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Church in China Announces Massive Government Raid, Almost Three Dozen Christians Detained

Early Rain Covenant Church in Sichuan Province, China, announced a massive raid that resulted in almost three dozen of their members being detained.

The church said in a statement published by China Aid that around 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 14, between 60 and 70 government agents disrupted their in-person worship gathering.

SWAT teams, police, local officials, and bureaucrats “stormed the venue and forcibly took control of the gathering.”

Two hours after the raid started, the communist officials started hauling away Christians in groups, with 33 total believers detained.

Most of them were transferred to Jiangyou City’s centralized registration center and detention facility.

Before letting anyone leave — including elderly people and children — police made them agree to sign a “guarantee letter.”

Some of the attendees agreed.

“However, officials refused to disclose the contents of the statement until individuals agreed to sign it. Because most believers refused to sign, they were never shown the document,” the statement said.

“Faced with pressure to sign an unknown statement, the congregation chose to remain peacefully and steadfastly in the hall,” the statement continued.

By the end of the day, between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., most of the Christians were released from the Jiangyou detention center one at a time.

But Elder Yan Hong and Elder Wu Wuqing remained in custody.

“As the released believers emerged from behind the detention center walls, they gathered closely together, offering prayers of thanksgiving and entrusting one another to God’s care. In the early hours of the morning, they accompanied one another on the journey back to Chengdu,” the church added.

“We thank the Lord for using this trial once again to bear witness to the Christian faith before many who have not yet heard the Gospel. Though the world may regard such experiences as shameful, we count them as an honor and a privilege.”

Early Rain Covenant Church, a Reformed Presbyterian congregation, previously made international headlines after their pastor, Wang Yi, was detained in 2018 and forced to endure a secret trial in 2019.

He remains in prison and is carrying out a nine-year sentence.

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The Real Grid Crisis Is A State Policy Problem Dressed Up As A Market Failure

There’s a critique of PJM making the rounds: PJM – the largest grid operator in the United States – is too big. There are too many state interests at play, and PJM doesn’t have the ability to function cohesively or quickly enough. FERC even scheduled a governance technical conference this month to examine whether PJM’s stakeholder structure can move fast enough to respond to demand. The reality is that policy disagreements at the state level are dressed up as a procedural defect with the grid, opening the way for critics to point their reforms at the wrong target.

Disagreements at the state level are just what you’d expect, pitting those that generate enough power to export against those that depend on imports. Pennsylvania is PJM’s energy workhorse, shipping out roughly a quarter of everything it generates. Illinois, West Virginia, and Michigan also produce more than they consume. The others – Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware – are net importers, and increasingly so as data centers expand across their footprints.

Exporters like Pennsylvania that are rich in nuclear, gas, and coal generation have fundamentally different interests in capacity pricing and transmission cost allocation from an importer state, which has restricted natural gas development, leaned hard into renewables, or joined an ambitious emission reduction program. When Virginia pulls in more expensive power from its neighbors, or when Maryland absorbs double-digit rate hikes, that isn’t a governance failure – it’s the market doing its job by revealing the cost of divergent state policy preferences (and thus resource access).

These state policy preferences are then lobbed at the market and its participants to respond to, whether by prematurely retiring generation, relying on tax subsidies, or simply building generation that is more expensive per megawatt when compared against traditional baseload fuels.

PJM is actively working to continue the evolution of the market to meet the demand of today and the future. It has cleared more than 60% of its interconnection backlog under a reformed study process and opened a new study cycle this spring in partnership with Google to apply AI to speed up the review process. A separate PJM program, the Reliability Resource Initiative, pulled in more than 11,000 MW of new projects that could come online quickly. PJM has also adjusted its review processes to allow more wind, solar, and storage to compete directly in the capacity auction. It’s even accepted a price collar through 2030, demonstrating that it is willing to make short-term adjustments in response to concerns by state executives.

More than 46,000 MW of approved projects – over a quarter of PJM’s existing capacity – already hold the right to build but are unable to move forward. Some 37,000 MW of PJM-approved generation can’t even break ground at all because of state and local permitting fights. At the same time, state policy mandates have pushed working plants into early retirement, further tightening supply from the other end. The same governors demanding faster action are often the ones holding the permits and slow-walking the buildout of energy infrastructure while forcing closures of dispatchable power.

PJM is not too big. It has demonstrated time and again that it can run a competitive power market and ensure the reliable transportation of power across 13 very varied states and the District of Columbia. It’s been successfully doing this for more than 30 years, delivering $5 billion in savings annually to customers, just as it was designed to do. It’s accelerated the queue and kept the lights on. What the market cannot do is permit projects or draft legislation. States must recognize their role in restricting the full benefits of the market.

Asking PJM to continue navigating these policy issues in the same manner – trying to respond to all of them – is a recipe for disaster. The states are absolutely responsible for chucking icebergs into the path of this ship, and if it goes down, they’ll have themselves to blame for the aftermath.

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London Police Accused of Letting Algerian Attempted Rapist Walk Free After Being Caught ‘Red Handed’ Near Buckingham Palace

London’s Metropolitan Police officers have been accused by a judge of letting an attempted rapist go after being caught “red-handed” outside Buckingham Palace, the trial of the migrant has revealed.

In the early morning of Sept 7, 2024, Algerian migrant Ramzi Barkat, 54, came upon a woman in St James’s Park, attempted to flirt with her, and when he was shot down, tackled and “straddled” her while holding down her wrists.

Fortunately for the woman, three nearby soldiers heard her screams and prevented Barkat from going further.

However, despite the apparent risk he posed to the public, police chose to release the Algerian migrant on bail or under investigation after the victim was interviewed, The Telegraph reported.

Judge Justin Cole of the Southwark Crown Court accused the police of a “catalogue of incompetencies” during the incident.

“He was simply let go in a situation in which frankly he had been caught red-handed and presented a continuing danger to the public,” Judge Cole said.

“The bottom line is this man was set free for a period of a year, a year to do what he likes, in a situation where he had attacked a lone female in a park. The public would be appalled to hear of such laxity.”

“The public would be appalled to hear of such laxity.”

The revelations came during this week’s sentencing hearing for Barkat, who was jailed for seven years and three months on Friday. Judge Coles said that Barkat “sought to take advantage of a lone vulnerable woman” and “acted like a predator”.

In addition to being found guilty of attempted rape, Barkat was also found guilty of assaulting one of the soldiers who prevented the rape, The Independent reported.

The Algerian migrant had claimed that he was merely attempting to steal the woman’s phone. On top of his prison sentence, he received a 10-year restraining order and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.

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Without Subsidies, Is AI Unaffordable?

Let’s pull all this into an undeniable conclusion: AI is based on massively subsidizing users’ costs.

What’s already abundantly clear but verboten to say as it would pop the bubble of AI valuations and triumphalism is that AI is unaffordable once the direct and indirect subsidies are withdrawn. Nothing that consumes this much electricity and requires such an immense scale of costly processing and memory capacity can be low-cost, never mind free.

The major AI platforms and vendors are subsidizing corporate and individual users in the hopes that they can achieve AI sector dominance –and the pricing power that comes with it–via the network effect, the dominance generated by having the majority of users bound by habit or dependence to your platform or tools.

This battle for network effect dominance is playing out in full view:

AI Giants Are Handing Out Tons of Free Computing Power to Grab Startup Share: (wsj.com) Pitched battle for business users comes as AI companies seek lasting streams of revenue.

Hans Ibarra, a founder building an AI-voice startup, has found himself on the receiving end of a big opportunity: Top artificial-intelligence companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and others desperate to win his business are ramping up discounts.

Across Silicon Valley, startup founders like Ibarra are enjoying a wave of computing credits and fielding competing offers from AI-model makers racing to land new enterprise customers. Cursor, the AI-coding company bought by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, offered a 75% discount through July 5.

“If I’m choosing between a really cheap Chinese model that I actually have to pay for, and a very expensive Anthropic model that I don’t have to pay for, I’m going to pick the Anthropic model,” Acker said. “I’m always going to pick the one for which I have free credits.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world of costs, AI Costs More Than The People It Replaced (forbes.com)(via Tom D.)

It turns out that experienced human workers doing the work right in the first place is cheaper than having AI run a probability distribution process that needs vetting and corrections. And remember, AI isn’t actually “intelligent,” it’s just a probability distribution using natural language.

As management guru Peter Drucker observed, enterprises don’t have profits, they have costs. Purveyors of AI platforms and tools have costs, and so do their customers. Those costs are currently being funded by investors, who are in effect subsidizing the AI companies’ “free” giveaways of horrendously costly “tokens” in a manic, desperate attempt to grab the brass ring of network effect dominance before their cash runs out.

This raises a question: Is this any way to run a railroad? In other words, is this actually a viable business model, burning billions of dollars in cash to lock in network effect dominance in a field that is rapidly obsoleting every iteration of an innately limited mode of computation? Is claiming that a probability distribution is “intelligent” in the same way humans are intelligent a viable business model when there is ample evidence this simply isn’t true?

AI and human intelligence are drastically different–here’s how (scientificamerican.com)

What happens when enterprises have to pay the unsubsidized costs of AI is they immediately curtail their AI spending because the customer-facing / financial benefits of AI are at best elusive and often negative. Peter Drucker was onto something that is currently being lost in the PR-propaganda push of those trying to cash in on the AI euphoria: enterprises don’t have profits, they have costs, and the real-world costs of AI are extraordinarily high while the payoffs are ambiguous.

There are many other hidden subsidies within the AI machinery. There are corporate tax write-off subsidies, energy subsidies, tax credit subsidies for building data centers, and so on. If these were stripped out, what would the real unsubsidized costs of AI be? No one knows, but they would be higher than what’s presented as the cost now.

Then there’s the if it’s legal, it’s moral, and what’s legal is for sale subsidy: AI is built on the systemic theft of copyrighted content. Last month alone, AI scrapers gorged on 246,000 pages from my Of Two Minds server, and hundreds of thousands of pages of my copyrighted works on my mirror site and other sites posting my work.

This is legal, but is it moral? Nobody asks such questions because the important thing is to avoid saddling AI users with the real costs. So if all those content creators get nothing–in effect, subsidizing both AI companies and the users of their AI platforms and tools–well, so what, because if it’s legal, it’s moral, and what’s legal is for sale.

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California Daycare Accused of Misleading Parents After Toddler Suffers Brain Injury in Alleged Incident Caught on Video

A California fitness club’s childcare center is facing a lawsuit after parents accused the facility of misleading them about how their 23-month-old son suffered a traumatic brain injury while in its care.

The lawsuit alleges surveillance footage contradicted the daycare’s description of the incident and showed an employee tossing the toddler into the air before he fell onto a hardwood floor.

The incident occurred March 17, 2025, at the Bay Club Clubhouse in El Segundo, a childcare facility operated by the Bay Club fitness club.

According to the lawsuit filed by Matthew and Elena Kittle, their son, identified as C.K., was dropped off at the facility while his father attended activities at another Bay Club location nearby.

The lawsuit claims that the footage showed the employee engaging with the child in a manner that ended with him being lifted above her head and falling to the floor after she failed to catch him.

The complaint alleges security footage captured an employee holding the toddler by his arms, swinging him between her legs, and then lifting him over her head before releasing him.

The child fell approximately six feet onto the floor, and the employee fell backward, landing on top of him, the lawsuit states, according to Law & Crime.

The parents allege that Bay Club staff initially described the incident as a minor fall.

The lawsuit claims employees told them the child had fallen from a height of about 1.5 feet while an employee lost her balance, giving the impression that the injury was not serious, according to KTLA.

The complaint alleges the daycare later contacted the parents again and said C.K. needed to be picked up because staff members could not calm him down.

When his father arrived, the lawsuit says he found the child with significant facial bruising, a swollen eye, and a swollen mouth.

The parents took C.K. to an emergency room, where doctors evaluated him for possible blunt force trauma.

According to the lawsuit, medical staff questioned whether the injuries matched the description of a short fall and recommended the parents confirm exactly what happened.

The child was diagnosed with a concussion, blunt head trauma, and facial abrasions, according to court documents, NBC News reported.

The family later obtained surveillance footage of the incident, which they say showed a much different version of events than what they had been told.

The lawsuit accuses the Bay Club of attempting to conceal the circumstances surrounding the injury and alleges the facility’s incident report was inaccurate and misleading.

It also includes allegations of negligence, negligent hiring and supervision, fraud, battery, and emotional distress.

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Shocking Surge: NYC Child and Teen Shooters Up 133% Since Cuomo’s ‘Raise the Age’ Law Let Young Predators Run Wild

New York City has seen a whopping 133 percent increase in the number of children and teens arrested or named as suspects in shootings over the past nine years since former Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Raise the Age law into effect in 2017.

The Raise the Age law, pushed through by Cuomo and later backed by Governor Kathy Hochul, was sold as a progressive reform to keep young people out of adult prisons and give them a chance at rehabilitation.

The law, which raised the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18 and funneled many young offenders into family court rather than adult prosecution, has come under intense scrutiny as NYPD data reveals a disturbing rise in youth violence that has persisted even as overall crime numbers have shown modest improvement.

The policy has created a system where even the most serious crimes by minors are met with a slap on the wrist, emboldening these young predators.

According to the latest NYPD figures obtained by the New York Post, there have already been 56 child suspects identified in shooting incidents so far this year, compared to just 24 at the same point in 2017 when the law first took hold.

The numbers were even higher in previous years, reaching 57 in 2021 and 76 in 2022.

Even more alarming is the growing share of shooting incidents committed by people under 18, which climbed to 21 percent last year from 19 percent the year before.

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When Billion-Dollar Non-Profits Stop Looking Like Charities

AltaMed Health Services reported $1.72 billion in revenue in 2024, which is more than many publicly traded healthcare companies. Yet unlike a public corporation, the nonprofit entity answers to no shareholders, enjoys broad tax exemptions, and derives much of its revenue from taxpayer-supported healthcare programs.

AltaMed also reported $1.66 billion in assets and its revenues exceeded expenses by $68.4 million. It operates more than 70 clinics, employs roughly 5,000 people, and serves more than 700,000 patients throughout Southern California, making it one of the nation’s largest federally qualified health center (FQHC) systems.

But AltaMed’s extraordinary growth raises another question that extends far beyond Southern California: What happens when a nonprofit grows into a multibillion-dollar enterprise while retaining the governance structure of a traditional charity?

That question has become increasingly relevant as individual nonprofit hospital systems, universities, and other charitable organizations now control hundreds of billions of dollars in assets while benefiting from tax exemptions, government reimbursements, tax-deductible donations, and public financing. Their primary accountability mechanism is a board of directors charged with ensuring that charitable resources remain devoted to public benefit rather than private profits.

Since 2001, AltaMed has paid more than $32 million in compensation to its CEO, Castulo de la Rocha, his wife Zoila Escobar, and one of their sons – which is significantly higher than most of its peer FQHCs. For instance, the chief executives of Family Health Centers of San Diego, Family HealthCare Network, and Comprehensive Community Health Centers each earned substantially less than de la Rocha in 2024 despite overseeing similarly large healthcare organizations.

Following scrutiny of excessive executive pay more than a decade ago, AltaMed adopted a split-dollar life insurance loan program designed to help retain selected executives. The program has provided substantial loans to a small group of senior leaders to finance life insurance policies. Split-dollar arrangements are technically legal, although federal officials have cautioned that similar structures have been used improperly in certain tax-avoidance schemes.

Executive compensation is only one measure of nonprofit governance. Equally important is how charitable organizations deploy their resources and whether those expenditures advance the mission for which they receive tax-exempt status.

Over the past two decades, AltaMed has built one of the country’s most prominent collections of Chicano and Latino art. It says the collection supports its “Art as a Holistic Approach to Healthcare” initiative, and that artwork displayed throughout its clinics creates a more welcoming and therapeutic environment for patients.

However, AltaMed’s involvement in the arts extends far beyond decorating clinic walls – it owns a collection of approximately 4,000 works of Chicano, Mexican, and Latin American art, the value of which exceeds $6 million. It has spent as much as $2 million on art-related activities outside the United States in places like Mexico City, Rome, Berlin, and Madrid. More recently, it has supported plans for a Museum of Chicano and Mexican Art in downtown Los Angeles, spending at least $150,000 on lobbying related to the proposal.

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ICC Prosecutor Who Sought Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu Over Crimes Against Humanity Found Guilty of Predatory Sexual Misconduct

The International Criminal Court’s own internal oversight body has just exposed its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, as a sexual harasser who abused his power over a junior female subordinate.

A 21-member bureau investigating the allegations concluded that Khan engaged in sexual activity with the junior staffer, constituting sexual harassment, and abused his authority in the process.

He pressured her into sex amid a blatant power imbalance. Khan later tried to dissuade her from pursuing misconduct claims against him.

UN investigators laid out the disgusting details: “He would grab and paw at her breasts, try to access her pelvic area, and suck on her neck,” i24 News reported.

Khan never clearly denied the sexual relationship despite being given 30 opportunities to do so during the UN probe. His main concern at the time? Whether the woman might have made recordings implicating him.

Only after it became clear no recordings existed did he offer denials, which the report slammed as “devoid of credibility.” At least two-thirds of the bureau members found his credibility utterly lacking.

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Mexico’s First Openly Gay Mayor Slain in Guadalajara as World Cup Highlights More Than 135,000 Disappearances and more Journalist Killings

Mexico’s hosting of the 2026 FIFA World Cup was meant to showcase national pride, soccer passion, and cultural unity before a global audience. Instead, the tournament has unfolded against the backdrop of some of the country’s deepest crises: cartel violence, forced disappearances, killings of public officials and journalists, and protests by families searching for missing loved ones.

The July 7 killing of Benjamín Medrano Quezada, Mexico’s first openly gay mayor, brought those realities into even sharper focus.

Medrano, 59, was shot and killed in Guadalajara, Jalisco, after leaving an ice cream shop in the Santa Elena de la Cruz neighborhood. According to authorities, gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire multiple times, striking him in the head and face.

Medrano served as mayor of Fresnillo, Zacatecas—one of Mexico’s largest municipalities and a strategic corridor for drug trafficking—from 2013 to 2015 before later serving as a federal deputy. He made history as one of Mexico’s first openly gay mayors and was also known as a singer, businessman, and owner of a gay bar in Fresnillo.

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The View Descends into Chaos After Joy Behar Admits Democrats Must Run a White Man to Win

Friday’s episode of the liberal talk show The View descended into chaos when co-host Joy Behar argued that Democrats need to run a white man in 2028 to have any chance of winning back the White House, sparking an immediate pushback from Ana Navarro.

During the heated exchange, Behar insisted she was simply focused on “winning” in what she called an “emergency” situation under President Donald Trump.

There is something hilarious about women who spent years demonizing white men suddenly treating them as saviors and their only path to victory.

Behar began by floating a list of white male candidates she believes could actually win, naming Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

She framed the suggestion as cold political reality, telling her co-hosts they needed to face facts after watching the country for decades.

Behar stated, “Maybe I’m too old at this point for this conversation. But I’ve been watching this country for a long time. And you’ve got to be in reality. These past few years that President Donald Trump has been in office, he’s practically destroying democracy. This is an emergency we’re in.”

Navarro jumped in, saying, “I hate it when I hear you say that it’s gotta be like a white man, cause I then feel that it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I don’t want.”

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