Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been issued with a formal letter of claim after several foreign politicians, commentators, and activists were blocked from entering the United Kingdom ahead of a major rally in London last weekend.

The legal threat was announced over the weekend by Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who said she and others had instructed a lawyer to act on their behalf over potentially defamatory remarks made by the prime minister last week.

“Today, Dominik Tarczyński, Don Keith, Ada Lluch, Joey Mannarino, and I have formally instructed our lawyer, Francesco Gargallo di Castel Lentini, to issue a Letter of Claim to Keir Starmer,” Vlaardingerbroek wrote on X. The lawyer mentioned is Vlaardingerbroek’s Italian husband.

Enough is enough.

Today, @D_Tarczynski, @RealDonKeith, @AdaLluch, @JoeyMannarino and I have formally instructed our lawyer, @Fr_Gargallo, to issue a Letter of Claim to @Keir_Starmer. The letter demands that he immediately retract his defamatory statements in which he labelled us… pic.twitter.com/myseUDpc8U

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) May 16, 2026

“The letter demands that he immediately retract his defamatory statements in which he labelled us ‘far-right agitators’ who wish to incite violence.

“Should he fail to comply, we reserve all our legal rights to pursue further action against him.”

The dispute follows a speech delivered by Starmer last Monday in which he said his government had barred what he described as “far-right agitators” from entering Britain to attend the Unite the Kingdom march organized by Tommy Robinson.

The demonstration took place in London on Saturday. Ahead of the event, those named in the letter received notices from the Home Office informing them that their U.K. Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) had been cancelled. The message stated that their presence in Britain was not considered “conducive to the public good.”

Among those affected was Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński, a conservative politician and outspoken opponent of mass migration.

“This is what communism looks like in the 21st Century. I have just been denied entry to the U.K. in order to speak at the largest patriotic event in Europe,” Tarczyński wrote on social media after being refused entry.

In total, 11 people were reportedly banned from entering the U.K. to attend the rally. They included American nationals, Don Keith and Joey Mannarino, and Spanish conservative influencer Ada Lluch.

Mannarino wrote in response, “None of us want to incite violence. None of us are agitators. We are simply people who want to see Europe remain Europe, the U.K. remain the U.K., America remain America, and so on.”

The letter of claim, dated May 13, was addressed to Starmer at 10 Downing Street and described the prime minister’s remarks as “potentially defamatory, untrue and denigratory.” It said the statements had been made against private citizens, parliamentarians, and lawyers, and demanded a formal retraction.

The row also comes amid broader warnings issued ahead of those attending the London protest. The Metropolitan Police cautioned that certain placards and chants could amount to hate crimes and lead to prosecution.

Those warnings followed new guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service on acts that may be treated as stirring up hatred.

Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson defended the guidance, saying, “This is not about restricting free speech. It is about preventing hate crime and protecting the public, particularly at a time of heightened tensions.”

Read more here…

For decades South Africa has operated as the breadbasket for half of the African continent, and the vast majority of that food was grown by white farmers (Boers and Afrikaners).  In other words, the very survival of Africans has long been dependent on the hard labor of the white people they are taught to despise.

South Africa has around 142 race-based laws which largely discriminate against white citizens, especially when property, business and government office is involved.  The Expropriation Act of 2024 allows the socialist government to confiscate any land of their choosing to “redress past discriminatory laws or practices” (land owned by white citizens).  This is part of a project to “fulfill land reform goals” (transfer wealth and farming operations to black citizens). 

The problem is, when land is seized or forced into sale to black owners, farming production reportedly collapses.  That is to say, once the white farmers are gone, crop yields fail and the black owners often resell the land and leave.  In other cases, the new owners allow the land to languish, using the homes for living but never cultivating the surrounding property. 

Black South Africans own more farmland per capita than French, German and Spanish farmers combined, yet, starvation persists in the region.  Excuses as to why this is happening persist, but the fact remains that if Africa wants steady food production, they will have to rely on experienced white Afrikaners to make it happen because no one else is going to do it.

Furthermore, the government’s failure to maintain basic infrastructure has forced local farmers to take on the costs in order to keep food production on track and the roads ready for freight.  

The pressure from government projects for “reparations” as well as the constant threat of violence from militant race communists targeting white farmers has made the job difficult.  Now, shortages of diesel and fertilizers caused by the Iran War are creating a perfect storm of circumstances which may cause a food crisis going into 2027.  If the shortages are not rectified, half of the African continent will be throttled by a lack domestic food supplies. 

The war is, apparently, the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back.  After years of the South African government sabotaging its most productive citizens and replacing them with less useful farmers, it was only a matter of time before a Black Swan event would lead to collapse.

Iran’s refusal to allow safe passage of tankers from countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is, interestingly, hurting BRICS nations far more than it is hurting the US or the west.  Around 25% of South Africa’s oil supplies pass through the Strait of Hormuz.  South Africa also imports around 80% of its fertilizer supplies.

The US blockade is only targeted at ships coming from Iranian ports with Iranian oil.  All other ships are allowed to pass. 

For now, the region is relatively safe from food shortages due to an unusually solid harvest in 2025, but 2027 looms and predictions are up in the air as to what will happen.  Once a planting season has passed, there is no way to make up the loss.  Foreign imports of food would be the obvious solution, but it’s a costly one.  Meaning, price inflation is likely for most of Africa in 2027 and government rationing is a possibility. 

The end result will undoubtedly be blamed on the closure of the Hormuz, but South Africa’s progressive policies set the stage and created the house of cards that is Africa’s food supply chain.  They are completely unprepared for any significant supply shocks, and the result could be disastrous.   

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Schools in the north of England are teaching pupils that black people cannot be racist towards white people.

According to materials adopted by a group of Sheffield schools, led by Notre Dame High School, teenagers are explicitly told: “Black people can be racially prejudiced towards a white person which is wrong and totally unacceptable. However, this is not racism. Racism is racial prejudice plus power. In the UK, white people hold the cultural power.”

For children as young as 7, lessons focus on “empathy building” around “privilege,” asserting that white people are “likely to be privileged by the colour of their skin” and have a “responsibility” to reduce racism by monitoring their language, challenging friends, and reporting incidents.

Pupils told it’s impossible for black people to be ‘racist’ to white peers https://t.co/hE74ZXEs2z

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) May 18, 2026

Handouts for older pupils push narratives on criminal justice, claiming black people are disproportionately targeted by police due to racism, with questions guiding students toward that conclusion.

The scheme aims to “interrupt systemic racism” and promote “strong social justice values,” according to its creators.

Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott slammed the materials, noting “It is deeply alarming that children as young as seven are being exposed to divisive identity politics in schools under the banner of ‘anti-racism education’… Labelling children by race and teaching them to focus on what divides them will only foster resentment and deepen division.”

Shadow minister Neil O’Brien called it “political indoctrination” and vowed to tackle such content.

These latest examples highlight a disturbing pattern in UK education: grooming children with critical race theory concepts, framing whiteness as inherently privileged and problematic, while shielding certain groups from accountability and cracking down on any dissent.

This comes as nurseries in Wales, funded by over £1.3 million in taxpayer money, have been urged to report “racist” incidents involving toddlers to police, turning playgrounds into surveillance hubs for the state’s anti-racism agenda.

Childcare workers are being trained to spot and log “racist incidents” by children barely out of nappies, with instructions to contact police via 999 or 101 if it could amount to a hate crime.

Funded by the Welsh Government and pushed by Diversity and Anti-Racist Professional Learning (DARPL) at Cardiff Metropolitan University, the program covers over 300 nurseries, playgroups, and childminders. It demands audits of resources for “diversity” and discussions of skin colour with toddlers to create “anti-racist” environments from the cradle.

Critics rightly point out that toddlers lack the cognitive ability to be racist, yet the state treats them as potential thought criminals.

UK schools have also pushed books telling children “there’s plenty of room” for small boat migrants, framing mass illegal immigration as something positive and inevitable.

The Green Party has also floated such extreme proposals for what to teach children, while the government urges schools to snitch on “anti-Muslim hostility” in an Orwellian surveillance push.

Counter-terror police have warned teens that sharing “funny content” could be terrorism, and a taxpayer-funded video game literally flags kids questioning mass migration as potential extremists.

Parents of a child who questioned why he had to celebrate Ramadan in school when he is not a Muslim were sent a letter informing them of the ‘racist’ incident.

British children are being conditioned to view their own heritage and skin colour as sources of guilt, accept open borders and cultural replacement without question, and self-censor any pushback—or face reports, labels, and potential police involvement.

This is not education. It is state-sponsored division and thought control, bankrolled by taxpayers under a Labour government disconnected from reality.

Parents are waking up to the grooming, and the pushback is growing. Childhood must be reclaimed from ideologues before an entire generation is lost to this divisive nonsense. Freedom of thought and equal standards for all—not racial power games—should define British values.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

It’s being widely reported as a major “first” of the war: a NATO fighter has jet shot down what is believed to have been a stray Ukrainian drone over a Baltic country.

The incident happened over southern Estonia on Tuesday, resulting in a regular NATO patrolling unit being forces to urgently scramble a pair of F-16 fighter jets in response. After the shoot-down, Ukraine owned up to it by issuing public apology.

Kiev called it an “unintended incident” – but then also suggested Russia caused it by diverting the drone’s path through electronic warfare. 

“We apologize to Estonia and all our Baltic friends for such unintended incidents,” a Ukrainian government statement said. “We have been and remain in close cooperation through our specialized institutions to get to the heart of the matter in each case and seek ways to prevent them, including through the direct engagement of our expert groups.”

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry then deflected, calling attention to Russian actions: “Moscow does this on purpose, together with intensified propaganda,” it said.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur had earlier described that the drone’s trajectory left the military with no choice: “we decided that we needed to take it down,” he had earlier announced.

“Most probably, today we can say that it was a drone that was, let’s say, meant to hit Russian targets,” he conceded, appearing to accept Ukraine’s explanation. According to further details:

A Romanian F-16 Nato jet shot down a drone over Estonia on Tuesday in what appears to be the latest case of Russian electronic jamming diverting long-range Ukrainian drones into the alliance’s territory.

A local resident told the Estonian public broadcaster, ERR, that he had seen two fighter jets – part of a Nato force policing the skies over the Baltic states – flying in the area before a loud bang that brought the drone down. He said the drone had crashed about 30 metres from the nearest residential building.

Moscow, for its part, has been warning Baltic countries against allowing Ukraine to launch drones from their territories, or to allow their airspace to be used for such hostile attacks.

For example, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has freshly called out Latvia: “The primitive Russophobia of Latvia’s current rulers proved stronger than their capacity for critical thinking or their sense of self-preservation,” it said in a Tuesday statement. 

However, Ukraine as well as Baltic officials have slammed the Kremlin statements as part of “yet another disinformation campaign.”

The whole incident is unusual given that typically NATO jets scramble in response to Russian drones. But here we have an ally vs. ally drone shootdown, and happening in airspace which is deemed NATO’s domain.

Via Remix News,

Last Friday, an Ipsos poll conducted for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, Le Monde, and Cevipof indicated that 45 percent of French voters are now considering voting for the National Rally (RN) in the 2027 elections, meaning the anti-migration party’s candidate is favored to win the presidency.

According to Antoine Bristielle, director of the Foundation’s Opinion Observatory, the poll shows that RN “has managed to unite very different electorates around a common foundation, but that its cohesion remains fragile as soon as one moves away from this foundation.”

The Jean-Jaurès Foundation identifies four main profiles of RN voters, which can be grouped into two categories.

The “identity-based liberals” include older, politically engaged voters firmly rooted in the right, as well as the “forgotten France,” which represents “a working-class bloc, more economically vulnerable, marked by a strong sense of abandonment and combining demands for social protection with identity radicalism.”

However, the other two groups are more recent profiles, demonstrating the RN’s expansion to new voters.

The “shifting France,” representing those “less politically engaged and still uncertain,” and the “opportunistic radical right.”

This latter group of voters, seen as “more affluent, more educated, and highly politically engaged,” is, according to the report, “already largely aligned with the RN’s positions” but may have voted for other right-wing parties in the past.

Immigration, as expected, is a paramount topic for at least three of the four groups.

“There are too many immigrants in France” is confirmed by 97 percent of “forgotten France,” 99 percent of “identity-based liberals,” 43 percent of “shifting France,” and 96 percent of “opportunistic radical right.”

As to the statement, “Now, I no longer feel as at home as before,” the percentages of support were 96, 98, 72, and 94, respectively.

The full study is available here.

Read more here…

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A House lawmaker has introduced legislation to prevent foreign adversaries, particularly the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), from exploiting sister city partnerships and jeopardizing U.S. national security.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, introduced the Sister City Transparency Act (H.R.8833) on May 14. In a statement announcing the bill, Roy’s office said local governments across the United States maintain roughly 1,800 sister-city partnerships with foreign municipalities, including 157 with communities in China.

“America’s local communities should never be left vulnerable to foreign influence operations masquerading as cultural exchange,” Roy said in a statement on May 14.

“The Sister City Transparency Act brings much-needed oversight and accountability to these partnerships, helping ensure they serve the interests of the American people—not the strategic ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party or other foreign adversaries.”

Study on Sister City Partnerships

The legislation would direct the comptroller general—the head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)—to conduct a study of sister-city partnerships with communities in countries deemed to have “significant public sector corruption,” including Russia and China, the lawmaker’s office explained. According to the language of the bill, the measure would specifically target countries that scored 45 or lower on Transparency International’s 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index.

China scored 41 in the 2019 index and 43 in the 2025 index.

The study would identify how foreign communities select U.S. communities for sister city partnerships, including whether certain economic activities or demographic factors influence those decisions; analyze the activities conducted in these partnerships and their economic and educational outcomes; review what types of information these partnerships make publicly available, including details related to contracts; and review how American communities “safeguard freedom of expression” and mitigate risks such as “foreign espionage and economic coercion” within these partnerships, according to the legislation.

Another part of the study would look into whether these partnerships involve economic arrangements that could make American communities “vulnerable to malign market practices” or educational arrangements that could “diminish the freedom of expression,” according to the legislation. Additionally, it would assess the extent of foreign access to local commercial, educational, and political institutions, and whether foreign actors could achieve “strategic objectives” contrary to U.S. economic or national security interests.

The legislation would also require a study of whether these partnerships are linked to broader foreign malign activities, such as “human rights abuses and academic and industrial espionage,” and how U.S. communities can prevent misuse of visa programs connected to them, according to the legislation.

The comptroller general would have six months to submit a report on its study to six congressional committees, including the armed services and foreign affairs committees in both chambers. The report would include findings, conclusions, recommendations, and, if necessary, a classified annex.

Concerns Over CCP Influence

“The CCP has demonstrated a pattern of exploiting international partnerships to expand influence, gather intelligence, and apply political pressure. Similar to concerns raised with Confucius Institutes, sister city relationships can create vulnerabilities for American communities, including exposure to foreign espionage, economic coercion, and ideological influence operations,” Roy’s office stated.

Similar legislation (S.1351) was introduced in the Senate in April 2025 by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

“Communist China is exploiting sister city partnerships to achieve its own strategic objectives, and we need to make certain we are not enabling this activity in our own communities,” Blackburn said in a statement at the time. “This legislation would shine a bright light on these partnerships to keep our enemies from furthering their own dangerous agendas.”

South Korea’s population decline and shrinking pool of military-age men are forcing Seoul to rethink its military force structure, with officials now exploring robots and AI-powered drones to offset future manpower shortages.

South Korea’s military is taking a direct page from Ukraine’s battlefield playbook by preparing to procure low-cost unmanned aerial systems and robotics for future wars, primarily through a potential partnership with Hyundai Motor – for now.

“Potential deployments include Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot, the four-wheeled MobED mobility droid, and wearable platforms like the X-ble Shoulder exoskeleton,” Bloomberg reported.

South Korea’s standing force has slumped 20% over the past six years to about 450,000 troops and is projected to fall to 350,000 by 2040. The demographic winter is already hitting national defense: the population of 20-year-old men has declined by 30% between 2019 and 2025, shrinking the enlistment pool.

Samsung Securities analyst Esther Yim wrote in a note that “robotics is a field without legacy constraints,” adding that “these systems can leverage electrical and electronic technologies developed for autonomous vehicles, allowing for rapid proliferation.”

For many months, we have outlined how modern warfare is being reshaped by Ukrainian innovation and, more recently, the U.S.-Iran conflict. Ukraine has served as an AI warfare laboratory, accelerating the rise of low-cost drones, ground robots, and, eventually, humanoid warbots.

What’s clear: future wars of attrition will mostly be fought with intelligent machines, as manpower-constrained militaries substitute AI drones and ground bots for soldiers on the battlefield.

Beyond Ukraine and South Korea, many other countries are experiencing a demographic winter, characterized by ultra-low fertility, rapid aging, and current or projected population decline.

Here are those countries by region: 

East Asia and Southeast Asia

• South Korea

• Japan

• China

• Taiwan

• Singapore

• Thailand

Southern and Western Europe

• Italy

• Spain

• Greece

• Portugal

• Germany

• Austria

Central and Eastern Europe / Balkans

• Poland

• Hungary

• Romania

• Bulgaria

• Croatia

• Latvia

• Lithuania

• Moldova

• Albania

• Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Serbia

This suggests that militaries in the countries listed above will be some of the first to prioritize ground bots, drones, and other battlefield robotics as their pools of military-age men continue to shrink. The next weapons stockpiling cycle has already begun as the world fractures into a more volatile and increasingly dangerous environment.

Authored by Peter Koenig via Global Research,

In a recent Buddhist retreat in Lima, Peru, about 200 participants were urged to abstain for the three-day retreat from our enslavement screens, “smart” phones, computers and television.

Difficult to say how many really followed the advice, but many did.

What was amazing is that during the first day, ignoring constant phone notifications was not easy for the many. But consciously resisting it made it easier. And the following days, we were hardly thinking of them anymore. The days were filled with meditation and different types of spiritual exercises… the digital age was peacefully removed into a corner.

Unfortunately, after the retreat, the hide-out corner became lively again and took up again most of our attention, in “angst” of what we may have missed during the highly divine retreat. Spirituality must have gradually evaporated again… and what we call “reality” kicked in.

Interestingly, what we call “reality” is a fake, indoctrinated reality. Over years we were told that technical advances, or as the World Economic Forum (WEF’s) Great Reset calls it, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is a concept describing how emerging technologies are blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It fundamentally alters how we live, work, and relate to one another.

Sending messages, videos, and silly jokes, rather than talking to each other, interchanging with physically presence. Along with this brainwashing propaganda, we were drugged with the belief that working from home is full of advantages. It is an outright lie.

These “work-from-home” benefits are geared to separate us from one another so that physical interaction is avoided, making us more manipulable, controllable and dispensable, capable of being replaced by robots, and eventually by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

And mind you, the 4IR was illegally approved by the United Nations (UN). There was a not-well-known Cooperation Agreement signed between the WEF and the UN in Geneva in June 2019 that established an unequivocal link between the UN (created by 51 nations (today 193 member nations) in October 1945 in San Francisco) and the world’s by far richest NGO, the WEF, established in Geneva Switzerland.

The UN was created to guarantee peace in the world, to make sure that no more wars, especially World Wars (WW), that would ravage planet earth. That principle is anchored in the UN Charter. The WEF is owned and run by BlackRock, the world’s largest financial asset manager, controlling together with Vanguard, an interchangeable partner, and StateStreet, a close associate, some 25 to 30 trillion US dollars equivalent in assets, controlling literally every sector of vital industries and services, like energy, food, transport, health but also of the world’s weapon industrial complex. It is a blatant contradiction to the UN Charter. The UN is controlled by financial behemoths, with powers way beyond BlackRock.

The 4IR is, therefore, not a human-friendly program. It is a global control mechanism, that could be right out of Orwell’s “1984” – but way more complex, dangerous and deadly.

Unlike previous revolutions, 4IR is not just about smart machines and systems; it is characterized by a lightning-fast convergence of diverse technologies. The WEF highlights several core pillars:

• Digital: Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and blockchain.

• Physical: Autonomous vehicles, 3D printing (additive manufacturing), and advanced materials.

• Biological: Gene editing (CRISPR), synthetic biology, and neurotechnology.

CRISPR stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” It is a technology that research scientists use to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms including humans.

The WEF, an executing agency for the financial giants attempting to control the globe, and especially for those pulling the strings behind the WEF, are viewing these advancements as an unprecedented opportunity to address global challenges—such as fast-tracking the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – in fact the population reduction agenda – and improving sustainable energy management – the fake Global Climate Change Agenda (GCCA).

The GCCA can be made responsible for every calamity affecting the world, the human race, including any new diseases and plandemics that another key executing agency, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been put in charge of.

As this article may go to print, the 79th World Health Assembly (WHA) takes place in Geneva from 18 to 23 May 2026. One of its primary objectives is to make the Pandemic Treaty operational. For that, unanimous agreement is needed on the details of the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System. This framework regulates how countries share virus samples and genetic data in exchange for guaranteed, equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments.

PABS Agreement has not been reached during last year’s WHA. The PABS is unlikely to be approved this year either. The PABS would give WHO full control over every member country’s health system. National health sovereignty would be gone.

What is little known to most people, instead or in parallel with PABS debates, some 300 so-called “side events” are taking place in the WHA week. Topics range from Climate Change, Environment and One Health, to Global Public Health, to Health Systems and Universal Health Coverage, to Population and Care [Control]. See this for the full list.

Through its global Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), the WEF brings together governments, businesses, and civil society to establish governance protocols. This ensures that these exponential technologies are harnessed responsibly for human control.

While the C4IR’s foundational headquarters and its first location was launched in San Francisco, USA in 2017, it has evolved into a highly decentralized global network. The network spans dozens of independent national and thematic centers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.

Digitization of humanity is thought-out to the last detail and the WHO is in-charge for much of these details. WHO has been created in April 1948, some three years after the UN and most of its sub-agencies. WHO is in charge of controlling health and death, a Rockefeller project; the Rockefeller clan being among the world’s prime eugenists.

Back to the Buddhist retreat: what people experienced by abstaining for three days from their electronic devices is rather phenomenal. Many said, they could imagine a life without these digital handcuffs. Indeed, it’s only a bit more than a generation that humanity has been gradually indoctrinated and subjugated to ever growing digitization, to its gradual use for everything.

We have literally developed a Stockholm syndrome – loving our hangman, our judge and prison ward. Sad but the majority of people today still have a hard time realizing it.

Imagine, only 30 years ago, the internet was hardly known to the public. The Network Infrastructure was developed by the US Department of Defense (DoD) (1969–1983), a Pentagon project, evolving into the modern internet on January 1, 1983.

The World Wide Web (1989) emerged from the CERN (Centre européen pour la recherche nucléaire, French acronym for European Center for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The Web is used to navigate the Internet.

What many say and feel is that, if EVERYONE would step back and return to the good old non-digital age, say 30 years back, it would be easy, because we would start afresh, and feel free again – in unison, having learned a lesson, never to forget.

That doesn’t mean we couldn’t use the societal useful electronic inventions for improving our lives – but never again fall for the targeted enslavement from full-control digitization – which is so far advanced that we are shortly before all electronic, digital money — to the point where you walk through a shopping mall’s cashier gate and pay by facial recognition which is linked to your all digital bank account. This exists already in large cities, like Moscow and other parts of the world.

Beware of misbehaving, or else your digital bank account is blocked.

Spiritual teachings and guidance may bond us together to form a strong body of think-alike humans called RESISTANCE.

And we shall overcome.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and federal law enforcement officials held a press conference around midday Friday to announce a “Summer Surge” under the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force ahead of America 250 events across the Capital Beltway.

The urgency reflects a decades-long, disturbing pattern of elevated summer violent crime by youths, worsened by failed progressive policies from left-wing officials in the D.C. area and extending into the Baltimore metro area, which have allowed juveniles to terrorize law-abiding citizens with limited consequences.

NBC Washington reporter Mark Segraves, who attended the press conference earlier, said that D.C. law enforcement will “prosecute parents of juveniles breaking curfew”…

DOJ announces “Summer Surge” in DC USAO announces they will now prosecute parents of juveniles breaking curfew. @nbcwashington pic.twitter.com/3MYw9U24w0

— Mark Segraves (@SegravesNBC4) May 15, 2026

Local outlet NBC Washington reports that the summer surge is coming “about two weeks after the D.C. Council chose not to vote on extending Mayor Muriel Bowser’s emergency youth curfew zones over the summer.”

President Trump issued an executive order in early 2025 that established the task force. He declared a violent crime emergency and temporarily federalized the Metropolitan Police Department by late summer 2025. 

DC-Baltimore metro area has a youth violent crime crisis: 

• D.C. Mayor Imposes Juvenile Curfew After Mobs Of Kids Wreak Halloween Night Havoc

• DC Enforces Youth Curfew “To Keep Young People Out Of Trouble”

• Citywide Youth Curfew Begins In Baltimore As Mayor Strives To Restore Law And Order

The broader read is that the Trump administration wants safe streets in the D.C. metro area ahead of America 250 events.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Cuba’s leader on Monday warned that any U.S. military action against the communist-controlled island nation would cause a “bloodbath” and lead to regional insecurity.

“If it were to materialize, it would trigger a bloodbath with incalculable consequences, plus the destructive impact on regional peace and stability,” Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel said in a May 18 post on X, according to a translation. [ZH: We’re sure Palantir and Anthropic calculated it in roughly 8 seconds…]

He also insisted that Cuba doesn’t pose any threat and doesn’t have “aggressive plans or intentions against any country,” but said that it has the “legitimate right to defend itself against a military onslaught.”

In recent months, the United States has imposed significant pressure on the country’s communist regime, blocking oil shipments from Venezuela following the U.S. military capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January.

The Trump administration is pressing Cuba’s leadership to end political repression, release political prisoners, and liberalize its ailing economy.

That prompted Cuban Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy to announce on May 13 that the country had completely run out of diesel and heavy fuel oil, with its power grid entering a critical state. O Levy said Cuba had not received any oil imports since December 2025 until Russia sent about 700,000 barrels of crude oil last month.

A Cuban official on Sunday accused the U.S. government of creating a fabrication following an Axios report, citing what it said was classified intelligence that claimed Cuba has acquired hundreds of drones.

In a post on social media, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez wrote that “Cuba neither threatens nor desires war” and that the country “prepares itself to confront external aggression in the exercise ​of the right to legitimate self-defense recognized by the UN Charter.”

In a May 18 emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a State Department spokesperson said the Trump administration will move “to protect Americans, our interests and our homeland from any threat.”

“President Trump … has taken historic action to rid our backyard of uncontrolled migration, dangerous narco trafficking, organized crime, and hostile foreign military presence,” the department spokesperson added.

President Donald Trump has said that after the war with Iran, he will turn his attention to Cuba. He pledged “a new dawn for Cuba” during a speech at a Turning Point USA event in April.

During comments to reporters on May 15 aboard Air Force One, the U.S. president said that Cuba’s leadership “needs help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country—they are really a nation or a country in decline.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and other U.S. officials visited Cuba on May 14, at the invitation of the country’s communist regime, officials said. An official statement from Cuba’s regime noted that the meeting “took place … against a backdrop of complex bilateral relations.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department reiterated that the United States would provide Cuba with $100 million in humanitarian assistance and support for satellite internet services “if the Cuban regime will permit it.”

“The regime refuses to allow the United States to provide this assistance to the Cuban people, who are in desperate need of assistance due to the failures of Cuba’s corrupt regime,” the department said on May 13.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.