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Iran Appointed to UN Program for Women’s Rights, Disarmament, and Terrorism Prevention

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been nominated to the U.N. Committee for Program and Coordination, which shapes policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention. The nomination was backed by ECOSOC members, including the UK, Spain, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, and Finland.

This is part of a broader pattern. In February 2026, an Iranian regime official took her seat as a full member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee, contributing to discussions on gender perspectives and gender-based violence, while Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister addressed the council’s high-level opening session.

Iran was previously removed from a comparable body in 2022, when ECOSOC voted 29 to 8 to remove it from the Commission on the Status of Women following its violent crackdown on protesters after the death of Mahsa Amini. It is now being nominated back onto similar bodies.

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Your Old Kindle Still Works Perfectly. Amazon Is Killing It Anyway

A record player from 1972 still plays records. A paperback from 1985 still opens. A Kindle from 2011, the one that works perfectly, the one with no cracked screen or dead battery, will stop functioning as an e-reader on May 20, 2026, because Amazon decided it should.

Amazon sent emails this week to owners of Kindle devices manufactured in 2012 or earlier, informing them that support for their hardware would end in six weeks.

After May 20, those devices will no longer be able to buy, borrow, or download books. The only content available will be whatever is already sitting on the device. And if you factory reset your Kindle, or deregister it from your Amazon account for any reason, you will not be able to re-register it. At that point, the device becomes a plastic rectangle.

The affected models include the original Kindle, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle 5, Kindle Touch, and the first-generation Kindle Paperwhite. Some of these devices have been in continuous use for 14 years. They work. The screens display text. The batteries hold a charge. The page-turn buttons click. None of that matters.

Amazon spokesperson Jesse Carr said that, “These models have been supported for at least 14 years — some as long as 18 years — but technology has come a long way in that time, and these devices will no longer be supported moving forward.” He added that Amazon is “notifying those still actively using them and offering promotions to help with the transition to newer devices.”

The promotion is a 20 percent discount on a new Kindle and a $20 eBook credit. Amazon is offering customers a coupon to buy something they didn’t want to buy, to replace something that already works. The offer expires June 20, 2026, which gives affected users exactly one month to decide whether to spend money solving a problem Amazon created for them.

The deregistration clause is where this gets ugly. The email Amazon sent includes a specific warning: if you deregister or factory reset your device after May 20, you cannot re-register it. The device becomes permanently unusable as a Kindle.

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Analysis: More Than 90 Percent Of Funds Backing Dems’ Gerrymandering Scheme Come From Outside Virginia

Democrats love to complain about big “dark money” donors trying to influence U.S. elections. But if their concerns were actually genuine, where is their outrage about the massive wave of out-of-state money flooding Virginia to pass their deceptively worded gerrymandering amendment?

According to figures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), the wrongly named “Virginians for Fair Elections” has received nearly $50 million to deceive voters into supporting a legally questionable ballot measure allowing the state’s Democrat-run General Assembly to redraw the commonwealth’s congressional map. The party’s current proposal would gerrymander the state’s U.S. House districts from a six Democrat-five Republican map to a 10 Democrat-one Republican map and effectively disenfranchise millions of rural Virginians in the process.

In the months leading up to the April 21 referendum, Virginians for Fair Elections has deployed dishonest ads characterizing Democrats’ gerrymandering scheme as “fair,” and claiming it’s about protecting “democracy,” a much-needed “emergency,” and “level[ing] the playing field.” But it’s clear after examining the funds being poured into the group, however, that most of its financial support isn’t coming from the Virginians it pretends it’s trying to help, but from leftist organizations based outside the state.

A Federalist analysis of the latest donation figures assembled by the Virginia Public Access Project shows that more than 90 percent of Virginians for Fair Elections’ large contributions come from Democrat-aligned out-of-state groups.

The organization’s largest contributor is none other than the D.C.-based House Majority Forward (HMF), a 501(c)(4) that boasts ties to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and House Democrat leadership. According to InfluenceWatch, HMF — which has given $29.3 million to Virginians for Fair Elections — “focuses on climate change, social justice, economics, and democracy, and produces ads in favor of Democratic candidates and opposed to Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives.”

The second largest donor ($11.02 million) to Virginians for Fair Elections is The Fairness Project. InfluenceWatch describes the D.C.-based 501(c)(4) as a “labor union-backed advocacy organization that finances and supports state ballot initiative campaigns to promote left-of-center policies such as government-mandated comprehensive paid family and medical leave, Medicaid expansion, and minimum wage increases.”

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African Descendant Claims British Threatened Her Ancestor, Then Learns He Was a Slaver Trying to Keep Brits from Ending Slavery in City He Ruled

Normally, we shouldn’t have to care about Ọmọba Antoinette Oyínkánsọ́lá Fernandez, better known as Antoinette Fernandez.

Her major claim to fame was that she was the Green Party candidate in the 2024 United Kingdom General Election for the parliamentary seat in Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She finished second, with 23 percent of the vote to 60 percent for the Labour Party candidate.

However, the Green Party — which has become a radical identitarian party that panders to the worst elements of Britain’s Islamic community — has seen a dramatic rise in its fortunes in the past few years, including winning a by-election in February that augurs poorly for Labour going forward. Fernandez, therefore, has a good chance of becoming a member of the U.K. Parliament in the not-too-distant future.

Second, Fernandez is profoundly ignorant and is willing to use that ignorance as a cudgel to make you think that she’s owed deference because of Britain’s colonial past. She is of Nigerian descent, and as she claims, her great-great-grandfather — a king — was overthrown by the Brits to avoid his people being massacred.

Just one problem, as users on social media pointed out: If her story is true, the British Navy overthrew her great-great-grandfather to stop the slave trade, which he was facilitating.

Talk about an unforced error.

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White House Warns Staff Against Insider Trading Using Iran War Information

As recent geopolitical events shake financial markets, some traders are making risky bets to profit from the volatility.

In an email on March 24, the White House warned staff not to trade or place bets related to the U.S. war in Iran, including on prediction markets.

The warning aimed to prevent any misuse of confidential information, the White House told The Epoch Times.

“President [Donald] Trump has been crystal clear: while he seeks a strong and profitable stock market for everyone, members of Congress and other government officials should be prohibited from using nonpublic information for financial benefit,” Davis Ingle, White House spokesman, said in an email.

The warning was in line with government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for trading activity, he said.

Ingles added that “any implication that administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”

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HUGE! Democrats Schiff, Pelosi Turn on Swalwell, Withdraw Endorsements, Call on Him to Drop Out of California Governor’s Race Amid Sexual Assault Allegations

Creepy Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell is going down in flames.

Swalwell is currently running as a Democrat in California’s gubernatorial race.

As TGP reported earlier on Friday, The San Francisco Chronicle published a story about a woman who claimed that Democrat Eric Swalwell sexually assaulted her twice.

The woman, who worked as a staffer in Swalwell’s office for two years, told The San Francisco Chronicle that Swalwell began pursuing her just weeks after she was hired at the age of 21 in 2019.

“A woman who worked for nearly two years for Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading candidate for California governor, said she had sexual encounters with him while he was her boss and alleged he twice sexually assaulted her when she was too intoxicated to consent,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Swalwell denied the allegations.

“These allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the frontrunner for governor,” he said.

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Iran must not repeat Libyan mistake of trusting US – ex-Gaddafi minister

Iran should not repeat the mistakes of Libya, which paid a heavy price for trusting the West, the North African country’s former information minister, Moussa Ibrahim, has warned ahead of the talks between delegations from Washington and Tehran.

The first direct meeting between the sides since the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28 is expected to take place in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Saturday, according to the White House.

The American team will be headed by Vice President J.D. Vance, and will also include special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Tehran hasn’t announced the lineup of its delegation yet, but reports claim that it could be led by parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

In an interview with RT on Friday, Ibrahim – a former cabinet member under longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was deposed and murdered in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 – said that “both parties come to these negotiations with different ideas about peace and conflict.”

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FRAUD FUGITIVE ON THE RUN: $11M Medicaid Scam Suspect Flees U.S. Before Trial After Posting Bond — Critics BLAST Tim Walz’s “Soft-on-Crime” System for Letting Him Keep Passport

In another jaw-dropping example of Minnesota’s collapsing justice system under far-left Governor Tim Walz, a major fraud kingpin in the state’s largest-ever Medicaid scam has skipped the country, just days before his high-profile trial was set to begin.

Abdirashid Said, the top defendant in a sprawling $11 million personal care assistant (PCA) fraud scheme, is now a fugitive after skipping a scheduled pretrial hearing in Hennepin County.

The trial, expected to last weeks and expose a massive web of fraud targeting taxpayer-funded Medicaid programs, has now been abruptly canceled.

According to reporting from KARE 11’s Lou Raguse, Said had been facing serious charges including racketeering, aiding and abetting theft by swindle, and perjury.

Prosecutors alleged he played a central role in a coordinated scheme involving PCA companies that billed Medicaid for services that were never performed, effectively siphoning millions from taxpayers.

Said had already been convicted of fraud in a previous scheme and was ordered by a judge NOT to work for any company receiving Medicaid funds, KARE 11 reported.

Yet he allegedly continued the grift, complete with perjury on the witness stand, where he claimed massive checks were just “loans and gifts” to pay off prior restitution.

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Overturns the 45-Year Drug Trafficking Sentence of Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned this April, the conviction and sentence imposed on former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.

The court ordered the case to be remanded to District Judge Kevin Castel with clear instructions to dismiss the accusation in full, declaring the proceedings moot following the presidential pardon granted by Donald Trump on December 1, 2025.

Hernández, who governed Honduras between 2014 and 2022, had been extradited in April 2022 and sentenced in June 2024 to 45 years in prison on charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and related firearms offenses.

The federal prosecution alleged that he facilitated the passage of more than 400 tons of cocaine during his term in office, relying primarily on the testimony of convicted drug traffickers.

However, Trump always maintained that Hernández was the victim of a “setup” and “unfair and harsh” treatment by the previous administration—a position that materialized in the full and unconditional pardon issued in December 2025, the same day the former Honduran leader regained his freedom.

The presidential pardon left the pending appeal without legal basis, rendering it “moot.” For that reason, the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal and ordered the district court’s sentence to be vacated—a step that amounts to erasing the judicial record of the conviction.

Hernández celebrated the victory on his X account with a direct message: “Court of Appeals overturns sentence and conviction, orders Judge Kevin Castel to dismiss the charges.”

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Scandal Hits Mamdani Administration – NYC Employee Says She Was Fired for Blowing the Whistle

One day shy of his first 100 days in office, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was hit with his first potential political scandal.

A lawsuit filed by a subordinate of a woman Mamdani appointed to run the city’s department of probation — and clean up ethical messes from the previous administration — claims she was fired for blowing the whistle on an “intimate relationship” between her boss and the agency’s top attorney, according to Politico.

And Mamdani himself is already facing public questions about it.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday by now-former city Department of Probation chief investigator Ebony Huntley.

According to the New York Post, Huntley claimed that the Department of Probation Commissioner Sharun Goodwin was engaged in a personal relationship with Wayne McKenzie, the agency’s general counsel.

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