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Minnesota Lawmakers File Bill To Legalize Psilocybin Possession And Cultivation

Minnesota lawmakers have introduced a bill that would legalize the non-commercial possession and cultivation of psilocybin by adults 21 and older.

Rep. Andy Smith (D) filed the legislation on Monday, with seven original cosponsors. The measure largely informed by the findings and recommendations of a task force that was established under a separate bill that Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed into law in 2024.

“I’ve had a couple folks ask me this: ‘We’re in a tight moment. Inflation is rising. Why is this something that you’re working on?’” Smith, who served on the task force and whose prior legislation created the body, told Marijuana Moment in a phone interview on Tuesday. “And it goes back to, all of us recognize, know someone or struggle ourselves with mental health—and that has been apparent for a while.”

“I think the pandemic highlighted how much we have to go as a society and how we deal with very complex issues, and these medications have shown, in studies, to have great potential to help in that,” Smith said. “I think that’s why it’s important—and it’s important to move on these quickly and responsibly.”

Under the lawmaker’s proposal, the state law would be revised to make it so adults would not face criminal or civil penalties for the personal “use, possession, transportation and cultivation.”

The purpose section of the legislation states that the reform is meant to “reduce the burden on the criminal justice system, promote harm reduction, and enable individuals to make personal decisions regarding the use of psilocybin without fear of prosecution.”

A Psychedelic Medicine Board would be established under the bill to establish possession limits. Smith said that requirement—as well as components that may prove more controversial in an especially divided legislature such as decriminalizing cultivation—will likely be up for debate as the measure moves through the process.

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British influencer, 29, is fighting for her life in South Korea after mysteriously being found unconscious with organ failure

A British influencer is fighting for life in a South Korean hospital after mysteriously being found unconscious in her apartment with a black eye and severe dehydration.

Content creator Ashley Surcombe, 29, was found by police who broke in, after her worried parents Nigel and Karen contacted them via a friend, when she failed to reply to messages and calls.

Paramedics rushed her to hospital, and she is currently in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Seoul suffering from severe dehydration and multiple organ failure.

Ashley – who has been living in South Korea for five years – is originally from Evesham and her distraught father has flown out to be by her bedside.

She was found on Monday after a friend of the family contacted police on their behalf, and officers entered her apartment and found her on the bathroom floor.

There were no signs of a forced entry and Ashley lived on her own.

Worried sister Kat Surcombe, 33, an aerospace engineer said: ‘We just don’t know what happened and we are trying to find out exactly, but it’s been difficult, and we have had to rely on contacts out there.

‘She was found unresponsive and unconscious on the floor; she didn’t have any broken bones, but she was severely dehydrated and has major organ failure.

‘About a week ago she told us she she hit her head against the door and got a nasty bruise on her eye.

‘Her blood sugar levels are very low and when we spoke with her on Saturday, she seemed confused, and you could barely see her lips she was so dehydrated.

‘We were supposed to speak with her at 8pm on Sunday (Korean time) but she never answered, and we didn’t get any response from messages so that’s when we called police through a friend of my dad who has contacts out there.

‘When they heard back that she was in hospital it was just horrible as we felt so helpless and so far away.’

Ashley is well known as a content creator in the UK and has over a million followers across her social media pages.

Ashley – who is fluent in Korean – had been planning to travel across the country and Southeast Asia and write up her experiences for her social media.

But the plan has now been put on hold as there is no indication as to when she may be released, and her family are now having to deal with spiralling hospital bills as Ashley’s insurance had expired.

Kat explained that an ICU stay is £1,500 a day and once stabilised that will drop to £500 plus tests including X rays, blood tests and scans have cost £100,00.

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Trump Admin Ends Taxpayer-Funded Housing For Illegal Immigrants

The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would be ending taxpayer-funded housing for illegal immigrants.

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revealed a joint partnership to curtail what they describe as an “exploitation” of the country’s housing programs.

As Rachel Acenas reports for The Epoch Times, Turner and Noem together signed the “American Housing Programs for American Citizens” memorandum of understanding (MOU).

“We’re here signing a partnership to ensure that the wasteful misappropriations that have been going to assist the illegal aliens in our country will no longer go to assist them but instead to assist the American people,” Turner said in a video statement on X.

American citizens have taken a back seat to illegal immigrants for too long, according to Turner, who said that American tax dollars should be used to benefit only U.S. citizens, especially when it comes to an issue as pressing as the nation’s housing crisis.

As part of the new memorandum, HUD will provide a full-time staff member to assist in operations at the Incident Command Center (ICC) to facilitate data-sharing and ensure taxpayer-funded housing programs are not used to benefit or harbor illegal immigrants.

Noem accused the Biden administration of failing to prioritize Americans.

“This memorandum is going to be a partnership that we will form to make sure that these housing programs are going to only people who deserve it, people who are in this country who need assistance, who want a better life for their family,” Noem said in the video.

The HUD and DHS partnership comes after Trump signed an executive order in February to direct federal agencies and departments to identify all federally-funded programs that provide financial benefits to illegal immigrants and to take corrective action.

The order seeks to “ensure taxpayer resources are not used to incentivize or support illegal immigration,” according to a fact sheet on the order.

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Democrat hints at Trump’s REAL reason for Canada annexation… and it’s the most bizarre conspiracy theory yet

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin has a bizarre new conspiracy theory about why President Donald Trump wants to make Canada the 51st state and it involves Elon Musk.

Raskin, a constitutional law professor, argued that if Trump brings Panama, Greenland and Canada into the United States it would require a new constitution – and that would allow Musk to run for president.

‘They want to bring in Panama. They want to bring in Greenland. They want to bring in Canada, where Elon Musk is a citizen after he left his apartheid South Africa,’ Raskin said.

‘Why? Because they believe that this new consortium will require a new constitution that would allow Elon Musk to run for president.’  

Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. His mother is Canadian, which allowed him to obtain Canadian citizenship in 1989. 

He moved to the United States in 1992 to attend the University of Pennsylvania. He initially entered the country on an Exchange Visitor Visa before transitioning to a work visa. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002. 

The Constitution requires natural-born citizenship for presidential candidates. 

But it can be amended as Raskin argues it would have to be in order for the United States to take possession of Panama, Canada and Greenland – which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to do.  

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Signs U.S. Massing B-2 Spirit Bombers In Diego Garcia

A significant force of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers looks to be currently wending its way to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Satellite imagery shows at least three C-17 cargo planes and 10 aerial refueling tankers forward-deployed in the last 48 hours to the highly strategic British territory, which has been used as a staging point for U.S. strikes in the Middle East on multiple occasions in the past. The build-up comes amid a new surge in U.S. strikes targeting the Houthis and growing warnings to Iran from the Trump administration over support for the Yemeni militants and Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The crews of two B-2 bombers, callsigns Pitch 11 and Pitch 14, could be heard communicating with air traffic controllers in Australia earlier today in publicly available audio. The crew of Pitch 11 confirms the presence of a third bomber, as well. The trio of bombers appears to have refueled in flight over Australia while heading westward.

A fourth B-2, callsign Pitch 13, landed at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii yesterday after declaring an emergency in flight. Video subsequently emerged showing that aircraft being met on the ground by a crash truck, but the nature of the emergency remains unknown.

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The Last Chapter of the Genocide

This is the last chapter of the genocide.

It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza.

No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity.

Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.

The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies.

The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas.

The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially bobby trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. 

The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties.

The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. 

The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.”

The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.

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DEA Promotes ‘Anti-420 Day’ Contest For Young People To ‘Flood’ Instagram With Marijuana Warnings

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is promoting an “Anti-420 Day” campaign that’s recruiting students to send short videos warning their peers about marijuana use.

In a bulletin that was distributed on Tuesday, DEA’s JustThinkTwice.com site shared details about the campaign, which is being run by the anti-cannabis nonprofit organization Johnny’s Ambassadors.

“Be an Instagram Influencer for Anti-420 Day,” the message says. “Johnny’s Ambassadors is hiring teens and young adults (high school and college students) to create original videos about the harms of youth THC use for Anti-420 Day.”

The plan is to “flood” Instagram with the short-form videos that would feature students talking about “why young people should not use THC.”

Students would be eligible for a $25 Amazon gift card for a personal video, $35 for a group video and $50 for a “professionally produced educational video or skit with adult sponsor supervision.”

“Your video should either be an educational Youth THC Prevention video on why young people shouldn’t use THC products (vapes, dabs, weed, edibles, gummies) OR a personal story of how you have been impacted by THC use (yourself, a friend, a family member, or a loved one),” the organization said.

It also provided examples of potential prompts, including explainers on “why THC impacts athletic performance on a team” and busting “commonly-held but incorrect myth about THC.”

“Tell a personal story about how you’ve been negatively impacted by THC use” or perform a “skit or drama to educate other teens why using products with THC is bad for you,” the description from Johnny’s Ambassadors—which was founded the parents of a child who died by suicide after consuming high potency marijuana concentrates—says.

There are some restrictions on the content, including a ban on “swearing” in the videos. And no content is allowed that “depicts, imitates, or promotes the possession or consumption of any THC product.”

“DO NOT IMITATE THE USE OF THC/MARIJUANA OR PARAPHERNALIA OF ANY KIND, EVEN AS A JOKE,” it emphasizes.

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US Intelligence Says Iran Is ‘Not Building a Nuclear Weapon’

US intelligence agencies have reaffirmed that there’s no evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons or that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has reversed his 2003 fatwah that banned the production of weapons of mass destruction.

“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Gabbard’s comments were based on the annual threat assessment, which is released by the ODNI with input from all US intelligence agencies. The report did note that there have been more calls inside Iran to reverse the ban on nuclear weapons, which have grown in response to Israeli aggression in the region.

“In the past year, there has been an erosion of a decades-long taboo on discussing nuclear weapons in public that has emboldened nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decisionmaking apparatus,” the report reads. “Khamenei remains the final decision maker over Iran’s nuclear program, to include any decision to develop nuclear weapons.”

The threat assessment comes amid increasing US sanctions and threats of military action over Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian officials have rejected the idea of talks with the US in the face of President Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign,” but have said the door is open for indirect negotiations.

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“MyTerms” wants to become the new way we dictate our privacy on the web

Author, journalist, and long-time Internet freedom advocate Doc Searls wants us to stop asking for privacy from websites, services, and AI and start telling these things what we will and will not accept.

Draft standard IEEE P7012, which Searls has nicknamed “MyTerms” (akin to “Wi-Fi”), is a Draft Standard for Machine Readable Personal Privacy Terms. Searls writes on his blog that MyTerms has been in the works since 2017, and a fully readable version should be ready later this year, following conference presentations at VRM Day and the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW).

The big concept is that you are the first party to each contract you have with online things. The websites, apps, or services you visit are the second party. You arrive with either a pre-set contract you prefer on your device or pick one when you arrive, and it tells the site what information you will and will not offer up for access to content or services. Presumably, a site can work with that contract, modify itself to meet the terms, or perhaps tell you it can’t do that.

The easiest way to set your standards, at first, would be to pick something from Customer Commons, which is modeled on the copyleft concept of Creative Commons. Right now, there’s just one example up: #NoStalking, which allows for ads but not with data usable for “targeted advertising or tracking beyond the primary service for which you provided it.” Ad blocking is not addressed in Searls’ post or IEEE summary, but it would presumably exist outside MyTerms—even if MyTerms seems to want to reduce the need for ad blocking.

Searls and his group are putting up the standards and letting the browsers, extension-makers, website managers, mobile platforms, and other pieces of the tech stack craft the tools. So long as the human is the first party to a contract, the digital thing is the second, a “disinterested non-profit” provides the roster of agreements, and both sides keep records of what they agreed to, the function can take whatever shape the Internet decides.

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Mysterious questions surrounding Yankees star’s son’s death at Costa Rica resort

Mystery continues to surround the death of the teenage son of New York Yankees champion Brett Gardner who passed away at a luxury Costa Rican resort last week.

Miller Gardner, 14, is believed to have died by asphyxia ‘after a possible intoxication’ from ingesting contaminated food, local officials told NBC News.

The teen was tragically found dead on Friday morning in his room at the Arenas Del Mar Beachfront & Rainforest Resort, in Manuel Antonio.

Other members of his family had also fallen ill during the trip, Brett Gardner and his wife Jessica shared in announcing their son’s death, which they added has left them with ‘so many questions.’

An autopsy and a toxicology report for the young Gardner are pending and it could take several weeks before his cause of death is officially confirmed.

A spokesperson for the Arenas Del Mar resort told DailyMail.com the hotel fully cooperating with the investigation and is determined too get to the bottom of what caused this tragedy.

Asphyxiation occurs when a person is unable to get enough oxygen in their body, which can cause fainting and death. 

Common causes include allergies, drowning, or airway blockage by food or vomit, and typical symptoms include difficulty breathing, loss of consciousness and the inability to speak. 

Food intoxication – or food poisoning – can often lead to asphyxiation, particularly if a sufferer is sleeping.   

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