Authored by David Bell and Ramesh Thakur via Brownstone Institute,

The recent release of Anthony Fauci’s diaries, followed by his refusal to answer questions in an appearance before a US Senate committee by invoking the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination 111 times, highlighted a stark divide in how the Covid pandemic was handled by public health authorities. This is as true of Australia as of the US.

Repeatedly, against certainty expressed in public to justify official statements on the origins of the virus and on lockdown, mask, and vaccine policies, their private contemporaneous conversations confirm that even the top scientists were making decisions based on scientific uncertainty.

Consequently, one of the key legacies of the public-private gap is growing distrust of official claims. That scepticism should extend to the future pandemic agenda. We rely on the World Health Organisation to coordinate among countries to prevent scourges such as pandemics reaching our shores, or at least mitigate their effects. In doing so, we must defer to an army of international bureaucrats who work in such institutions. A deference that relies on trust.

Their salaries and careers depend on convincing us to part with more of our money to support their work. Yet, according to a new article on international pandemic financing in the Cambridge journal Health Economics, Policy and Law, the WHO and World Bank rely on dubious assumptions to calculate the return on investment case on which all major international efforts to mitigate future pandemics rely.

This should alarm governments. Mitigation is worth investing in, as pandemics will occur from time to time. But the article shows that current investments will have an overall detrimental effect on global health. Most starkly, it suggests a deep rot in the quality of institutions we rely on as stewards of this commonly accepted global good.

The WHO and World Bank report, produced at the request of the G20 in 2022, proposes an annual $31.1 billion budget for pandemic preparedness and prevention, about $10.5 billion of which would come through foreign aid (including Australia). About $26 billion would come from low and middle-income countries already struggling with economic issues including burgeoning Covid debt. For context, the entire WHO budget for 2024-25 was just $3.8 billion a year.

The point of the WHO and World Bank’s argument is that if we spend such resources on preparing for pandemics, we will reap orders of magnitude greater return on investment down the road, more than a thousandfold in some wealthy countries – a bargain difficult to refuse if true.

The article from Leeds University shows that the financial arguments are based on smoke and mirrors. They rely on assumptions on the quality-adjusted life years lost to pandemics as against the big three global infectious diseases of HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria; on the share of global funds to be devoted to pandemics in comparison to the other three per life saved in each case; and on the benefits to be gained from investments in vaccines and other pharmaceutical products instead of in the more basic determinants of health resilience in the population such as nutrition, sanitation, water, and hygiene. These are the factors, along with antibiotics and gains in medical advances, that have reduced the mortality toll from pandemics since the Spanish flu of 1918.

Furthermore, the WHO and World Bank also discount the adjustments made to human behaviour to mitigate health risks as they become obvious, collateral costs of the pandemic response measures, and the likely benefits of investing in those measures.

This matters because our government has signed on to the amended International Health Regulations, is expecting to sign the proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement, and looks set to sign a UN political agreement this September advocating for yet more money for the authors and beneficiaries of the growing pandemic industry. They are promising a lot of money based on the WHO’s costings.

It matters because most Australians assumed that we could trust international institutions and that they valued rigour rather than engage in false accounting and subterfuge.

Unfortunately, incentives without accountability are a poor basis for health governance. It matters because funds to finance the pharmaceutical corporations, research institutions, and bureaucrats who stand to benefit from the pandemic agenda will have to be diverted from programs that work. International funding for the big endemic diseases and basic priorities such as nutrition is already falling, while the pandemic agenda expands. The Leeds authors call for simple transparency and honesty in assessing global health priorities, and in paying for them. Not a big ask. The Australian government has a choice to be constructive on behalf of its taxpayers and require better, or through blind acquiescence remain part of the problem.

Republished from The Australian

One day after veteran commodities strategist Jeff Currie told investors to “get long and buckle up“ for the next leg of the commodities rally, UBS strategist Sagar Khandelwal issued a similarly bullish call, urging clients to “position for a commodity upcycle.”

Khandelwal said electrification, surging power demand, artificial-intelligence infrastructure spending, persistent supply constraints, and years of underinvestment are converging to create a perfect storm for a sustained upcycle in hard assets.

Commodities can generate returns while protecting portfolios against energy disruptions and renewed inflation, he said. That defensive role becomes valuable when the toxic mixture starts hitting stocks and bonds. 

Here’s how the UBS strategist framed the trade:

Position for commodity upside

We believe commodities can provide both a structural source of return and portfolio protection in scenarios where higher inflation expectations challenge equities and bonds. While commodities have historically offered valuable diversification benefits due to their relatively low correlation with traditional asset classes, we also see a supportive longer-term backdrop driven by electrification, rising power demand, AI infrastructure investment, and supply constraints across several markets. In our view, investors should maintain diversified exposure across precious metals, energy, industrial metals, and agriculture to capture a broad range of opportunities. Given fast-shifting leadership within commodity markets, we think an actively managed approach can help investors navigate the commodity upcycle.

Gold

Gold has resumed its upward trend as US inflation concerns have ebbed, and markets have reined in expectations for near-term Federal Reserve rate hikes. Looking ahead, however, we believe central bank demand, continued diversification away from the US dollar, and global debt concerns will remain important structural supports. For investors with substantial gains following the strong rally over the past year, higher prices may provide an opportunity to rebalance some exposure into other commodity sectors. We continue to view gold as a useful strategic diversifier, and we remain constructive on gold prices over the next 12 months.

Energy

The ongoing conflict between the US and Iran highlights the fluid nature of geopolitical events and how they can impact energy. With crude supply remaining restricted and both sides facing constraints in reaching a compromise, uncertainty over how quickly shipping conditions and production will normalize is likely to keep energy markets sensitive. In our view, energy exposure can help protect against lingering supply uncertainty and inflation spillovers, while robust demand supports a constructive medium-term outlook.

Industrial metals

Industrial metals, such as copper, have benefited from secular demand drivers such as electrification, the energy transition, and the ongoing global buildout of AI infrastructure. Prices have remained resilient despite periodic global economic growth worries. While factors like tariffs and trade policy risks may keep prices volatile in the near term, demand trends remain constructive for the asset class over the longer term. In copper specifically, supply constraints and projected market deficits reinforce our positive longer-term outlook.

A look at the Quantix Commodity Index Total Return shows that the broad commodity complex has surged to a record high, gaining more than 22.5% since late June. The index tracks 24 US-dollar-denominated futures across energy, agriculture, livestock, industrial metals, and precious metals, suggesting the rally is no longer confined to a single corner of the physical world.

That momentum in the commodities index reinforces veteran Currie’s warning last week that “scarcity in the physical world” is reemerging. Already, we’re seeing London copper trading above $14,000 a ton, the Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index breaking out to a three-year high, and European tungsten prices exceeding $3,000 a ton.

Currie’s conclusion was very blunt: “The illusion of abundance is likely behind us.”

Via Remix News,

Polish prosecutors are now investigating a “White Lives Matter” graffiti as a hate crime in the city of Rzeszów, with the suspects facing up to three years in prison if they are apprehended and convicted.

Painted on a wall in the Polish city of Rzeszów, the graffiti was reportedly created as a memorial to the murdered British youth Henry Nowak.

??? In Poland, prosecutors are now investigating a “White Lives Matter” graffiti as a hate crime, with the suspects facing up to 3 years in prison if they are apprehended and convicted.

Painted on a wall in the Polish city of Rzeszów, the graffiti was reportedly created as a… pic.twitter.com/FP1HYP0cDZ

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 25, 2026

Polish police have reportedly secured surveillance footage and referred the case to Polish prosecutors.

However, Polish newspaper toRzeszow claims that cameras are not in the direct area where the wall was painted, making it difficult to identify the suspects.

Authorities also painted over the entire wall.

Major Polish news outlet wPolsce24 has reacted with outrage to the investigation: “The Rzeszów case is part of a broader trend of suppressing the voices of white people who dare to remind them that their lives also have value. When black people say “Black Lives Matter,” it is a fight for equality. When white people say “White Lives Matter,” it is immediately racist.“

The news outlet further writes: “The slogan on the garages in Rzeszów was not an expression of hatred. There was a voice reminding us that white lives matters too. And as long as we treat some lives as ‘more equal’ than others, such slogans will appear on walls.”

Meanwhile, authorities claim the graffiti is illegal under article 257 of the Polish penal code, which concerns the public insult of a group of people or an individual based on national, ethnic, or racial identity.

A group labeled “Narodowy Rzeszów” allegedly posted a video of themselves standing next to the graffiti holding a banner and flares and displaying the logo of the right-wing National-Radical Camp (ONR), however, it remains unclear if they sprayed the graffiti themselves.

Their post pointed to violence against Whites in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Social media platforms took the video down.

Read more here…

Speculation has abounded over the nature of CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s surprise Tuesday trip to Moscow and what was conveyed to top Kremlin intelligence officials.

The ‘official’ Washington narrative of what was behind the trip was issued on Wednesday in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, which laid out Ratcliffe delivered a “warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.“

Since then, media reports and pundits have mused that nearby small ‘eastern flank’ countries like Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania could be prime targets for some kind of Russian military action, at a moment Europe’s support to Kiev has steadily ramped up.

Surprisingly, on Thursday former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves (president: 2006 – 2016), who remains influential voice in the European security debate and has served on an EU task force, told a European outlet that the CIA director’s meeting was more likely centered on the Iran conflict and not on warning against attacking Europe.

Ilves in a freshly published interview with EuroNews said he had “severe doubts” that concerns over aggression against the Baltic states were the reason for Ratcliffe’s visit.

“What is the real problem for the United States right now? The real problem is Iran, the fact that the Russians are giving targeting information to the Iranians,” he said.

“Those are real problems for the United States, and that would be sufficient to warrant the director of the CIA to go to Moscow to tell them to back off.”

US intelligence and Trump officials for months have alleged that Russia is likely helping Iranian forces with identifying and locating US military assets in the region. At times throughout Operation Epic Fury, Tehran appears to have even targeted CIA stations.

The bulk of American military assets and bases in the Gulf countries have suffered severe damage earlier in the conflict, resulting in a Pentagon troop drawback to safer areas. This is indeed a big deal if it is the case that Russia or China (or both) have handed the Iranians intel to help push back American bases and forces.

Former Estonian leader Ilves further explained that in reality there had been “no change in the US’s threat assessment for the Baltic states.”

Yesterday CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow. The visit was brief but quickly fueled widespread discussion and speculation.

Official statements from Russia and Washington remain silent on the reason for the trip. Details about his counterparts remain unavailable as… pic.twitter.com/0W7t0i72Pq

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) August 26, 2026

“If the purpose was to go and genuinely tell the Russians not to do anything in the Baltic states, as was claimed, then there would be some kind of activity here,” he underscored. 

Also, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna announced Thursday that the country’s threat assessment had “not changed”. Tsahkna said: “We remain vigilant, but Estonia’s threat assessment has not changed.”

Ilves concluded in his comments that the official narrative is but cover for the real reason underlying Ratcliff’s visit.

Skepticism has been widely voiced among independent journalists and pundits:

CIA chief urgently flew to Moscow in the middle of America’s losing war against Russia’s ally Iran, and the reason had nothing to do with a desperate attempt to turn Russia against Iran, but rather “Putin could try…limited assault on an allied country in the next few years”? 🤔 https://t.co/WmNYnGstfo

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) August 26, 2026

“I don’t think it’s a false flag, but rather just kind of make something up to divert attention from what is the real problem that the US faces right now,“ the Estonian ex-President said.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

A street interview doing the rounds this week encapsulates the entire European open-borders agenda in under two minutes.

Older Spaniards nod along when asked if they would welcome a migrant into their home, saying it would make for a much better system if everyone did so.

Solidarity, humanity, of course. Then the interviewer produces a real migrant looking for a home and suddenly everything changes.

Funniest thing I’ve watched this week.

Boomers in Spain get asked if they’d accept a migrant into their home. They say yes. Chad offers them one. And instantly, they change their mind. pic.twitter.com/2ruX39i0Mh

— Casey Krol (@CaseyKrol) August 26, 2026

The interviewer presents the couple with a Nigerian man named Sony who plays guitar on the pavement for small change – and their previous answers collapse into excuses, holidays, “not right now,” and finally “no, no, no, no, no.”

The clip, shared by Casey Krol and filmed in the Rescue You style, is the kind of unscripted moment the official narrative cannot survive. Abstract empathy and virtue signalling is easy, but when the reality of the situation is presented, everything is turned on its head.

The couple in the video are not monsters. They are ordinary people who have absorbed years of hectoring lecturing and know the approved answer. They just refuse to live it.

The same pattern repeats at every level in Europe: politicians, NGOs, and detached citizens demand that someone else absorb the costs of mass low-skilled inflows while they keep their own postcodes intact.

Spain’s socialist government has spent years selling the opposite message. Prime Minister Sánchez has called migration “one of the great engines of national development” and an “act of justice and a necessity.”

He has framed legalization as recognition that hundreds of thousands already “form part of our everyday lives.” Globalist Alex Soros praised him for it, saying Sánchez showed “what real leadership looks like” and “We need more elected leaders like him.”

The public has not bought it wholesale. A Sigma Dos poll for El Mundo found 70 percent of Spaniards support mass deportation of illegal immigrants – including 57 percent of PSOE voters. Only the far-left Sumar base rejects the idea.

The latest explosion for Spain came at the end of July when more than 70,000 people poured into the tiny North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco in two days. Beaches, schools, and parks filled with tents, waste, and disease. Scabies, measles, and tuberculosis appeared among police and residents. Locals described playgrounds and sand turned into shit covered slums.

The chaos did not stay in Ceuta. Boats began hitting mainland tourist coves. In Cartagena, dozens of military-age men leapt onto a packed beach in full view of families. Mayor Noelia Arroyo said: “This cannot be normalised. We cannot accept that human trafficking mafias have such an easy time reaching our shores.” Former mayor Francisco Bernabe asked how a boat that size evaded radar: “Are they broken? Do they have them turned off?”

This week the tension in Ceuta boiled over again. Residents marched on the migrant camp at El Trampolín beach, tore down tents, and threw belongings into the sea. Police fired warning shots to keep the two groups apart. The city of 84,000 has been told to absorb what Madrid will not remove.

?? Ceuta residents have taken to the streets to protest the Spanish government’s handling of the migration crisis and demand the removal of migrants from public areas.

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/QdlyKOwB4J

— Europa.com (@europa) August 27, 2026

Sánchez oversaw a royal-decree regularization – no parliamentary vote – sold as covering 500,000 people. Applications blew past one million. Successful applicants get residence, work permits, benefits, and a path to citizenship that opens the entire Schengen zone.

The paperwork tsunami was immediate. Thousands of military-age men queued at consulates and registry offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, and Almería. Some camped overnight.

Others climbed embassy walls when appointments ran out. Union officials warned of collapse.

One municipal delegate said daily social-service requests in Madrid jumped from 1,500 to 5,500. Vox’s Santiago Abascal called it an accelerating “invasion.” Polish MEP Anna Bry?ka said left-wing governments were “bringing about the collapse of the Schengen Area and mocking the safety of Europeans.”

When patriots protested the amnesty, they were met by socialist counter-mobs.

The labor market tells the same story. Foreign-born workers now hold 52.6 percent of unskilled construction jobs and outnumber Spaniards in those roles. Since 2019 the sector has lost more than 22,000 Spanish workers and gained 238,000 foreign ones. Bricklayers, plumbers, and electricians show the same slide. Spain’s youth are not replacing the retiring generation; imported labor is.

Meanwhile, foreigners commit five times more rapes and four times more murders per capita than Spaniards. In Catalonia, 91 percent of convicted rapists are migrants, who make up 17 percent of the population. Reported rapes in Spain rose 322 percent in a decade. Penetrative rape cases more than doubled between 2019 and 2024.

The streets have turned into blood baths. Recently, a North African migrant shouted “Allah” while stabbing a young woman to death in Esplugues de Llobregat; a 58-year-old man who tried to intervene was also attacked.

The same weekend produced more stabbings and a shooting.

A man employed to evict migrant squatters was lynched and stabbed by a mob.

A Gambian migrant stabbed a police officer while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

A repeat offender stomped a local man’s head.

Citizens rioted after an elderly man was beaten.

And on and on and on.

Many of the “unaccompanied minors” driving the migrant numbers are not minors at all. In Madrid, 70 percent of those tested by bone-age X-ray were adults. The same fraud appears across Europe.

Seventy percent of the country already knows the solution is removal, not more lectures about housing the next arrival.

The people who designed this system will keep calling it compassion. They will keep living somewhere the consequences do not reach. Ordinary Spaniards are the ones facing the dire fallout.

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

Authored by Heng He via The Epoch Times,

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, the hard-edged reformer who engineered China’s rise from planned-economy backwater to global manufacturing giant, died this month at the age of 97.

His legacy-tax centralization, mass layoffs, China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a brief, forgotten moment of tolerance toward Falun Gong-now stands as both the foundation of modern China’s wealth and a stark reminder of how easily that progress can be reversed.

Zhu’s Legacy of Economic Reform

After the decade-long Cultural Revolution pushed the regime to the brink, then-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Deng Xiaoping pivoted China toward market reforms. He relied on pragmatic trial and error rather than a rigid master plan, describing his step-by-step approach as “crossing the river by feeling the stones.”

Zhu executed that vision. As vice premier and premier from 1991 to 2003, China’s “economic tsar” used iron-fisted reforms to engineer the country’s rise, including restructuring fiscal policy, dismantling inefficient state-owned enterprises, and securing China’s entry into the WTO.

Zhu was officially credited with advancing China’s landmark tax-sharing reform in the 1990s, which centralized much of the country’s tax revenue in Beijing. That reform undeniably strengthened the central government.

However, it stripped local governments of steady tax income, forcing them to rely on selling land to fund local budgets. Paired with state ownership of land, this shift created a “land-finance” model that drove housing prices sky-high and triggered today’s ongoing property crisis.

It isn’t the tax reform alone that is to blame. China’s system of state and collective land ownership is what enabled large-scale land sales in the first place.

The obituary also praises Zhu for safeguarding Hong Kong’s status as a global financial center. Ironically, Hong Kong’s diminished standing today stems largely from policies adopted under CCP leader Xi Jinping-making praise for Zhu an implicit rebuke of China’s current leadership.

WTO Entry-and Its Costs

One of Zhu’s most consequential achievements was leading China to join the WTO in 2001.

To prepare the country for global trade, Zhu aggressively restructured inefficient state-owned enterprises. While this boosted efficiency, it triggered mass layoffs, displacing tens of millions of workers.

Unlike post-Cold War America, China’s nascent private sector was too weak to absorb the surge of unemployed labor.

The aggressive restructuring stripped millions of workers of their livelihoods, leaving them with virtually no safety net. While the reforms eventually sparked massive economic growth, the workers who bore the cost were largely left behind without fair compensation.

The Premier Who Called Out Shoddy Construction

When the Yangtze River dikes failed during the 1998 summer floods, Zhu inspected the breach in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, and discovered that the construction had cut corners and used shoddy materials. Furious, he publicly denounced the dam as a “bastard project” and dubbed it a “tofu-dregs project”-comparing the crumbling concrete to the brittle, worthless pulp residue left over from making soy curd.

As long as corruption remains a recurring public concern in China, the term “tofu-dreg project” will likely remain part of the country’s political vocabulary and a defining mark of Zhu’s legacy.

The Premier Who Listened-Meeting With Falun Gong

One episode stands apart from Zhu’s economic legacy. In the late 1990s, Zhu and the entire Politburo Standing Committee opposed then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin’s decision to suppress Falun Gong, according to insider accounts.

On April 25, 1999, roughly 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered peacefully near Zhongnanhai, the CCP’s headquarters, in Beijing to petition the authorities for freedom of belief. Earlier in the month, dozens of practitioners in Tianjin had been detained by local police for their faith.

In a bold move for an official, Zhu met directly with representatives, listened to their grievances, and ordered the release of the detained practitioners, along with an assurance that practitioners would have a lawful environment in which to pursue their practice.

The spiritual discipline was introduced to the Chinese public in 1992 and gained widespread popularity, attracting at least 70 million practitioners by the late 1990s.

At an internal leadership meeting the following day, according to insider accounts, Zhu suggested that suppression would harm the country’s image and that the regime should leave Falun Gong practitioners alone. Jiang, afraid of the practice’s growing popularity, responded that doing so would bring down the Party.

Months later, Jiang launched a sweeping, nationwide campaign against Falun Gong-initiating a persecution that continues today.

Reform Can Be Reversed Overnight

Zhu’s death cast an unexpected shadow over Xi’s plans to commemorate Jiang with unusually high political honors, an effort intended to elevate Jiang alongside the CCP’s founding generation. Instead of highlighting Jiang’s legacy, Zhu’s passing reminded the public that the reforms of China’s most prosperous era owed far more to Zhu.

It was Zhu who was behind Deng and the CCP in launching the Shanghai Stock Exchange in December 1990-now a global financial powerhouse that hosts major state-owned enterprise listings.

Although Zhu was the official most responsible for driving China’s reform era, Xi’s policies have now largely dismantled that work. That contrast reveals the ultimate lesson of Zhu’s legacy: under totalitarian rule, no amount of reform is secure-it can all be undone overnight.

Federal regulators have cleared a blood test aimed at detecting signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared a blood test known as Elecsys pTau-217 for people aged at least 55 who have shown signs of, or have been complaining of, cognitive decline, Roche announced on Aug. 24.

The test, which can be used by primary care doctors and specialists, detects a biomarker called plasma phosphorylated tau 217. In a study that ran from 2004 to 2025 and was published in JAMA, researchers found that higher levels of the biomarker were associated with an increased risk of progression to cognitive impairment.

As Zachary Stieber reports via The Epoch Times, the FDA has previously approved several other tests for Alzheimer’s, beginning in 2025 with a test from Fujirebio Diagnostics that measures both pTau217 and another protein. Roche said its test is the first to measure a single biomarker.

“Elecsys pTau217 has the potential to transform how Alzheimer’s is assessed across primary and specialty care,” Dan Malarek, president and CEO of Roche Diagnostics North America, said in a statement.

“This kind of innovation can help bring diagnostic evaluation closer to patients and give clinicians greater confidence in determining the right step in their care.”

Alzheimer’s is a brain disorder that destroys a person’s memory and thinking skills over time. People with the disease gradually become unable to perform tasks such as eating and walking. Many people begin experiencing symptoms such as memory difficulties between the ages of 60 and 70.

The Alzheimer’s Association and other groups have welcomed the tests as a less invasive option than other methods, such as testing of cerebrospinal fluid.

“Each FDA clearance gives clinicians another validated option to work with when evaluating patients showing signs of cognitive impairment,” Maria C. Carrillo, the association’s chief science officer and medical affairs lead, said in a statement.

“That’s real progress for a field that, for decades, had far too few tools to offer.”

Dr. Carole Ho, executive vice president and president of Lilly Neuroscience, which helped develop the test, said in a statement that “for millions of families navigating the uncertainty of Alzheimer’s disease, a timely diagnosis is the first and most critical step toward meaningful care.”

Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics said they will carry the new test.

Once ordered by a doctor, patients can have their blood drawn for the test in a doctor’s office, a Labcorp service center, or a Quest center.

Authored by Jake Scott via FEE,

On a Sunday night in late July, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and China’s Xi Jinping spoke for more than an hour. It was cordial and faintly triumphant, with the two governments announcing their intention to accelerate a long-stalled China-Mercosur trade agreement. Alongside this, there are plans to deepen cooperation on satellites and critical-minerals processing, and waive short-stay visa requirements.

This marks a serious change for Brazil. For years, it was Brasília that had spearheaded all resistance to exactly this sort of deal within the Mercosur bloc. The reversal was as sudden as it was shocking, taking only a fortnight to emerge, following a new American tariff taking effect and the Brazilian president deciding that the cost of alignment with the United States had, at last, exceeded its benefits.

Confronted with a United States that has moved from partner to antagonist, Brazil sees itself as neither retaliating in kind nor capitulating; it is hedging, deliberately, on several fronts at once. For many observers, this is a rational reaction to the emergence of an increasingly multipolar world. But just under a century ago, this practice had a name: “pragmatic equidistance.” It was the way Brazil described its international strategy of balancing relationships with competing powers without committing to either.

The ongoing and escalating international trade war fueled by retaliatory tariffs has been the main catalyst here. In late July, a 25% tariff covering a broad range of Brazilian goods came into effect; per the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry’s reckoning, nearly half of all Brazilian exports to the United States are now subject to some form of additional duty. Alongside the general tariffs, a “forced-labor” levy of 12.5% was introduced by the US to enforce bans on importing goods made with forced labor abroad, which in many ways represents a globalization of America’s existing ban on Chinese goods using forced labor.

It is estimated that the hardest-hit goods carry a combined tariff of 37.5%.

President Lula’s response has been to reframe the introduction of these tariffs as Washington’s error rather than Brazil’s, calling the tariffs a “strategic mistake” in the Washington Post, and warning that the tariffs will drive Brazilian firms to replace their American suppliers with partners elsewhere.

The rhetoric is only part of it, though: Brazil has filed for consultations with the World Trade Organization to challenge both the broad tariffs and the forced-labor levy as breaches of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The effectiveness of these consultations is up for debate given the WTO’s general paralysis, but what matters more is what this reveals for Brazil’s international-relations strategy: it is pragmatic equidistance on display. Brazil has filed the complaint with the WTO, while continuing negotiations with the US.

Meanwhile, Brazil is attempting to hedge its bets by engaging with the wider global economy. This month, ApexBrasil (the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency) has launched a R$105 million ($20.5 million) program to support just shy of 2,500 exporters across 57 industries in their search for new markets, including the EU, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.

Simultaneously, the Mercosur bloc is actively pursuing parallel deals with India, Japan, and Canada, with Brazil at the heart of this strategy. Lula has enacted the Mercosur-Singapore agreement, the bloc’s first with a Southeast Asian economy, under which Brazilian exports will progressively enter duty-free.

What is also interesting is what the imposition of these tariffs has meant for Lula at home. Many Brazilians read the tariff regime as a direct attempt to influence the Brazilian elections that are due to take place in October 2026, which in turn has allowed Lula to cast himself as a defender of Brazil’s sovereignty against foreign interference. This strategy has borne fruit: Lula’s polling has remained steady in the mid-40s, while Flávio Bolsonaro-the only other major contender-has seen his popularity steadily decline since April 2026, meaning Lula’s lead has slowly widened.

It may not have helped Bolsonaro that his presidential bid launch saw him flanked by Javier Milei and Benjamin Netenyahu, with few Brazilian politicians in the room. International campaigning is increasingly common, but in a climate skeptical of foreign interference, that move may have been more than a little tone-deaf, especially given the increasingly strained relations between Argentina and Brazil.

Not only this, but when the US sent election officials to verify the integrity of Brazil’s electoral system, their visas were simply denied. For a public that is heavily resistant to the sense of being managed from abroad, this was a message that landed exactly in the way it was needed to.

Most notable, however, is Brazil’s attempt to sidestep all of this via improved trade relations between the Mercosur bloc and China. Of course, Mercosur is a customs union, and so all members must negotiate jointly-which is why a proposed China agreement has been formally proposed and “under study” since around 2017. In this, Brazil had been the brake, while Uruguay had spent years advocating for the trade agreement, and pursuing its own China talks whilst the other Mercosur members stalled.

In January 2023, Lula traveled to Montevideo to argue that Mercosur should secure an EU deal first, and only then negotiate with China. With this deal signed in Asunción in January 2026-after 26 years of negotiations-and coming into effect in Brazil in April, the roadblock had been cleared. At least, on Brasília’s end: Argentina’s President Javier Milei is ideologically opposed to China, and will likely veto any deal pursued by Mercosur. China is already Brazil’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade valued at $188 billion, and a deal could meet Brazil’s other strategic interests, such as widening agricultural access.

Regardless, Brazil has been hedging its international trade relations with careful maneuvering, and in the long run, this may be the smart move.

Jury deliberations in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial started on Aug. 27 after five weeks of testimony.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is accused of killing her three young children while her now-ex-husband was running errands in January 2023.

The 36-year-old mother faces three counts of first-degree murder, one for each child: Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan.

Judge William Sullivan gave the jury the option to instead consider second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Only a few hours of deliberations happened before Sullivan ordered a recess until 9 a.m. on Friday at the Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

No verdict was reached on Thursday.

In his closing argument on Aug. 27, Jacki Thrapp reports for The Epoch Times, that defense attorney Kevin Reddington urged jurors to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity, alleging that “her mind was gone” during the killings and said she was in the throes of postpartum psychosis.

“This young lady is not guilty of the killing of her children because she was suffering from a disease and defect, as his honor instructed you,” Reddington told jurors in closing arguments.

“And they’re not going to be able to prove otherwise.”

Additionally, Reddington describved the accused murderer by saying: “This young lady did nothing wrong in her life. She was… a darn good mother.“

Lindsay Clancy’s defense attorney:

“This young lady did nothing wrong in her life. She was… a darn good mother.” pic.twitter.com/mL03GAuHlg

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 27, 2026

Clancy admitted to strangling her kids with exercise bands in the basement of their home in a coastal Boston suburb, slicing her wrists and neck with a knife, and jumping out of a window in a failed suicide attempt, which left her paralyzed.

Her now-ex-husband, Patrick, said that months before the incident, the mother told him she was having thoughts of suicide and harming their kids.

Clancy was also prescribed medications and checked into a psychiatric hospital ahead of the incident.

Her then-husband testified that Clancy had a “normal” demeanor when he left to run errands that day.

When he returned, he found his injured wife, who informed him that the kids were in the basement.

Clancy detailed what happened in a call with him a week after the incident, he said.

“She heard a man’s voice telling her that if she didn’t do ​it now, she would lose her chance or something like that,” he testified.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Clancy suffered from mental health issues but said she carried out the killings while knowing it was wrong.

“This case is not about our mental health system or how it treats women,” Assistant ​District Attorney Jennifer Sprague told jurors.

“That’s a distraction to get you angry and passionate about an important issue, but an issue that’s not on trial here.”

Clancy faces life in prison with no possibility of parole if she is convicted on any of the first-degree murder charges she faces.

Authored by Sylvia Xu via The Epoch Times,

States are racing to reduce faulty payments to food stamp recipients, in a bid to avoid penalties included in the signature budget bill passed by Republicans last year.

Starting in October 2027, states with payment error rates of 6 percent or higher must cover 5, 10, or 15 percent of SNAP benefit costs, depending on the payment error rate.

Even though the deadline is more than a year out, enrollment in the program has dropped by more than 5 million recipients as a result of the stricter rules, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia made improper payments of more than 6 percent in 2025, according to the Department of Agriculture. Nearly half of states will have to pay more than $100 million in penalties, according to publicly available federal data.

Just nine states fell below the 6 percent error threshold in the 2025 fiscal year: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Four states are considering dropping the food stamp program entirely as a result of the new rules, according to a survey by the American Public Human Services Association.

California, New York, and Florida would be responsible for more than $1 billion in SNAP costs if they failed to reduce their rates of erroneous payments. Texas would owe around $750 million.

For several states, however, a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill delays the cost-sharing requirement for an additional two years. Nicknamed “the Alaska Carveout,” the provision allows states with improper payment rates of 13.34 percent or higher in fiscal 2025 to put off the cost-sharing requirement until fiscal 2029.

Similarly, states exceeding that threshold in fiscal 2026 can put off cost-sharing until fiscal 2030.

In addition to next year’s deadline, beginning this October, states will bear 75 percent of the costs to administer the food stamp program.That’s up from the 50 percent share paid by states since the program was started in 1964.

The tighter rules address a “financing mismatch” in the food stamp program, according to the Cato Institute, a policy research organization. For decades, states have processed SNAP applications and distributed benefits, while financial consequences have fallen overwhelmingly on federal taxpayers. That gives states little incentive to control waste and prevent fraud.

SNAP payment errors totaled more than $10 billion in 2025. More than 87 percent of that amount was due to overpayments.

‘Significant Waste’

SNAP is a federally funded program, administered by the states, that provides food benefits to low-income families. In 2025, federal taxpayers spent about $103 billion on SNAP benefits and nearly $7 billion in administrative fees.

With an overall error rate of 10.6 percent, nearly one in nine food stamp allotments went to an ineligible recipient or was paid in the wrong amount.

State agencies made improper payments mainly because they did not verify recipients’ eligibility criteria, such as citizenship, employment, finances, identity, residency, and household size, before making a payment, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Although the 2025 error rate decreased slightly from previous years, it still showed “significant waste” at the state level, according to a June statement from the Department of Agriculture.

Errors can stem from either state agencies or recipients. While state agencies can make mistakes when updating recipient information or processing payments, recipients may also forget to report income changes or additional family members.

Those are “honest mistakes” rather than intentional fraud, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a July report. Even so, the errors prove that “state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Rollins said in a June statement.

After the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect in July 2025, participation in the food stamp program dropped 12 percent-more than 5 million-to 37 million this April, according to Department of Agriculture data released in July.

Rollins attributed the decline to the administration’s crackdown on fraud and ineligible recipients.

The downward trend may continue, as 11 states reported that they may narrow eligibility policies when costs change.

State Response

Error rates might not reflect the true picture of how a state distributes money, historical reports suggest.

A 2015 audit by the Office of Inspector General found that states hired outside consultants and error review committees to mitigate individual errors identified by quality control, rather than addressing the root causes of eligibility inaccuracies.

And in 2014, the Department of Agriculture could not validate state-reported error rates in 42 of 53 state agencies because of date-quality issues.

Nonetheless, a July survey of 39 states from the American Public Human Services Association found that agencies across the country are “working incredibly hard” to reduce error rates by addressing root causes.

States reported that they will invest in workforce training, root-cause analysis, and technology upgrades to improve payment accuracy.

Virginia, which would face 15 percent cost-sharing based on its 2025 errors, has stopped self-attestation of eligibility since the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed.

It previously allowed applicants to self-report expenses and incomes.

Louisiana is offering a $1,500 bonus to staff who maintain an error rate of 4 percent or lower.

The agency is also automating checks on household income to reduce unintentional errors, which account for 62 percent of the state’s inaccuracies, according to the think tank Invest in Louisiana.

Mississippi is updating its 35-year-old eligibility systems to ensure program integrity, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

Minnesota is investing millions of dollars to modernize decades-old technology used to administer state programs, according to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Each change suggests that new financial accountability rules are making a difference, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

The American Public Human Services Association survey reported trade-offs for increased accuracy, including timeliness of benefit payments and a delay in EBT chip card implementation.

And four states indicated that they may drop out of SNAP altogether or pause participation in the program as a result of the cost-sharing provisions. The survey report did not disclose which states are considering dropping out of the program.

The American Public Human Services Association did not respond to a request for comment.

The ‘Alaska Carveout’

Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with error rates at 13.34 percent or higher will secure a two-year delay in cost sharing. The “Alaska Carveout” provision was negotiated and secured by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) prior to voting on the budget bill.

In a July 2025 letter to Alaskans, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said the state had worked hard to include delayed cost-sharing in the act because it had the highest payment error rate in the country.

The provision currently affects six states and the District of Columbia. Those include Alaska, New Mexico, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon.

But the exemption may precipitate a reverse effect by rewarding the worst-performing states while penalizing those working to reduce their error rates, according to a July report from the Cato Institute.

To delay penalties, states could slow efforts in correcting errors and keep improper payment rates elevated, according to the think tank.

Data Sharing

In an effort to overhaul fraud, waste, and abuse in government programs, the Trump administration is pushing to codify data sharing between states and the federal government.

“We need to know where your tax dollars are going, and if the state of California and the state of New York aren’t going to tell us, we need Congress to force them to tell us,” Vice President JD Vance told a fraud task force roundtable on Aug. 5.

Technological verification and data-sharing measures can solve the majority of integrity problems in government programs, said Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

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