In an unexpected development, Syria’s Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) government says it is ‘open’ to allowing Russia to keep its permanent air and naval bases on the Mediterranean coast.

Russian forces throughout the country had rapidly pulled back to the two bases since Bashar al-Assad’s December 8 ouster. Since then the naval base at Tartus and the Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia have seen a scramble of personnel packing up equipment, with the fate of the bases uncertain.

Regional reports have said that much of the equipment is being relocated to a ‘friendly’ port in eastern Libya under warlord Khalifa Haftar. But Moscow would clearly like to maintain its only deep-water Mediterranean port, and wants the best outcome for its strategic presence in the Middle East.

Of course, the West is pressuring HTS and self-declared President of Syria Ahmed al-Sharaa (aka Jolani) to boot the Russian bases.

The Washington Post reports, “Syria is open to letting Russia keep its air and naval bases along the Mediterranean coast as long as any agreement with the Kremlin serves the country’s interests, Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra said in an interview this week, underscoring the pragmatic approach taken by his government as it charts new alliances and reassesses old ones forged under the previous regime.”

It appears the new Syrian government realizes it may be more valuable to deal with Russia closely rather than force its exit from the region, as part of a pragmatic approach:

Russia’s attitude toward the new Syrian government has “improved significantly” since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in December, and Damascus is weighing Moscow’s demands, Abu Qasra said, signaling a dramatic shift among the former militants who make up the new Syrian government.

Until recently, rebel fighters like Abu Qasra, a key leader in Syria’s insurgency, were under constant bombardment by Russian warplanes. But “in politics, there are no permanent enemies,” he said of Moscow, once Assad’s most powerful ally. Asked if Russia would be allowed to maintain its naval port at Tartus and the Hmeimim air base in Latakia, Abu Qasra said: “If we get benefits for Syria out of this, yes.”

One major card that Washington has yet to play is the ongoing crippling sanctions which still have not been lifted. Currently the EU is said to be discussing lifting its sanctions on the country’s oil and energy sector, but the US appears in no hurry.

Washington might attempt a quid pro quo which requires Damascus to tell the Russians to finally pack it up and leave, and in return US sanctions would be dropped. The capital and most other cities still only have perhaps an hour of electricity a day, and food and basic necessities of life are still extremely expensive after sanctions-induced inflation.

But also, other US officials might see Russia as possibly a stabilizing presence at a moment Trump is said to be mulling a US withdrawal from Syria. Russia is generally friendly with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, made up largely of Syrian Kurds, and the fear is that Turkey will move in to northern Syria. A Russian presence might dissuade or balance this, however.

Authored by Joseph Lai via RealClearPolitics.com,

President Trump says what he means and means what he says. 

Global business leaders would be well advised to believe him when he told those assembled at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 23: 

“Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth” and added, “but if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff.”

On Feb. 1, Trump announced tariffs against China, Canada, and Mexico. Citing the “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl,” he imposed an additional 10% tariff on all imports from China and 25% tariffs on all imports from Mexico and Canada. Although President Trump granted a temporary reprieve following phone calls with leaders of Mexico and Canada, those tariffs will be implemented in March unless Trump modifies his executive order. 

More brinksmanship over trade is on the horizon. 

On the first day of his second term, the president ordered national security reviews of bilateral trade relationships and multilateral trade deals. These reports and their findings are due April 1. Potential sectoral and country-specific tariffs are expected thereafter. For China, expect Trump to pursue maximum pressure in the form of further increased tariffs on Chinese imports. Trump will seek as much leverage as he can ahead of potential trade talks with President Xi.

Expect the unexpected in tariff policy. 

The business community should hope for the best but plan for the worst as America’s trade deals are revised. 

Here are four guideposts for global businesses as they navigate the early months of Trump’s second term:

First, when Trump says, “tariffs are the most beautiful words to me in the dictionary,” believe him. 

His philosophy on trade has been consistent going back to his public statements on trade and tariffs amid Japan’s 1980s boom. Business leaders would be wise to onshore as much of their operations as is practical.

Second, the age of globalization and transnational supply chains is ebbing. 

When engaging with Trump and his team, business leaders should downplay their defense of globalization and pursue onshoring strategies that allow their companies sufficient time to transition supply chains domestically. 

Third, lowering or eliminating bilateral trade deficits is a priority. 

Trump continues to focus on America’s trade deficits with countries such as China, Mexico, and Germany. Corporate leaders seeking stability should engage Washington stakeholders and leaders in foreign capitals.

Fourth, trade policy should not be viewed in isolation from the rest of Trump’s pro-growth economic agenda. 

The president is determined to extend the 2017 tax cuts for businesses and individuals, reduce regulations on businesses, make the federal permitting system transparent and predictable, and provide a more permissive environment for mergers and acquisitions.

President Trump views his reelection as a mandate for change. He will do everything he can to upend decades of trade and economic orthodoxies. Business leaders should take Trump’s inaugural address and remarks to the World Economic Forum literally and seriously. Together, they offer a roadmap for what to expect from the next four years.

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As the second Trump administration nears the end of its first three weeks leading the federal government, Elon Musk’s advisory commission, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has deployed teams within multiple agencies to use technology to cut costs and streamline processes.

Moving at breakneck speed as President Donald Trump shakes up the executive branch, Musk’s engineers and advisers have accessed information technology (IT) systems in several federal departments.

Anonymously sourced reports, not yet independently verified by The Epoch Times, allege DOGE is probing several other agencies, and groups are filing lawsuits to bar Musk’s advisers from accessing those departments’ computer systems.

DOGE’s actions, which Musk says are aimed at reducing government spending and waste, have spurred a backlash from some Democratic lawmakers who describe it as a breach of congressional oversight by an unelected “special government employee.”

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) cited cybersecurity concerns if DOGE is connecting to federal databases with “their own unvetted commercial servers.”

This week, during a House Oversight Committee on “Reducing Waste in Government,” Rep. James Comer (R-K.Y.) defended Musk’s unprecedented role in the executive branch, saying “real innovation isn’t clean and tidy.”

President Donald Trump defended DOGE’s access to federal data systems on Friday, adding that the Pentagon and the Department of Education are next.

“We’re going to be looking at tremendous amounts of money … being spent on things that bear no relationship to anything and have no value,” Trump said.

“I’m very proud of the job that this group of young people … [are] doing. They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption.”

So far, the DOGE team has accessed IT systems at agencies, including the Treasury Department, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), while a coalition of labor unions has sued to block access at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Additionally, students in California are suing the Department of Education, alleging that DOGE staffers are accessing confidential student data.

The Epoch Times could not independently confirm other agencies—including the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Agency for International Development—where DOGE may have received access to internal systems or databases.

Treasury Department

The Treasury Department confirmed in a Feb. 4 letter to Congress that DOGE staff had been given “read-only” access to the agency’s nearly $6 trillion federal payments system.

According to the letter, Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause will work with the agency as a “special government employee” to review the Bureau of the Fiscal Service for operational efficiency and prevent abuse, fraud, and waste. The work will be done in conjunction with career Treasury officials.

On Feb. 5, the Justice Department wrote in a court filing that it would, for now, restrict DOGE’s access to Treasury Department payment systems.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

DOGE was also granted access to systems and technology at CMS, the agency said on Feb. 5. CMS will be in direct collaboration with DOGE while two senior agency staffers will direct the effort.

CMS, which is within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Medicare is a health insurance plan for older and disabled Americans, while Medicaid covers low-income enrollees.

While DOGE has said it wants to cut $2 trillion in government spending, the goal would likely be difficult to reach without reducing spending on health and social assistance programs.

Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance subsidies made up 24 percent of the 2024 federal budget, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

However, Trump told reporters last week that there would be no impacts on Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security unless his administration finds waste or abuse.

“The people won’t be affected,” Trump said, referring to recipients of those benefits.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

DOGE has also been granted access to NOAA’s IT systems through the Department of Commerce, according to several Democratic lawmakers.

“Elon Musk and his DOGE hackers are ransacking their way through the federal government … and gutting programs people depend on,” Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), two of the lawmakers confirming the development, wrote in a joint statement.

NOAA is the “principal federal agency tasked with understanding and predicting changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

Huffman and Lofgren noted that Americans rely on NOAA’s services “day in and day out” for warnings on “incoming severe weather, such as hurricanes, wildfires, and tornadoes.”

The NOAA is home to the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, two critical tools for weather forecasting and warning residents in vulnerable areas about approaching storms.

Department of Energy

Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed to CNBC on Feb. 7 that DOGE staffers were actively probing the U.S. Department of Energy but denied allegations that Musk’s people had access to U.S. nuclear secrets.

“I’ve heard these rumors. They’re like seeing our nuclear secrets. None of that is true at all,” Wright told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan.

The Department of Energy manages the nation’s nuclear infrastructure and implements U.S. energy policy. The agency also funds scientific research into energy, while one of its central responsibilities is maintaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

Other Developments

A coalition of labor unions sued the U.S. Department of Labor, its acting secretary, Vince Micone, and Musk on Feb. 5, alleging that DOGE plans to illegally access the agency’s computer data.

The coalition also alleges that DOGE intends to “fire any employee who protects the integrity of those systems” and that Musk would have access to information on Labor Department investigations into his business dealings.

On Feb. 5, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Musk would stay out of matters where he has conflicts of interest.

The University of California Student Association sued the U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 7, alleging that DOGE staffers are illegally accessing confidential student data.

The lawsuit, filed in Washington federal court, accuses DOGE of violating federal privacy laws by accessing Education Department computer systems containing student financial aid information.

DOGE did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Andrew Moran, Stacy Robinson, Zachary Stieber, and Reuters contributed to this report.

Authored by Sheramy Tsai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Walk into any grocery store, and chances are, most of what you see is ultra-processed—foods engineered for convenience but often lacking real nutrition. These products make up nearly three-quarters of what’s on the shelves and have been linked to rising rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.

But what exactly makes a food “ultra-processed”? The answer is murky, leaving shoppers confused and policymakers silent on the sidelines.

In a sign of the times, AI may help provide some answers.

The Challenge of Defining Ultra-Processed Foods

Despite the growing evidence linking ultra-processed foods to chronic diseases, even experts struggle to agree on a clear definition.

For a food to be ultra-processed, it must have been chemically altered, said Albert-László Barabási, co-author of a new study on processed foods and co-founder of Foodome—a project mapping the chemical components of the human diet. Certain orange juices labeled “natural,” for instance, are broken down into three separate components, stored individually, and later recombined, thus making them ultra-processed, he said in a press release.

Barabási said that food packaging doesn’t reveal whether a product is ultra-processed. The USDA tracks only a limited number of nutritional components, and the FDA mandates reporting for just about 12 nutrients, leaving much of what’s in our food hidden from view.

This lack of transparency underscores the importance of clear categorization. To help consumers understand food processing, researchers developed the NOVA classification system. Widely regarded as the gold standard for assessing food processing, this method sorts foods into four categories based on how much they’ve been altered from their natural state. Here’s how it breaks down:

• Unprocessed or Minimally Processed Foods – Whole foods that are fresh, dried, ground, pasteurized, or frozen with no added ingredients, such as fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, and milk.
• Processed Culinary Ingredients – Substances derived from whole foods used in cooking, such as salt, sugar, oils, and butter.
• Processed Foods – Foods made by combining whole foods with culinary ingredients, such as canned vegetables, fresh bread, cheese, and smoked meats. These typically have added salt, sugar, or fat but still retain most of their original food structure.
• Ultra-Processed Foods – Industrial formulations with little to no whole food, containing additives such as emulsifiers, stabilizers, artificial flavors, and preservatives. Examples include sugary cereals, packaged snacks, frozen meals, soda, and instant noodles.

NOVA’s Impact

While the NOVA classification system has been a game-changer for public health research, it is not without flaws, says computational physicist Giulia Menichetti. It groups foods based on processing levels rather than their actual nutrition. That means a fortified breakfast cereal with added fiber and vitamins gets the same “ultra-processed” label as a sugary snack cake—even though the cereal is clearly a better choice.

These inconsistencies aren’t unique to NOVA. Menichetti notes that most food classification systems rely on human interpretation, which can lead to varying conclusions among experts. Without clear, standardized criteria, it remains difficult to define what truly qualifies as ultra-processed—and even harder to incorporate that definition into public health guidelines.

Despite these concerns, many experts still consider NOVA a good starting point. “If you avoid foods in the ultra-processed category, you’re probably making healthier choices overall,” nutrition researcher Nick Norwitz told The Epoch Times. “But not all ultra-processed foods are created equal. There’s nuance in this category.”

What Is GroceryDB?

Enter GroceryDB, a new tool created by researchers at Northeastern University. By analyzing ingredient lists and nutrition labels from over 50,000 food products, GroceryDB ranks foods based on how processed they are. At a time when ultra-processed foods dominate both diets and debates, GroceryDB may offer shoppers a way to take control of what’s in their cart—and their bodies.

Led by Menichetti and published in Nature Food, the GroceryDB study aims to simplify nutrition’s complexities and help consumers make healthier choices.

At the heart of GroceryDB is the FPro algorithm, a machine learning tool that evaluates how processed a food is. Fresh produce ranks near 0, while ultra-processed items such as frozen dinners or sugary snacks climb closer to 1. To make it easier for shoppers, these scores are converted into a simple 0–100 scale on the TrueFood Dashboard.

“Much of nutrition research still relies on manual curation, but our study highlights how artificial intelligence and data science can scale these efforts up,” Menichetti told The Epoch Times.

Unlike other systems that focus on a single nutrient, such as sugar or fat, FPro analyzes a food’s entire nutrient profile. This holistic approach allows the tool to spot patterns that reveal hidden industrial processing—even in foods marketed as “healthy,” such as fortified cereals.

For example, a simple whole-grain bread with no additives might score 31, signaling minimal processing. Add resistant starches or fibers, and the score jumps to 73. A heavily processed version with corn syrup and preservatives could max out at 99.

GroceryDB relies on NOVA as the foundation for training its machine-learning model, raising questions about whether the tool represents a true shift in food classification or simply builds upon the existing framework in a more automated way.

“Food labels often mislead or overwhelm,” said Menichetti. “GroceryDB translates complex data into clear, actionable insights for consumers.”

The algorithm also evaluates individual ingredients in products. Oils such as olive or flaxseed score low for minimal processing, while palm and soybean oils score high as they are ultra-processed. Even similar-looking products can differ dramatically. One cheesecake with 14 ingredients and five additives might score far lower than another with 43 ingredients and 26 additives.

“Our goal is to help people make sense of the overwhelming choices they face in grocery stores,” Menichetti said. “By showing how processed a product really is and the available alternatives, we’re giving consumers a tool to make healthier, more informed decisions.”

But even FPro has its limits. Norwitz points out that we still don’t fully understand how industrial food processing changes food at a chemical level. “There’s a lot we don’t know,” he said. “The hidden effects of food processing—what we call the ‘dark matter of nutrition’—could be critical to understanding the true impact of ultra-processed foods on health.”

The Cost of Convenience

Ultra-processed foods aren’t just prevalent—they’re cheap. A can of processed soup might cost as little as $1 per serving, while preparing a homemade alternative with fresh ingredients could cost triple that or more. For shoppers on tight budgets, this affordability gap makes ultra-processed foods the easiest choice.

Menichetti’s research highlights just how steep this gap is. Highly processed soups and stews are nearly 70 percent cheaper per calorie than their minimally processed counterparts. Across most food categories, every 10 percent increase in processing trims about 9 percent off the cost per calorie—a cost advantage that’s hard to ignore when feeding a family.

This affordability often comes from the use of cheap, calorie-dense ingredients like refined grains, seed oils, and high-fructose corn syrup. Federal subsidies have significantly lowered the production costs of corn, soybeans, and wheat, leading to their widespread use in processed foods. These ingredients are inexpensive to produce at scale but add little nutritional value despite their caloric load.

For families in marginalized communities—where access to fresh produce or whole foods is limited—ultra-processed options often become the default. A 2022 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who struggle to afford enough food get a larger share of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods compared to those who have steady access to nutritious meals. This reliance on cheaper, calorie-dense, but nutrient-poor foods creates a cycle of poor nutrition and chronic health issues.

GroceryDB’s creators hope the tool can level the playing field by helping consumers identify less processed alternatives within their price range. By offering a clear breakdown of ingredient contributions and processing scores, GroceryDB empowers shoppers to make informed, cost-conscious decisions.

“GroceryDB currently provides the data to systematically identify cost barriers across different food categories and grocery stores,” said Menichetti. “It enables consumers to discover more affordable options within the same category that have comparable FPro scores.”

By making affordable, minimally processed options more accessible, tools like GroceryDB could help close the gap in public health disparities while encouraging healthier eating habits.

Reshaping the Food Landscape

“Even small changes in dietary habits can have a big impact,” said Menichetti. “If we help consumers nudge their choices toward less processed options, we can begin to address chronic health issues tied to ultra-processed foods.”

But GroceryDB isn’t just about better grocery trips. According to Menichetti, the tool has the potential to reshape public health by transforming how policymakers and the food industry approach nutrition.

“This initiative is not just for consumers—it also speaks to agencies, governments, and grocery stores,” Menichetti said.

Policymakers could use GroceryDB to identify areas where healthier options are scarce or too expensive. Grocery stores might then use it to adjust their layouts, stock more minimally processed items, and encourage healthier choices. These changes could have a meaningful impact, especially in communities with limited access to nutritious food.

With food processing under increasing scrutiny, tools like GroceryDB—alongside policy changes and consumer awareness—could help reshape the way we shop and eat for the better.

“GroceryDB is just the beginning,” said Menichetti. “We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that started a process by which international organized crime cartels would be designated as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” or “Specially Designated Global Terrorists.”

The designations would give the U.S. government power to go after the cartels’ finances, target those who supply them with weapons, and even carry out military strikes against cartel-owned facilities.

With groups such as the Sinaloa cartel, MS-13 from El Salvador, and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua posing a serious threat to the United States, analysts say these new terrorist designations could have far-reaching consequences.

The Trump administration has not gone into detail about how it plans to use the new powers, but on Jan. 31, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would not rule out military strikes against the cartels.

On Feb. 3, following Trump’s tariffs threat, Canada announced it would invest $200 million and appoint a czar to investigate the fentanyl trade and would also designate the cartels as terrorist organizations.

Ioan Grillo, a Mexico-based journalist and author of several books, including “El Narco, The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels,” told The Epoch Times the terrorist designations would provide the U.S. government with more power to go after the cartels’ finances.

He said it could also be used to target arms dealers in the United States who provide weapons for them.

“You could go after people trafficking firearms to the cartels, you could arrest them for providing material to a foreign terrorist organization,” Grillo said.

Organized crime syndicates such as Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa cartel will be put in the same basket as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other groups listed as designated foreign terrorist organizations on the State Department’s website.

Francois Cavard, a human rights activist who has spent years investigating the drug trade in Central and South America, told The Epoch Times that changing the legal status of cartels such as Tren de Aragua from “being considered just another criminal organization” to being designated as terrorists was “huge.”

Cavard said the gang—whose name translates as the “Train of Aragua” and which began as a group of corrupt workers on a failed railway project, which was funded by a huge loan from China—was heavily involved in human smuggling, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

Greta Nightingale, an attorney and partner at O’Melveny, a firm of Washington-based international lawyers, and chair of its national security group, said that being designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” and a “specially designated global terrorist” were based on different statutes but have essentially the same effect.

She told The Epoch Times that the assets of the designee are frozen and that if they come within the control of U.S. persons (such as a U.S. bank) they cannot access them.

Nightingale said Americans are also not allowed to engage in any dealings with such designees or engage with third parties if they will benefit the designated party.

“If a U.S. company does business with a Mexican company that is tied to one of these cartels, they risk an enforcement action,” she said.

“If the company is owned or controlled by a cartel, then such business is clearly illegal. But if the ties are more attenuated then the legal exposure is less clear.”

Danger of ‘Reputational Harm’

Nightingale said that “the safest approach is to stay away if you have information that suggests that there are ties between a cartel and a Mexican business, as you invite reputational harm and also may undermine the safety of your employees.”

Cavard said the most significant effect of the designation is that cartels and gangs such as Tren de Aragua were no longer considered to just be after illegal financial profit but are considered “to also have power and control purposes … that represents a serious and extremely dangerous threat to the security of the country.”

He said the designation would also “make it clear to the high-level corrupt accomplices these criminals may have within the United States and in U.S. government offices and agencies … that they’re going after them also.”

Cavard said it would also send a message to what he called “extremely compromised nations” such as México, Panama, Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia.

He said groups such as Tren de Aragua had “accumulated the power and the financial resources that have enabled them to corrupt and/or intimidate high-level politicians, authorities, and justice officials all over the world, including the United States of America, and this is an extremely high national security concern for all countries.”

Grillo said, “As for the legal implications, it redefines the battle and could be used in justification of other things such as military actions, as were used against al-Qaeda in Pakistan.”

But he said that potentially could lead to a “bad outcome” if Mexican civilians were killed in such an air strike.

Hegseth, in response to a question from “Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade about whether the military would strike a cartel organization inside Mexico if those organizations targeted Americans at the U.S.–Mexico border, said, “All options will be on the table if we’re dealing with what are designated to be foreign terrorist organizations who are specifically targeting Americans on our border.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) talks about his legislation to designate Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, at the U.S. Capitol on March 8, 2023. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Grillo, who has written on his Substack about U.S. Gen. John Pershing’s raid into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa in 1916, said military strikes would not solve the problem of cartels because, according to research published in Science in 2023, there were 180,000 people in Mexico employed by the cartels.

“It’s probably an underestimate. But even if you go in there with a drone strike, and you kill five, you kill 10, you kill 20 cartel operatives, you don’t solve the issue. You haven’t killed 1 percent of them, and it really would inflame relationships with Mexico,” Grillo said.

“You could easily end up killing Mexican civilians. It’d be very hard to know if you killed Mexican civilians, or killed Mexican policemen or Mexican soldiers.”

Grillo said such incidents would fuel popular resentment in Mexico against the United States “and make it harder for the Mexican president to actually cooperate with the United States on all these issues.”

Could ‘Make Things Worse’

“I do think the United States is right to be concerned about the rise of cartels, but sometimes you can make things worse by doing things like firing some missiles and killing people and inflaming the situation,” Grillo said.

He said the cartels had been largely to blame for the smuggling of fentanyl into the United States, which had been “devastating” in the past decade in terms of addiction and deaths.

Trump’s executive order states:

“The cartels have engaged in a campaign of violence and terror throughout the Western Hemisphere that has not only destabilized countries with significant importance for our national interests but also flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.”

Grillo said that “it’s difficult to read Trump sometimes.”

“Trump is likely using this stuff as a way of pressuring Mexico. So the best scenario could perhaps be if Mexico manages to reduce the amount of fentanyl being trafficked to the United States. That could happen,” he said.

The ingredients of fentanyl are produced in China and exported to Mexico, where syndicates such as the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) manufacture the deadly product, which is shipped across the border for an army of U.S. addicts.

But Trump’s threat of 25 percent tariffs may have already succeeded in getting the Mexican government to take action on fentanyl.

On Feb. 3, both Mexico and Canada agreed to strengthen border security in exchange for a one-month pause on the tariffs.

Mexico agreed to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops to the border immediately to deter drug traffickers, who make huge profits from the fentanyl trade.

The DEA raids an unofficial nightclub and arrests 50 people, some of them suspected of being members of Tren de Aragua, in Denver, Colo., on Jan. 26, 2025. DEA Rocky Mountain Division

“The cartels are only interested in making money. That’s the main objective,” Grillo said.

“They do resemble armed groups. If you’ve seen videos where there’ll be like 50 guys in balaclavas with RPG-7s, with bulletproof vests, helmets, they look like an insurgent group, and they can act like an insurgent group in terms of the way they might fight the military sometimes in Mexico, the way they can fight each other, and terrorize civilians.

“They don’t have a political or religious ideology. They don’t have a political program.”

Cavard said Tren de Aragua, too, had no political ideology but had spread its tentacles among the Venezuelan diaspora in North, Central, and South America.

“The criminals said wherever our Venezuelan migrants go, we can go with them, and we can use them to carry whatever we want, we can take advantage of them, things like prostitution because they said ‘you do it or you die,’” he said.

Cartels ‘Good at Adapting’

Grillo said it was difficult to know how the cartels would deal with being designated as terrorists.

“Generally, [what] I think about the cartels is they’ve been really good at adapting to different situations and finding the opportunity to make more money, take more power,” he said.

“When there’s more crackdowns, when the border’s harder to cross, they put the price up and make more money moving migrants. When marijuana was legalized, it killed the Mexican marijuana trade but they moved to fentanyl and other synthetics.”

Cavard said Trump’s executive order designating Tren de Aragua as terrorists was “necessary.”

“He is not giving them enough time to grow and expand their terror, and the feeling they can do whatever they can whenever they can, and the effect that can have on recruiting new members,” he said, adding that Trump “is not going to be playing anymore, he is not going to be prioritizing the human rights of criminals over those of his own citizens.”

“If you don’t obey Tren de Aragua or MS-13, you pay with your life, and [Trump] is saying, ‘Guess what, that’s what’s going to happen [to the gangsters].’”

As predicted, President Trump’s controversial calls for the US to ‘takeover’ the Gaza Strip is for the first time in many years uniting the Arab world and its leadership more than ever.

Ultra-provocative plans have been floated from the administration over the past days, including reportedly the idea of setting up a Palestinian state inside Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere in northern Africa.

Israeli media has even listed the African states of Morocco and the Puntland State of Somalia as places where Palestinians from the Gaza Strip could be expelled. The secessionist Republic of Somaliland was specifically named in a Channel 12 report, but this hasn’t come directly from the US administration per se.

Naturally this is going to inflame Muslim sentiment in the region. Egypt has been among the first influential Arab and North African states to blast the Trump plan while expressing solidarity with Saudi Arabia:

Egypt condemned on Saturday as “irresponsible” statements by Israeli officials suggesting establishing a Palestinian state on Saudi territory, according to a statement by Egypt’s foreign ministry.

The foreign ministry said it considered the suggestion a “direct infringement of Saudi sovereignty”, adding that the Kingdom’s security was a “red line for Egypt”. 

Of course, Riyadh swiftly condemned the plan, saying it will remain unwavering on the question of full Palestinian sovereignty. It said it will never normalize relations with Israel if Palestinians are expelled from Gaza.

Without doubt, this is going to greatly complicate US relations with the Saudis and make things harder for Trump policy in the whole Arab world, as one regional news source described:

The headlines across Saudi Arabia this week have been, by all accounts, as “firm and unwavering” as the kingdom’s official position on Gaza, rejecting outright any normalisation process with Israel without a Palestinian state in the equation.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told reporters that Riyadh no longer has the precondition of a Palestinian state in order to open up diplomatic relations with Israel.

A short time later, Trump made the stunning announcement that the US would expel Gaza’s residents to nearby countries and then “take over” the enclave and turn it into a beach resort. 

Within minutes, at 4am local time, Saudi Arabia issued a statement rejecting the entire premise. 

“The Palestinian state is not the subject of negotiation or concessions,” read the headline in Saudi’s Al-Watan newspaper, citing the foreign ministry. 

Since then, other Arab League members have agreed and expressed outrage and condemnation. Jordan too has rejected all calls to absorb hundreds of thousands more Palestinians.

‘Everybody loves it’: US President Donald Trump persists with Gaza takeover plan pic.twitter.com/mARBXDBajr

— The National (@TheNationalNews) February 6, 2025

Trump has been specifically pressuring Egypt and Jordan to take in the Gaza Strip’s one million plus Palestinians. But the reality is that it will simply be a non-starter and practically impossible, without Arab support. The Arabs in turn have blasted this as brazen and open ethnic cleansing campaign of historic and sovereign territory. The United Nation has also issued such condemnations.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Russia’s foreign spy agency (SVR) claimed last week that it’s received information alleging that NATO wants to depose Zelensky through new elections, which follows US Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg calling on that country to finally hold its long-delayed presidential and parliamentary ones. SVR added that the bloc will launch a large-scale information campaign to discredit Zelensky by exposing his corruption, such as the funds that he and his team supposedly stole through various means.

This isn’t the first time that SVR has claimed to have knowledge of Western plots to replace Zelensky, some of which were cited and analyzed here when assessing the veracity of the one that they reported on last August, yet nothing of the sort has come to pass thus far. That, however, doesn’t mean that their latest claims shouldn’t be taken seriously. Observers should also remember that Putin himself predicted last June that the West will make moves in the first half of 2025 to replace Zelensky.

Kellogg’s previously cited comments and Politico’s subsequent piece about how “Ukraine freaks out as US and Russia push for elections” suggest that there’s some truth to SVR’s latest claim, though it remains to be seen whether Ukraine will hold elections later this year and if Zelensky will even run in that case. 

Nevertheless, the argument can be made that Trump prefers to get Zelensky out of the way since he was the Biden Administration’s top foreign policy asset, plus those two don’t like each other that much.

Democratically replacing Zelensky, even if the process isn’t free and fair should the US meddle in it to ensure that he either doesn’t run or that he loses if he does, is the most “face-saving” means to that end since the West can then present it as alleged proof that Ukraine is a “real democracy”. Trump’s return to office heralds a new era in International Relations so he might want to replace liberal-globalist leaders like Zelensky with like-minded populist-nationalist ones in order to help him implement his agenda.

Zelensky is one of the most symbolic remnants of the liberal-globalist era that’s finally ending. 

Him remaining in power could therefore impede the new populist-nationalist era that Trump is pioneering, ergo the need to replace him with someone who’s more aligned with his worldview. While speculation abounds about who that could hypothetically be, the argument can be made that Zelensky’s former advisor Alexey Arestovich would be a prime contender due to the pragmatic policies that he’s espoused.

At any rate, everything should become clearer after Kellogg’s reported trip to Kiev in the middle of this month, which sources claim will follow his attendance at the Munich Security Conference from 14-16 February. Leaks about his discussions with Zelensky and other European leaders will likely follow. This will allow observers to get a better sense of the veracity of SVR’s latest report. If it’s lent even partial credence in an objective sense, then more people might take their next reports even more seriously.

Authored by Casey Carlisle via AntiWar.com,

Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, the natural progress of things is for prices to yield and for quality to gain ground.  Technology is what enables this natural progress.  Do televisions cost more now than they did in the early ‘90s?  What about mobile phones?  Same answer for both questions: both are better and less expensive today than they were in the early ‘90s, which is why one will conclude that something is awry when reading headlines like “Global Military Spending Has Almost Doubled Since the Early ‘90s.”

Why has military spending almost doubled since the early ‘90s?  Arguably for the same reason hospital services have: government intervention.  Those who ‘serve’ in government endlessly tax the present because they arrogantly claim to know what the future should be rather than allow the future to unfold via voluntary exchange between producers and consumers.  Against all reason and historical precedent, they claim that, in order to stay safe, ‘defense’ spending must increase.  But that’s like claiming that, in order for eggs to contain yolks, the cost of raising chickens must necessarily outpace the rate of inflation.

“But but but” the unthinking screech, “the world is much more dangerous today!”  Perhaps, but is warfare immune from technological advance?  No, as Jefferson’s actual quote helps explain: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”  The world’s danger stems from governments’ interventions.  Wars aren’t cheap; governments don’t engage in them for fun.  The people would rather not fight, but instead of consulting with the people, governments conscript them.  Increased military spending is inversely proportional to market forces – the will of the people.

Military spending has almost doubled because the government that allegedly serves us trades our present liberty for its imagined, grotesque future.  Weapons manufacturing is one of the most regulated – if not the most regulated – industries in the “land of the free,” and that regulation paves the way for the most perverse incentive imaginable: though the maiming, killing, and destruction of “them” and their cities equates to the decimation of their economy, “our” business relies on it.Y

But work divided – not obliterated – is what enables the natural progress of things.  And when the number and duration of wars are unknown, and when that uncertainty is combined with the fact that war – at least its initial phase – is entirely devoid of market forces, weapons manufacturers can charge whatever they like, considering the governments that purchase their products spend their citizens’ money and not their own.  Governments have only what they’ve taken from the people they claim to serve, and they spend that money in the same way they obtained it: without consent.

There’s nothing natural about military spending nearly doubling; it’s a choice, just like inflation.  But these are not choices freely made by citizens; they’re choices imposed on citizens by those who claim to serve citizens.  Where citizens do have a choice, however, is whether to enlist, but increasingly more patriots have decided to abstain from military enlistment.  Why, then, would military spending increase while the number of those ‘serving’ decreases?  Because, again, military spending is not the product of billions of freely transacting individuals but of a handful who claim with a straight face that they know better than the billions engaging in voluntary exchange (the global economy).

“That’s just the way things are” is what the parasites hope you’ll keep chanting, but that song is better ascribed to things subjected to market forces.  “This is the way things will be” is why global military spending has doubled and will continue to increase.  As long as the government—not the people – decides which weapons will be purchased and which wars will be funded, the people will continue to fund the increasingly expensive suffering of others worldwide for the benefit of their governments.

Casey Carlisle writes in the Pacific Northwest.

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

Nearly 100 people were sickened by an outbreak of an unknown gastrointestinal illness this week on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Radiance of the Seas, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC said on Feb. 5 that about 89 of the 2,164 passengers on the ship were affected by the outbreak, or about 4 percent of the passengers. Two out of 910 crew members reported symptoms, the agency said.

The primary symptoms, according to the CDC, are vomiting and diarrhea. The “causative agent” was listed as “unknown,” the agency also said.

The Radiance of the Seas trip started on Feb. 1 and is scheduled to end on Feb. 8, while the outbreak was first reported on Feb. 5.

Sick passengers and crew members were isolated from the rest of the individuals on the cruise ship, the CDC said. The ship also has stepped up “cleaning and disinfection procedures” and collected samples for testing to determine the nature of the outbreak, the agency said.

Officials with the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program are now “remotely monitoring the situation, including review of the ship’s outbreak response and sanitation procedures,” it added.

While the cause of the outbreak wasn’t disclosed, the CDC noted that norovirus is generally the cause of outbreaks on cruise ships and that “finding the agent that caused an outbreak … can take time.”

“When an outbreak occurs, people whose symptoms met the case definition are asked to provide stool or vomitus samples. These samples are tested to determine the causative agent,” the CDC said.

Since the start of 2025, the CDC has reported six outbreaks on cruise ships, including the Radiance of the Seas trip. Three of the outbreaks were caused by norovirus, while one was caused by E. coli and other was “presumed” to have been caused by ciguatera fish poisoning, according to the agency.

Cruise ships are required to report cases where individuals report diarrhea or vomiting, along with other symptoms, to the CDC, the agency has said.

Norovirus Case Updates

Cases of norovirus started surging in parts of the United States over the winter, according to government data.

The most recent numbers from the CDC show there were 97 outbreaks of norovirus reported during the week of Jan.9, although that was down from the 128 outbreaks reported a week earlier. Numbers from the past few years show a maximum of 65 outbreaks reported during that first week of December 2024.

A norovirus infection is characterized by sudden vomiting and diarrhea. Outbreaks are often seen on cruise ships, in congregate living situations such as nursing homes and jails, and in schools and places where people are close together.

In a normal year, according to the CDC, norovirus causes between 19 million and 21 million cases of vomiting and diarrhea, 109,000 hospitalizations, and 900 deaths across the United States. The virus also is associated with about 495,000 emergency department visits, mostly in younger children, the CDC says. Most outbreaks occur between November and April.

If there is a new strain of the virus, there can be upward of 50 percent more norovirus illness. the agency said. Norovirus outbreaks often occur in health care facilities, long-term care facilities, restaurants, child care centers, schools, and cruise ships.

The Epoch Times contacted Royal Caribbean for comment on Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.