing, sometimes billed as CRISPR 2.0, could be safer and more precise than the original. And this summer, the sequel technology is being used in patients for the first time.
On Tuesday, the Boston biotech firm Verve Therapeutics announced that it had edited the DNA of a person with a genetic condition that causes high cholesterol and predisposes them to heart disease. The base editor is designed to tweak a gene in the liver, curtail the accumulation of cholesterol, and hopefully lower the risk of heart attacks.
Verve chief executive and cofounder Sekar Kathiresan likens the approach to “surgery without a scalpel.” Although the trial is focused on people with the genetic condition familial hypercholesterolemia, Kathiresan hopes that the one-and-done therapy may one day be used more broadly, to permanently reduce the risk of heart disease in millions of people with high cholesterol. “We are completely trying to rewrite how this disease is cared for,” he said.
Base editing is making its way into studies for other conditions as well. Earlier this year, researchers at University College London quietly began a clinical trial using base editors to engineer immune cell therapies for leukemia — likely the first time base editors were used as part of any experimental medicine. And Cambridge firm Beam Therapeutics plans to use base editors to treat people with genetic blood diseases in a trial that will launch later this year. The firm also has early stage programs for cancer, liver disease, immune disorders, and vision loss.
The powerful tool that could make all these treatments possible was first conceived by David Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in 2013, when he realized that CRISPR was not a panacea. CRISPR acts like a pair of molecular scissors that cut specific sequences of DNA. While that’s useful for turning problematic genes off, it doesn’t help to fix them.
“We really need ways to correct genes, not just disrupt them,” said Liu. “And that’s where base editing comes in.”
Liu’s base editors are modified versions of CRISPR that act like molecular erasers and pencils, swapping one of the four bases, or letters, of DNA for another. One version, developed by his postdoctoral researcher Alexis Komor in 2016, converts a C into a T. A second base editor, developed by his graduate student Nicole Gaudelli in 2017, changes an A into a G.
These two base editors could correct about 60 percent of all single-letter typos that cause rare genetic diseases, yet that’s not what scientists are doing first. The three clinical trials of the technology starting this year will use base editors to intentionally create typos.
The potential power of that strategy is clear in Verve’s clinical trial. Scientists have discovered multiple genes that raise cholesterol and increase the risk of heart attacks. People with genetic mutations in one of these genes, called PCSK9, have extremely low levels of LDL cholesterol — often called “bad cholesterol” — and are “remarkably protected against heart attack,” Kathiresan said. “Our idea was to develop a gene editing medicine that would mimic the natural situation.”
Verve uses base editors to introduce a mutation in the PCSK9 gene of patients with familial hypercholesterolemia. The results in monkeys have been remarkable, lowering levels of LDL cholesterol by about 70 percent after two weeks. The levels remained low for at least two years, Kathiresan said.
“This seems like a bigger effect than I would have predicted,” said Dr. Sarah de Ferranti, chief of ambulatory cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Even if it were half as effective, I still think that would be a huge game changer.”
HEALTH
There’s A 50/50 Chance You’re Not Getting Enough Of This Vitamin, Research Shows
You enjoy the occasional orange and you’re definitely not a 16th-century sailor lacking access to produce, so why should you be concerned about your vitamin C levels?
While your instinct to question the concern of true (as in, unmistakable) vitamin C deficiency (which affects only 6% of the American population) is valid, far more adults are insufficient in vitamin C than you may realize. And insufficiency in this essential nutrient teeters right beside full-on deficiency. (Talk about too close for comfort.)
Vitamin C insufficiency in the U.S.
It turns out a whopping 42% of U.S. adults are insufficient in vitamin C (per blood test results), while 118 million American adults are failing to consume adequate amounts of vitamin C daily from their diet alone—that’s nearly half of the population! Even though long, treacherous trips across the sea devoid of citrus fruits are far behind us, it seems we’re still not getting enough vitamin C in 2022.
In fact, even mindbodygreen’s co-founder and co-CEO, Colleen Wachob, has struggled to reach sufficient vitamin C levels. “As a healthy eater, I was shocked last year to find out from my doctor that I had hypovitaminosis C, aka vitamin C deficiency. It’s more common than you might think,” she shares.
According to Alexander Michels, Ph.D., clinical research coordinator at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, it can be difficult to recognize when your body isn’t getting enough of this essential vitamin.
“Vitamin C insufficiency is mainly a silent issue. If you’re not getting the recommended levels of vitamin C in your diet, it weakens your antioxidant defenses—a problem that presents with no obvious or immediate signs,”* he explains.
Why is vitamin C important?
Let’s review vitamin C’s purpose in the body so you can fully understand the shock value (and personal gravity) of these statistics.
Vitamin C is an essential nutrient that is extremely important in a number of physiological functions.
Most notably, perhaps, is its ability to scavenge free radicals and maintain oxidative stress balance (a vital process that protects your cells on a daily basis).*
In addition to its antioxidant activity, vitamin C aids in collagen production (which promotes both joint and skin health, to name a few, since collagen is ubiquitous in the human body), supports cognitive function, helps protect eyes from UV-induced oxidative stress, and more.*
Michels notes that low vitamin C intake can affect the proper function of the immune system and even have consequences for cardiovascular health.*
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Planned Parenthood Offers Transgender Hormone Therapy to Minors
Planned Parenthood is providing transgender hormone therapy across the country, with certain locations even serving minors who are attempting to change their sex.
America’s largest provider of abortions is also providing “gender affirming hormone therapy” to minors in California and Nevada and to those 18 years and older across the country.
Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which oversees a region spanning from mid-California to northern Nevada, offers “gender affirming hormone therapy” to those ages 16 and 17 with parental consent. For those under the age of 16, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte directs “transgender and gender diverse youth” to external clinics that do not have an age limit.
The Mar Monte branch of Planned Parenthood notes that their clinics provide services such as “Feminizing Hormone Therapy including estrogen and spironolactone” and “Masculinizing Hormone Therapy including testosterone.” It also provides hormone therapy self-injection instructions.
Similarly, the Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida also offers hormone therapy to minors under certain conditions and provides self-injection instructions.
Cancer-Linked Herbicide Chemical Found in Over 80 Percent of US Urine Samples: CDC Study
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have found a widely-used herbicide chemical that has been linked to cancer in the majority of urine samples collected from children and adults in the United States.
The health agency released the results of its National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) last month, which showed that over 80 percent of urine samples tested by the CDC contained glyphosate.
Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide and is the active ingredient in the popular Roundup brand, among others, as it is highly effective at managing invasive and noxious weeds.
NHANES, which began in the early 1960s, is a program of studies that are designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children across the country.
The survey found glyphosate in 1,885 of 2,310 urine samples collected from people aged 6 years and older in 2013 and 2014. Nearly a third of the samples came from kids, ranging in age from 6 to 18.
Food is the main route of exposure to glyphosate for children aged 18 and under, according to CDC researchers. Given that the herbicide is used as a pre-harvest drying agent, or crop desiccant—a chemical applied to crops to dry them out more quickly before harvest—the pesticide is highly likely to make its way into foods.
Since glyphosate was first registered, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has continuously reviewed and reassessed its safety and uses, most recently releasing an interim decision for registration review in January 2020.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
OPEC Expects to Increase Oil Output by 1 Million Barrels per Day in 2023
OPEC expects to increase oil output in 2023 by nearly 1 million barrels per day due to rising global demand.
“In 2023, expectations for healthy global economic growth amidst improvements in geopolitical developments, combined with expected improvements in the containment of COVID-19 in China, are expected to boost consumption of oil,” the organization said in its monthly report released on July 12.
Year over year, world oil demand is anticipated to rise by 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd), and overall demand is projected to reach 103 million bpd, OPEC said in its report.
Non-OPEC supply is expected to increase by 1.76 million bpd in 2023, with OPEC having to chip in an additional 940,000 barrels daily. In total, OPEC production is expected to be at 30.1 million barrels per day in 2023, up from 29.2 million barrels in 2022.
For 2022, total global oil demand is estimated to increase by 3.36 million bpd, with OPEC having to release an extra 1.1 million barrels of oil each day.
In the first quarter of 2022, OPEC was supposed to release 28.63 million bpd but could only produce 28.36 million bpd, a shortfall of 270,000 barrels. Things improved in the second quarter after OPEC produced 610,000 bpd more than expected.
In June, OPEC oil output rose by 234,000 bpd, driven by production increases in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Iran, and Angola.
With regard to the United States, OPEC expects total oil output to rise by 700,000 bpd in 2023, a slower growth when compared to the 880,000 bdp increase estimated for 2022.
Political Battle for Texas Heating Up With Soaring Temperatures
Democratic gubernatorial candidate slams Abbott over electrical grid strain
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke supports green energy, but that didn’t stop him from attacking Gov. Greg Abbott over potential blackouts tied to the state’s reliance on wind power.
With temperatures forecast to be well over 100 degrees in Texas on July 11, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) issued a conservation appeal to the public.
ERCOT, which is in charge of the Texas electrical grid, asked residents and businesses to voluntarily conserve electricity on July 11 between 2-8 p.m., when a reserve capacity shortage was predicted.
Wind turbines were projected to produce less than 10 percent of their capacity, according to the agency.
The decrease in wind production combined with extreme heat and record demand prompted the call for Texans to cut back on electricity use. The agency stated that no widespread outages were expected.
California Cities Ban New Gas Stations as Price Tops $6.10 per Gallon
An increasing number of California cities are banning the construction of new gas stations despite critics saying that stations are necessary for the vast majority of drivers and commuters.
“We didn’t know what we were doing, actually,” Petaluma Councilwoman D’Lynda Fischer told the Los Angeles Times Monday of a citywide ban on new stations. “We didn’t know we were the first in the world when we banned gas stations.”
Since that ban, four other cities in the Bay Area have done the same. They include Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, American Canyon, and Calistoga.
And some elected officials in Los Angeles County are pushing to bar the construction of gas stations in the county, which has 13 million residents.
“We are ending oil drilling in Los Angeles. We are moving to all-electric new construction. And we are building toward fossil fuel free transportation. Our great and influential city, which grew up around the automobile, is the perfect place to figure out how to move off the gas-powered car,” Councilman Paul Koretz, a Democrat, told the LA Times.
Koretz, in the interview, claimed that a ban would be a step toward Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to end the sale of gas-powered vehicles in California by 2035.
“Given Gov. Newsom’s timeline to end the sale of gas vehicles by 2035, gas stations are a dying business,” Koretz said.
GARDENING, FARMING & HOMESTEADING
COVID RELATED NEWS
Fauci Likely to Birth His Own COVID Variant After Paxlovid
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a warning about the potential for COVID-19 rebound after Paxlovid treatment
Dr. Anthony Fauci took Paxlovid for COVID-19, tested negative, then developed worsened symptoms, known as COVID-19 rebound; he then took a second course of the drug
People who take Paxlovid can still transmit COVID-19 to others, even if they’re asymptomatic
Two separate studies suggest Paxlovid is causing SARS-CoV-2 to mutate and develop resistance to the drug
Despite the many questions regarding Paxlovid’s association with rebound infections and mutations, Pfizer is moving ahead and seeking full approval of the drug from the FDA
Fauci: Vaccines Don’t Protect ‘Overly Well’ Against Infection
Tuesday on FNC’s “Your World,” White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said the COVID-19 vaccines did not perform “over well” against infection of the virus.
Instead, he argued the vaccine helped protect from the symptoms of the virus.
“Let me ask you about this because when people heard, oh, my gosh, this happened to Dr. Anthony Fauci, everyone knows someone who’s gotten this again, and sometimes again after that,” host Neil Cavuto said. “And they’re beginning to wonder about the regimen for treating it, whether you get two vaccination shots, whether you get a booster, another booster. They just don’t know. What do you tell them?”
Well, that’s a great question. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify it, Neil,” Fauci replied. “There’s no doubt that the vaccines themselves, particularly vaccine plus a booster at the appropriate time when you become eligible for a booster, for more than one booster — if you’re over 50 years old, you get eligibility for two boosters.
“One of the things that’s clear from the data is that, even though vaccines, because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus, don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection, they protect quite well against severe disease leading to hospitalization and death,” he added. “And I believe that’s the reason, Neil, why, at my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease,” he added. “And that’s very likely why I had a relatively mild course.”
Dr. Malone Warns of Immune Imprinting After Fauci Floats Second Booster Shots
Dr. Robert Malone is warning of immune imprinting after Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled his backing for second COVID-19 vaccine boosters for all Americans aged 5 and older.
“I couldn’t design a vaccine if I wanted to, to be more likely to drive immune imprinting,” Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA technology the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built on, told The Epoch Times.
Immune imprinting refers to a phenomenon whereby initial exposure to a virus strain may prevent the body from producing enough neutralizing antibodies against a new viral strain.
The COVID-19 vaccines currently in circulation are based on the Wuhan strain of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.
A number of strains have emerged and become dominant since the Wuhan strain was prevalent, including the currently dominant Omicron variant.
Researchers with Imperial College London and the United Kingdom Health Security Agency found that people who received three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and were infected with the Wuhan strain had a lower level of protection against later strains when compared to people who had not been infected. Other groups, including researchers with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have found the vaccines much less effective against Omicron subvariants than the Wuhan strain.
A number of studies have found negative effectiveness among vaccinated groups. That means those who get vaccinated are more likely to get infected.
In some areas, the vaccinated account for a majority of those infected or in hospitals or dying with COVID-19. In Louisiana, for example, 70 percent of the deaths recorded between June 23 and June 29 were among the vaccinated.
The details in the stories of the families whose loved ones died in the hospital because of what they call “death protocols” are strikingly similar.
The patients were all scorned because of their unvaccinated status and were given a combination of sedatives and the antiviral drug remdesivir. They were also kept isolated, malnourished, and ultimately put on a ventilator before dying.
After the deaths of their loved ones, the families were left in confusion and with inconceivable stories that many don’t believe—stories of chilling administrative cruelty.
The FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation (FFFF) has gathered about 200 of these stories through its COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project to build an online database of testimonies for the purpose of surveying accounts of treatment for the sick unvaccinated and prosecuting any cases involving alleged abuse.
“They are horror stories,” Carolyn Blakeman, media director and task force coordinator for FFFF, told The Epoch Times.
Many of these hospital deaths occurred in 2021, after COVID-19 vaccine mandates were announced by President Joe Biden.
In some cases, people who didn’t want to take the experimental vaccine were being fired from their jobs, while unvaccinated patients in hospitals were being treated much differently than their vaccinated counterparts.
The phrase “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” was used by public officials to place blame on those who chose to not take vaccines that later proved to not be as safe and effective as touted.
Reports from people such as Scott Schara in Wisconsin and Anne Quiner in Minnesota began to reveal patterns of behavior by hospital administrators that suggested medical discrimination and protocols that many, such as Schara and Quiner, have alleged led to the barbaric deaths of their loved ones.
To grasp how health officials, physicians, and citizens were falling in lockstep with what appeared to be a global trance, Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer of mRNA technology, presented the idea that many have fallen into “mass formation psychosis.”
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