Putin Says OPEC+ Output Cuts “Likely” To Continue Into 2024
By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Russian President Vladimir Putin told an energy conference in Moscow on Wednesday that Russia and Saudi Arabia would “most likely” extend output cuts into 2024 and warned that clashes in the Middle East could impact oil exports with higher shipping and insurance costs.
“I am sure that the coordination of the OPEC+ partners’ actions will continue,” Putin told the conference.
“This is important for the predictability of the oil market, and ultimately for the well-being of all mankind,” Putin added, noting that while Russia and Saudi Arabia would likely “continue [their] cooperation”, “we need to consult with colleagues – our decisions are made by consensus”.
In the last days of September, OPEC+ decided to keep current oil production cuts in effect until the end of the year, extending 1-million-barrel-per-day supply cuts that began in July through December 31, 2023. Russia also extended its 300,000 barrels per day export cut until the end of the year.
After Brent crude’s brief flirtation with up to $97 per barrel in late September, oil prices have pared gains, again rallying briefly with the Hamas missile attack on Israel over the weekend, which has led to a declaration of war by Israel.
On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz formed an emergency unity government for conflict decision-making as Israel places the Gaza Strip under siege, stripping it and its 2 million people of all power and electricity.
That second rally on the potential for a Middle East conflict to threaten supplies was short-lived. On Wednesday at 12:34 p.m. ET, Brent crude was trading at $86.61, down 1.19% on the day. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) was trading at $84.46, down 1.76% on the day.
At the Moscow conference, Putin was standing beside Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, who has asked the Russian leader to “mediate” in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Putin is calling for the creation of a Palestinian state to resolve the conflict, and is using this as a platform to bring attention to what he calls the “failure” of Washington’s Middle East policy, The Moscow Times Reports.
California Introduces “Ebony Alert” To Find Missing Black Kids, Young Women
A new California law which goes into effect Jan. 1 is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for missing black kids and young black women.
On Sunday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed Senate Bill 673 to create the “Ebony Alert” monitoring system, which will allow the Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when black youth, or women, go missing in an area. The Ebony Alert system will utilize electronic highway signs, and encourages authorities to use social media, TV, radio and other systems to spread word when a black child (or woman!) goes missing, NBC News reports.
The Ebony Alert will be used for missing black people between the ages of 12 and 25.
“Data shows that Black and brown, our indigenous brothers and sisters, when they go missing there’s very rarely the type of media attention, let alone AMBER alerts and police resources that we see with our white counterparts,” state Sen. Steven Bradford (D), who created the legislation, told NBC News earlier this year, adding “We feel it’s well beyond time that we dedicate something specifically to help bring these young women and girls back home because they’re missed and loved just as much as their counterparts are.”
About 141,000 Black children under the age of 18 went missing in 2022, and Black women over 21 accounted for nearly 16,500 missing persons cases that year, according to the most recent data from the National Crime Information Center. More than 30,000 Black people in the U.S. remained missing at the end of 2022, according to the center. Although about 38% of the people who went missing i in 2022 were Black, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, missing Black people are less likely than white people to have their stories highlighted in the media. Also, missing persons cases for Black people remain open longer than those for white people. Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the foundation, told CNN that a majority of the 6,000 cases of missing Black people in her database remain unsolved. -NBC News
The state’s Amber Alert system, meanwhile, requires that a victim be under the age of 17 or have a proven disability, and authorities must have a reason to believe they’re in danger. Alerts can’t be used for custody battles or runaways.
The problem, according to the report, is that missing black kids are usually classified as runaways – and therefore don’t qualify for Amber Alerts.
“Something’s better than nothing,” said Bradford. “Whether the Amber alert or an Ebony Alert is going to be 100% effective, we don’t go with that false illusion or belief. But it’s better than not doing anything at all.”
Former President Donald Trump’s defense of Operation Warp Speed remains a sticking point for some of his supporters drawn to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s message and his direct rebuke of the COVID policies.
Attendees of an event at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum where Mr. Kennedy spoke on Oct. 2 discussed with The Epoch Times their concerns and what they appreciated about his message, but noted significant differences between the two.
“As Kennedy has been calling out the truth no matter how much criticism he’s faced for it, Trump has really been silent on the whole COVID sham,” Scott Stringer said.
“In my mind, Trump was tricked.”
Mr. Kennedy has frequently railed against the ties between Big Pharma, the medical profession, and the government that has been toxic for the country, Mr. Stringer said.
“The medical community cannot be trusted,”he said.
In a recent visit to the doctor’s office with his son, he said staff pushed the vaccine, which was unrelated to why they were there.
“I can’t believe they did that with all the medical data that’s come in,” he said.
Charlotte Stringer, Mr. Stringer’s wife, agreed that President Trump needs to admit that he was wrong. This admission, she said, would bring him more support.
The problem is, given his personality, it’s unlikely he will confess to such an enormous mistake, she said.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said. “With that said, I think he’s the best choice to run this country.”
On Mr. Kennedy’s speech, she appreciated his open-mindedness given his history as a person who for years listened to and advocated for mothers of the vaccine-injured while they were being dismissed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Having witnessed churches close and continue to take in tithes while simultaneously getting loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, she said Mr. Kennedy’s stance against the lockdowns, specifically regarding the closure of the churches, resonated intensely with her.
“That really made me have huge respect for him,” she said.
‘We’ve Got to Stop the Shots’
MaryJo Perry, president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights (MPVR), said she’s troubled by President Trump’s unwillingness to admit what she describes as Operation Warp Speed having been a failure.
“I don’t know if his motive is pride, or if there’s something else going on,” she said.
Mr. Trump planned to set up a commission to investigate childhood vaccines back in 2017 after he got elected and was about to take the White House, Mr. Kennedy broke the news and said he would chair the commission after he met Mr. Trump on Jan. 10, 2017.
However, the idea was never implemented and the Trump Campaign didn’t confirm the proposal.
Ms. Perry pointed to a video of Bill Gates stating that he had advised President Trump against the investigation.
“That would be a bad thing, don’t do that,” Mr. Gates said in the interview.
Though she doesn’t know if this was why President Trump abandoned the idea of starting a commission with Mr. Kennedy.
“And then, on the heels of that, we had this Operation Warp Speed that didn’t work, and yet he’s still protecting it,” she said. “That bothers me greatly.”
Also present was Dr. John Witcher, founder of MS Against Mandates, who was fired for treating COVID patients with ivermectin.
“Though he never mandated them, he pushed the shots and has said multiple times that he saved 100 million people by rolling out the vaccines,” Dr. Witcher said. “He knows that a lot of his constituents are 100 percent against the vaccine, but he doesn’t want to admit that he was duped by Dr. Fauci.”
“Of course, that’s what Kennedy has been out there saying from Day One,” Dr. Witcher said. “He continues to be against the shot. And we’ve got to stop these shots.”
‘A Man of Integrity’
Overall, Mr. Stringer said that it came off “very clearly” that Mr. Kennedy was “a man of integrity.”
“He believes in his positions, and he’s not afraid to change his views,” he said.
On whether a Trump/Kennedy ticket would work, Mr. Stringer said there’s no question that both love the country, unlike the current administration.
The alliance could have the potential to unify the nation, he said.
But there would need to be an alignment on issues like energy and the COVID vaccines, he said.
“I agree more with Trump on energy, and we’ve got to have a better energy policy, but how does that stand with where Kennedy stands on energy?” Mr. Stringer asked. “Kennedy doesn’t like nuclear energy or coal, and he worked to remove fracking from New York State, though he and Trump seem to agree on wind energy and the fact that it’s gotten out of control.”
On vaccines, they would need to come to an understanding, he said.
“Trump would need to reconcile with the great work Mr. Kennedy has done to expose the truth on vaccines so that Trump can leverage that and say, ‘You know what, I was duped,’” he said.
Both have taken a stance against the Ukraine war, which Mr. Stringer also opposes.
“We do not need to send them another dime,” he said. “I think there’s some suppression of real information on what’s going on over there. I think it’s one of the most corrupt governments and countries in the world, honestly.”
Mr. Stringer said he believes Mr. Kennedy would make a great vice president and a great president.
“He believes in what his uncle and his dad stood for, and I think he could keep us solid in a lot of ways,” he said, referring to the late President John F. Kennedy and the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, respectively.
Before Mr. Kennedy announced a week later on Monday, Oct. 9, that he would not be running as a Democrat but as an independent, those in last week’s audience were already speculating that he would be leaving his former party.
Mr. Stringer said he wasn’t concerned over whether this decision could end up drawing votes from either side.
“I’m not afraid that anyone speaking the truth is going to split the vote,” he said. “The big question is who’s he going to take the votes from? Biden or Trump?”
Predicting that Mr. Kennedy would leave the Democratic Party, Ms. Stringer wants to see President Trump leave the Republican Party and become independent as well.
“I would love to see them meet in the middle and run together,” she said.
Given the rate of the country’s decline, Ms. Stringer said she’s not overly concerned with hot-button social issues that seem to never be resolved and just wants to see President Trump back in office.
If Mr. Kennedy were to join him, even better, she said.
On concerns over spitting the vote, she believes Mr. Kennedy would take votes away from President Biden.
“There are a lot of people on the left who are seeing what Biden—or whoever is leading him—is doing and wishing they had voted for Trump,” she said. “It’s clear that a man who doesn’t know how to walk across a stage, who falls down, who can’t remember people’s names or state he’s in, is being controlled. He’s not running the show, and many on the left are realizing that their children won’t have a pot to pee in because he is turning this country into a laughingstock to the rest of the world.”
‘Trump Needs to Follow Kennedy’s Lead’
Dr. Witcher said he’s not alone in wanting to see Mr. Kennedy as vice president to President Trump.
“Like many people, I think they could be a great team together,” Dr. Witcher said. “We’ve got to expose the corruption at all levels of government.”
President Trump, he said, has the capacity and gumption to charge forward, while Mr. Kennedy has the experience of fighting against the pharmaceutical industry.
“The COVID vaccine mandates that were enacted are really the biggest issue, and we can’t forget that,” Dr. Witcher said. “There are a lot of people in his camp that voted for him who did not and will not take the vaccine. They saw COVID as a plandemic from day one. Trump needs to follow Kennedy’s lead on that because it’s the reason he’s so popular.”
When asked if he thought Mr. Kennedy would make a good leader, Ron Matis, the political director for the Mississippi District of the United Pentecostal Church, the organization that cosponsored the event with MPVR, said he thought that the most powerful statement he made was that he’s willing to examine all sides of the argument and, if wrong, adjust his worldview accordingly.
“That’s something you don’t hear people who are running for office say,” Mr. Matis said. “They seem to have everything baked in and are not willing to listen, so the fact that he said as a leader he would be open to changing his position based on evidence, I think a lot of people found that refreshing.”
Zelensky Asks To Visit Israel In ‘Solidarity’ As Spotlight Shifts
Most people at some point in their daily lives have experienced that annoying moment when a “friend” invites themselves over, typically at an inconvenient time, maybe for dinner or an intrusive lengthy conversation.
Perhaps that’s what the Israelis may be feeling after suffering one of the worst disasters in their history, as on Wednesday Axios is out with the following exclusive story: Zelensky asks to visit Israel in show of solidarity.
Two Ukrainian officials have told Axios that Zelensky, who is Jewish, wants to travel to Israel as a “show of solidarity” amid the Gaza war and as Israel is reeling from the weekend terror attacks by Hamas. Israeli officials have also confirmed the request to the publication.
“Zelensky’s office sent an official request to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office asking to coordinate a visit, the Ukrainian and Israeli officials said,” the report says.
As soon as the Saturday Hamas assault on the Nova Trance music festival and area Jewish settlements began, the entire world and all major international media outlets became transfixed on developments in Israel and Gaza.
Pro-Israel as well as pro-Palestinian protests and counterprotests immediately sprang up in the US and Europe. Facebook profile flags were also switched in the blink of an eye – from Ukrainian to Israeli flags… it’s almost as if the public masses in the West “forgot” about Ukraine, as the Israel-Gaza war enters day five.
It seems the pro-Ukraine cause in general, including efforts in Congress and by the Biden administration to keep the billions in aid flowing, has been sapped of its prior enthusiasm and momentum. Zelensky, having been suddenly removed from the spotlight, now appears to be seeking to link his cause with Israel’s, the cynic might say.
Axios noted, “A visit by Zelensky would boost international support for Israel’s counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza”—or perhaps it will in Zelensky’s own mind at least.
Zelensky made a surprise visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday to issue a solidary statement in support of Israel…
Zelensky: I urge all leaders to visit Israel and show their support for the people pic.twitter.com/knbqF1TQwp
“In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity … Israel has the full right to defend itself against terror,” Zelensky had said in a statement that came shortly after the Saturday Hamas attack.
Time will tell if this visit of the Ukrainian president will materialize. There’s as yet no date, and the Israelis are, well… very busy at the moment. Likely much too busy to have to roll out the red carpet for Zelensky to do a Tel Aviv photo op.
Some pundits have said that underlying this is a scramble for valuable US foreign aid, which could be diverted to Israel…
But the Pentagon has sought to calm Kiev’s fears, promising in a new statement there’s enough aid to go around:
The secretary of defense said Wednesday that the Pentagon is able to continue providing aid to Ukraine in its war against Russian invasion and also support Israel after a Hamas attack Saturday sparked a new and bloody war there.
“Absolutely, we can do both, and we will do both,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at a press conference Wednesday in Germany, where he appeared with newly confirmed Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown to announce the 48th aid package to Ukraine.
But already public support for ‘endless’ support or ‘blank check’ funds to Ukraine was waning, and now as all eyes are on the Middle East, it is likely to further fade. After all, the major news networks have suddenly dropped their coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, airing instead 24/7 updates on Israel, Gaza bombardments, and the plight of the over 100 hostages taken by Hamas.
America’s wind power industry somehow manages to attract almost no negative coverage in the press, or litigation from environmentalists, despite causing some of the most obvious and tragic environmental catastrophes so far this century. Last August I wrote about the ongoing slaughter of whales off America’s northeast coast thanks to construction of offshore wind turbines:
“When you detonate massive explosives, repeatedly drive steel piles into the ocean floor with a hydraulic hammer, and blast high decibel sonar mapping signals underwater, you’re going to harm animals that rely on sound to orient themselves in the ocean. To say it is mere coincidence that hundreds of these creatures have washed ashore, dead, all of a sudden, during precisely the same months when the blasting and pounding began, is brazen deception.”
Nonetheless, when the story can’t be buried, deception is the strategy. Not one major environmental organization, government watchdog agency, or media outlet has called for a slowdown in industrial offshore wind projects. Instead, they repeatedly claim these allegations are misinformation. And from that paragon of truth, FactCheck.org, we get this: “No Evidence Offshore Wind Development Killing Whales.”
Let’s set aside the obvious negative impact on whale populations of tens of thousands of marine surveying and construction sorties into offshore areas where shipping traffic has never before been concentrated, or the impact of noise and explosions on not one site, such as would be the case with a lone oil rig, but on thousands of sites, each one being prepared for an offshore wind turbine. The destruction wrought by wind turbines extends well beyond what it’s doing to whales.
A report just released by a New England fishermen association summarizes research they completed on offshore wind projects. Their findings are stunning. Just the geographic extent of these proposed offshore wind projects is unprecedented. According to the report, “Federal regulators at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have designated almost 10 million acres for wind farm surveys and development.” That is over 15,000 square miles.
Not included in that allocation are the corridors where high voltage lines will have to cross the ocean floor to transfer electricity from the turbines to land-based power grids. The report found that “electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emanating from subsea cables appear to produce birth deformities in juvenile lobster.” That’s just the beginning.
The report also found that wind farms “increase sea surface temperatures and alter upper-ocean hydrodynamics in ways scientists do not yet understand,” and “whip up sea sediment and generate highly turbid wakes that are 30-150 meters wide and several kilometers in length, having a major impact on primary production by phytoplankton which are the base of marine food chains.” And there’s more.
Wind turbines “generate operational noise in a low frequency range (less than 700 Hz) with most energy concentrated between 2 and 200 Hz. This frequency range overlaps with that used by fish for communication, mating, spawning, and spatial movement,” and “high voltage direct current undersea cables produce magnetic fields that negatively affect the drifting trajectory of haddock larvae by interfering with their magnetic orientation abilities.” Haddock are “a significant portion of U.S. commercial fish landings and are an important component of the marine food chain.”
Nothing to see here, right?
What’s going on off the coast of New England is being allowed to happen because of disgraceful negligence on the part of America’s environmentalist community. What’s about to happen in California is just as bad, and is proceeding without any organized opposition or serious criticism.
Earlier this year, the federal government leased 583 square miles of deep ocean waters off the coast of California for offshore wind farms. When the first phase of these offshore wind developments are completed, these wind farms will deliver 4.5 gigawatts of “clean” electricity to the California grid. That may sound like a lot of electricity. It’s not.
To begin with, even offshore wind only blows intermittently. The most optimistic projections for the actual yield of these turbines are never more than 50 percent. This means that in terms of baseload power, only 2.25 gigawatts will come from these new offshore wind farms. California’s average electricity consumption is 32 gigawatts (of which only 22 gigawatts are produced in-state), which means if these offshore wind farms are ever completed, they’ll supply a mere 6 percent of California’s current electricity demand – the same amount currently coming from Diablo Canyon, California’s last operating nuclear power plant. But how many turbines will this take, and what will they look like?
The biggest wind turbines in the world can now produce 10 megawatts at full output. To generate this much electricity, these machines are 1,000 feet tall, which is more than three times higher than the Statue of Liberty from the water line to the tip of the torch. To achieve a collective capacity at full output of 4.5 gigawatts, 450 of these would have to be built, floated 20 miles offshore, anchored to the seabed with cables nearly a mile long, then from each one a high voltage line would also have to descend 4,000 feet to reach the ocean floor, where it would then lie on the sea bed – some proposals actually call for them to be buried – to transmit electricity to the onshore power grid. Four hundred and fifty floating wind turbines, each one of them with vertical dimensions that are longer than a modern aircraft supercarrier. There are huge and unresolved engineering hurdles involved in developing large floating wind turbines.
Bear in mind, if California’s state legislature gets its way, and the state goes fully electric – think all space heaters, water heaters, dryers, along with all trucks, buses and cars going fully electric – electricity demand will more than triple. While it’s hypothetical, the math is simple and revealing: to get 100 gigawatts of baseload power from offshore wind, you would need 20,000 turbines. And imagine all the high voltage distribution lines, and all the batteries to buffer the massive surges of intermittent power.
To somewhat return to reality, we must acknowledge that none of California’s enlightened planners intend to use offshore wind to generate 100 percent of California’s renewable electricity. But in one of the most reputable mainstream studies produced to date, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, Mark Jacobson, completed a series of simulations, culminating in a report released in December 2021 that called for 20 percent of California’s electricity to derive from offshore wind. Making more conservative assumptions regarding the size of each offshore turbine and the yield, he predicted more than 12,000 offshore wind turbines would be required.
Imagine the logistics.
How many ships will this take? How many submarines and divers? How many port facilities? How many new homes for the construction workers? What about the undersea power cables? What about the storage batteries needed to buffer nearly 20 gigawatts of on again, off again electricity? What about the ongoing maintenance? What about the raw materials needed to build all these leviathans? What about the billions and billions of dollars that will flow into the pockets of the special interests behind this disaster of a project, paid by taxpayers and ratepayers?
Overall, Jacobson’s study projected about one-third of California’s electricity to come from a combination of onshore and offshore wind turbines. Shall we reiterate what else we already know about wind turbines? Their slaughter of raptors, bats, and insects? Their incessant, low frequency sound that is audible for miles and, despite “debunking” articles that defy basic common sense, drives people and animals nuts? The visual blight? The staggering quantity of materials required for their manufacture, and the difficult if not impossible task of recycling the materials after they’ve reached the end of their service life?
Where are the environmentalists?
Where, for that matter, are the economists? Is the mantra “climate crisis” so powerful that literally anything goes, including a scheme that delivers not only environmental but economic catastrophe? In 2020, an in-depth financial analysis by the Manhattan Institute documented how “offshore wind’s costs will far exceed its benefits.” And that was before the supply chain problems, inflation, and interest rate hikes that have forced offshore wind developers from New England to California to greatly increase required rates, or pull out of projects altogether.
Imagine if this was an oil rig, a desalination plant, or a nuclear power plant. The opposition would be apoplectic, and that is not hypothetical conjecture. California had a chance to build another major desalination plant which would have supplied 55,000 acre feet per year of drought proof fresh water to the residents of Orange County, population 3 million. Along with other projects in the works, this desalination plant could have made that relatively arid coastal county completely independent of imported water. But environmentalists fought the project at every turn, and in May 2022, in a unanimous vote, the California Coastal Commission denied the construction permit.
The scandalous double standard at work here can only be attributed to a combination of powerful special interests representing the wind power industry, interacting with a state legislature and environmentalist movement that is either bought off or alarmingly stupid. As it is, hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidies are on track to pay for offshore wind. If it is not stopped, it will be one of the most egregious cases of economic waste and environmental destruction in human history.
More than a year before White House lawyers claim to have ‘discovered’ classified documents at the Penn Biden Center in November of 2022, evidence has emerged that White House employees ‘inspected’ or ‘took inventory’ of them, while another official removed “a few” boxes containing Biden materials that October, according to the House Oversight Committee.
According to a letter to White House counsel Edward Siskel from Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), the official timeline of events provided by the Biden team “omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating.”
Comer says that a Penn Biden Center employee told the committee that on March 18, 2021, senior White House aide Annie Tomasini “[took] inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials” stored at the center, where he established a private office after his vice presidency.
The same witness also said that on Oct. 13, 2022, Oval Office deputy director of operations, Ashley Williams, removed “a few” of Biden’s boxes.
The White House has previously claimed that all relevant documents were either moved to the National Archives or the DOJ, while Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, said that the documents were discovered on November 2, 2022 – a total lie.
The committee, which has conducted three witness interviews, says on five occasions, White House employees, including former White House Counsel Dana Remus, and the president’s former assistant Kathy Chung, a current Department of Defense employee, went to the Penn Biden Center to take inventory, pack up or remove materials. These visits occurred between March 2021 and mid-October 2022. –CBS News
“There is no reasonable explanation as to why this many White House employees and lawyers were so concerned with retrieving boxes they believed only contained personal documents and materials,” said Comer in his letter.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
We have discovered new information about the number of White House employees involved in President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.
President Biden’s attorney stated that the discovery of classified documents at Penn Biden Center occurred on November… pic.twitter.com/rLN1VJyRKC
The letter requests transcribed interviews with Remus, Williams, Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, a top adviser to the first lady, and Katie Reilly, a West Wing aide, according to CBS News.
It is also asking for documentation and communication related to the documents. The committee has already interviewed Chung, who was then-Vice President Biden’s assistant.
Democrats, of course, have resorted to whataboutism…
“Former President Trump’s willful retention of hundreds of highly classified documents, his defiance of court-ordered subpoenas, his reported disclosure of our country’s most sensitive national security information, and false statements to law enforcement should worry the Chair of a congressional committee with jurisdiction over government records,” said a spokesman for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. “Instead Chairman Comer is using the Committee to focus on President Biden whose complete cooperation with the Special Counsel’s investigation stands in stark contrast, including voluntarily participating in a two-day interview with the Special Counsel, and opening the doors to his Penn Biden Center office and private residence to investigators.”
As Jonathan Turley noted earlier, the ‘ultimate punchline’ here could be that Special Counsel Robert Hurmay be in a sticky situation if he actually finds evidence of a crime.
On its face, the President claims that he had no knowledge of these documents appears dubious at best.
Some classified material reportedly goes back to Biden’s time as a senator — material that he would have had to remove from a sensitive compartmented information facility or secure room on Capitol Hill.
More importantly, the documents from the Obama Administration were removed when Biden left as vice president.
Why were they divided and some documents were found in his garage and possibly his library?
If Hur found fingerprints that contradict Biden’s statements, he could face not just some of the same charges brought against Trump but also possible false statement or obstruction charges.
Notably, Biden used counsel to conduct searches and (as in the Trump case) additional classified materials were found after the Biden team said that they had finished their searches.
There are serious questions over whether, in allowing uncleared counsel to search through these documents, evidence may have been lost in how they were stored or appeared in locations like the garage.
Hur can bring charges against third parties, who would not be barred from indictment under the DOJ policy.
But what does Hur then do if he has evidence against the President himself?
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests were higher after the COVID-19 pandemic than before the pandemic, U.S. researchers found.
They analyzed data from Seattle and King County in Washington state from the years 2018 to 2021. The dataset consisted of 13,081 patients, including 7,102 who were dead when emergency responders arrived and another 4,952 who were treated but died ahead of hospitalization or in the hospital.
Compared to the prepandemic years, or 2018 and 2019, there were 19 percent more people who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in the pandemic period, or 2020 and 2021, researchers said. That included a 10.8 percent increase in those who survived until responders arrived and a 27.2 percent increase in patients declared dead when responders reached the patients.
The increase in those who survived was among 18- to 64-year-olds, with the rate among those 65 and older holding steady.
The numbers were the highest during 2021, after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out.
The researchers did not factor in vaccination status, instead aiming to examine the impact of COVID-19 on out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
Of the people who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests during the pandemic and survived until emergency responders arrived, 6.2 percent tested positive for COVID-19 in the two weeks before the cardiac arrests or the week following the cardiac arrest, or were diagnosed with COVID-19. Just 3.7 percent of a random sample of those who were declared dead on arrival had COVID-19, which was lower than the percentage in a recent Maryland study.
During the pandemic, the Washington state researchers said, survival was less likely among people who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA), consistent with previousresearch. While 42.6 percent of people survived to hospital admission before the pandemic, just 35.7 percent did in 2020 and 2021. And compared to 2018 and 2019, when 19.2 percent of the patients survived to hospital discharge, just 15.4 percent of patients were discharged alive during the pandemic.
COVID-19 contributed to the downturn in survival, but only a little, the researchers said. They pegged it as responsible for 18.5 percent of the downturn.
The major factors, they said, included social isolation that led to fewer observed events, a delay in health care workers treating patients due to updated equipment and resuscitation protocols, and hampered emergency response times. The factors were described as Utstein characteristics.
“OHCA survival was poorer during the pandemic years, largely owing to changes in systemwide Utstein characteristics, as opposed to patient-specific acute SARS-CoV-2 infection,” Jennifer Liu, an epidemiologist at the Seattle and King County Department of Public Health, and her coauthors wrote. SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19.
Other groups have also said that indirect reasons for the lowered survival rate and increased occurrence rate could stem from reasons such as delayed response times.
Ms. Liu and the other authors declared no conflicts of interest or funding.
Limitations of the paper, which was published by JAMA Network Open, include the data being from one county.
Vaccination Impact?
Ms. Liu did not respond to a request for comment, including why the group did not analyze the possible impact of vaccination on the increase in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The COVID-19 vaccines can cause myocarditis, or heart inflammation, as well as other cardiac events.
“What most striking is the lack of analysis of a possible correlation of OHCA case rates with the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns that started at the end of 2020 and continued throughout 2021,” Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Epoch Times via email.
“Such correlation has been observed in other studies and since the authors seem to have access to comprehensive case-level data (e.g., medical records), it looked like they could have potentially done that,” Mr. Levi, who was not involved in the research, added. “At the very least the authors should have analyzed the temporal correlation between community vaccination rates and the OHCA case rates.”
Mr. Levi noted that the number of events was primarily grouped in the pandemic and pre-pandemic periods, apart from one graph in the supplementary content, which showed the year with the most events was 2021.
“It is not even clear if there is an increase in 2020 compared to the baseline, or the entire increase is observed in 2021,” Mr. Levi said.
The researchers did find a statistically significant correlation between weekly COVID-19 rates in the community and the weekly rate of OHCA, but only in 2020, not in 2021. Mr. Levi contributed to research that found the worse outcomes among people who suffered heart cardiac arrests during the pandemic in Boston stemmed from a reluctance to seek health care. He and other researchers also found that in Israel, increases in emergency calls for young people for cardiovascular events were significantly associated with COVID-19 vaccination.
Some other papers have found that prior to the vaccine rollout, people who tested positive for COVID-19 and suffered a cardiac arrest were more likely to die when compared to people who did not test positive.
This supposedly innocent question has been lobbed at children and teenagers for decades, although the answers might differ now due to the rise of social media and the possibility of achieving worldwide fame not being confined to appearing on the big screen or arena stages anymore.
12 percent of male teens listed professional athlete as their preferred future job, followed by 11 percent who wanted to become an online content creator.
Classic dream jobs like musician (six percent) and doctor or nurse (five percent) still made the top 5, albeit barely.
For females, the latter seems to be the most coveted future job, with 13 percent of teenage girls wanting to become a medical professional, while 11 percent put actress as their dream occupation.
The fact that becoming a YouTuber, streamer or vlogger made the top five for participants of both genders shows the rapid development of financial and societal clout attributed to online personalities, for better or worse.
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the market size for influencer marketing has doubled since 2019 and was valued at $16.4 billion worldwide in 2022.
And Gantz too spoke of total societal mobilization in Wednesday night words:
Benny Gantz, who joined an emergency government with Netanyahu, stated on Wednesday that his cooperation with the government is “a clear message to our adversaries and to all Israeli citizens: all of us together are mobilizing.” Gantz said after the Security Cabinet meeting in which he participated, “Just as people from left and right, from the city and the village, go out to fight, decisions of the government will also be made by people from different camps. Now, we are all one camp – the camp of the people of Israel.”
These Israeli leaders don’t seem too concerned (an understatement) about the immense and rapidly mounting civilian casualties among Palestinians caught under the air war with nowhere to go, as a long, bloody ground campaign in the Gaza Strip looks inevitable.
Below is an interesting clip from 2009 of Pat Buchanan offering his thoughts on what’s been a decades-long crisis:
Pat Buchanan warns in 2009 that the brothers of the little girls killed by Israel during the bombing of Gaza that year would grow up to join Hamas and fight Israel. Well, it’s 14 years later and they’re grown up now pic.twitter.com/ZMNjcTv7Pp
Update(1425ET): US National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby confirmed that the United States will be sending the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean, after it was already announced that the USS Gerald R. Ford would be deployed as part of “support” operations related to the Israel-Gaza conflict.
However, Kirby said that the Eisenhower will not be directly joining or escorting. Instead, the carrier will be in the region for availability if called upon. While in a press briefing Kirby tried to downplay the dual carrier deployment as somewhat routine or expected, they will certainly be on standby to potentially intervene if all hell continues breaking loose in the Middle East.
UPDATE: NSC Spokesperson John Kirby confirms the USS Dwight D Eisenhower carrier strike group will be headed to the Mediterranean but says it will not join the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group as a second strike group, but will be available in the area if needed. pic.twitter.com/kpaAxbgXfc
Kirby also confirmed that the US administration is in talks with Qatar as part of mediation efforts to free the hostages being held by Hamas. It’s believed there are Americans among the captives in Gaza, which at this moment is being pounded by Israeli airstrikes. Kirby said the following:
“Obviously, we’re in discussions not only with the Israelis, about what hostage recovery could look like, but with other allies and partners in the region. And there are some countries like Qatar that have open lines of communication with Hamas, so of course, we’re casting the net wide as you would expect, we want to get these all the hostages back with their families, particularly the American hostages, no question about that.”
Meanwhile…
MCCAUL: US SPECIAL FORCES, FBI SHOULD BE USED TO FREE HOSTAGES
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Update(1304ET): The IDF has revised its earlier alert as follows, downplaying the severity of the northern infiltration alert:
IDF spokesperson: Further to the reports of intrusion from the Lebanese border into Israel’s airspace, as of now fear of intrusion has been ruled out.
An updated headline from Times of Israel: IDF says no drone infiltration in north after scares send millions into shelters
An emergency war-time government has been formally announced in Israel:
Israel’s Netanyahu forms unity government with ex-Defense Minister Gantzhttps://t.co/SyuTAWnDTM
Update(1250ET): Israeli emergency authorities, specifically the Israeli Homefront Command, has ordered residents in the far northern town of Ma’alot-Tarshiha to stay in their homes and lock their doors, warning of possible infiltration of militants from Lebanon. The alert stayed active for a brief period Wednesday. There are current official reports of an airspace breach from Lebanon, possibly drones sent by Hezbollah:
🚨A report was recieved regarding a suspected infiltration from Lebanon into Israeli airspace.
The current top headline at The Times of Israelreads:
Residents across north told to shelter as several aircraft appear to infiltrate Israel
On the other side of the border, Lebanese residents are scrambling for exit as fighting grows, and as evidence of damaged and burning homes and buildings begins to circulate:
Cross-border violence between Lebanon and Israel has escalated into a fourth day, pushing many Lebanese in southern towns to leave as Hezbollah and the Israeli military continue to trade fire.
Hezbollah said it fired precision missiles on an Israeli position across from the Lebanese town of Dharya on Wednesday, drawing retaliatory Israeli shelling that has left a number of houses damaged.
Tensions have been boiling along the Israeli-Lebanese border since Palestinian fighters launched a surprise multi-front assault on Saturday morning. The Israeli military has been heavily bombarding the Gaza Strip since, while Palestinian groups have continued to fire thousands of rockets towards Israel. At least 1,055 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis have been killed.
Sirens are reportedly going off across northern Israel, amid unverified reports of major drone action:
Amid the escalating and highly dangerous (for the prospect of major, broader war) tit-for-tat Israel-Hezbollah escalation, both sides are vowing “decisive” response to deadly attacks.
News wires are now reporting that 22 Americans have been confirmed killed after the weekend Hamas terror rampage in southern Israel.
The US Embassy in Beirut is meanwhile refuting reports that it is evacuating, but is it a sign of things to come as the south Lebanon situation slides?
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut has not evacuated and is open and operating normally. Reports saying otherwise are false. For more information and travel advisories, visit our embassy website: https://t.co/QDEaP8dkZR
A below review of the last hours via journalist Joyce Karam. UPDATE:
Lebanon front, Israel- Hamas war
Drones, infiltration from Lebanon
Israel fired flares
Residents in N Israel to enter shelter
Gaza hospitals full capacity
Israel gets war cabinet
Evacuations from Israel
200,000 Gazans displaced
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A worst-case scenario for Israel is emerging: the dreaded multi-front war involving Hezbollah, which is a much more formidable and better equipped paramilitary force than Hamas.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus has confirmed Wednesday Israel fired rockets into southern Lebanon for at least a second straight day, striking Hezbollah positions after the Iran-backed group struck Israeli soldiers with anti-tank missiles fired from across the border.
Bloomberg has also confirmed in a note, “Israel said an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon hit one of its military posts near the border, news that saw investors seek haven assets like US Treasuries.” This as an Israeli ground invasion into the Gaza Strip, which is sure to be a bloody campaign, appears imminent after PM Netanyahu told Biden in a Tuesday phone call, “We have to go in. We can’t negotiate now.”
Netanyahu also previously vowed in public statements that “what we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.”
Citing IDF spokesman Conricus further, Fox News underscores that Israeli is now “actively fighting a secondary front” in the north and is surging troops toward that end:
…the Israeli army shelled the Lebanese border town of Duhaira and the surrounding area where the missile attack came from. He also said Israel was actively fighting a secondary front along Israel’s northern border with Hezbollah in Lebanon, in addition to the counteroffensive the IDF is launching in the Gaza Strip.
“We have deployed tens of thousands of additional units along the northern border,” Conricus said, including infantry, special forces, armored forces, artillery, air forces, and “additional assets including intelligence and logistics.”
Cross-border shelling has occurred since Sunday, leading to multiple casualties among Hezbollah members and possibly other Islamic factions. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has also had a presence there and has taken casualties. The IDF said, “The message to Hezbollah is very clear: ‘If they try to attack, we are ready and we are vigilant on our border.’”
At least one “Israeli senior officer” has been killed at the northern border since the exchange of fire has increased. Another two Israeli troops have also been confirmed killed. Hezbollah has claimed to have wounded and killed a “large number” of Israeli troops.
Al Jazeera wrote Tuesday that “At least three Hezbollah members, an Israeli senior officer and two Palestinian fighters have been killed so far in the cross-border fighting.”
And the IDF has confirmed: “In Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah have already fired anti-tank missiles and rockets at our positions and soldiers, fortunately without any significant casualties,” Conricus said. “There has already been an attempt of Islamic jihad terrorists infiltrating into Israel. That attempt was successfully thwarted by the IDF, sadly at the cost of a senior [IDF] officer and two other soldiers.”
Hezbollah has meanwhile issued a fresh statement saying it sees the United States as a direct accomplice in Israel’s killing of Gazans, as the Israeli air war continues, with Palestinian deaths on Wednesday approaching 1,000 after four straight nights of unprecedented bombardment.
Hezbollah issues a statement saying the United States is a ‘full partner’ of Israeli ‘aggression’ on the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah also says that it holds the United States fully responsible for the airstrikes that are killing civilians in Gaza.
“At least 950 people, including at least 140 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry,” CBS reports. ‘The ministry said in a social media post that at least 5,000 more people in the blockaded Palestinian territory were wounded, most of them women and children.”
Dangerously, and amid fears of a broader regional conflagration, Syria launched missiles on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which didn’t appear to do significant damage. However, Israel has reportedly released an emergency statement for settlements in the area: “Instructions have been given to residents of the Golan to stay near shelters.” Israel says it is forming an emergency war-time government.
ISRAEL PLANS TO ANNOUNCE EMERGENCY GOVT TONIGHT: ISRAEL RADIO
Iran’s Supreme Leaders has issued fresh threats, even while asserting it didn’t have a direct hand in the Saturday Hamas terror rampage into Southern Israel:
The Zionist regime wants to justify the mass murder of the people in #Gaza by attempting to show itself as the victim.
Heads of the usurper regime should know that the response to these atrocities will be a heavier slap to their hideous faces.
Complicating matters and sending regional tensions soaring further at a moment of fresh Iran threats, a US carrier group will soon cross the Atlantic to park in waters off Israel as part of “support” operations. A second carrier could also be on its way:
The US might deploy a second aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to support Israel’s attack on Gaza, two Pentagon officials told POLITICO on Tuesday.
In the wake of the Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US announced that it was deploying the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group, which arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean on Tuesday.
The Pentagon officials said that the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group, which includes several other warships, were already scheduled to leave Norfolk, Virginia, this week and that it might be ordered to also deploy near Israel. The Pentagon said that the Eisenhower could leave on Friday and arrive in the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of October.
A double aircraft carrier deployment would be a massive show of force in the region and could risk escalating the situation. Some Shia factions in Iraq have threatened attacks on US bases in the country if the US “intervenes” to support Israel against Hamas.
Hezbollah has issued a statement directly responding to this possibility, saying, “Sending aircraft carriers to the region with the aim of raising enemy morale reveals the weakness of the Zionist military machine.”
More images have begun to emerge of the ratcheting conflict along the Israel-Lebanese border…
⚡️Consequences of the Israeli bombing on homes in the Lebanese town of Al-Dhahira this morning pic.twitter.com/Q6LbSIoIWS
In Israel, the death toll from the weekend attack has risen to 1,200 – according to new official statements. The Biden administration has also confirmed that at least 14 of these were US citizens.
Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips has scored a victory of sorts in his ongoing lawsuit for refusing to bake a gender transition cake, with the Colorado Supreme Court agreeing to hear his appeal.
Last week, in a win for Mr. Phillips’ years-long legal fight, the Colorado Supreme Court finally agreed to hear his case after a lower court held that Colorado authorities can force the baker to put messages on cakes that violate his personal beliefs, according to a case announcements posting.
Mr. Phillips, who in 2018 won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit for declining to bake a custom cake for a same-sex wedding, was sued once again in 2019 for refusing to create a cake for a transgender lawyer celebrating a gender transition.
The attorney, Autumn Scardina, also demanded that Mr. Phillips create a custom cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana, according to court filings.
But Mr. Phillips declined, saying he would not create cakes expressing those messages for anyone.
Then, a lower appeals court held that Colorado authorities could compel Mr. Phillips to put messages on his cakes that go against his religious convictions, prompting Mr. Phillips’ attorneys to file an appeal in April with the Colorado Supreme Court.
Subsequently, in July 2023, following a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of a Christian website designer who argued that Colorado’s law requiring her to create websites celebrating same-sex weddings infringed on her constitutional rights, Mr. Phillips’ attorneys filed a supplemental notice with the state Supreme Court, asking for a hearing.
More Details
In the supplemental filing, Mr. Phillips’ attorneys asked the Colorado Supreme Court to apply the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis and similarly affirm Mr. Phillips’ constitutional right to free speech.
And so on Oct. 3, in a victory for Mr. Phillips’ legal battle, the Colorado Supreme Court finally agreed to hear his case.
“Free speech is for everyone. As the U.S. Supreme Court held in 303 Creative, the government can’t force artists to express messages they don’t believe,” Jake Warner, senior counsel for the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), said in a statement.
“Because the attorney asked Jack to create a custom cake that would celebrate and symbolize a transition from male to female, the requested cake is speech under the First Amendment,” he added.
“You don’t need to agree with Jack’s views to agree that Americans shouldn’t be compelled to express what they don’t believe,” he added.
Mr. Phillips told Fox News in an interview that he hopes the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case gives him hope for an end to his years-long legal fight.
“I hope it is the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m pretty excited about it,” Mr. Phillips told Fox News in an interview.
“The state court turned us down in our first case, but I think they realize now that I serve everybody,” he added.
The Colorado Supreme Court has yet to schedule oral arguments in the case.
Mr. Phillips said the case is about his right to express his religious freedom and to “do so without fear of punishment in the marketplace.”
Supreme Court Decision In Web Designer Case
In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Christian web designer Lorie Smith, who said she would design a website for anyone—including if they identify as LGBT—so long as the requested content doesn’t run afoul of her religious beliefs.
Ms. Smith said that, when clients asked her to include messages that are pro-abortion or same-sex marriage—both views that conflict with her personal convictions—she would refer them to other designers.
Concerned that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission would use the state’s anti-discrimination statute to force her to create websites that convey messages that she disagrees with, she challenged the law to protect free speech.
Like Mr. Phillips, Ms. Smith was represented by ADF.
In July 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled against Ms. Smith, holding that the state has the right to force her to create websites with messages that violate her religious beliefs.
Her attorneys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court—and won.
“Like many states, Colorado has a law forbidding businesses from engaging in discrimination when they sell goods and services to the public. Laws along these lines have done much to secure the civil rights of all Americans,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the 26-page majority opinion (pdf), with the court’s three liberal justices dissenting.
“But in this particular case, Colorado does not just seek to ensure the sale of goods or services on equal terms. It seeks to use its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not believe. The question we face is whether that course violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
“In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance,” Mr. Gorsuch wrote.
“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” he added.
