Blog

Gunmen kill Mexico city councillor during basketball game

Gunmen burst into a sports hall in central Mexico and shot dead a local government official attending an amateur basketball game on July 5, local authorities said.

Families and children had gathered at the sports centre in the violent state of Guanajuato, where Mr Ignacio Alejandro Roaro, a city council secretary in Apaseo el Grande, was killed.

The city council “strongly condemns the treacherous, despicable, and cowardly attack that occurred this Saturday, in which our colleague and friend, city council secretary Ignacio Alejandro Roaro, lost his life”, it said in a statement.

Local media said an armed man had been arrested.

Guanajuato is a thriving industrial hub and home to several popular tourist destinations, but it is also Mexico’s deadliest state due to gang turf wars, according to official homicide statistics.

In June, 11 people were shot dead and about 20 others injured in a shooting targeting a neighbourhood party in Irapuato, about 80km west of Apaseo el Grande.

A month earlier, 17 bodies were found by investigators in an abandoned house in Irapuato.

Keep reading

US Reassesses Relations With Colombia As Crime And Cocaine Surge Under Leftist Regime 

The Trump administration recalled its top diplomat in Colombia, John McNamara, for “urgent consultations” on Thursday in response to what it described as “baseless and reprehensible” statements from senior Colombian officials. While the State Department did not specify which remarks prompted the move, it indicated that further actions would follow. In response, Colombian President Gustavo Petro recalled his country’s ambassador to the U.S., citing the need to reassess the bilateral relationship.

Tensions between the two nations have been rising, exacerbated by the recent shooting of opposition Senator Miguel Uribe, which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio blamed on inflammatory rhetoric from Colombia’s far-left government.

Earlier in the year, President Petro refused to accept deportation flights from the U.S., prompting President Trump to threaten tariffs and sanctions; however, that dispute was ultimately defused. Colombian Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia resigned amid the diplomatic fallout. 

The deterioration in bilateral relations comes as Colombia’s security situation has deteriorated under President Petro’s leftist regime. Once a close ally of the U.S., Colombia has descended into crime and chaos, with coca cultivation surging. 

Coca cultivation rose 10% last year to 253,000 hectares — enough to produce more than 2,600 tons of the drug. The National Liberation Army, or ELN, capitalized on the boom, seizing full control of the Catatumbo region near the Venezuelan border, one of the world’s most prolific drug corridors. -Bloomberg

Petro’s “total peace” policy—centered on negotiating with drug cartels—has deeply frustrated the Trump administration, which has spent several months seeking to dismantle cartel command-and-control networks across the Americas to stop the flow of illicit drugs into the U.S. 

Keep reading

Inside the cyber-scam capital of the world — and modern slavery in the internet age

The message from Alice was blunt: “I don’t trust you. You are one of them, right? You all just want to sell me like some animal.”

Alice’s hostile reaction wasn’t completely surprising to Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li and Mark Bo, the co-authors of “Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds” (Verso), out July 8. “Like the dozens of other survivors we met in the following months,” they write, “her harrowing experience had left her unable to trust anyone.”

Alice (not her real name), a Taiwanese single mom, had recently escaped from a Cambodian scam compound where she’d been raped, beaten, sold multiple times and nearly forced into a brothel. 

She’d been lured to the town of Sihanoukville by a friend who promised her a legitimate job, and even paid for her visa and flight. What awaited Alice, however, was not a front-desk position but forced criminal labor in an online fraud mill. 

“The supervisor informed her that she had been sold there to conduct online scams,” the authors write, “and that she would not be allowed to leave until she had earned enough money for the company.” 

When she resisted, the supervisor threatened Alice with a stun gun and “said that if she did not comply, he would lock her up in a room and let several men rape her,” the authors write. “Which is exactly what happened soon after.”

Keep reading

The Green Lobby’s Dishonest Crusade for Solar and Wind

You wake up to an alarm, flick on the light, brew coffee, and drive to work. Every step requires energy – the stuff that shares the coin of physical reality with matter, the E in E = MC2.  It keeps homes warm, food fresh and economies running. 

Supplying 80% of the world’s primary energy, coal, oil and natural gas make up the lifeblood of modern civilization. Yet, there continue to be calls for the abandonment of these fuels without any feasible, scalable replacement in sight. 

It is dishonest for “green” lobbyists to claim that electricity from wind and solar can replace fossil fuels, when currently most of the energy used in the world is not even in the form of electricity.

Electricity represents only about 20% of global final energy consumption. That means four-fifths of the world’s energy use comes from fuels that power ships, planes, trucks and industrial furnaces. Oil fuels vehicles, natural gas provides heat for homes and industry, and coal is critically important for the manufacture of steel from iron.

Demand for hydrocarbons is expected to exceed that of electricity for many decades.

You’ve probably heard it before: “Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels.” This is a falsehood supported by a misleading metric – the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). When Mark Twain spoke of “lies, damn lies and statistics,” he had LCOE in mind.

LCOE purports to present an apples-to-apples comparison between various energy sources. However, the measure is meaningless because it ignores key costs such as those of providing backup power to compensate for the intermittency of solar and wind. Something must be available to step up when the wind and sun are not available for power generation.

While it may be true that sunshine and wind are “free,” converting them to a form of energy that works with modern power grids and integrating them into the 24-hour operation of electrical systems supplying millions of customers is difficult and expensive. 

A 2022 study by Robert Idel exposes LCOE’s flaws.

First, LCOE assumes constant output, but solar and wind produce only 20%-30% of their designed capacity, compared to 80%-90% for plants running on coal, natural gas or nuclear fuel.

Second, integrating solar and wind requires expensive infrastructure, including new transmission lines between population centers and remote industrial installations of wind turbines or solar panels or to natural gas plants standing by as backups. 

Third, LCOE ignores more subtle but, nonetheless, important operational considerations. For instance, as the output of solar and wind rises and falls with changes in the weather or daily westward progression of the sun, fossil fuel plants must ramp up or down, reducing efficiency and raising costs.

The rosy numbers of LCOE don’t reflect the reality of electricity bills. In California, where so-called renewables make up more than 50% of electricity generation, residential rates hit 30 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023 – more than double the U.S. average.

Higher energy prices infiltrate every corner of life – manufacturing, logistics, heating, cooling, farming, data storage and more.

Keep reading

NY Times Gets Attacked by the Left for Publishing Story About Zohran Mamdani Claiming He Was Black on Columbia University Application

As you may have noticed, the activist left gets very angry when the media goes after a Democrat that they like. The left simply isn’t used to it, because it almost never happens.

This week, the liberal New York Times dropped a bombshell on NYC communist and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, exposing the fact that he described himself as black on his application to Columbia University.

This outraged a number of people on the left. How dare the New York Times perform an act of journalism that negatively affects their side?!

FOX News reports:

NY Times addresses backlash over report on NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani’s college application

The New York Times seems to be in damage control after the paper’s story about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani identifying as Asian and African American on his college application upset some of its readers, leading to an editor from the outlet attempting to clear up the controversy on social media on Friday.

The article claimed that Mamdani, when asked his race on his 2009 college application to Columbia University, checked the boxes for “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” in their article published on Thursday.

The Times’ assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust, Patrick Healy, put out a lengthy statement on X the following day after receiving “reader feedback” on the article…

Mamdani’s application was made available to The Times after a cyberattack on Columbia University in late June led to some of the school’s sensitive information being exposed to the hackers.

Keep reading

Austin, Texas: Over Three Dozen Bodies Found in Lake Since 2022, Prompting Fears of Serial Killer

Suicides, simple accidents, a deadly combination of alcohol and deep water — or a clever serial killer on the loose in the Texas state capitol?

That’s the question haunting Austin, Texas locals after the dead body count in a reservoir named Lady Bird Lake climbed to 38 recovered corpses since 2022 when another man’s body was pulled from its waters last month.

The Austin Police Department (APD) told Fox News Digital that detectives don’t suspect foul play, and the department is working to determine whether the body recovered is a 17-year-old kayaker reported missing.

But the discovery of yet another dead body has reignited fears that a serial killer is hunting male victims in Austin and disposing their bodies in or around the lake. The reservoir was first created in the 1960s as a cooling pond for a power plant but is now used primarily for recreation and flood control.

Local authorities downplay the possibility of foul play.

However, Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist and expert trial witness, told Fox News Digital that the theory can’t be so easily dismissed.

“The denials by law enforcement and other authorities that these cases are murders or the work of a serial killer are premature,” she said. “They don’t want the public to panic about a possible serial killer, so they are making light of all the deaths.”

According to data obtained by Fox 7, of the nearly three dozen bodies found, 30 have reportedly been men, with approximately 60 percent between 30 and 49 years old. Fox 7 reported:

“In the past three years, the causes of death have been mainly attributed to accidental drownings. Second is suicide, as well as drug overdoses, and natural causes. Only one case has been ruled a murder; about half a dozen of these cases remain unknown.”

Lieberman said such statistics often don’t tell the whole story:

One cannot rule out that a so-called ‘accidental’ drowning isn’t the result of a murderer unless there were witnesses. Murderers can use drowning as their [modus operandi]. Similarly, suicides must be proven, not just assumed if someone has been depressed.

The psychiatrist added that date rape drugs can render even a man easy prey for a thief or a killer, citing water as an attractive way to dispose of a body:

Water can cause decomposition of the body and can wash away evidence, from fingerprints to DNA. If the water has movement, such as a river or stream, it can propel the body far from the actual scene of the crime, making it more complicated to find the killer. Some killers choose water-based crime scenes with the hopes that their murder will be misconstrued as drowning, which can make it harder, because it can be difficult to differentiate drowning from murder.

In a 2023 statement, Fox Digital reported, APD tried to dispense of public fears that a serial killer was targeting men in the area. The department cited alcohol mixed with a large body of water as the culprit, with the majority of deaths occurring after the surrounding park’s closing time.

Keep reading

U.S. Air Force Halts Musk’s SpaceX Rocket Project on Pacific Atoll After Leftist Activists Raise Alarm Over Seabirds

The U.S. Air Force has scrapped its plans to test hypersonic rocket cargo deliveries using Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets from the remote Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean—all to protect a few seabird nests.

The decision, first reported by Stars and Stripes, comes just weeks after Reuters ran a story quoting so-called “experts” who raised concerns that the high-speed delivery project could disturb nesting tropical birds on the uninhabited atoll.

The Air Force had intended to use the atoll—an uninhabited U.S. territory located 800 miles southwest of Hawaii—as a launch and landing site for experimental rocket systems capable of delivering 100 tons of cargo anywhere on Earth in under 90 minutes.

The implications for battlefield logistics and humanitarian aid were monumental. But that vision has now been grounded.

Why? Because a handful of environmentalists raised concerns over the nesting patterns of tropical birds on the atoll.

A petition opposing the program gathered fewer than 4,000 signatures. In response, the Air Force initially promised an environmental review. Now, they’re outright exploring new locations.

Keep reading

Virginia Enacts Law To Ban Nazi Symbols, Protects Sacred Swastika From Misrepresentation

Virginia has officially enacted House Bill 2783, which criminalises the display of Nazi symbols, including Hitler’s Hakenkreuz (Hooked Cross), when used with the intent to intimidate. The law, effective from July 1, makes such acts a Class 6 felony. What makes this legislation particularly historic is a culturally sensitive amendment that clearly differentiates Hitler’s Hakenkreuz, a symbol of hate, from the sacred Swastika, an ancient symbol of peace and prosperity revered by nearly two billion Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and other communities worldwide.

The final version of the Bill marks a major victory for minority communities in Virginia, particularly after a strong advocacy effort led by the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) and allied groups. “We are pleased to see how Virginia is tackling growing hate while being sensitive to minority groups that revere the Swastika,” said Nikunj Trivedi, President of CoHNA.

He added, “Now the need of the hour is for the media, law enforcement, and educational institutions in Virginia to update their language to reflect this critical nuance and ensure fair treatment for all.”

Evolution of HB2783

Initially, HB2783 had a major cultural oversight—wrongly referring to the Nazi symbol as the Swastika. In reality, Hitler never used the word ‘Swastika’; his symbol was the ‘Hakenkreuz’—German for ‘Hooked Cross.’ The Bill’s early wording incorrectly suggested that the Nazi emblem was “commonly known as the Swastika,” inadvertently linking a sacred symbol to one of history’s darkest ideologies.

Keep reading

NASA confirms that mysterious object shooting through the solar system is an ‘interstellar visitor’ — and it has a new name

NASA scientists have confirmed that a mysterious object shooting toward us through the solar system is an “interstellar object” — only the third of its kind ever seen. Experts have also given the cosmic interloper an official name, and revealed new information about its origins and trajectory.

News of the extrasolar entity, initially dubbed A11pl3Z, broke on Tuesday (July 1), when NASA and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) both listed it as a confirmed object. It was first discovered in data collected between June 25 and June 29 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which automatically scans the night sky using telescopes in Hawaii, Chile and South Africa. Multiple telescopes across the world have subsequently spotted the object in observation data that date back to June 14.

The object is traveling toward the sun extremely fast, at around 152,000 mph (245,000 km/h), and observations suggest that it is set on an extremely flat and straight trajectory, unlike anything else in the solar system. This led many experts to speculate that it originated from beyond the sun’s gravitational influence and has enough momentum to shoot straight through our cosmic neighborhood without slowing down.

Keep reading

Report: European Union to Sanction Israel Next Week Over Gaza War

The European Union is planning to sanction Israel next week over the Gaza conflict.

The European elitists found violations of human rights obligations by Israel in Gaza.

Israel has been at war with Hamas since the terror group stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The terror group slaughtered families in their homes, targeted a rave party with hundreds of young adults, gunned down the young party-goers, and kidnapped hundreds of Jews on their way back to Gaza.

Israel retaliated with the promise to destroy Hamas in Gaza. The international community believes Israel has committed human rights violations in the process.

Now, EU officials are finalizing plans to sanction Israel this coming week.

Via Reuters.

However, deep divisions among member states suggest that only a few of the proposed measures—if any—are likely to be implemented.

According to an internal EU report on its trade agreement with Israel, seen by Euractiv last month, the bloc found “indications of violations” of human rights obligations.

In response, the European External Action Service (EEAS) is drafting a document outlining possible measures. EU ambassadors are expected to review it on July 10.

In 2024 the International Criminal Court called for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Gaza War.

Keep reading