Authored by Amy Denney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It’s been decades since Carole Maggio first started teaching her spa clients to exercise their faces to reverse signs of aging.

Today, GLP-1 receptor agonists are edging out sun damage as the driver factor for facial exercises, which she calls “facercise.” She’s seeing more patients taking these weight-loss drugs in her spa with the telltale signs of “Ozempic face,” such as sagging skin, sunken cheeks and eyes, and deeper wrinkles.

She recounted how many people have said they just wanted to lose 10 pounds, but they lost 30.

“They get on this roll and in their mind’s eye, they think more is better. They end up looking so much older,” Maggio told The Epoch Times.

“Ozempic face” can be prevented with a slower approach to weight loss, experts say.

There are also non-invasive tools—holistic approaches like Maggio’s and fillers of many kinds—that can prevent and reverse saggy skin.

What Causes ‘Ozempic Face’?

Patients taking GLP-1 receptor agonists lose an average of 7 percent of their facial volume for every 22 pounds lost, mostly from fat pads in the midface—cheeks and areas around the nose, mouth, and temples, according to a study published in Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery quantifying the “Ozempic face” phenomenon. Fat volume helps make a face look youthful.

A mixture of factors influences facial changes, including the potential rapid loss of nutrients, vitamins, and fatty acids that make up the building blocks of collagen and elastin, which act as a scaffolding of sorts for facial firmness. GLP-1 drugs can also disrupt the skin barrier and cause dry, dull skin.

The authors noted that clinical trials analyzing GLP-1 receptor agonist use for weight loss rarely report facial fat loss as an adverse effect.

“Because of this, providers prescribing these medications are unlikely to counsel patients pretreatment about the potential for undesirable changes in facial appearance.”

How to Recognize ‘Ozempic Face’

Ozempic face can have a global effect on the face, according to plastic surgeon Dr. John Burns. He provided a more detailed explanation of some changes that could take place:

• Increased lines and wrinkles around the eyes, forehead, and mouth
• Sunken or hollowed eyes
• Hollow cheeks or temples
• Sagging, loose skin along the jawline and jowls
• Exaggerated nasolabial folds and marionette lines
• Thinner lips, elongated upper lip
• More visible facial bones, loss of fullness or plumpness
• Unmasking of the platysma muscle in the lower face and neck

New Name–Persistent Issue

Hollowed-out faces accentuated by wrinkles and sagging isn’t new—the condition only has a new name due to its rising prevalence in tandem with GLP-1 drug use, said dermatologist Brooke Jeffy.

“You see the exact same changes in someone who loses weight rapidly from other things, like bariatric surgery, for example,” she told The Epoch Times.

Ozempic face tracks with a universal phenomenon—aging.

“As we age, we lose collagen and elastin in our skin, and then when you add on top of that a loss of facial fat and a loss of muscle tone, the combination is profound,” Burns said. “The amount of weight loss is important. If somebody’s lost 20 pounds, that’s one thing, but if they’ve lost a hundred pounds, that’s a whole other thing.”

‘Ozempic Face’ Treatments

There is a wide variety of approaches from non-invasive to plastic surgery that address “Ozempic face.” Here are a few:

Facial Workouts

Maggio coaches clients in 13 exercises that amount to a daily commitment of 14 minutes.

The workout is designed to combat the seven signs of aging—also common in those experiencing ‘Ozempic face’— including low eyebrows, drooping eyelids, nose faults, sagging jaw, double chin, thin lips, and low, flat cheeks. By using your fingers as counterweights and working facial muscles until you feel a lactic acid burn, the routine she teaches aims to lift and tone facial features.

Some exercises include:

• Cheek lift: Exercises the buccinator muscle, lifting it and helping add dimension to the face
• Eye opening: Contracts the orbicularis oculi and levator palpebrae superiors, muscles that create sleepy eyes when they’re relaxed and loose
• Lip toner: Involves all mouth muscles to smooth lip lines and plump the lips
• Lip corners up: Lifts the corners of the mouth

Facial exercises won’t help with fat loss, but they may prevent muscle wasting. Burns said toning your face could also help build muscle volume.

“I do think animating your face, using those muscles more vigorously, would help.”

Fillers

For those looking for a more rapid transformation, a wide variety of injectable procedures can restore facial volume in a number of ways.

Synthetic fillers can be either short-lived, lasting six to 18 months, or bio-stimulating, which causes your body to create collagen and scar tissue, and last two to three years, or even longer, according to plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Bonillas.

Common fillers include:

• Hyaluronic acid: a substance found in the skin that keeps it plump and hydrated. It can be injected as a gel for results that last six to 12 months.
• Calcium hydroxylapatite: found primarily in the bones, it is thicker than hyaluronic acid and lasts up to 12 months.
• Polymethylmethacrylate: a synthetic, biocompatible substance like poly-L-lactic acid, but takes the form of a tiny ball beneath the skin. It provides support indefinitely and also contains collagen.

Poly-L-lactic Acid 

A biodegradable synthetic substance, poly-L-lactic acid, is biocompatible, which means it’s safe to use in the body. One of its main mechanisms is that it stimulates your body to rebuild natural collagen, and the gel itself is absorbed after a few days, much like absorbable stitches. It’s sold under the brand name Sculptra® Aesthetic.

Unlike fillers that tend to dissipate quickly, biostimulating products recruit your own body to make more collagen, which leads to a longer-lasting effect. The poly-L-lactic acid itself is often undetectable in six to eight weeks, replaced by tissue your body has made.

Autologous Fat Injections

On the more invasive end of the spectrum, autologous fat injections require surgery but have longer-lasting results of many years. Liposuction is used to collect fat from another area of your body—it’s then purified and injected into the temples, cheeks, lower eyelids, and other areas.

“These work pretty well unless patients undergo a significant or a severe amount of weight loss, where they have significant wasting, and then because fat behaves like fat, it will eventually resorb with further weight loss,” Bonillas told The Epoch Times.

Fillers can be more advantageous for those who are still losing weight or whose weight isn’t stabilized, he added.

Most facelifts involve fat injections or fillers because facelifts alone don’t address the loss of volume, they simply tighten loose skin. It can be helpful for your weight to be stabilized before opting for a more invasive surgery.

Facelifts can also be a wake-up call for patients to make healthier choices to protect their investment, Jeffy said.

“If you want to keep it, you have to take care of it,” she said. “Living a healthy life is not necessarily easy. We have to make harder choices sometimes.”

Healthy Life, Healthy Face

Since “Ozempic face” can result from the rapid depletion of nutrients, vitamins, and fatty acids that help maintain collagen and elastin, an alert in Facial Plastic Surgery recommends reducing the risk by prioritizing a nutrient-rich diet with ample protein, vitamin C, antioxidants, and mineral-rich foods.

To prevent premature aging, experts advised avoiding excessive sun exposure and cigarette smoking, while drinking plenty of water, exercising, and eating whole, nutrient-dense foods.

Avoiding packaged food with preservatives should become a lifestyle, Burns said. “Diet sodas are not good for you. Sugary drinks are not good for you. The healthier you are, the better your skin is going to look, and the better it will hold up to weight loss.”

Maggio added that a good skin care routine with gentle cleansing and products that exfoliate and contain retinol, which can stimulate collagen production, can be helpful, too. She also advises that her clients address stress and sleep deprivation—both of which can age the face.

Experts said the only way you might prevent Ozempic face is to slow down the rate and amount of weight loss. However, there’s no good way to predict how your face might react to weight loss.

“I’ve always believed personally that there’s a healthy way to lose weight,” Burns said. “The GLP-1 medications help people get past barriers, but in general, you want to get to a point where you can maintain your healthy weight with a good diet and exercise program.”

In a somewhat predictable outcome, the pro-European party of Moldovan President Maia Sandu (Party of Action and Solidarity, PAS) has claimed victory and a new majority in parliament in Sunday’s elections, paving a continued path toward EU membership. We say ‘predictable’ given that this was one recent international headline: Moldova bans pro-Russian parties ahead of Sunday’s election. Anyone seen as Moscow-sympathetic has had the looming threat of a crackdown by the state hanging over them. But the government has claimed instances of bribery and corruption, and interference by Russian state actors.

Overall, the Moldovan government has in the last months has very openly engaged in a campaign to persecute, intimate, and silence the opposition on charges of “massive Russian interference”. It has also leveraged relations with the Western allies to seek to cleanse society of Russian sympathies. It was only on Friday that the nation’s electoral commission issued a blanket ban on the ‘pro-Russian’ Heart of Moldova and Moldova Mare parties. This barred several candidates from seeking office.

Opposition leader Igor Dodon is a former President of Moldova and is seen as the main ‘pro-Russian’ figure, leading the Party of Socialists (PSRM) which is the main component of the Patriotic Bloc. He has urged people to “peacefully protest” the election’s outcome outside parliament in the capital Chisinau on Monday. The turnout for the demonstration has not appeared substantial. Western mainstream media has cited this as an example of Russian ‘meddling’.

BBC records of the results, “With 99.9% of the 1.6 million votes counted, PAS had 50.17% of the vote – far ahead of the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc on 24.18%, Moldova’s central electoral commission said.”

Turnout was higher than in recent years, reportedly at 52% – but Moscow officials have complained that many could not participate. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, “From what we see and know, we can conclude that hundreds of thousands of Moldovans were deprived of the opportunity to vote in Russia because there were only two polling stations open to them, which was of course insufficient.”

The tiny Eastern European nation bordering Ukraine has experienced the same kind of internal political pro-EU vs. pro-Russia tug of war historically on display in other countries such as Ukraine or Georgia. One thing which has long alarmed the West is the presence of Russian ‘peacekeeping’ troops in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region. 

We earlier reported the bombshell revelation by Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, who alleged that French intelligence services attempted to strong-arm him into censoring conservative Moldovan channels ahead of the critical 2024 presidential election.

As expected, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the result. “You made your choice clear: Europe. Democracy. Freedom,” she wrote on X.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also celebrated: “These elections showed that Russia’s destabilizing activity loses, while Moldova in Europe wins,” he stated.

And Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk praised Sandu, declaring that she has “saved democracy” and “stopped Russia in its attempts to take control over the whole region. A good lesson for us all”.

* * *

Below, Andrew Korybko offers five implications on what to expect from this crucial parliamentary election outcome…

1. The West Has Perfected Its “Regime Reinforcement” Model

Last fall’s EU referendum and Sandu’s re-election were achieved via the means above, which preceded the first round of Romania’s presidential election whose results were then annulled on false pretexts of foreign meddling after the result disappointed the EU. The re-run then predictably led to their preferred candidate winning upon his rival’s disqualification. The West’s “regime reinforcement” model has now been perfected after the latest Moldovan elections and will thus likely be applied elsewhere in Europe.

2. NATO Will Complete Its De Facto Capture Of Moldova

Moldova is a constitutionally neutral state but that could soon change if PAS holds another referendum modeled off of its flawed EU one. Even without amending the constitution, NATO is still expected to complete its de facto capture of Moldova, likely by building upon Moldova’s special ties with Romania and last year’s defense pact with France. As was assessed here, France envisages using Romania-Moldova as a launchpad for openly intervening in Ukraine, whether before or after the war ends.

3. Moldova Will Be Drawn Even Deeper Into Mission Creep

Expanding upon the second consequence of these elections, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned in mid-July that “NATO Is Turning Moldova Into A New Military Ram Against Russia”, adding that its citizens might even be used as cannon fodder in Ukraine. Whether Moldova ultimately gets directly involved in the conflict or only facilitates the flow of arms and maybe one day Western/French troops there too, it’s still being drawn even deeper into mission creep, which entails very serious security risks.

4. A Joint Moldovan-Ukrainian Attack On Transnistria Is Possible

The preceding two consequences segue into the penultimate one of NATO backing a joint Moldovan-Ukrainian attack on Transnistria, something that SVR warned about last winter, on the assumption that it would be a low-cost but highly symbolic victory over Russia whose peacekeepers are still deployed there. This dangerous scenario could provoke Russian retaliation against Moldova, thus directly dragging it into the conflict, and possibly even NATO-member Romania too if its troops clash with Russia’s peacekeepers.

5. The Root Cause Of NATO-Russian Tensions Remains Intact

And finally, what all of this shows is that NATO continues expanding eastward at the expense of Russia’s security interests, thus confirming that the root cause of their tensions remains intact. These latest moves raise the odds that NATO will intensify its de facto expansion into Ukraine too, whether during or after the war, which in turn raises the odds of NATO-Russian tensions further worsening. The new normal that’s therefore emerging between them is one of heightened tensions for the foreseeable future.

* * *

Will Moldova be a future Ukraine? First comes EU accession talks, then the inevitable ‘path to NATO’ – a scenario which Moscow is likely to seek to prevent and fight against.

Via Middle East Eye

An unlikely answer has been found for who should lead the process of running Gaza after Israel’s genocidal war: Tony Blair. It was revealed last week that the former British prime minister – a controversial figure in the Middle East, to say the least – was being considered to lead a transitional authority in the enclave. 

Haaretz has now published a leaked draft plan of what Gaza would look like under Blair’s initiative. The plan reveals a hierarchy in which an international board of billionaires and businesspeople sit at the top, while highly vetted “neutral” Palestinian administrators are at the bottom. 

It sets out a three-year plan, budgeted at $90m in the first year, $134m in the second and $164m in the third (these are solely management expenses, and don’t include reconstruction or aid). 

The administration would work closely with Israel, Egypt and the US, and, according to Israeli sources cited by Haartez, has the backing of the White House. Middle East Eye breaks down key highlights from the 21-page leaked document. 

Board of billionaires

Gaza International Transitional Authority, or Gita, is the name given to the new institution which will administer the Palestinian enclave. According to the draft, Gita will be run by an international board which has “supreme political and legal authority for Gaza during the transitional period”.

The board will be in charge of all appointments, and supervise every component of the authority. It will be made up of between seven and 10 members, including a chair. 

The board will include a senior UN official, with Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, cited as an example. It would also include “leading international figures with executive and financial expertise”. 

Three names are cited as potential candidates: Marc Rowan, a billionaire who owns one of America’s largest private equity firms, Naguib Sawiris, an Egyptian billionaire in the telecommunications and technology sector, and Aryeh Lightstone, chief executive of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute.

Lightstone was a senior adviser to David Friedman, a staunch defender of Israel’s illegal settlement movement, when he was US ambassador to Israel between 2017 and 2021 under Donald Trump’s first administration. According to Haaretz, he was also deeply involved in the creation of the highly controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. 

Not every single board member will be a billionaire or have links to Israel or America. There will be “at least one qualified Palestinian representative”, potentially coming from the “business or security sector”. It wasn’t made clear what “qualified” means.

And finally, the document said that the board would have “a strong representation of Muslim members to ensure regional legitimacy and cultural credibility”. These Muslim figures would ideally have the political support of their countries, but also “long standing business credibility”. 

Members of the board would be “nominated by contributing states and confirmed through a process coordinated by the UN”. The board would report to the UN Security Council, which would ultimately grant it authority to carry out its functions. 

The Security Council currently includes non-permanent members that have been highly critical of Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza, such as Algeria, Pakistan and Slovenia, in addition to permanent members Russia and China. It would be interesting to see if these countries would approve a transitional government in Gaza run mostly by non-Palestinian billionaires and business figures. 

The chairman (probably Blair)

Various media outlets have reported that Blair is being touted to be the chair of the transitional authority, though his name is not mentioned in the draft. Public-private partnerships to run government projects, one of Blair’s hallmark policies as prime minister of the UK, is mentioned in the document. 

According to the draft plan, the chairman will serve as the “senior political executive, principal spokesperson, and strategic coordinator for the entire transitional authority”. They would be appointed through “international consensus” and endorsement by the UN Security Council. There is no mention of Palestinian consensus in choosing them. 

If Blair is indeed the proposed chairman, he may have his work cut out gaining “international consensus” for his appointment. His handling of the Iraq war as premier of the UK, as well as his dealings with a string of autocrats, has left him deeply unpopular across the globe. 

The chair will represent Gita “in all diplomatic, donor and intergovernmental forums”. They will also lead “strategic security diplomacy” with other actors, “including Israel, Egypt and the United States”. 

The document notes that initially, Gita’s senior officials won’t be in Gaza. In the first year, they’ll be based in “coordination cells” such as El-Arish in Egypt’s Sinai and “remote policy hubs” such as Cairo and Amman. 

There would be partial deployment into Gaza by the second year, before “full operatationalization” into the enclave in the third year. 

Hierarchical structure

An organizational chart at the end of the document lays out the hierarchical structure of Gita, with the board and chairman at the top. A security body, the “International Security Force”, is on the same row as the board and chairman and appears to be outside of the hierarchy. 

This body will man crossings into Gaza, naval approaches and “perimeter zones” in coordination with Israel and Egypt. 

Directly underneath the board and the chairman will be a number of bodies and structures – none of which appear to be directly Palestinian-run – including an investment and economic development authority and an “executive secretariat”.

The latter will coordinate daily operations, including digital creating systems to identify Palestinians in Gaza and “digital platforms for licensing and permits”. It will also run “targeted operations to prevent the resurgence of armed groups”. There is no mention of Hamas in the entire document.

Below that layer are several officials overseeing humanitarian work, reconstruction, legislative and legal issues, and security, as well as a coordinator with the Palestinian Authority (PA). It is below this, at the very bottom of the chart, where we see named Palestinian involvement: the “Palestinian Executive Authority”.

Palestinian Executive Authority, with little authority

Despite the name, the Palestinian Executive Authority, at the bottom of the hierarchy, has little to no independent authority. It is separate from the PA, which administers parts of the occupied West Bank.

It would be made up of technocratic ministries that administer health, education, water supply and energy, labour market policies, housing, local criminal justice and welfare, among a few other policy areas. It would be headed up by a “Palestinian Chief Executive Officer”, appointed by the international board. 

It’s notable that the language used for all roles throughout the document, like board, chairman and CEO, reflects a business structure rather than a country or territory. 

The Palestinian CEO will lead the process of identifying “directors” (not ministers) to head up the various departments like health, education, infrastructure and planning. The directors will need to “meet standards of technical competence, integrity, and neutrality”. 

The international board of billionaires and businesspeople will have the final say on appointments “to safeguard institutional legitimacy and independence”. 

“All department heads are subject to performance review and can be dismissed or replaced in accordance with transitional governance procedures,” the document notes. 

An Israeli source told Haaretz that the Palestinian Executive Authority would be completely subordinate to the board and have no independent authority.  As such, it would be far weaker than the technocratic administration set out in a joint Arab plan led by Egypt earlier this year. 

Below the Palestinian Executive Authority are a number of municipal roles related to the running of local public services and utilities. “All mayors and senior municipal administrators are nominated by the Palestinian Executive Authority and formally appointed by the GITA International Board,” the plan states. 

Once again, it is also spelled out that any Palestinian appointees to such roles “must meet strict standards of political neutrality”. 

It is not spelled out whether the likes of Aryeh Lightstone, the pro-Israel former adviser named in the document as a potential board member, is considered “politically neutral”.

International law

There are various judicial and legal arms to the authority, too. That includes a legislative and legal supervisor who, among other things, would ensure that the transitional authority was operating in a manner “consistent with international law”. 

Given how closely this authority states that it will work with Israel, which has been breaching international law in the West Bank and Gaza for over seven decades, it will have its work cut out. 

War criminals are proposing a war criminal as head of…. Gaza. It would be precious comedy if it were not so tragic https://t.co/Z3MLszXTrp

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) September 25, 2025

There will also be a “judicial board” to oversee due process, legal compliance and justice sector reforms. The board will be “chaired by a reputable Arab jurist, preferably Palestinian”. Interestingly, one of its roles will include legally protecting the “right to return” for any Palestinian in Gaza who decides to voluntarily leave their home. 

“GITA does not facilitate or endorse population relocation but ensures that all voluntary movement is conducted in accordance with international law and rights protections,” the plan states. Palestinians will likely be skeptical of any such promises, particularly from an authority that will have Israeli backing. 

During the Nakba in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes in what is now Israel, many thought they would be gone for just days. Over 77 years later, they still have not been allowed to return. 

The draft plan mentions that Gita will work “in close consultation” with the PA, with a view to eventually handing management over to it. It doesn’t set out a timetable for when this will happen. 

America loves to tally its billionaires and track the S&P’s every tick, but the millions struggling to cover rent or stock the fridge rarely make the headline scroll.

Poverty is the country’s most persistent invisibility cloak, present in every zip code, yet ignored in a culture that equates success with worth.

In this chart Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao breaks down where the poor in America actually live, ranked by each state.

Data for this visualization is sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau.

It averages three years of Current Population Survey results (2021-2023) to estimate how many residents in each state live below the federal poverty line.

Read the last section for more information on their methodology.

Ranked: U.S. States by Residents in Poverty

Four populous states—California, Texas, Florida, and New York—account for 13.5 million low-income residents, or more than one-third of all Americans in poverty.

California alone has 4.5 million people struggling to make ends meet, roughly the population of metropolitan Phoenix.

While the Golden State’s higher cost of living may impact this figure, it also underscores how expensive housing can compound economic hardship, even in high-income states.

Fact: People in California have the lowest purchasing power in the country.

Poverty Rates vs. Absolute Numbers

A fair criticism of this visualization is that it doesn’t account for population.

We previously mapped out poverty rates by state in the country to help cover this angle. The table below has the relevant figures.

In fact, California’s poverty rate is 12%, solidly middle of the pack.

But its 4.6 million poor residents are larger than the entire state of Oklahoma.

By contrast, Mississippi’s headline-grabbing 17% rate represents about 500,000 people.

Thus, a national food-assistance program needs almost nine times the meal budget for California, even though Mississippi is poorer than California.

Even within similar rate bands, scale varies wildly: Louisiana (18.9%) has 853,000 million people in poverty, compared with 388,000 in New Mexico (18.5%).

Thus, absolute numbers are also necessary to flag where to park mobile clinics, expand SNAP distribution sites, and hire caseworkers.

Fact: New Mexico also has the highest share of households on income or food support.

How Poverty is Measured in America

The way the Census Bureau calculates this line is important and can impact the data.

They use pretax household income against a threshold at three times the cost of a minimum food diet from 1963, adjusted for family size and inflation.

For reference, this is a quick guide on how much a household needs to be earning to be considered below the poverty line in 2023.

• One person: ≤$15,480

• Two people: ≤$19,680

• Three people: ≤$24,230

• Four people: ≤$31,200

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out What is Costs to Buy a Home in America on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

President Donald Trump has finally done it… the thing we’ve all been waiting for: WE’RE GETTING EARHART FILES

Indeed, on Friday Trump ordered the release of records related to legendary pilot Amelia Earhart and her ill-fated attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world at the age of 39. 

“I have been asked by many people about the life and times of Amelia Earhart, such an interesting story, and would I consider declassifying and releasing everything about her, in particular, her last, fatal flight,” Trump wrote on Truth social, instead of releasing the list of powerful Epstein associates who systematically raped young women, over and over. 

“I am ordering my Administration to declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her,” Trump continued (likely after watching some documentary the other night).

As the Epoch Times notes further, Earhart made history in 1932 as the first woman to fly nonstop and solo across the Atlantic. By 1936, she was preparing to fly around the world with navigator Frederick Noonan, but their first attempt ended in Hawaii due to technical problems.

In May 1937, the pair made a second attempt, flying East. After reaching New Guinea, they set off toward Howland Island, a tiny speck of land with an airstrip lying about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. They never arrived.
Earhart and Noonan’s disappearance sparked one of the largest government rescue missions of its time, involving an aircraft carrier with 54 aircraft, a Coast Guard ship, two destroyers, and a battleship.

Despite the massive operation, no trace of the aviators or their plane was ever found. On July 19, 1937, the U.S. Navy called off the search, and Earhart and Noonan were presumed dead.

The incident remains one of aviation’s enduring mysteries. Over the decades, teams of public and private expeditions have searched the Pacific in hopes of finding wreckage of Earhart’s aircraft, but none have succeeded.

Different theories about her fate have emerged, including the claim that she was captured by Japan—at a time of tense relations with the United States—and executed under suspicion of being a spy.

“Amelia made it almost three-quarters around the World before she suddenly, and without notice, vanished, never to be seen again,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.

“Her disappearance, almost 90 years ago, has captivated millions.”

Trump has shown a recurring interest in declassifying files connected to historical mysteries. In January, shortly after returning to the White House, he directed officials to prepare the release of documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Antifa mob actions in Portland and Seattle have been a constant feature of the Pacific Northwest for years, ever since Democrat political leaders supported their operations during the BLM riots.  Leftist riots, firebombings and assaults have been normalized in Democrat controlled regions, enabling activist groups to harass their opponents with impunity.  They understand that within certain metros, the law does not apply to them.

NGOs also work to support these intimidation tactics by arranging legal representation and bail for those activists that do get arrested.  The revolving door continues, charges are often dropped and officials refuse to prosecute.  

Democrats in Portland claim that the violence has subsided and that videos of Antifa operations circulating online are from the BLM era.  Andy Ngo, a journalist who has been carefully tracking Portland Antifa ever since he was almost killed by them in 2019, disagrees. 

Andy Ngo has exposed numerous far-left actions in Portland over the years, including actions against ICE as they attempt to enforce Trump’s deportation policies for illegal immigrants.  He has received numerous death threats for this reporting.

Trantifa are urging people to kill me to silence my reporting on Portland.

“Portland is peaceful.”
“Just administer the lead pill doctor.” pic.twitter.com/rOC5IYfY7P

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) September 28, 2025

Leftists groups have been forming regularly outside the Portland ICE facility, threatening officers and attempting to impede vehicles.  There have been similar attempts to violently thwart ICE in Seattle, Chicago, LA and New Jersey, to name a few.  According to Oregon’s lesbian Governor Tina Kotek, however, there is no threat.  Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

Kotek told reporters Saturday afternoon that she awoke Saturday morning to President Donald’s Trump’s announcement on social media that he will send “all necessary Troops” into Portland in order to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities from “domestic terrorists.”

Kotek said she was attempting to understand Trump’s rationale, saying his view of Portland was based on “information that is not accurate today,” and though the city does have protests, they have remained peaceful, not like the ones in 2020. Trump also claimed that there were elements of “insurrection,” which Kotek denied.

Oregon Democrats spread disinformation about protests and mob activities, asserting that there is no Antifa presence and that ICE facilities are safe.  Some have posted clips from these locations during the day after activists have gone home.  Antifa surrounds the facilities primarily at night. 

Taken just a few minutes ago outside the ICE facility in Portland that Trump claims is under siege. My message to Donald Trump is this: we don’t need you here. Stay the hell out of our city. pic.twitter.com/XV3NCir20G

— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) September 27, 2025

Here is the scene in front of the ICE facility in Portland this week:

Portland (Sept. 27) — No games. Federal agents move in force to make an arrest as the far-left rioting begins following the President’s announcement of a surge of resources to the state to protect federal property. Video by @KatieDaviscourt: pic.twitter.com/dxxLE2Lg0k

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) September 28, 2025

Portland (Sept. 28) — A black man was beaten to the ground by rioters outside the ICE facility. pic.twitter.com/JcWlPWJXHA

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) September 29, 2025

Meanwhile, rapper Ice Cube’s crew bus for his tour was just firebombed in Portland.  Did low IQ Antifa think it was a federal ICE vehicle?

NEW: Ice Cube’s tour bus was firebombed in Portland while he was in town for a performance at the Moda Center.

The fire is currently under investigation, and officials are reviewing security footage from nearby cameras to gather evidence.

Please don’t tell me some leftist… pic.twitter.com/ahfZA9B4et

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 27, 2025

Reports suggest that Antifa organizations in Portland are now scrubbing their online presence and they may very well disappear before Trump deploys the National Guard to the area.  Trump has stated that troops would be sent specifically to protect ICE agents in their deportation efforts. 

If local officials refuse to prosecute dangerous activists, or if they are actually giving aid to violent leftists within their own cities, this gives Trump a perfect rationale to deploy troops.  The best way for Portland to avoid such an outcome would be to enforce their own laws and arrest protesters that cross the line into insurgency.

Reports from earlier today indicate a Netherlands-flagged cargo ship is on fire in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen, after being struck by an unidentified projectile launched by the Houthis.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations has cited that “a vessel reported seeing a splash and smoke in the distance” and it’s as yet “unclear how severe the blaze was” – according to Bloomberg. The ship’s Amsterdam-based operator stated Monday, “Earlier today its general cargo vessel Minervagracht that was on passage in the Gulf of Aden, in international waters, has come under attack of an unidentified explosive device, inflicting substantial damage to the ship.”

“Security company Ambrey said the ship targeted on Monday was previously attacked on Sept. 23 when a French naval group reported an incident involving the Netherlands-flagged Minervagracht,” Bloomberg says further. “It’s a relatively small cargo vessel built in 2011 which can hold about 700 containers.”

Despite several rounds of attacks by Israeli jets in the past months, the Iran-aligned Houthis have remained undeterred in targeting any vessel deemed to have Israeli links, or bound for an Israeli port.

A Western warship is said to be heading to the scene of the distressed cargo ship to assess to the situation, and possibly commence with rescues.

The Amsterdam-based firm Spliethoff is the owner of the vessel. Additionally, the Joint Maritime Information Center, overseen by the US Navy, has said that the shipper had “no Israeli affiliations” – so this suggests the Houthis could be returning to a stance of willingness to attack any and all foreign vessels traversing the waters.

The Houthis have by and large respected the months-long US ceasefire declared by President Trump, but have said they have committed to continuing attacks on any Israeli-linked or Israel-bound vessel traversing the Red Sea.

As the US Navy stepped back from regional operations, Washington has pressured the Europeans to step up defense of the vital trade transit waters.

#Houthis hit ship in GOA 🚨

Dutch-flagged MV Minervagracht reported being hit in GOA by at least on Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM).

Serious fire is reported on board.

This is the same vessel that reported a near-miss in the Gulf of Aden on 23 Sept.

Vessel’s last AIS… pic.twitter.com/yyvEqHij72

— Martin Kelly (@_MartinKelly_) September 29, 2025

The Houthis are an Iran-aligned movement which has shown resiliency, given that for over a half-decade it was bombed by the Saudi-US-UAE coalition, largely to no effect, and now it is in a war with Israel, and has managed to effectively shut down international transit shipping through the Red Sea.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

More than 8,000 traps have been deployed across Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, targeting the New World screwworm (NWS) flies, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a Sept. 26 post on X, adding that no additional NWS infections have been detected since last Sunday.

On Sunday, Sept. 21, an announcement was made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which said that Mexico’s National Service of Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety, and Quality had confirmed a new NWS infection in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nueva Leon state, less than 70 miles from America’s southern border. The infected animal was an 8-month-old cow.

Earlier in July, an NWS infection had been reported 370 miles south of the U.S.–Mexico border.

In her post, Rollins said that over 13,000 screening samples have been screened, and zero NWS flies have been identified thus far.

In addition, 750,000 sterilized NWS flies are being trucked in and dispersed in the Nueva Leon region twice a week, she said.

Mass-produced, sterile male NWS flies are often used to tackle the spread of wild NWS fly swarms. When these sterile flies are released into a swarm in large numbers, they mate with the wild female flies, which end up laying unfertilized eggs, thus lowering the swarm population.

Tackling NWS swarms is crucial since they pose a major threat to livestock. In an Aug. 15 statement, USDA called NWS a “devastating pest.”

“When NWS fly larvae (maggots) burrow into the flesh of a living animal, they cause serious, often deadly damage to the animal. NWS can infest livestock, pets, wildlife, occasionally birds, and in rare cases, people,” the agency said.

“It is not only a threat to our ranching community, but it is a threat to our food supply and our national security.”

Since May, U.S. ports have been closed to imports of cattle, horses, and bison from Mexico to prevent the spread of NWS flies into the United States.

Rollins accused Mexico of having “failed to enforce proper cattle movement controls and neglected to regularly maintain fly traps as agreed, undermining detection efforts.”

“This is unacceptable,” she said in the post on X. “Mexico must immediately implement agreed-upon protocols, expand surveillance, and restrict cattle movement in infected zones. For the foreseeable future the border will remain closed.”

In a Sept. 22 statement, Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development said that the Sept. 21 detection was of an NWS fly in its larval stage, “meaning there is no possibility of the fly emerging.”

Moreover, the trapping system set up throughout northern Mexico has so far not detected a single NWS fly, said the statement.

“Mexico has established an identification and communication protocol at approved feedlots in the north of the country to immediately detect and eliminate cases and prevent any further incidents.”

Last month, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. signed a declaration empowering the Food and Drug Administration to authorize drugs aimed at preventing or treating NWS infections among animals.

“Today we are taking decisive action to safeguard the nation’s food supply from this emerging threat,” Kennedy said in a statement.

“This authorization equips FDA to act quickly, limit the spread of New World Screwworm, and protect America’s livestock.”

Currently, no drugs have been approved by the FDA to prevent or treat NWS infections. According to the FDA, its Center for Veterinary Medicine is working with companies to identify drugs that can work against the parasite.

Meanwhile, a travel-related human case of NWS infection was detected last month in an individual from Maryland, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Aug. 25.

The infection was detected after the individual returned to Maryland from El Salvador, Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

“This is the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm myiasis (parasitic infestation of fly larvae) from an outbreak-affected country identified in the United States,” he said, adding that the case posed a “very low” risk to public health in the United States.

Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.

Charlie Javice, the founder of a startup company that sought to improve how students apply for financial aid and who is best known for defrauding the world’s largest commercial bank (to be fair a few banks in China are bigger but they areall state owned), was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison for cheating JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million by greatly exaggerating how many students it served.

Javice, 33, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court for her March conviction by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who said she committed “a large fraud” by duping the bank giant in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem the company, called Frank, had over 4.25 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000, Hellerstein found.

Frank, which JPMorgan shut down in early 2023 after spending shit ton of money on without doing any due diligence, pretended to offer a tool to help students fill out their Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, which is required by most colleges in making financial aid decisions.  A JPMorgan executive testified that the bank mistakenly thought Bank of America was also bidding for Frank. In reality, Capital One Financial Corp. withdrew a $125 million offer over regulatory, marketing and technological concerns on the same day JPMorgan made its bid for Javice’s company.

JPMorgan executives testified at trial that they hoped to gain millions of new, young customers through the Frank Deal, which made Javice a managing director and head of student solutions at the bank. But the bank launched an internal investigation after an email marketing push to Frank users yielded only 10 new checking accounts, they said. 

Jurors heard from a data scientist whom Javice paid $18,000 to create “synthetic” user data to provide to JPMorgan during her negotiations with the bank. Frank’s chief engineer testified that he had refused to create such data for Javice because he feared it might be illegal.

The judge said Javice had assembled a “very powerful list” of her charitable acts, which included organizing soup kitchens for the homeless when she was 7 years old and designing career programs for formerly incarcerated women.

“You’re a good person,” Hellerstein told Javice. “You’ve done a bad thing, and I have to punish you.” In addition to prison time, he ordered her to forfeit $22.4 million.

“I am deeply sorry, and I am asking with all my heart for forgiveness,” Javice said through tears before her sentencing. “If it were within my power, I would never make the same mistakes again, not for money, not for recognition, not for anything.” Family members in attendance in the front row of the courtroom also wept as Javice spoke.

In court papers, defense lawyers noted that Javice has faced extraordinary public scrutiny, reputational destruction and professional exile, “making her a household name” in the same way Elizabeth Holmes became synonymous with her blood-testing company, Theranos. Which, considering both women are criminals, is hardly a shock. 

Defense attorney Ronald Sullivan told Hellerstein that his client was very different from Holmes because what she created actually worked, unlike Holmes, “who did not have a real company” and whose product “in fact endangered patients.”

In seeking a 12-year prison sentence for Javice, prosecutors cited a 2022 text Javice sent to a colleague in which she called it “ridiculous” that Holmes got over 11 years in prison.

Prosecutors asked Hellerstein in a court filing for a stiff sentence, calling the crime a “brazen fraud” that she undertook to get JPMorgan to pay far more for her company than it was worth in the September 2021 deal. Javice’s lawyers on Monday suggested a sentence “in the neighborhood of 18 months.” They had called her actions a “single lapse in judgment” and claimed the loss was “not consequential” to a bank as big as JPMorgan.

Hellerstein largely dismissed arguments that he should be lenient because the acquisition pitted “a 28-year-old versus 300 investment bankers from the largest bank in the world,” as Sullivan put it.

“A fraud is a fraud, whether you outsmart someone who’s smart or someone who’s a fool,” the judge said, adding that he was focused on “her conduct, not JPMorgan’s stupidity.” Still he said JPM “have a lot to blame themselves” after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was “punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity.”

Sullivan said the bank rushed its negotiations because it feared another bank would acquire Frank first.

A prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, though, said JPMorgan “didn’t get a functioning business” in exchange for its investment. “They acquired a crime scene.”

Fergenson said Javice was driven by greed when she saw that she could pocket $29 million from the sale of her company.

“Ms. Javice had it dangling in front of her and she lied to get it,” he said.

Given a chance to speak, Javice said she was “haunted that my failure has transformed something meaningful into something infamous.” She said she “made a choice that I will spend my entire life regretting.”

Javice, who lives in Florida, has been free on $2 million bail since her 2023 arrest. It means she has been wisely spending the money she stole from JPM.

At trial, Javice, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, was convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud and wire fraud charges. Having attracted clearly clueless investors like Apollo CEO Marc Rowan (not to be confused with Apollo’s Leon Black who had a thing for even younger women), Javice was one of several young startup founders with elite backgrounds convicted of fraud in recent years. The group includes FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Theranos Inc.’s Elizabeth Holmes.

Her lawyers had argued that JPMorgan went after Javice because it had buyer’s remorse.

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

There has been a big increase in the number of Global Positioning System (GPS) spoofing or jamming attacks, aimed at messing with the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) data, which is standard on all international shipping.

Jeroen Pijpker, from NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, told The Epoch Times they had recorded 400 GPS spoofing and jamming incidents in their database—25 percent of which related to actual vessels—but he believed it was the “tip of the iceberg.”

Nir Ayalon, the founder and CEO of Cydome, a maritime cybersecurity firm based in Israel, told The Epoch Times that 95 percent of incidents caused by spoofing or jamming do not end up making the news.

He said Cydome had seen a 500 percent increase in GPS spoofing and jamming this year, with a 2,000 percent rise in the number of maritime blackspot areas.

GPS jamming was blamed for a collision in the Gulf of Oman in June 2025, between the Liberia-flagged tanker Front Eagle, and the Adalynn, which has been identified by Lloyd’s List—the bible of the shipping industry—as a “dark fleet” vessel.

Ayalon said that GPS spoofing is sometimes carried out by the operators of ships in order to disguise their location or identity, but it is also perpetrated as a hostile act.

He said that was believed to be the case with the MSC Antonia, which ran aground in May in the Red Sea, close to the southern end of the Suez Canal, en route to Malta from the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah.

‘Manipulation of the Data’

“When we talk about GPS spoofing or jamming, we have several methods that organizations will use,” Ayalon said. “So there is the manipulation on the RF [radio frequency] data from the satellite to the vessel or to the antenna itself, but we have also manipulation of the data itself.”

He said spoofing or jamming could be carried out in two ways—by intercepting GNSS messages from the antenna to the transceiver, or by manipulating the AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, which all ships use.

An attacker will manipulate this data, which is easier because it’s on the web, Ayalon said. “It does not require any encryption or any authentication, so you can basically add any information that you want there.”

“It’s very easy to get into AIS data,” he said.

He said GPS spoofing could, in effect, render ships invisible—in other words, they would show up on the map in a certain location, but in reality, they would not be there.

Referring to the MSC Antonia incident, he said: “Basically, their location was manipulated and the ship autopilot tried to fix the path to the path that it thought was the right one … so the ship grounded.”

“If you would look at the place where the AIS is telling you that the ship is … there’s no ship there,” Ayalon said.

Sometimes, spoofing was carried out by bad actors who were trying to damage a specific vessel, he said.

There were also reports of Russian oligarchs using spoofing to hide the location of their megayachts in 2022, when sanctions against Russia kicked in.

“There was a case in Dutch waters, near Den Helder, there was a Russian oligarch with his superyacht, and there was a lot of spoofing around the superyacht,” Pijpker said.

Jamming and Spoofing

Ayalon said that in order to carry out GPS jamming or spoofing, a bad actor needs only a relatively small high-frequency antenna, which would usually need to be sited on a tall building or on a cliff or other high place, close to a port or a shipping lane.

“They will need an antenna,” he said, adding that it is not always something that can be seen.

“It can be quite a small device,” he said.

The Norwegian shipping insurance company Gard published an article recently about GPS jamming, which said navigation in the shipping lanes of the Middle East have been impacted by GPS interference which was used as “defensive measures used to protect against drone and missile threats targeting critical infrastructure include the Israeli coast and the Red Sea during the Israel–Hamas conflict as well as the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf.”

Ayalon said there were a number of GPS spoofing blackspots around the world where mariners knew they had to keep especially alert.

These areas included the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf, the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the Barents Sea, and the seas around North Korea.

There is also a small blackspot near Pensacola, Florida, which may be linked to a U.S. naval air station.

Ayalon said a lot of the satellite data for shipping around China was also not accurate because of spoofing.

Pijpker pointed out a case in 2019, when a British ship, the Stena Impero, drifted into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf after apparently having its GPS spoofed.

He said the Iranians allegedly used GPS spoofing to get the ship to unintentionally enter their national waters, and they then seized it. It left Iranian waters later that year.

Ship Honeynet Created

But Pijpker said GPS spoofing remained an “under-researched topic,” and he said his own university had created a ship honeynet in an attempt to understand the “malicious traffic,” referring to a network setup with intentional vulnerabilities to attract hackers.

He said it was a “virtual ship” that was linked to the internet by a Starlink device and a decoy server and was designed “to see what kind of people are attacking ships.”

Ayalon said the increase in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites like Starlink had brought with it a lot of new maritime technology, but he said a lot of crew members trust what the computer and other semi-autonomous systems display.

“This means that we see more and more events like the MSC Antonia,” he said.

He said there were a lot of tools that enabled crews to check the integrity of their GNSS, and he said crews will need to start using these types of systems “in order to make sure that they’re in the right place.”