Another week, and another wave of scandals hitting an increasingly disunified Zelensky government. The Ukrainian President on Sunday took the unprecedented step of slapping sanctions on his own former press secretary.

Iuliia Mendel has lately emerged as a very visible outspoken critic of Zelensky’s continued rule, which has run long past his scheduled term – having been extended repeatedly during martial law due to the war with Russia. Zelensky has accused Mendel of echoing Russian propaganda and ‘promoting disinformation’.

She apparently made herself a target after going on Tucker Carlson’s show back in May, where she called out Zelensky, saying “there is no democracy in Ukraine now.“

According to an introductory segment of the conversation with Carlson:

During the conversation, Mendel stated that “the only way to support Ukraine today is to push it toward a peace agreement.” At the same time, she called Vladimir Putin “evil” but also accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being “evil.” According to her, Zelenskyy allegedly “plays a teddy bear for the camera,” but “turns into a grizzly bear when the lights go out” and “destroys people.”

She also had called Zelensky “a dictator” and “the greatest obstacle to peace” in Ukraine – and sought to detail instances where he listened to Western hawks over some of his own officials and derailed a path to peace.

Mendel was the president’s press secretary from 2019 to 2021. She was there from the start when Zelensky took office in May 2019.

Russian state media has seized on the headline, detailing that the new sanctions decree “slapped Mendel with personal restrictions including an asset freeze, a ban on transferring capital abroad, and other financial and commercial measures set to last ten years.”

“Mendel will also be stripped of state honors indefinitely and have her social media accounts restricted inside Ukraine,” the report adds. 

🇺🇦🇷🇺 Zelensky Press Secretary Iuliia Mendel tells Tucker Carlson that Zelensky sends his political opponents to the front lines:

“The situation in the country is inhuman because I never would think that my country would be the one where people are grabbed on the streets and… pic.twitter.com/K0icFYSivE

— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) May 12, 2026

She has since stated: “Sanctions against Ukrainian citizens are unconstitutional, just like many of Zelensky’s other decisions. Volodymyr Zelensky uses them against anyone who advocates for peace in Ukraine. I knew that ‘high treason’ charges were being prepared over my interview with Tucker Carlson.”

The development comes amid another unfolding situation impacting top Ukrainian national offices:

Ruslan Kravchenko left Ukraine days after resigning amid a corruption investigation involving officials in his office, as a major confrontation unfolds between the country’s prosecutors and independent anti-corruption agencies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suspended Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko on Monday, hours after it emerged that he had left the country after resigning amid a major corruption probe that had reached his own office.

Kravchenko crossed the border overnight, according to Ukrainian media citing law-enforcement sources.

The same report underscores that “NABU and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) described Kravchenko’s actions as part of what they called a ‘systematic attack’ on Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption institutions.”

Today they call me pro-Russian. Tomorrow they can call you that too.
Almost everyone who has talked about peace and compromise has been branded, without nuance, “pro-Russian” — by the government, its media, and its experts.Any realistic terms for peace: “pro-Russian”. Criticism… pic.twitter.com/c4GUrGwgnx

— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) September 11, 2026

This is latest fallout amid several high level corruption probes which have resulted in the dismissals of no less than two top Zelensky aides. There’s severe tension also between the defense ministry and national intelligence offices, after a Zelensky-led military leadership shake-up.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

The “enrichment” we were sold was cuisine, music and vibrant street life. What arrived, in town after town, is a sanitation standard the UN still spends billions trying to wipe out of third world nations.

Open defecation is not a Western urban myth. WHO and UNICEF still count hundreds of millions of people doing it in fields, ditches and open ground. Nigeria sits near the top of the league table. India, despite a national toilet-building drive, still records tens of millions.

When you import the people at scale and refuse to enforce the most basic public standards, you import the habit. The footage is now so routine it has become a genre.

The picturesque village of Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire, has been blessed with the kind of diversity that was only previously seen in London:

Africans defecating in residential streets in the middle of the day ?? pic.twitter.com/GrR5FPCIx3

— Rare | ???? (@RareRestore) August 31, 2026

A children’s park is next. Nothing says community cohesion like a man treating a playground as an outdoor latrine and finishing the job by hand.

A man defecates in a children’s park. He uses his hand to clean himself. pic.twitter.com/BEcggkUlAq

— David Atherton (@daveatherton) September 6, 2026

Truly, the contribution to British civic life is immeasurable.

Notting Hill Carnival has been doing this for years. A resident’s doorbell captured carnival-goers treating her property as a trench for shitting and pissing all day. Some even apologised to the camera. Sadiq Khan’s London treats the event as a celebration.

This London Resident used her Ring Doorbell Cam to capture dozens of Notting Hill Carnival Goers pissing & shitting on her property all day.

Some even apologised to the camera ??

Sadiq Kahn likes to celebrate this for Londoners. pic.twitter.com/qnXi0HGGtd

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) September 1, 2026

Susan Watts, 69, recorded dozens of people using the space by her front door after earlier carnivals and told the Daily Mail the stench left it “like being in a filthy toilet.” The council quoted her £75 to jet-wash a private area. Dignity, it turns out, has a surcharge.

THIS IS ENGLAND TODAY. IMPORT THE THIRD WORLD, BECOME THE THIRD WORLD. GOD HELP US ALL ???? pic.twitter.com/zAS3RAMXlI

— aileen B ????????? (@AileenBart60380) August 27, 2026

Oxford Street is London’s main retail drag. When you have to put up signs telling adults not to defecate on it, the experiment has already failed.

This is displayed on Oxford St. London’s main retail thoroughfare. When you have to put up signs saying “don’t shit here” something has gone badly wrong. pic.twitter.com/ZviMfaX0on

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) February 21, 2026

I think this was seen on Oxford Street? I was shocked- l lived in London for 15 years until mid 1990s and never saw anyone shitting in the street far less posters forbidding it.

— Cait Mercer (@MercerCait) February 21, 2026

Birmingham now has the same notices.

UK: ??

SHAMEFUL Defecating in the streets is prolific in Birmingham.

It has been said that Britain of old was paved with gold.

Ever since we’ve been invaded, our streets are paved with SHIT.

Don’t be fooled, if our cities were still safe and proud, there would be no need… pic.twitter.com/3jrAq0ua4T

— Rogue (@RogueUnfiltered) June 1, 2026

The NHS gets it too. An intoxicated man who has already fouled himself refuses to leave A&E. Staff time, corridor space, and public patience all redirected to a problem that starts with the same refusal to use a toilet.

?INTOXICATED MIGRANT REFUSES TO LEAVE A&E HOSPITAL AFTER PISSING & SHITTING HIMSELF ?

?THIS IS WHY THE NHS IS ON ITS ARSE – ABSOLUTE STATE OF IT! pic.twitter.com/8xZIPGHEMs

— Gauci Reports (@GauciReports) November 15, 2025

Spain and Italy get the same treatment.

Muslim migrant shitting in the streets in Ceuta Spain ?? ?

Welcome to the Islamic enrichment of Europe ? pic.twitter.com/PzK8LF9SdR

— CanadianExMuslim (@ExMuslimAz) July 31, 2026

A drinking fountain in Spain with the tap used as an anal bidet, on a fixture children drink from.

Migrant washes his ass at a drinking fountain in Spain which kids use to drink. Sources confirm the tap was wedged in between his buttcheeks. Diversity is our strength! ? https://t.co/Uwoc8hwgAl

— Mark Johnson (@Mark_Johnson80) September 11, 2026

Rome, once the capital of a vast empire, now the toilet of the world.

Migrant openly shitting on the street.

Rome, Italy.

pic.twitter.com/fel6WSqCTg

— Canadian Patriot (@PPC4Liberty) May 23, 2024

Canada is not spared.

Cultural enrichment in Canada means you get to deal with public defecation. pic.twitter.com/nstSF6Jjdw

— Ian Miles (@ianmiles) September 14, 2024

Vancouver’s own figures are not a vibe. City data and CTV reporting put faeces removals in the first two months of 2025 at 1,870. 2023 saw 19,900 collections. 2024 still logged 17,670.

#REPORT: Vancouver residents are calling for action as “public defecation in the city reaches new heights,” with 1,870 human feces removals taking place in the first two months of 2025 alone. pic.twitter.com/NsuPTFppVk

— Canada Proud (@WeAreCanProud) May 7, 2025

Business groups run “Poop Fairy” patrols because the municipal programme is too slow.

?NEW

Video surfaces of a bus in Brampton being put out of commission

after someone took a ? on the bus

Why is public defecation ‘exploding’ in 2025?pic.twitter.com/ElQoE447YZ

— Tablesalt ???? (@Tablesalt13) October 22, 2025

The Nigerian government has spent years running campaigns begging its own citizens to stop doing this in public. Billboards, World Toilet Day speeches, a “Clean Nigeria: Use the Toilet” drive. Vice President Kashim Shettima said access to toilets is “about dignity, health, and safety.”

Nigerian government in their desperate attempt to stop public defecation has launched a campaign urging #Nigerian man to stop defeacating in public. pic.twitter.com/QOo5QPup0L

— PSAFLIVE (@PSAFLIVE) November 13, 2022

UNICEF has repeatedly placed Nigeria among the world’s worst for open defecation, with tens of millions still practising it.

India remains in the same conversation even after Swachh Bharat. The habit did not vanish because a plane ticket was purchased.

Public Defecation – Is a major problem in countries like INDIA and NIGERIA. pic.twitter.com/0PUJETequ5

— Cornbread Mafioso ?? (@Soulful1865) June 13, 2024

The historic town of Cambridge in the UK has already taken the next logical step: if the arrivals prefer squatting and shitting all over the floor, the host city will install facilities to enable just that. Labour-run Cambridge City Council spent nearly £1 million on a Silver Street toilet block that includes squat-style cubicles “preferred by some international visitors,” then charges £1 to use them.

Resident Heather Boyd told the BBC: “I certainly think if I’m going to spend £1, I’m not going to squat as well. That is absolutely crazy.” Britain spent centuries perfecting the flush toilet. Now taxpayers are paying in order for the third world to squat into a hole.

How culturally enriching. How much these individuals are contributing. The GDP of public health risk, the tourism brochure of a high street that needs pictograms of a squatting figure with a red line through it.

If Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth is meant to reflect London and the UK as it really is, Here’s the next statue:

The Gentleman In Blue (Shitting In The Street) – Commissioned by the late Professor Jason Arday. pic.twitter.com/CQptIew9HY

— Mcgregor Mackenzie ??????? (@mcgregormackenz) September 11, 2026

Still, it could be worse. And it is.

Europe’s roads reveal a striking divide between countries where drivers regularly replace their vehicles and those where aging, secondhand cars remain the norm, according to a new report from ecarstrade.com. 

New research from B2B automotive company eCarsTrade compared vehicle fleets across more than 30 European countries and found Luxembourg sitting comfortably at the top of the rankings for the continent’s newest cars.

Nearly 43% of Luxembourg’s registered vehicles are less than five years old, the highest proportion in the study. At the other end of the age spectrum, only about 6% of its cars have been on the road for 20 years or longer. The country also replaces vehicles unusually quickly, with its annual fleet renewal rate topping 10%. Roughly 7% of Luxembourg’s cars are now fully electric.

Belgium ranked second. More than one-third of its cars are less than five years old, while the country added roughly 456,000 new vehicles in 2024. Its fleet renewal rate is about 7.5%, among the strongest in Europe. Electrification is also becoming more prominent: roughly 5% of Belgium’s total fleet is electric, while EVs account for around 28% of new registrations.

Denmark placed third, with approximately 28% of its cars less than five years old and only around 6% at least 20 years old. But Denmark stands out even more when it comes to the transition toward electric vehicles. More than half of new vehicles sold there are fully electric, and battery-powered cars already account for roughly 12% of the country’s entire fleet.

The United Kingdom came in fourth. Britain has an especially small population of very old cars, with fewer than 5% of vehicles aged 20 years or more, the lowest share measured in the study. Nearly 2 million new cars were registered in 2024, helping keep the country’s annual fleet renewal rate near 6%. EVs represented about 19% of new registrations, although they still make up a relatively small share of all vehicles currently on British roads.

Norway rounded out the top five and remains Europe’s standout when it comes to electrification. More than 27% of all Norwegian cars are fully electric, by far the highest share among the countries examined. Even more striking, roughly 88% of new vehicles purchased in Norway are electric. That means the country’s existing fleet is rapidly being transformed as older gasoline and diesel vehicles are gradually replaced.

Behind the top five were Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Germany, for example, has roughly 30% of its fleet under five years old, while Switzerland is closer to 25%. The Netherlands has a somewhat older fleet overall, despite having a relatively healthy market for newer vehicles and EVs.

The report says that the opposite extreme can be found in Albania. According to the research, roughly nine out of every 10 vehicles there are at least a decade old, giving Albania the oldest fleet among the countries examined. The disparity highlights a broader economic divide in European car ownership: wealthier Western and Northern European countries generally replace vehicles more frequently, while parts of Eastern and Southeastern Europe rely much more heavily on older vehicles and secondhand imports.

That distinction can also make registration statistics somewhat misleading. A vehicle being registered in a country for the first time does not necessarily mean it is a new car. Used cars exported from countries such as Germany and France frequently enter fleets elsewhere in Europe as newly registered vehicles despite already having years of driving behind them.

“There’s a very clear split across Europe when it comes to car ages,” an eCarsTrade auto industry expert said. “Western countries keep replacing their fleets regularly, partly because incomes are high enough to realistically afford new vehicles.”

The researchers pointed specifically to Romania, Poland and Albania as markets where imported secondhand vehicles play a much larger role. As a result, the underlying age of some national fleets may be even greater than headline registration figures initially suggest.

The study, conducted in August 2026, compared more than 30 European countries using three primary measures: the percentage of cars at least 20 years old, the percentage at least 10 years old, and the percentage less than five years old. Those variables were combined into a Fleet Age Score ranging up to 100, with lower scores indicating newer national fleets.

Luxembourg recorded a score of just 1.6, well ahead of Belgium at 13.1 and Denmark at 17.1. The UK scored 18.8 and Norway 18.9, followed by Liechtenstein at 19.6, Austria at 20.8, Germany at 20.9, Switzerland at 23.7 and the Netherlands at 24.1.

Taken together, the numbers show that Europe is not moving toward a newer or more electric vehicle fleet at anything close to a uniform pace. In Luxembourg, frequent vehicle replacement keeps the average car relatively young. In Norway and Denmark, electrification is rapidly reshaping what people drive. Meanwhile, countries that depend heavily on imported used vehicles continue to operate fleets that can be dramatically older than those found just a few hundred miles away.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via Antiwar.com,

US Africa Command announced on Friday that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia as the Trump administration continues a record-breaking bombing campaign in the country, which receives virtually no coverage in US media.

AFRICOM said the strike was launched on September 8 and targeted al-Shabaab in the vicinity of Quumbi, a village about 50 miles northeast of the southern port city of Kismayo,

As usual, AFRICOM offered no other details about the strike, and there were no statements from US-backed forces about military operations in the area that day.

“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said.

According to AFRICOM’s numbers, the attack brings the total number of US airstrikes in Somalia this year to 81, higher than any other year prior to 2025, when President Trump oversaw 124 AFRICOM airstrikes, breaking the previous annual record of 63 that he set in 2019.

The US has also been conducting an air war against an ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, and Drop Site News recently reported that a US strike was carried out in the region on September 3, though it has not been claimed by AFRICOM, suggesting that not every US attack is being announced.

According to numbers from New America, an organization that tracks the air war and also counts airstrikes that are reported but not claimed by the US, the September 8 strike would bring the total number of US bombings in Somalia this year to 83.

The US has been involved in Somalia for decades and has been fighting al-Shabaab since the George W. Bush administration backed an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 that ousted the Islamic Courts Union, a Muslim coalition that briefly held power in Mogadishu after taking the city from CIA-backed warlords.

Al-Shabaab was the radical offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union, and its first recorded attack was a suicide bombing in 2007 that targeted Ethiopian troops occupying Mogadishu. It wasn’t until 2012 that the group pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda. The ISIS affiliate in Puntland started as an offshoot of al-Shabaab and first emerged in 2015.

Britain has a strange labor problem: the people who have spent decades working increasingly aren’t leaving, while the people trying to begin their careers increasingly can’t get in, according to Bloomberg.

More than 1.7 million people over 65 are now employed in the UK, the highest level on record. Meanwhile, youth unemployment is hovering near a decade-plus high, and nearly one million people between 16 and 24 are neither employed nor in school.

The demographic shift is dramatic. About two decades ago, there were roughly 10 working young people for every employed person over 65. Today there are only about two.

Some of this is simply good news: people are healthier, living longer and have more opportunities to work flexible schedules. But money is clearly part of the equation too. Rising living expenses have pushed some retirees back into the workforce and encouraged others to postpone retirement.

That becomes more consequential when companies aren’t creating many new positions. The Bank of England has described Britain as having a “low hire, low fire” labor market. Companies aren’t necessarily conducting massive layoffs, but they’re also reluctant to expand payrolls. When older employees remain in their jobs longer, fewer vacancies naturally work their way down the ladder.

Bloomberg writes that AI could amplify the problem. Graduate positions as a percentage of available jobs have reportedly been cut in half since 2022. Instead of building large teams of junior employees, companies can increasingly give experienced workers AI tools and ask them to produce more.

As one employment expert put it, some companies are effectively saying, “we just want to get rid of some junior staff and replace them with AIs.”

Working from home could be contributing as well. Junior employees require more training and supervision, something that becomes considerably more difficult when employees and managers aren’t regularly sitting together.

The end result is almost backwards from the traditional labor-market cycle. Britain has record numbers of retirement-age people still collecting paychecks at precisely the same time that an unusually large number of young people can’t find their first one.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

An ISIS fanatic who pledged allegiance to the caliphate, circulated execution videos, and blagged his way into an NHS heart unit with a fake degree is lining up for parole in November.

GB News host Patrick Christys broke the story this week and put it as plainly as it deserves: “What a country we are.”

‘What a country we are!’ @PatrickChristys exclusively reveals that a ‘ISIS fanatic’, who faked a degree to work in the NHS, could be set free onto the streets of Britain within months. pic.twitter.com/5b3enaS0z3

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 10, 2026

Full segment:

Ali Abdillahi, a Somali-born Dutch national who has lived in Britain since the age of seven, was jailed in March 2022 for eight years and ten months.

The Old Bailey heard he ran a private Telegram group called “Sons of Abdullah,” pumped out recordings of preachers calling for armed jihad, and shared Islamic State films showing executions and graphic violence.

View counts on the material ran from 280 to 1,300. Officers found a pledge of allegiance to ISIS on his phone and notebooks that laid out the same mindset.

Mr Justice Sweeney called it one of the “more serious cases of its type.” The judge told Abdillahi: “You had showed you committed these offences because of your support for Islamic extremism.” Sweeney added that he supported the concept of “Armed Jihad” and viewed Islamic State as the “inheritor of Islam.” No separate jail term was added for the fraud that got him through the hospital doors.

In July 2020, while he was spreading that material, Abdillahi forged a biomedical science degree from the University of Hertfordshire, stuffed the lie onto his CV, and applied through an agency.

Croydon University Hospital took him on as a cardiographer. He treated heart patients. The court was told no concerns were raised about his work before his arrest on 7 August 2020 at his home in Enfield.

He then tried to use the same fake qualifications to talk a court into granting him bail on the terrorism charges. That earned him the extra ten months for perverting the course of justice.

When police first asked about the degree, he offered this: “I believe I created a character for myself, and looking back, I do not know what is real and what is not… I was convinced I had a degree. My intention was not to lie or anything like that.”

Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command’s Commander Richard Smith said at the time: “Extremist propaganda online is extremely harmful and is a means by which terrorist groups seek to radicalise people all over the world. Abdillahi sent videos and recordings glorifying extremist violence to promote the hate-filled mindset he supported to others.”

Christys noted the obvious: this was not a porter or a cleaner. “An ISIS fanatic managed to use a totally fake degree to get a real job in the NHS… he was examining people’s hearts.”

GB News has established he is listed for parole on 19 November. A three-year extended licence sits on top of the sentence. Whether the Home Office has even bothered to order his deportation is, according to the channel, still unclear.

‘We have thrown our doors open to jihad.’@PatrickChristys asks whether the West has learnt any lessons from ‘radical Islamism’, 25 years on from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. pic.twitter.com/TResBYut2J

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 11, 2026

‘I could weep for the state of the UK.’

Journalist Cristo Foufas reflects on the impact of Islamist terrorism on Britain. pic.twitter.com/w8Jmq5FcJG

— GB News (@GBNEWS) September 11, 2026

This is not a one-off. In February, we reported the case of Zahid Iqbal, jailed in 2013 after plotting to bomb a Territorial Army centre in Luton with an IED strapped to a remote-controlled toy car, working from an al-Qaeda kitchen-bomb manual.

The parole board moved to free him years early despite warnings from prison and community offender managers, and despite a previous early release in 2021 that had to be revoked when he failed to comply.

Reform UK crime adviser Colin Sutton called that decision “baffling.” “This wasn’t a guy in his bedroom cooking something up. This was somebody who arranged training. He had links with al-Qaeda. He was a proper terrorist. And he was released early in 2021 and had to be called back in because he wasn’t complying with the conditions.”

Abdillahi’s November date sits inside the same culture. Terrorists and fraudsters get calendars. Ordinary people who post the wrong opinion get cells.

Labour’s answer to a prison system running at around 97 percent capacity has been to empty it. After public fury over plans that would have fast-tracked rapists, groomers and the killers of PC Andrew Harper, Prime Minister Andy Burnham narrowed the scheme. Rape, serious child sex offences, grooming and unlawful killing were carved out. The rest of the machine still runs.

25 years after 9/11 and Britain is quite literally importing convicted terrorists on small boats and allowing it to continue.

No wonder MI5 says the terror threat is greater today than then. pic.twitter.com/f39FMGsgfD

— Matt Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) September 11, 2026

Official figures published this month show about 700 eligible offenders due out on 1 October, with some 2,550 released by the end of the year and around 4,500 over the following months.

Prisoners who would once have served 40 percent of a standard sentence can now walk after a third. Others who would have served two-thirds can leave at halfway. Police chiefs have already said forces will need nearly £500 million extra just to chase licence breaches and fresh offending from the wave.

The exemptions do not rescue the principle. A man who pledged himself to ISIS, tried to radicalise others, and was allowed to put electrodes on British patients with a printed-off degree is still being processed toward the street. The Home Office cannot even say, on the record, whether it intends to put him on a plane.

Britain imported the ideology, waved the fake certificate through an agency, parked him in a heart department, and is now preparing the paperwork for his return to the community.

That is not a glitch. It is the system working as built: weak borders, weaker vetting, and a justice machine that treats jihadist propaganda as a manageable risk while it panics over tweets posted by those concerned about it.

By Charlie Zhu, Bloomberg Markets live reporter and strategist

China’s biotech stocks are emerging as the latest AI trade, fueled by expectations the technology will accelerate drug development and boost returns.

The Hang Seng Biotech Index has risen nearly 22% this quarter, set to outperform the Hang Seng Tech gauge by the most on record in Bloomberg data going back to 2015, as investors bet artificial intelligence will reduce timelines and cost in pharmaceutical research and development. The prospect of AI-originated drugs generating licensing and royalty income in the longer run may give the rally staying power.

“AI-driven drug discovery (AIDD) is taking off in China and generating a lot of investor interest, owing to the speed and cost benefits that AI brings,” Citigroup Inc. analysts including John Yung wrote in a note this month. The sector’s low penetration of the projected $313 billion global pharmaceutical R&D market implies “significant room for growth.” 

Shares of Insilico Medicine Cayman TopCo have more than doubled since their debut in Hong Kong in end-December, while those of Shanghai-listed HitGen Inc. have gained nearly 40% this year following a 90% rally in 2025. Both companies have buy ratings from every analyst tracked by Bloomberg.

Unlike many US companies that remain loss-making, several Chinese leaders are already profitable and should see earnings accelerate as robust demand translates into stronger utilization and operating leverage, according to Citigroup. Strong growth in AI-related revenue from leading wet lab vendors — which test AI-designed drugs — in the first half and advances of drug candidates at companies such as Insilico have bolstered sentiment toward the sector.

Leading Chinese AIDD companies are also trading at steep discounts to their US peers despite broader exposure across the value chain, analysts said. Meanwhile, continued progress in clinical milestones and new partnerships offer catalysts for local players, Linda Shu, head of China healthcare research at HSBC Qianhai Securities, said in a note.

To be sure, competition remains a concern as contract research organizations, drugmakers and private platforms may expand into AIDD, while disruptive technologies could erode the advantages of existing platforms. Broader doubts about the sustainability of AI investment may also weigh on shares.

Still, “China has a strong combination of scientific talent, a large innovative-drug pipeline and extensive drug contract manufacturing infrastructure for synthesizing and testing AI-generated molecules,” said Victoria Mio, a portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Group Plc. Investors will be focused on “proprietary data, internal pipeline progress, pharmaceutical partnerships, licensing economics and cash runway,” she said.

Authored by Andrew P. Napolitano via Ron Paul Institute,

A failed war does not end when the drones stop flying. It creates a new danger: A government that refuses to admit defeat and a president who, having failed abroad, seeks muscular victories elsewhere.

The war against Iran is a case study in the limits of military power, the dangers of presidential overreach and the enduring wisdom of the Constitution’s separation of powers. It was unauthorized, unconstitutional, illegal, strategically incoherent and – by the standards by which wars must be judged – a geopolitical failure.

The American people were told that force would achieve clear objectives. Iran would be compelled to surrender. Somehow, American security would be enhanced. The region would become more stable.

Instead, the United States expended enormous resources, consumed scarce munitions, deepened regional instability and failed to produce the political outcome President Donald Trump promised. Senior military officials just last week warned him that extending large-scale operations risked exhausting critical military capabilities and weakening America’s ability to respond elsewhere.

The United States can destroy buildings, eliminate targets, deploy aircraft, ships, missiles, drones and troops anywhere on the planet. But war is not a video game in which the destruction of enemy assets automatically produces political surrender. War is a contest of wills, societies, culture and endurance.

And here is the constitutional question that should have been asked before the first bomb was dropped: Who gave the president the authority to begin this war? The Constitution did not.

Article I, Section 8 gives Congress – not the president – the power to declare war. The framers deliberately rejected the British model in which kings could drag nations into conflicts based upon personal judgment, ambition or political convenience. James Madison warned that the executive branch was “the branch of power most interested in war,” and therefore the Constitution placed the decision to enter war outside the president’s constitutional reach.

The president is commander in chief. He commands forces after lawful congressional decisions have been made. He does not possess the power to transform his title into a personal authority to begin wars.

That principle has been repeatedly recognized by the Supreme Court. In cases such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Court rejected the idea that President Harry Truman had unlimited power simply because he claimed national security. Justice Robert Jackson’s famous concurrence warned that executive power is most dangerous when it operates in a “zone of twilight” where presidents attempt to expand authority beyond constitutional boundaries and without congressional concurrence.

The Iran war belongs precisely in that twilight – where executive ambition collides with constitutional restraint.

The administration may argue that modern threats require flexibility. That argument has been made by presidents of both parties for decades. But flexibility is not the same as unlimited authority. The Constitution was written for difficult moments, not easy ones. It was designed to restrain presidents even when they believe they have compelling reasons to act.

The military failure abroad has created a political dilemma at home. A president who promised victory must now confront the reality that victory was never achieved.

The danger is what happens next.

History teaches that political leaders who suffer public humiliation abroad often seek demonstrations of strength elsewhere. Foreign-policy failure can produce domestic overreach. Leaders who cannot achieve the desired result overseas may attempt to prove their power through actions at home.

That is where the war comes home.

The president, frustrated by military limitations, may turn toward radical immigration enforcement, Supreme Court-prohibited tariffs, statutorily prohibited domestic deployments of military forces, stealing foreign-owned oil, and assertions of executive authority that collide with free speech and free association.

But the Constitution does not permit a president to substitute disappointment for law.

The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person – not just Americans – shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The Sixth Amendment guarantees all persons – not just Americans – from whom the government seeks life, liberty or property the right to a public trial before an impartial jury, and other constitutional protections. These protections apply not because accused persons are necessarily innocent but because government power is too dangerous to operate without restraints.

Evidence is not conviction. Accusation is not guilt. Presidential assertion is not judicial judgment.

The executive branch cannot simply identify alleged criminals in speedboats or elsewhere, declare them enemies and impose punishment without trial. That is a system the American Revolution rejected.

The same principle applies to the use of military force inside the United States. The founders were deeply suspicious of standing armies being used for law enforcement. That suspicion produced constitutional protections and later statutes prohibiting the military’s role in civilian law enforcement.

The military exists to defend the nation from foreign threats. It is not a presidential police force.

Likewise, Congress – not the president – defines crimes and establishes punishments. A president cannot create new categories of enemies and decide their fate by executive command. The Constitution does not authorize a monarchy with aircraft carriers.

Every generation faces a temptation to exchange freedom for security. Every generation is told that normal rules cannot apply because a crisis is too serious, an enemy too dangerous and a moment too urgent.

The founders knew that argument well and they rejected it.

The Constitution was written precisely because government officials would sometimes believe that their objectives justified employing extraordinary power. The separation of powers, congressional war authority, judicial review and due process protections are not obstacles to effective government. They are safeguards against government becoming the threat it was created to prevent.

The ultimate question is not whether a president is strong enough to exercise power. The question is whether the president is restrained enough to obey the laws he has sworn to uphold.

That is the fear of a republic when the war comes home. To paraphrase the author Herman Melville, beware the president weeping when he bares an iron hand.

Authored by Jay Rogers via American Greatness,

Last Wednesday, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent FBI Director Kash Patel a letter demanding every document connected to an operation codenamed Round River.

If you haven’t heard of it, that’s understandable; it’s the sequel nobody promoted, and I’ll get to it. I’ve spent part of my career testifying as an expert witness on fiduciary duty, the branch of law that punishes people for betraying the trust placed in them.

Measured by that standard, Round River isn’t merely disinformation; it’s a breach of duty so complete that in my industry it would end a career and trigger a bar complaint.

In Washington, it’s earned a strongly worded letter.

That’s the whole scandal in one sentence: the deep state keeps getting caught, and nobody ever pays for it.

Start with what most people half remember. In October 2020, less than three weeks before the election, the New York Post published emails from a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. Within 48 hours, 51 former intelligence officials, including two former CIA directors, signed an open letter declaring the story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Twitter locked the Post out of its own account. Facebook throttled the link. The letter did exactly what it was built to do. By 2022, the Washington Post’s own hired cryptography experts had authenticated thousands of the laptop’s emails using the same digital signatures banks use to verify a wire transfer. Real disinformation, corrected two years too late to matter.

Here’s the detail that should bother you more than the letter itself: the man who organized it told Congress, under oath, exactly why he did it. Michael Morell, former acting CIA director, testified that a call from Antony Blinken, then a senior Biden campaign adviser, “triggered” his decision to draft the statement. Asked why he wanted to help the vice president win, Morell didn’t dress it up: “Because I wanted him to win the election,” he said. He had no evidence of Russian involvement, he testified. Four of the 51 signers, including Morell, were active CIA contractors at the time, with badges granting access most Americans never get. They used their old authority to help a friend’s campaign and called it a national security judgment. My brother spent his career in Army Special Forces guarding secrets that get people killed and signed papers promising decades of silence. These 51 men signed a letter to swing a presidential election and called it patriotism.

The paper trail keeps growing. In February, former senior intelligence officer Thomas Kuhns, who spent his career on the intelligence community’s analytic standards committee under Obama, filed a formal complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general. His conclusion, built on line-by-line tradecraft analysis rather than partisan grievance, was that the letter’s “planning, drafting, and dissemination” showed characteristics consistent with coordinated intelligence deception operations. Kuhns noted that none of the 51 signers, despite decades of FBI contacts, ever asked whether the laptop was real before declaring it Russian bait. In May, the inspector general referred his complaint to the Justice Department, and nobody there has said a word about it publicly since. A career analyst accusing his own former colleagues of running a deception operation against the electorate should be front-page news. It barely registered.

The FBI, we now know, was running a parallel operation of its own. Documents declassified this August show analysts on the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force launched it around December 2019, sorting more than 70 Americans and organizations by political utility. Democrats, including Joe and Hunter Biden, were filed as “targets” of Russian disinformation; Republicans, including Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo, were filed as “conduits” spreading it. Of 53 confidential sources touching the case, at least 14 fed the bureau derogatory information on the Bidens dating to 2015. The FBI never investigated a single tip; it labeled them as disinformation anyway, then warned Congress that asking about Burisma made members unwitting tools of Moscow. Patel says he’s disbanded the unit and opened a review, and that the bureau has identified “tens of thousands of responsive pages” and is “preparing… for disclosure.” Six years later, we’re still waiting on someone to flip the switch.

None of this worked without help. Newsrooms that spent 2020 calling the laptop Russian disinformation spent the next three years waving off Joe Biden’s visible decline the same way, right up until special counsel Robert Hur described the sitting president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” too frail to stand trial for mishandling documents. Then came the June 2024 debate, and the collective editorial memory of the press corps improved overnight. Convenient. The pattern repeats because it works: dismiss the inconvenient fact, discredit whoever raises it, and admit the truth once it’s too late to change the outcome.

Defenders of the letter’s signers claim these were private citizens exercising their First Amendment rights, not the CIA acting as an institution. But Morell asked the agency’s own Publication Review Board to clear his draft the same week he recruited signatories, which means he leaned on his active clearance and his institutional relationship to lend the letter a credibility no private citizen carries on their own. You don’t get to borrow the flag when it helps and hand it back once the subpoenas start.

None of this happens in a vacuum. The public reads Round River against a backdrop it already distrusts. A federal special counsel indicted Trump on 37 felony counts for retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago; a different special counsel investigated Biden’s parallel documents problem and charged him with nothing because prosecutors doubted a jury would convict a man they called too forgetful to be culpable. Hunter Biden was convicted on gun and tax charges, then pardoned by his father before sentencing. The Durham report found the FBI opened a full investigation into the Trump campaign on raw, uncorroborated intelligence and never opened so much as an inquiry into similar intelligence about a Clinton campaign scheme to do the same in reverse. None of that proves coordination. It’s enough to explain why voters call the asymmetry two-tiered before Round River even enters the conversation.

Here’s the accountability scoreboard six years in: 51 security clearances revoked by executive order, a couple of internal reviews, one inspector general referral sitting at Justice since May, and not one indictment, deposition, or dollar of restitution from anyone who ran either operation. Compare that to a broker who mismarks risk tolerance: license gone, career over. The deep state gets a strongly worded congressional letter and a press release about an “ongoing review.” Small wonder trust in the federal government sits near a five-decade low, with barely one in five Americans saying Washington does the right thing most of the time. That’s not apathy. It’s a verdict.

Congress can fix this without rewriting the Constitution: criminal exposure for clearance holders who abuse them and inspectors general free to act on their own timeline.

Until one of those 51 names sees the inside of a courtroom, the lesson every future intelligence officer will draw is the only one that matters: lie for the right team, and the worst that happens is you lose a parking pass at Langley.

A 15-year-old boy from St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, was rescued after spending two days on a capsized boat in the frigid Bering Sea.   The teen, identified by family as Derek Parker Aghnaanga, left Savoonga on Friday, September 4th, with his older brother and cousin in an 18-foot fishing skiff. They were expected back Sunday afternoon but the boat did not return.

Unfortunately, Derek’s brother and his cousin died from drowning during the ordeal, leaving him to float alone on the vast Alaskan waters.  The U.S. Coast Guard began a search, though the chances of finding survivors was considered slim. On Monday morning, a Coast Guard aircrew spotted Derek sitting on top of the overturned boat 4 miles from St. Lawrence Island and 164 miles from the mainland coast.    

According to a relative, Darren Toolie-Noongwook, a fishing line got tangled in the motor. The crew tried to free it but failed, leaving the boat to drift. Later that night the weather worsened and the 18-foot skiff overturned.

Family members have say that Sidney Kulowiyi, the older brother and boat captain, was moving to get Derek a life jacket when he became tangled in the lines as the boat flipped. He was pulled under and did not make it out. Derek and their cousin, Barton Rookok, climbed onto the overturned hull. 

They spent the first night together on top of the skiff, but the next night Rookok panicked (possibly due to hypothermia), left the boat, and drowned.

A nearby fishing vessel pulled Derek to safety after he was located by the Coast Guard they later recovered the bodies of his two relatives. The rescuing captain said the boy had clung to the skiff through cold water of about 50°F (10°C) and mentioned that his brother was still under the boat and that his cousin had slipped away the night before.  

Surprisingly, there are only around 12 such incidents of boats capsizing per year in the Bearing Sea and larger ships have a high rate of crew survival.  However, the sinking of small skiffs like Derek’s usually lead to death for those involved.   

Family members say Derek told them he believed he was going to make it – that he would be found and be safe.  He sat on his knees and prayed until the Coast Guard located him.