Authored by Thomas Lifson via AmericanThinker.com,

Monday, the nineteenth of June, is our newest federal holiday (just 2 years old), Juneteenth, and federal workers get yet another day’s pay without having to work for it.

Since the federal workforce is heavily overrepresented with black workers (18.2% of the federal workforce versus 12.6% of the population), the words “disparate impact” come to mind, benefitting African Americans with a paid holiday that not too many other employees get, judging by the fact that I was able to book two appointments with service providers tomorrow before I even realized Monday was holiday.

Juneteenth, we are told, commemorates the end of slavery, even though President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued two-and-half-years earlier.

As Henry Louis Gates wrote, explaining the holiday:

The First Juneteenth

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” —General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865

When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued the above order, he had no idea that, in establishing the Union Army’s authority over the people of Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, “Juneteenth” (“June” plus “nineteenth”), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States. After all, by the time Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas, the Confederate capital in Richmond had fallen; the “Executive” to whom he referred, President Lincoln, was dead; and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was well on its way to ratification.

But Granger wasn’t just a few months late. The Emancipation Proclamation itself, ending slavery in the Confederacy (at least on paper), had taken effect two-and-a-half years before, and in the interim, close to 200,000 black men had enlisted in the fight. So, formalities aside, wasn’t it all over, literally, but the shouting?

As Professor Gates explains, despite the legal formalities, including Granger’s order, news of the emancipation spread slowly, and many people were still held as slaves in places the news hadn’t reached. The celebration of Juneteenth began as a folk holiday mostly among African Americans, but as race became an increasingly polarized factor, agitation began to make it a federal holiday, culminating in a bill passing Congress and signed by President Biden two years ago, following the George Floyd riots and BLM agitation, making it a new federal holiday, increasing labor costs for the federal government by about half a percent.

Notably the newest federal holiday created before Juneteenth was Martin Luther King Day, also commemorating the civil rights advancement of African Americans, meaning that 2 of the 12 federal holidays are now focused on this regrettable part of our history.

If all this celebration were a balm to the anger and tensions, it would be wonderful. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. The brilliant writer Shelby Steele had a lot to say about the current push for reparations and much more in the Wall Street Journal on Friday:

The Great Society was a gigantic virtue signal. It was moral advertising when the times called for the hard work of adapting a long-oppressed people to the demands of the modern world.

But an even greater barrier to black development turned out to be freedom itself. In the mid-’60s, when the civil-rights movement and Martin Luther King were staples on the evening news, we black Americans stepped into a vastly greater freedom than anything we had ever known. King’s rhetoric—“Great God Almighty, we’re free at last”—portrayed freedom as heaven. But freedom also had to have been scary. Oppression had conditioned us to suppress our humanity, to settle ourselves into a permanent subjugation. Not the best preparation for a full life in freedom.

I believe it was this collision with freedom—its intimidating burden of responsibility, its terror of the unknown, its risk of humiliation—that pressured black Americans, especially the young, into a terrible mistake.

In segregation we had longed for a freedom grounded in democratic principles. In the ’60s we won that point. But then suddenly, with the ink still wet on the Civil Rights Act, a new voice of protest exploded onto the scene, a voice of race and color and atavistic longing: “black power.”

To accommodate, we shifted the overriding focus of racial protest in America from rights and laws to identity. Today racial preferences are used everywhere in American life. Identity is celebrated almost as profusely as freedom once was.

It all follows a simple formula: Add a history of victimization to the identity of any group, and you will have created entitlement. Today’s black identity is a victim-focused identity designed to entitle blacks in American life. By the terms of this identity, we blacks might be called “citizen-victims” or “citizens with privileges.”

The obvious problem with this is that it baits us into a life of chasing down privileges like affirmative action. In broader America, this only makes us sufferers for want of privileges. Reparation can never be more than a dream of privilege.

I truly believe that most non-black Americans want native born African Americans to achieve parity with other groups, including the comparatively recent arrivals from Asia and, yes, Africa, who have excelled in the freedom our economy offers, and have achieved average income levels higher than the general population of whites. Nigerian Americans, for example, enjoyed an average household income of $71,465, topping the median household income of the country as a whole of $69,717, and well above the comparable figure for the all-white “Appalachian Americans” of $49,747.

The end of slavery here is something that we should celebrate, though we must recognize that extra-legal forms of slavery, such as sex slavery at the hands of criminal gangs, still exists. And legal slavery still exists in a number of countries, including Sudan, Libya (where slave markets thrive in the wake of the deposing of Col. Ghaddafi at the initiative of Hillary Clinton), and Saudi Arabia. Slavery is, of course, sanctioned in the Koran, and therefore quite acceptable according to orthodox adherents of Islam.

A genuine celebration of the end of legal slavery here is well worth a federal holiday. I just wish that our discussion and broad understanding of slavery were more honest and better informed.  And that, as a friend emailed me yesterday, there were not as much backsliding on civil rights in other areas:

Not only has the civil rights movement been reversed with blacks segregating themselves including across college campuses where they want their own dorms, clubs, and classes and where… the only thing that matters these days is one’s skin color, but the women’s rights movement has obviously been set back tremendously as well now that men can participate in women’s sports, purportedly have babies, and receive advantages in the workplace as long as they claim to identify as a woman.

One could also argue that voting rights are being set back as our votes become diluted through new laws that are intended to make voting easier but that allow for much more cheating as well as municipalities that are giving voting rights to illegal immigrants. Then there’s our human rights which are being impacted by a decline in quality of life with crime rampant due to progressive policies that don’t enforce criminal laws or that get rid of criminal laws, human, child and drug trafficking due to an open border and lack of enforcing our immigration laws, forced vaccinations during Covid and related dictates that have had far-reaching implications including in education, and whites (including Jews) being marginalized through reverse discrimination, lies in schools, and public policies that minimize our rights. I could go on but there’s a pattern that’s helping to lead to the decline of America.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

Investor sentiment is clearly bullish. The CNN Fear and Greed Index for June 18th, 2023, stood at 82, which signals “extreme greed”. This is a drastic optimistic move after closing at “greed” (56 over 100) a month before and “extreme fear” (17 over 100) only one year ago. However, in the same period, the Citi global economic surprise index has declined twelve points, with the euro area component collapsing 123 points. The US economic surprise index has also declined by thirteen points.

The disastrous performance of the euro area, which fell into recession in the first quarter, is also happening while this economic region enjoys significant tailwinds: Declining energy and commodity prices have supported the euro area’s GDP, boosting the external component thanks to meaningfully lower imports. Furthermore, the euro area should benefit from the expected positive impact of the massive EU Next Generation stimulus plan. None of those effects have helped, which proves yet again that massive government stimulus plans hardly boost growth and productivity and are often directed to politically favored sectors with little real impact on jobs or growth.

This is hardly a surprise, as the Juncker Plan and the Growth and Jobs Plan of 2009 also failed to deliver any multiplier effect. The euro area is a chain of government stimulus plans that yield no real economic return as productivity growth continues to be exceedingly poor, the unemployment rate is twice that of the U.S., and growth simply does not take off.

It is important to understand that the negative trend in economic surprise comes in the middle of two gigantic stimulus plans, in the euro area and the U.S., and with the benefit of lower imports due to falling commodity prices and rising exports thanks to a robust China re-opening, which may have come below consensus estimates but is still the driving force of global growth alongside India.

Many blame rate hikes for this decline in macroeconomic figures relative to estimates. However, few seem to blame the insanely negative real rates and monster stimulus packages for this poor economic return. Think about this for a moment: The world “invested” close to 20% of its GDP in public and monetary stimuli in 2020 to deliver a strong recovery that never happened and only received high inflation and poor growth in return.

The spectacular failure of these enormous stimulus plans is almost never analyzed in academic papers because it seems that some academics have decided to avoid any study that mildly questions governments and their bloated spending. Stimulus plans fail, and all we seem to hear when the recovery is weak is that the problem is the normalization of rates, not the inexistent multiplier effect of these giant government plans that leave an unsustainable trail of higher debt and, now, inflation.

Social programs have also failed. The latest Eurostat figures show that in 2022, 95.3 million people in the EU will be at risk of poverty or social exclusion, equivalent to 21.6% of the EU population. In 2018, it was 109.2 million people, or 21.7% of the population. This is an almost insignificant improvement considering the enormous social spending, more than two trillion euros of stimulus, and the increase in population. Resorting to the old “it could have been worse” argument makes no sense. There is plenty of evidence of better uses of public money all over the world.

Rate hikes have not caused the weakening of the eurozone economy; giant government spending plans have. There is no discernible improvement in productivity or job creation other than the return of tourism, and certainly no fiscal multiplier. The growth trend is simply back to where it was in December 2019, with the eurozone on the verge of recession but with a significantly larger debt burden.

The balance sheet of the G4 central banks has just declined by a small 9.5% after soaring 78% in 2020–2021. Rate hikes have only corrected the economic aberration of negative rates. Normalization of monetary policy is happening slowly, and central banks remain hugely accommodative. Some investors may expect a mirage bounce from government programs that have proven to generate no real improvement numerous times, but it will not happen.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The Irish Green Party followed many on the left around the world, including our own Democratic Party, this week and came out for censorship and speech controls. Indeed, the party went full Orwellian as its chairwoman Pauline O’Reilly called for “restricting freedom” to protect it.

O’Reilly’s comments are part of the introduction of the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022. We previously discussed this massive assault on free speech.

The legislation that would criminalize “incitement to violence or hatred against” people with “protected characteristics,” as well as “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.”

Limiting free speech has become an article of faith for many on the left. I have written about my distress (as someone who grew up in a liberal, politically active Democratic family in Chicago) in watching the abandonment of free speech values by the party. Democratic leaders now uniformly call for censorship and speech regulations. President Biden even charged that companies who refused to censor opposing views on social media were “killing people.”  Others have denounced free speech as “a white man’s obsession.”

The anti-free speech movement has become openly Orwellian in claiming to protect freedom by limiting freedom.  It also employs using terms like disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation to obscure their effort to silence those with opposing views. Rather than use “censorship,” they refer to “content moderation.”

That effort was on full display this week in Ireland with this anti-free speech legislation.

Speaking before the Irish Senate (Seanad) this week, Green Party chairwoman Pauline O’Reilly declared “when one thinks about it, all law and all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. This is exactly what we are doing here. We are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good.”

It is the same message of New York democrats calling for limiting speech as a way of protecting democracy. Indeed, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has declared free speech is “tyranny.”

O’Reilly assured citizens that giving up freedom was nothing new or threatening:“Throughout our Constitution one can see that while one has rights they are restricted for the common good. Everything needs to be balanced.”

What is particularly chilling is how low the threshold is for denying free speech, according to O’Reilly. It now appears that “deep discomfort” is enough:

“If a person’s views on other people’s identities make their lives unsafe and insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, our job as legislators is to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”

What is interesting is that O’Reilly admits that there is nothing new about hateful views but it is time to clear out such voices: “Social media has fuelled hatred but it has also put on display for all of us the dirty, filthy, underbelly of hatred in Irish society. That hatred has always existed.”  Of course, she and the majority will determine what views create “deep discomfort.”

The Irish legislation is likely to be replicated around the world if the free speech community cannot hold the line against the anti-free speech movement. It is part of an unrelenting movement in Europe, particularly by the European Union, to rollback Western free speech values that once defined countries.

We have been discussing efforts by figures like Hillary Clinton to enlist European countries to force Twitter to restore censorship rules. Unable to rely on corporate censorship or convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are resorting to good old-fashioned state censorship, even asking other countries to censor the speech of American citizens.

Ireland now stands on the precipice of freedom. The embrace of such laws by the Irish is crushingly ironic. Frank Ryan, who fought against the treaty, spoke for many radicals in declaring “as long as we have fists and boots, there will be no free speech for traitors.” Those anti-Treaty forces rejected the views of free speech that long defined Western nations. Now, Ireland is declaring “no free speech for haters” and assumes the authority to define who are haters and who are not.

Authored by Julian Adorney via The Mises Institute,

Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of the founders of critical race theory (CRT), recently decried what she called the “war on wokeness” (by which she seems to mean a war on CRT). According to her, this “war on wokeness” is “the road to an authoritarian state that’s paved through the history of white supremacy.”

It’s true that the “war on wokeness” has taken on authoritarian overtones of late. Many Republicans are rejecting the ideas of pluralism and free speech that underpin the American ideal and pushing through broad laws aimed at banning the teachings of CRT. In their desire to stop “wokeness,” these laws often muzzle dissenters and are so broadly written that they can throw the baby out with the bathwater. Free speech advocates have roundly condemned these laws and for good reason.

But it’s also true that critical race theory has serious problems. You don’t have to be a “white supremacist” or trying to promote an “authoritarian state” to be skeptical of CRT.

First, prominent critical race theorists (“Crits” as they call themselves) lean hard into race essentialism. In their book Is Everyone Really Equal?, Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo (of White Fragility fame) lay out some quotations that they disagree with. One such quotation is, “People should be judged by what they do, not the color of their skin.” Sensoy and DiAngelo dismiss this idea as “predictable, simplistic, and misinformed.”

It’s tough to overstate how inimical this concept is to modern-day American values. Martin Luther King Jr. famously proclaimed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” For Sensoy and DiAngelo, this dream is “misinformed.”

In another section, Sensoy and DiAngelo list traits (allegedly) held by members of the “dominant group” in society (white people, straight people, men, etc.) and contrast them with traits they claim are held by members of “minoritized groups” (black people, LGBTQ folks, women, etc.). Traits held by the dominant group include “presumptuous, does not listen, interrupts, raises voice, bullies, threatens violence, becomes violent.”

Traits held by the minority group include “feels inappropriate, awkward, doesn’t trust perception . . . finds it difficult to speak up, timid.” For Sensoy and DiAngelo, members of the majority group are angry bullies who don’t care about anyone except themselves, and minorities are timid children who can’t speak up or look after themselves. Is it any wonder that many minorities find this kind of rhetoric offensive?

A second reason to oppose CRT is that many Crits don’t admit that society can ever really get better. In the book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, Richard Delgado (another founder of CRT) and Jean Stefancic argue that American race relations don’t improve. They call many of the civil rights gains of the 1950s and 1960s—including Brown v. Board, the landmark Supreme Court case that desegregated schools across the country—“shams.” According to the authors, these gains are merely “hollow pronouncements issued with great solemnity and fanfare, only to be silently ignored, cut back, or withdrawn when the celebrations die down.”

For Delgado and Stefancic, meaningful social change is almost impossible. Unless all of society changes at once, “change is swallowed up by the remaining elements, so that we remain roughly as we were before.” This is an ideology that has little room for the gains of the Civil Rights Movement or the dramatic decrease in bigotry in the sixty years since. A foundational American story is that our society is imperfect but getting better, but CRT only has room for the first half of that statement.

Finally, critical race theory is explicitly opposed to the Enlightenment ideals upon which America was founded. Sensoy and DiAngelo say that CRT initially advocated “a type of liberal humanism (individualism, freedom, and peace)” but stress that it “quickly turned to a rejection of liberal humanism.” Values such as freedom and individualism are, apparently, not particularly welcome in Crit circles.

According to Delgado and Stefancic, “Critical Race Theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order.” CRT is opposed to “equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” If you want the law to treat people equally regardless of their immutable characteristics (i.e., race, gender), then, by their founders’ own admission, CRT is not for you.

Critical race theory isn’t all bad, and there are concepts like intersectionality that can help us to recognize the struggles and advantages of people who don’t look like us. But the field has deep problems, and more and more Americans of all ethnicities are picking up on this. Maligning critics as “white supremacists” is unlikely to fix those problems.

By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

“Chair Powell, what’s the value in pausing and signaling future hikes versus just hiking now?” asked Nick Timiraos from the WSJ. “I mean, not to be flippant, but I don’t lose weight just by buying a gym membership; I have to actually go to the gym,” continued the reporter, as his colleagues in the press corps looked on in awe, praying to someday engineer such a perfect question, delivered so casually, beautifully. “Sixteen of your colleagues put down a higher year-end ’23 rate today. A majority of you think you’re going to have to go up by 50 basis points this year. So why not just rip off the Band-Aid and raise rates today?”

* * *

“We’re two-and-a-half years into this or two-and-a-quarter years into this,” said the Fed Chairman at his press conference, leaving interest rates unchanged at 5.00-5.25%, below the latest 5.3% annual core CPI. “And forecasters, including Fed forecasters, have consistently thought that inflation was about to turn down, and, you know, typically forecasted that it would, and been wrong,” continued Powell.

In a hyper-financialized world where money can be created and extinguished with the click of a mouse, no one fully understands inflation, let alone can accurately forecast it.

“I think if you look at core PCE inflation overall, look at it over the last six months, you’re just not seeing a lot of progress. It’s running over 4.5%, far above our target, and not really moving down,” he said. “We want to see it moving down decisively, that’s all. We are, of course, going to get inflation down to 2% over time,” declared Powell, doing his best to sound confident.

Because of course, the only thing more inflationary than having a central bank which has paused with inflation more than double its target, is having a Fed Chairman who appears to lack decisiveness and determination.

“We want to do that with the minimum damage we can to the economy, of course. But we have to get inflation down to 2%, and we will. And we just don’t see that yet,” he said, desperate to engineer a soft landing, which of course is what all Fed Chairs must first attempt, elusive as such outcomes are.

“As anyone can see, not a single person on the committee wrote down a rate cut this year nor do I think it is at all likely to be appropriate, if you think about it. Inflation has not really moved down. It has not so far reacted much to our – to our existing rate hikes and so we’re going to have to keep at it.”

Heavily armed agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided a gun store in Great Falls, Montana, last week in what was described by a local lawmaker as a “Soviet-style intimidation raids.” 

Tom Van Hoose, the owner of Highwood Creek Outfitters, told the local media outlet KRTV that 20 heavily armed agents swarmed his gun shop on Wednesday morning, confiscated 13 years of 4473 forms, and copied the firearm acquisition and disposition book.

“The fact that they think we make so much money as a gun business that they had to come investigate all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars whatever it is we supposedly absconded with, anybody that knows the margins in the gun business knows they’re not that high,” said Van Hoose.

He said the reason for the raid is unclear. He believes it could be part of a nationwide trend by Biden’s ATF: 

“I can only assume that it’s because of the style of weapons that we have and the press that’s so against them.

“The current administration seems to be hell-bent on getting those guns out of the hands of average Americans.”

Van Hoose spoke to the firearms blog The Truth About Guns, stating that the IRS claimed he had underreported and failed to report millions of dollars of income. The shop owner denied the accusation. 

On Friday, Congressman Matt Rosendale sent a letter to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, asking for answers and calling the raid “outrageous.” 

“Under Director Dettelbach’s leadership of the ATF, a pattern of intimidation and harassment against hardworking Americans has emerged – Montanans will not tolerate these political witch hunts. I remind both Director Dettelbach and Commissioner Werfel that Congress has the power of the purse, and I will ensure that funding for these agencies is not weaponized against the American people,” Rosendale said in his letter.

He continued: “I request that the ATF and IRS cease conducting these Soviet-style intimidation raids.” 

At 0730hrs on June 14, 2023, Twenty (20) Heavy Armed Agents From the IRS Criminal Investigation and Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Raided Highwood Creek Outfitters, a Gun Shop and Indoor Firing Range in Great Falls, MT.

Tom VanHoose, the Store Owner was Served a Warrant… pic.twitter.com/H7gomdt4sH

— Tony Kambeitz (@Kambeitz9) June 17, 2023

*    *    * 

Here’s Rosendale’s full letter to the ATF and IRS:

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

A Harvard/Harris poll is bad news for Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department. The poll shows that 55% of Americans believe Trump’s indictment is politically motivated and 56%  believe that it constitutes election interference.  The poll captures the level of distrust for the Justice Department and further demonstrates what I described yesterday as the failure of Merrick Garland at the midpoint of his tenure as Attorney General.

The view of the case appears to be worsening. Now there is less than a majority viewing the indictment as well-founded and justified. The poll shows that 83% of Republicans and 55% of Independents view the indictment as a political exercise. Not only do 56 percent view it as election interference but only 44 percent see it as “the fair application of the law”: 

Harvard Harris Poll:

— 55% of Americans say Trump’s indictment is politically motivated, (including 83% of Republicans and 55% of Independents)

— 56% consider Trump’s federal indictment to be an interference by the Justice Department in the 2024 Elections pic.twitter.com/9UtnV0UtD2

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) June 16, 2023

The poll is also bad news for Biden. Some 65 percent believe Biden “mishandled” classified material while 72 percent take that view with Clinton’s email scandal.

The Justice Department and the media appear to have “lost the room” with the American people. They are primarily appealing to Democrats who (at 80%) support the indictment.

The FBI and the Justice Department made this perception worse through continual leaks to the media and allegedly staging the photo above after the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

By his own measure, Garland has failed to restore the credibility and trust in the Justice Department. It now appears worse than when his predecessor, Bill Barr, was in office.

It is also an indictment of the media. After years of “advocacy journalism” and biased reporting, the public now tunes out the media. This is a strong indictment with troubling allegations and evidence. Yet, it does not matter because the media long ago lost much of the country with one-sided, unrelenting coverage.

It also means that this case could conceivably never see a jury unless Special Counsel Jack Smith succeeds in pushing for a speedy trial before the election. A majority of the public now supports a pardon for Trump if he is convicted.  With these polls, the pressure of other Republican candidates to pledge a pardon is likely to increase. Indeed, as suggested in another column, Biden may want to consider a pledge to commute any sentence to try to defang this building election issue.

China has halted the release of national data on how many cremations too place at the end of 2022, a figure which would allow the world to see the true impact on the wave of Covid-19 infections which were sweeping the country during that period.

China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs omitted the data from its quarterly report – a figure which was consistently included for the fourth quarter going back at least 10 years, the South China Morning Post reported Thursday.

According to experts, China’s official data on deaths following the end of Beijing’s “zero covid” policy has been significantly underestimated despite claiming to have scored a “major and decisive victory” over the virus.

Before 2020, fourth-quarter cremation data was typically released in the first two months of the following year, along with other civil affairs data such as social welfare and marriage registrations.

Though the time lag for data releases has increased slightly since 2020, when the country was first hit by Covid-19, the most recent release came after a longer-than-average delay of six months after the end of the quarter.

Several provincial-level regions also scrapped the release of cremation services data for the fourth quarter of last year.

On June 9, the same day the national numbers were released, Chongqing’s civil affairs bureau published a notice that said it would suspend the release of civil affairs data indefinitely following an instruction from the Ministry of Civil Affairs. -SCMP

The bureau also said that 2023 data would be temporarily withheld, and would be “synchronised with the new provisions on data publication in the newly approved ‘Statistical Survey System for Civil Affairs’ by the National Bureau of Statistics.”

An analysis by SCMP reveals that over a dozen provincial-level regions broke from tradition and dropped cremation figures from public releases.

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

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week expanded a recall of frozen strawberries due to a potential contamination of hepatitis A, according to an agency news release.

On Monday, the Willamette Valley Fruit Company based in Oregon announced the recall of frozen strawberries that are sold at Walmart, Costco, and HEB retail stores under the brand names Rader Farms Organic at Costco and HEB as well as Great Value at Walmart, the FDA notice said. The strawberries were grown in Mexico, the agency added.

The FDA notice further said that Walmart locations across the United States sold the Great Value strawberries, while the impacted products were sold at Costco stores in Colorado, Texas, Arizona, and California between Oct. 3, 2022, and June 8, 2023. A list of products, lot numbers, and best by dates is available on the FDA’s recall website.

Hepatitis A, a contagious liver disease that results from exposure to the hepatitis A virus, can “range from a mild illness lasting a few weeks to a serious illness lasting several months,” the FDA said.  A common vector for the virus is via contaminated food, officials say.

Hepatitis A disease occurs between 15 and 50 days of exposure, officials also said. The symptoms include jaundice—a yellowing of the skin and eyes—as well as pale stool, abnormal liver tests, abdominal pain, fatigue, and dark urine.

“In rare cases, particularly consumers who have a pre-existing severe illness or are immune compromised, hepatitis A infection can progress to liver failure … persons who may have consumed affected product should consult with their health care professional or local health department to determine if a vaccination is appropriate, and consumers with symptoms of Hepatitis A should contact their health care professionals or the local health department immediately,” the FDA said.

But the notice said that no illnesses have been associated with the recalled strawberries so far.

The FDA called on consumers not to eat the frozen strawberries. “Consumers are urged to check their freezers for the recalled product, not to consume it and either discard the product or return it to the store for a refund,” the agency said.

An FDA investigation has traced hepatitis A infections from strawberries that were imported from Mexico’s Baja California state, reporting five linked cases of the illness in March. The strain of hepatitis A in the cases was identical to the one that cause an outbreak of infections in 2022, according to the FDA.

In March of this year, Wawona Frozen Foods, California Splendor, Scenic Fruit recalled frozen strawberries sold under multiple brands, including PCC Community Markets, and Trader Joe’s, Kirkland Signature, Simply Nature, Vital Choice, Made With, and Wawona, the FDA said.

Read more here…

Via The Cradle,

The Taliban’s governor of the Afghan central bank Hidayatullah Badri met with Chinese envoy Wang Yu this week to discuss banking ties and business, the bank’s spokesperson informed Reuters on Friday. “In this meeting, economy, banking relations, business and some related topics were discussed,” said Badri.

Although Beijing does not have formal diplomatic ties with the Taliban government, China is among the few countries that have maintained a diplomatic presence in Kabul since the Taliban took back the country following the US’ disastrous withdrawal in 2021.

Following the withdrawal, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Italian news outlet La Repubblica that China would be its principal partner in rebuilding Afghanistan after a 20-year US occupation.

China is also interested in bringing the West Asian nation to join Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

US sanctions and banking restrictions have dealt heavy damage to Afghanistan’s banking system, which has been cut off from the global financial system. These policies have served as the primary cause of the country’s ongoing economic crisis.

Afghanistan’s central bank has been unable to supply adequate liquidity to banks due to its inability to print money and the illegal freeze of nearly $10 billion in foreign reserves, $7 billion of which are held at the Federal Bank of New York.

China has recently shown an economic interest in its neighbor, and is seeking investment opportunities in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) – particularly in mining.

In April, the Taliban said that a Chinese firm was interested in investing $10 billion in lithium extraction as part of a project that would allegedly employ over 120,000 Afghans.

“Afghans are looking forward to exploiting their lithium and other mining deposits for their benefit,” Shahabuddin Delawar, the Taliban’s minister for mining, said.

At the start of the year, the Taliban signed an oil extraction deal with Chinese firms Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co. (CAPEIC).