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House Democrat Snagged a Bunch of Oracle Stock Just Before TikTok Deal Was Announced

President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order affirming technology giant Oracle would play a leading — and potentially lucrative — role in TikTok’s pending U.S. spinoff from Chinese company ByteDance.

Just days before that, a Democratic congressman from Louisiana was busy buying up shares of Oracle, according to a congressional financial disclosure reviewed by NOTUS.

Rep. Cleo Fields purchased between $80,000 and $200,000 worth of Oracle shares across three different trades — on Sept. 17, 18 and 23, the disclosure document indicates. (Lawmakers are only required to disclose the values of stock trades in broad ranges.) News of Oracle’s participation in the TikTok deal first broke on Sept. 22.

Fields is a member of the House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, which has jurisdiction over laws and government programs affecting financial markets and the securities industry. He also serves on the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, prohibits members of Congress from using nonpublic information to inform personal financial decisions.

It is unclear what Fields knew about Oracle’s participation in the TikTok deal — if he knew anything — or whether Fields initiated the Oracle stock purchases himself or had a financial adviser make the purchases on his behalf.

Fields’ congressional office acknowledged NOTUS’ requests for comment but did not otherwise respond.

In July, after Fields went on a June stock-purchasing spree worth between $3.56 million and $11.07 million, Fields’ office told OpenSecrets that the congressman “has complied with all rules outlined by the House of Representatives.” Fields represents a congressional district that stretches from Shreveport to Baton Rouge.

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Defending the Summary Execution of Suspected Drug Smugglers, Trump Declares an ‘Armed Conflict’

This week, President Donald Trump sought to justify his new policy of summarily executing suspected drug smugglers by declaring that his targets are “unlawful combatants” in an “armed conflict” with the United States. But that terminology, which Trump deployed in a notice to Congress, does not change the reality that he has authorized the military murder of criminal suspects who pose no immediate threat of violence.

So far, Trump has ordered three attacks on speedboats in the Caribbean Sea that he said were carrying illegal drugs, killing a total of 17 people. The first attack was a September 2 drone strike that killed 11 people on a boat that reportedly “appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it.” On September 15, U.S. forces blew up another speedboat in the Caribbean, killing three people whom Trump described as “confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela.” Four days later, Trump announced a third attack that he said killed three people “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” who were “conducting narcotrafficking.”

Contrary to Trump’s implication, that designation does not turn murder into self-defense. “The State Department designation merely triggers the government’s ability to implement asset controls and other economic sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and other statutes,” Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman noted after the first attack on a suspected drug boat. “It has nothing to do with authorizing [the Defense Department] to engage in targeted killings…which is why the U.S. military doesn’t go around killing members of all designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”

According to White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, Trump’s literalization of the war on drugs is fully consistent with international law. “The president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores,” she told The New York Times this week. “He is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”

That framing is logically, morally, and legally nonsensical. The truth is that Americans like to consume psychoactive substances that legislators have deemed intolerable, and criminal organizations are happy to profit from that demand. The fact that Americans who use illegal drugs sometimes die as a result—a hazard magnified by the prohibition policy that Trump is so eager to enforce—does not transform the people who supply those drugs into murderers.

If it did, alcohol producers and distributors, who supply a product implicated in an estimated 178,000 deaths a year in the United States, would likewise be guilty of murder. And by Trump’s logic, they would be subject to the death penalty based on nothing more than the allegation that they were involved in the alcohol trade.

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Immortal Monkeys? Not Quite, But Scientists Just Reversed Aging With ‘Super’ Stem Cells

In a discovery that may have profound impacts on aging, scientists in Beijing have taken a dramatic step toward what once seemed impossible: making old animals biologically young again. The study was published last month in the journal Cell.

By fortifying human stem cells with a gene long linked to longevity, they rejuvenated aged monkeys – improving memory, protecting bones, calming inflammation, and restoring youthful activity across dozens of organs.

The work, while still in animals, is among the most compelling demonstrations yet that aging in primates might be reversible.

The Science Behind the Breakthrough

At the heart of the study are mesenchymal progenitor cells (MPCs) – a type of stem-like cell found in bone marrow and connective tissues. These cells act as the body’s maintenance crew, capable of turning into bone, cartilage, fat, and muscle cells, while also secreting factors that help nearby tissues repair themselves.

But like all cells, MPCs age with us and eventually succumb to senescence  a state of permanent retirement. Senescent cells don’t divide anymore. Worse, they pump out inflammatory molecules, scar tissue signals, and other “toxic chatter” that accelerate aging in neighboring cells. In effect, senescent cells spread decline.

Upgrading the Repair System with FoxO3

To overcome this exhaustion, researchers turned to FoxO3, a protein known as a longevity gene regulator. In healthy young cells, FoxO3 acts like a switchboard operator, turning on DNA repair pathways, antioxidant defenses, and stress-resistance programs. In older cells, FoxO3 activity wanes – leaving them vulnerable to damage.

Hydra, a freshwater organism capable of regenerating indefinitely, rely heavily on FoxO to keep their stem cells active. Humans share this same protein, and genetic studies link variants of FOXO3 to exceptional longevity in people.

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Residents take matters into own hands and launch ‘Scooby-Doo’ hunt for ‘serial killer’ after 22 bodies found

Houston residents launched their own ‘Scooby-Doo’ style investigations to find an unconfirmed ‘serial killer’ after the discovery of six bodies since September 15 bringing the total found in the city’s bayous area to 22 this year.

Rumors of a mystery mass murderer came to a peak in the community in late September after officials announced that five dead bodies had been found over a five-day period.

Police said that had brought Houston’s total for the year to 14, but KPRC-TV reported using medical examiner records that the real number for 2025 was actually 22. 

Various bayous scattered around the city were listed as their places of death.

This latest development came as Houston locals launched their own far-fetched efforts to track down the supposed serial killer.

TikTok user Darius Stcyr said: ‘Let’s set up a trap. As you know, we have a serial killer on the loose.’

He continued: ‘Just the thought that could possibly be my baby girl one day [who] gets snatched up and found in a bayou. That really bothers me, you know? 

‘The police is clearly having a problem doing their job. I’m not understanding after the first body. Why aren’t there people staking out and watching?’ 

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A Government Shutdown Isn’t Really a Shutdown. Most Federal Employees Are Still Working and Will Get Paid.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats failed to pass a continuing resolution to maintain government funding at current levels on Tuesday. As a result, the federal government “shut down” on Wednesday morning. Some federal services and agencies might be put on hold, but the vast majority of the federal government, including all of its mandatory wealth transfers and obligatory payments, will remain unaffected.

During the shutdown, agencies that don’t fund themselves or haven’t received additional funding via a standalone bill must furlough non-excepted employees and stop their non-essential operations. Employees who render “essential services related to national security and public safety, like inpatient and emergency medical care, air traffic control, law enforcement, border security, disaster aid, and power grid maintenance” are excepted employees who will continue working (though these services may face disruptions), according to Rep. Ami Bera (D–Calif.). Also excepted are the 2.07 million “active-duty military personnel, as well as reserve component personnel on federal active duty, [who] must continue to report and carry out assigned duties,” explains the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). However, nearly 407,000 of the roughly 741,000 civilians employed by the Defense Department are expected not to be furloughed, as they are either excepted or not funded through annual appropriations.*

In addition to nearly 3 million Americans, uniformed and civilian, working for the Pentagon, there were 2.91 million non-military federal employees in August, per the latest data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which, like the Bureau of Economic Analysis, is not one of the agencies spared the shutdown’s effects). Of these, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 750,000 could be furloughed each day of the shutdown, at a daily cost of $400 million.

During a government shutdown, the largest expenditures are nondiscretionary and, as such, remain untouched: These include entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as interest payments on the debt. Altogether, mandatory spending and net interest payments made up 74 percent of the federal budget in FY 2024. Meanwhile, thanks to the funding provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Aviation Administration are also unaffected, according to The Washington Post.

If a government shutdown were what it sounds like, libertarians and supporters of small government would have reason to celebrate. But it’s not: The biggest contributors to the deficit are largely unaffected. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of federal employees are on vacation, not rendering services to the taxpayer. While this vacation is technically unpaid, it’s only so for the time being: After the 2018 government shutdown, Congress passed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which requires all federal employees who are furloughed or required to work without pay during a shutdown to receive back pay once federal funding resumes.

The lion’s share of government spending is utterly unaffected by the legislature failing to pass a spending bill, and that’s the real problem: The federal government is on autopilot, and its profligacy has the country slouching toward a fiscal crisis that Congress appears entirely unwilling to steer us away from.

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The secret cult caves of polyamorous Mormon ‘prophet’ with 85 wives are seen for first time

An expert has revealed what’s hidden inside secret caves in Arizona created by the self-proclaimed prophet of a polygamous cult.

In preparation for the end of the world, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, led by Warren Jeffs, began digging caves underneath the compound that housed his enormous ‘family’.  

Jeffs is currently serving a life sentence for aggravated sexual assault and a further 20 years for another count of sexual assault.  

‘Not only were they preparing for the end of the world from a religious standpoint, but they were temporarily preparing for it,’ veteran investigator Mike King told NewsNation.

‘And they started digging caves that I heard about all the years I was investigating out there, but I could never prove (their existence), I could never find it when I talked to members of the FLDS.’

The church, a radical Mormon denomination of around 13,000, had mostly previously denied the existence of the caves.

Members told King ‘we’ve heard about it, but [the caves] don’t exist’.

‘I would talk to leaders in the church who fell away and said, “No, it doesn’t exist,”‘ King added. 

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Ex-FBI explosives expert, famed whistleblower says bureau’s J6 pipe bombs lab analysis ‘a mess’

Aformer FBI scientist, explosives expert and respected whistleblower—who exposed forensic fraud at the bureau’s national laboratory—says the Jan. 6 pipe bombs don’t look like they were made to explode and the FBI’s original lab analysis needs to be probed by Director Kash Patel and Congress. 

“Frankly, this report is a mess,” Fred Whitehurst, the first successful FBI whistleblower in history, told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

Whitehurst’s landmark whistleblowing in the 1990s exposed forensic fraud at the FBI crime laboratory, which eventually subjected it to outside oversight for the first time. During his service at the FBI, he was regarded by the bureau as the foremost expert on explosives. He led the probe into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing during which he uncovered evidence that the FBI was manipulating forensic evidence. 

Just the News reported on Monday that the January 6 pipe bomb analysis conducted by the FBI’s explosives laboratory found the devices were filled with chemical building blocks of black powder, each was equipped with a 60-minute kitchen timer, and each had destructive potential. However, neither device exploded, and they were discovered about 16 hours after the FBI claimed they were planted outside both the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters. 

A look at the bombs’ explosive mixtures, fusing

But, Whitehurst says, the FBI analysis obscures what he believes is the true impression of the FBI’s explosives analysis, that neither bomb was “going to blow up.” 

“The materials—potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal—if they’re not in the right proportions, and I mean the right proportions, and I don’t see where anybody has told me that they are in the right proportion, they’re not going to blow up,” Whitehurst said. “You might as well have had a crock of flour in that pipe.”

“And so to say that it was … a destructive device, without knowing that. If they had known that, they would have … just definitely said it,” he added.

Whitehurst also raised questions about the pipe bombs’ reported “fusing system,” which utilized bunches of steel wool in each device. The explosives expert said that using that amount of material would likely render the devices inoperable. 

“The reason you use steel wool, at least one or two little strands of it, is because the circuit going through the larger wires doesn’t really heat them. But, when you’ve got that same voltage across a small wire, you got the same current you’re putting through it, it heats it up, and it catches, you know, catches on fire—it gets it closed,” Whitehurst said. 

“But, what I’m seeing in the pictures is, is this wad of steel wool,” he continued. “There’s enough steel wool there… all it’s going to do at the most is warm that steel wool. It’s not, you know, from my doing that… it’s not going to glow at all. It’s just going to get a little bit warm.” 

“So the device that they put there, the pictures they show me, that’s not going to be a fuse,” he concluded.  

Both devices never exploded and were discovered about 16 hours after the FBI claimed they were planted outside both major party headquarters. 

The document package turned over by Patel to the House Judiciary Committee and its special Jan. 6 investigative subcommittee also raised significant new questions about the FBI’s original timeline, Just the News reported on Monday. 

You can read the FBI’s pipe bomb analysis below:

File

FBILabAnalysisJ6PipeBombs.pdf

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Erasing Encephalitis — Why Vaccine Brain Injuries Became Autism

I’ve long believed that public relations (propaganda) is one of the most powerful but invisible forces in our society. Again and again, I’ve watched professional PR firms create narratives that most of the country believes, regardless of how much it goes against their self-interests.

What’s most remarkable is that despite the exact same tactics being used repeatedly on the public, most people simply can’t see it. When you try to point out exactly how they’re being bamboozled by yet another PR campaign, they often can’t recognize it — instead insisting you’re paranoid or delusional.

That’s why one of my major goals in this publication has been to expose this industry. Once you understand their playbook — having “independent” experts push sculpted language that media outlets then repeat — it becomes very easy to spot, and saves you from falling into the traps most people do. The COVID-19 vaccines, for instance, were facilitated by the largest PR campaign of our lifetime.

One of the least appreciated consequences of this industry is that many of our cultural beliefs ultimately originate from PR campaigns.1 This explains why so many widely believed things are “wrong” — if a belief were actually true, it wouldn’t require a massive PR investment to instill in society. Due to PR’s power, the viewpoints it instills tend to crowd out other cultural beliefs.

In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at what’s behind one of those implanted beliefs: “vaccines don’t cause autism.”

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Conservatives, NDP want to know if Liberals ‘lied’ about Irish bands entry ban

The immigration minister faces growing opposition pressure to clarify if Irish hip-hop group Kneecap is banned from Canada, following a since-dismissed UK terrorism charge.

NDP MP Jenny Kwan, the party’s immigration critic, urged Immigration Minister Lena Diab on Thursday to confirm whether the group is banned, after officials repeatedly refused to answer for almost two weeks.

This follows Conservative demands for a clear explanation from Liberal MP Vince Gasparro, the parliamentary secretary for combating crime, who made the announcement but has not yet clarified his reasoning.

On September 19, Gasparro denied Kneecap member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh entry over legal troubles abroad. It’s unclear if the ban still stands.

The band states it has not received official notice of an entry ban or visa denial, according to media reports.

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Armed Illegal Alien Freed Five Times Under Biden ARRESTED Outside Houston ICE Office

On October 2, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the arrest of Jose Andres Rodriguez-Torres, a criminal alien from Mexico, who was taken into custody outside an ICE Office after officers discovered he was armed with a knife and in possession of a crack pipe.

Rodriguez-Torres’ arrest is not an isolated incident—it is the culmination of years of repeated illegal entries and criminal conduct that have gone unchecked due to weak enforcement under the Biden Administration. 

This individual has crossed the border illegally five times, a felony offense, and despite a prior encounter with ICE following a burglary arrest in Seattle last year, he was released rather than deported. 

That decision allowed him to continue threatening communities until this latest incident.

According to ICE, Rodriguez-Torres approached the restricted employee parking lot at the Houston facility before officers confronted him. 

He admitted he was from Mexico, became tense, and dropped to the ground. Officers then observed a sheathed knife on his waist. 

A search revealed a glass pipe commonly used to smoke crack cocaine.

Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin underscored the gravity of the situation: “A criminal illegal alien—released by the Biden Administration and previously removed four times—armed with a knife in a restricted parking lot outside of an ICE office in Houston. These are the types of threats and risks our officers face every single day as they work to remove the worst of the worst.” 

McLaughlin added that just the same day, ICE officers elsewhere faced two separate incidents where criminal illegal aliens used vehicles as weapons. 

“This violence against federal law enforcement MUST END,” she said.

The newly released immigration history of Rodriguez-Torres underscores how broken enforcement has become. 

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