I wonder if water fountains are more likely to stop crime because of the soothing sounds of moving and lightly crashing water? Good frequency drowns out the bad frequency. Wonder if there is a study on that somewhere.
Kernkraft 400 - Zombie Nation
Water tames the flames… probably why Obama saga let all the monuments and recreation things decay.
They must've read your application and been like, "absolutely fuck this guy".
>>24627068 (pb) FDA drops vape guardrails in a total administration pivot
The problem is, they ban legal options for things, but never stop the illegal market that imports it anyways. So people just end up using way worse products because it arrives from sketchy markets.
World Cup vendors are mostly illegal aliens, and they’re scared of ICE
DHS officials say ICE officers may be at matches. Vendors planning to sell in and around SoFi Stadium say it’s a gamble between their safety and a potentially lucrative payday.
LOS ANGELES — With the World Cup fast approaching, Southern California is bracing for a wave of international fans and elite soccer stars. But there’s another potential arrival causing unease: ICE agents.
Latino vendors, fixtures outside SoFi Stadium in Inglewood and other venues around the region, often sell merch and food after concerts and sporting events. Some are expressing concern about ICE potentially working the games. And workers at SoFi Stadium — set to host eight games starting June 12 — are threatening to strike if ICE is there, citing fear for their safety.
Last June, the Los Angeles area was the site of sprawling immigration raids in which the Trump administration targeted day laborers and factory workers. Widespread protests followed, along with some clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement and the deployment of the National Guard.
“We always have this worry that we’re going to be more on the lookout for immigration [rather] than focused on selling,” said Henrry Josue, a 23-year-old hot dog vendor who did not disclose his legal status but plans to set up his stand during the World Cup.
“We came to make money, not cause problems,” he said.
NBC News reported last week that federal officers and agents who arrest immigrants as part of their work with ICE may be at World Cup matches.
The Department of Homeland Security is offering its personnel to local police departments and federal agencies to provide extra security around the perimeters of games, similar to its role at the Super Bowl and the Kentucky Derby, two DHS officials said, adding that ICE officers and agents providing security won’t be checking spectators or employees for immigration status.
So far, it’s unclear whether any departments or agencies are taking ICE up on the offer. On Monday, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts said ICE has offered resources from a “public safety perspective,” but his city and its police department haven’t “engaged in any such discussions” with the agency.
And, he said, “I have no information suggesting that ICE is going to be present in an immigration enforcement capacity.”
Asked whether street vendors outside matches should be concerned if they don’t have legal status, a DHS spokesperson said they should.
“Yes, people who are unlawfully in the United States and have no legal status should voluntarily depart and pursue legal entry the same way millions of people around the world do every single year,” the spokesperson said. “That is how immigration law works.”
DHS said international visitors legally in the U.S. for the games “have nothing to worry about.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/soccer/ice-world-cup-games-vendors-california-rcna344392
Nesbitt calls on DOJ to investigate Whitmer following nonprofit fraud scandal
LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Michigan Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, R-Porter Township, has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, calling on it to open an investigation into Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her administration after a Detroit-area business leader allegedly used a $20 million state grant for her own expenses.
In early May, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced 16 felony charges against Fay Beydoun, including a 20-year felony for conducting a criminal enterprise. She has also been charged with seven counts of uttering and publishing, a 14-year felony; one count of forgery, a 14-year felony; one count of larceny by conversion, more than $20,000, a 10-year felony; and six counts of larceny by conversion, $1,000 to $20,000, a 5-year felony.
Beydoun received a $20 million Michigan enhancement grant from the state Legislature for the nonprofit Global Link International, which aimed to bring Middle Eastern start-ups to Michigan.
Investigators say that instead of using the $20 million to bring startup businesses to the state, Beydoun used it for personal expenses and for her $550,000 annual salary.
The funds, appropriated by the state Legislature in 2022, were administered by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. A few years prior, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had appointed Beydoun to the MEDC’s Executive Committee. Whitmer had also appointed Beydoun to the Commission on Middle Eastern American Affairs and served as the executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce.
In the letter sent to the DOJ, Nesbitt says that “Michigan faces a unique crisis of oversight” due to Nessel and Whitmer’s “well-documented personal friendship and political alliance.”
“This relationship creates an inherent conflict of interest that calls into question whether the Michigan attorney general can impartially investigate the governor,” the letter reads.
Nesbitt claims that Beydoun donated over $16,000 to Whitmer and “hosted high
dollar fundraisers” at the same time the grant funding was being negotiated.
He also says that Internal “WhatsApp messages” from February of 2021 show Beydoun claiming she spoke with Whitmer to secure funding as a “budget line item.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/nesbitt-calls-doj-investigate-whitmer-165822088.html
Congo: American doctor with Ebola flown to Germany as his wife and children are monitored
American doctor with Ebola flown to Germany as his wife and children are monitored
Leaders of the Christian missionary group Serge, which Dr. Peter Stafford works for, said he unknowingly operated on a patient with Ebola before the outbreak was detected.
By the time an American surgeon who contracted Ebola in Congo was flown to Germany for treatment Tuesday, he was barely able to stand on his own, according to two leaders of the Christian missionary group with which he worked.
Dr. Scott Myhre, East and Central Africa area director for the group Serge, described the scene as Dr. Peter Stafford departed.
“There were people in full — we call it PPE — the personal protective equipment, and they’re completely covered, and he’s hanging on them barely strong enough to walk,” Myhre said. “He looked really tired and really sick.”
Stafford, 39, worked at Nyankunde Hospital, which is in Congo’s Ituri province, where the Ebola outbreak is centered. Days before the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the outbreak, Stafford operated on a 33-year-old patient with severe abdominal pain, Myhre said. At the time, doctors thought the patient had a gallbladder infection.
Stafford “did an abdominal procedure and found that the gallbladder was normal and closed him up, but this patient subsequently died the next day,” Myhre said.
Days later, they realized the patient, who was buried before he could be tested, most likely died of Ebola. Stafford developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive for Ebola on Sunday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“He’s a very meticulous professional, and for every surgical case he does, he would be completely gowned in sterile garb and gloves and hats and glasses,” Myhre said. “But that’s not quite enough to prevent an Ebola exposure.”
Stafford’s wife, Rebekah Stafford, 38, is also a doctor and treated the same patient.
She and the couple’s four young children are also being monitored, Myhre said. Another physician, Patrick LaRochelle, 46, is thought to have been exposed through a second patient and is being monitored, as well. None has shown signs of illness.
They have all “departed DRC and are en route to other locations where they can be monitored in close proximity to expert care if needed,” Serge said in a statement Wednesday. While the Staffords have all gone to Germany, LaRochelle was being taken to Prague’s Bulovka Hospital, Serge said, which the Czech Health Ministry said has “specialized facilities for highly dangerous infections.”
Myhre said Stafford quarantined himself as soon as he developed symptoms, which included chills, fever, muscle aches, fatigue and nausea.
For the flight to Germany, Myhre said, Stafford was placed in a tube-shaped plastic bed, “about the size of a casket,” to protect the airplane’s crew from getting infected.
The incubation period for the virus is up to 21 days, according to the World Health Organization, whose leaders have expressed serious concern over the “scale and speed of the epidemic.”
The virus was likely to have been spreading for weeks before the outbreak was identified. The death toll has risen quickly: At least 131 people in central Africa are thought to have died, and 531 are suspected to have been infected.
The type of Ebola fueling the outbreak is a less common form known as Bundibugyo, which has no approved vaccine or treatment. During previous Bundibugyo outbreaks, the death rate ranged from 30% to 50%, according to WHO.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/american-doctor-ebola-evacuated-germany-wife-four-children-congo-rcna345961
UAE says new pipeline that will bypass Strait of Hormuz is nearly 50% complete
-The UAE has already completed nearly 50% of a second pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, said the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co,, or ADNOC.
-The new pipeline will double ADNOC’s export capacity through Fujairah, a port that sits on the Gulf of Oman just beyond Hormuz.
The United Arab Emirates has built nearly 50% of a second pipeline that will bypass the Strait of Hormuz, said the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., or ADNOC, on Wednesday.
“Right now, too much of the world’s energy still moves through too few chokepoints,” Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber said in an interview at the Atlantic Council.
The new pipeline will double ADNOC’s export capacity through Fujairah, a port that sits on the Gulf of Oman just beyond Hormuz. The UAE has accelerated the construction of the project due to the Iran war. The pipeline is expected to become operational in 2027.
Iran has blockaded Hormuz since early March, choking off the oil and gas exports of the UAE and the other Gulf Arab producers. The UAE has redirected some oil exports through an existing pipeline to Fujairah, which has a maximum capacity of 1.8 million barrels per day.
The Hormuz blockade has triggered the most severe energy supply disruption in history, al Jaber said. More than 1 billion barrels of oil have been lost due to the strait’s closure, the CEO said. Nearly 100 million additional barrels are lost every week that Hormuz remains closed, he said.
It will take at least four months to ramp oil flows up to 80% of normal levels even if the conflict ends immediately, Al Jaber said. It will take until the first or second quarter of 2027 for oil flows to fully normalize, he said.
“This is not just an economic problem,” Al Jaber said. “In fact, this sets a dangerous precedent once you accept that a single country can hold the world’s most important waterway hostage.”
Iran blockaded Hormuz after the U.S. and Israel launched a massive wave of airstrikes against it on Feb. 28. Those strikes killed top Iranian leaders including head of state Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Friday that the importance of Hormuz to the global energy market will decline after the Iran war, as Gulf nations build more pipelines to bypass it.
“This is a card you can play once,” Wright said of Iran’s blockade. “There’ll be other routes for energy to get out of the Persian Gulf.”
“We will see a decreasing importance from the Strait of Hormuz, but not a decreasing importance of those nations’ energy production and energy supply,” he said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/uae-pipeline-strait-hormuz-iran-war-oil.html
NYC Hotel Housekeepers Will Earn Over $100,000 After New Contract
A deal between a powerful union and an industry group substantially boosts annual pay for workers coping with New York City’s high cost of living.
The average pay of housekeepers in New York City hotels will increase to more than $100,000 a year as part of a contract settlement between an industry trade group and a powerful union. The deal, which the group ratified on Monday, averts a threatened strike this summer that could have disrupted the influx of tourists expected for the World Cup and America 250 festivities.
The owners of nearly 250 hotels in the city reached agreement with the union, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, on an eight-year contract that would increase wages by more than 50 percent for workers, union officials said. The hotel owners will continue to pay the full cost of providing health-care benefits for 27,000 union members and their families.
The unusually generous terms were ratified by the board of the Hotel Association of New York City, which represents the hotel owners, and is scheduled for a vote Thursday by the members of the hotel workers’ union, who have a history of moving in lock step with their leaders. The hotel workers’ union said that its new contract would raise the pay of housekeepers from slightly below $40 an hour to more than $61 an hour by 2034.
“Wage increases were our primary focus in this contract cycle because the cost of living for our members has been increasing so dramatically,” said Rich Maroko, the union’s president.
Labor unions in New York City have been notably restive this year, with failed negotiations having led to strikes by the main nurses union, faculty members at New York University and, this past weekend, by engineers and other employees of the Long Island Rail Road. Last month, a strike by the city’s doormen and other workers in unionized apartment buildings was avoided with an agreement that would raise average wages by $4.50 an hour over four years.
“We are proud the New York hotel industry will continue to provide the best pay and benefits in the country,” said Vijay Dandapani, the hotel association’s president. But he added that the association’s members are facing “tremendous economic headwinds” and exceptionally high taxes, along with the loss of 20,000 hotel rooms since the coronavirus pandemic and demand for rooms that still has not fully recovered since Covid devastated tourism in the city.
Steadily rising labor expenses are likely to translate into higher costs for visitors to the city, said Didio Pequeno, a director of hospitality market analytics for CoStar Group, a research firm. “They’re going to try to offset that by raising rates,” he said.
But how successful they would be is unclear, given that New York City already has the highest average room rates of any big city in the United States, at about $335 a night, Mr. Pequeno said. In the past year, New York hotels have also had the nation’s highest occupancy rate, at about 84 percent, he said.
The agreement between the hotel workers and the industry comes about six weeks before the expiration of the current 14-year contract. For more than a year, union officials had been preparing for a strike in early July, just before the celebration of the 250th birthday of the United States and the final of FIFA’s World Cup tournament at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Their salvos included creating a website, fifahotelstrike.org, that warned of a “distinct possibility that there will be strikes, pickets and lockouts” during the World Cup. Union leaders also successfully pushed for an increase in the maximum weekly unemployment benefit in New York State to $869 a week, from $504, which would make a strike less costly for their members.
In the past few years, hotel workers had gone on strike in several cities, including Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But there had not been a citywide strike by hotel workers in New York since a 1985 walkout that lasted nearly a month.
Several elected officials, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, had expressed support for the nurses and doormen amid their contract negotiations. Mr. Mamdani said he was “proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our hotel workers” through their campaign for higher pay and better benefits.
“This contract is a win for our hospitality industry, our economy and for a city that works best when the people who keep it running can afford to live here too,” Mr. Mamdani said in a statement.
The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council had endorsed Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor, in his campaign for mayor last year. But after Mr. Cuomo lost in the Democratic primary, union leaders endorsed Mr. Mamdani.
https://archive.ph/GC1CG#selection-4843.0-5061.26
Jeff Bezos says bottom half of earners should pay zero in income taxes
-Income tax paid by lower earners is “a small amount of money for the government,” Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday.
-The bottom half of taxpayers had an adjusted gross income of nearly $54,000 in 2023, according to the Tax Foundation, citing the most recent IRS statistics.
-Bezos’ comments come as a number of Democratic states explore higher taxes on the wealthy, and federal lawmakers have introduced proposals to cut taxes for lower earners.
Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos on Wednesday called for zero federal income taxes on the bottom half of earners.
The top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all the tax revenue, and the bottom half pay 3%, Bezos told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on “Squawk Box.”
“I don’t think it should be 3%,” Bezos said. “I think it should be zero.”
The bottom half of taxpayers had an adjusted gross income of nearly $54,000 in 2023, according to the Tax Foundation, citing the most recent IRS statistics. By contrast, households in the top 1% earned at least $676,000 of income that year.
Bezos said the income tax paid by lower earners is “a small amount of money for the government,” and offered the hypothetical example of a healthcare worker who makes $75,000 a year.
“We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington,” he said. “They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.”
He said he would “advocate” for such a change, but did not offer details on how lawmakers might enact it.
Bezos is the world’s fourth-richest person, with a net worth around $269 billion, according to Forbes.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/jeff-bezos-income-taxes.html
Jeff Bezos: You have to give Trump credit, he’s doing some great things
Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos fawned over President Donald Trump during an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, describing the president as “a more mature, more disciplined version” of Trump than his first term in the White House.
“When I last interviewed you, it was about two years ago, President Trump had just won, he was not the president yet,” said CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin during an interview with Bezos on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “And I had asked you what you thought of him at the time, and you said that you thought that he had mellowed, that he was calmer.”
“I still think that,” Bezos interrupted.
Sorkin continued, “Two years later, we have wars and tariffs and all sorts of things that have happened since then. What do you think?”
Bezos replied, “I’m comparing him to his first term, and I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. Again, I’ve worked with all the presidents, I will work with all the presidents, you know, and I hope to do that going forward if they’ll have me, but we need our business leaders to provide input into the administration, regardless of who the president is.”
“I’m not on the side– you know what, I’m on the side of America, and that is so important. Like, and that’s where business leaders should be,” he continued. “I think we are, but we get perceived as being like, you know, partisan or whatever. Like, I was helping Obama every chance I could. I was helping Biden every chance I could. I still call Obama for advice. He’s a very smart guy.”
Bezos concluded, “Trump has thought some good ideas, and he has done a lot– he’s been right about a lot of things, and you have to give him credit where credit is due.”
Bezos has received criticism from liberals for moving closer to Trump in recent years.
Last year, on the same day that Bezos dined with Trump, the Washington Post owner announced that his newspaper would no longer publish opinion pieces that were not focused on defending “two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”
The announcement came just one month after more than 400 Washington Post journalists signed a scathing letter to Bezos expressing concern over the political direction of the newspaper.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/jeff-bezos-fawns-over-trump-in-wild-cnbc-interview-a-more-mature-more-disciplined-version-than-his-first-term/
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NOW - Trump says Netanyahu "will do whatever I want him to do. He's a great guy," adding, "I'm right now, at 99% in Israel. I could run for Prime Minister. So, maybe after I do this I'll go to Israel run for Prime Minister."
https://x.com/disclosetv/status/2057095762245292366