How the World’s Best Footballs Are Made in Pakistan 🇵🇰⚽ | Complete Factory Process Revealed
Yeah but America was the first on the moon in the history books. Just roll with it.
It's called solar wind you conspiracy theory whack job. Russian shills just mad USA made it to the moon first.
Dr. Anthony Fauci to Face Senate Grilling Next Week
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases honcho who became a household name during the Covid-19 pandemic, will testify before a Senate panel next week.
Fauci, 85, is slated to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, July 29.
Republican lawmakers have long sought to question Fauci, who stepped down from his post as then-President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser in December 2022.
Last month, Peter Navarro, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, accused Fauci of “playing God” in regard to the pandemic.
“He basically gave money to the Wuhan lab for the express purpose of using gain-of-function research to create a deadly virus for the purpose of then creating vaccines to kill the virus,” Navarro told claimed in an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “How did that go, Anthony?”
He added: “One million Americans died, millions worldwide! He needs to be held accountable.”
Fauci received a pardon in the twilight of Biden’s presidential term in January 2025.
“For more than half a century, Dr. Fauci served our country,” Biden said in a statement at the time. “He saved countless lives by managing the government’s response to pressing health crises, including HIV/AIDS, as well as the Ebola and Zika viruses. During his tenure as my Chief Medical Advisor, he helped the country tackle a once-in-a-century pandemic. The United States is safer and healthier because of him.”
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/dr-anthony-fauci-to-face-senate-grilling-next-week/
Man who stabbed 2 near New York’s Central Park yelled ‘Allahu Akbar,’ police say
The NYPD is investigating whether the stabbings of the two men is a hate crime but says mental illness may have played a role.
A man accused of stabbing two people near Manhattan’s Central Park on Thursday reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar” during the attacks, the city’s police commissioner said.
The stabbings on the Upper West Side occurred at around 1:31 p.m., and both victims, who are adult men, were stable at a hospital and expected to survive, the New York City Police Department said.
Raul Morales, 51, was arrested, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement on X.
New York City Comptroller Mark Levine identified the victims Friday at a news conference as Chok Sung and Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus. Tisch noted in the statement that one of the victims is Asian and the other is Jewish.
“Detectives are continuing to work the case and determine motive, but according to victim and witness statements, Morales yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ during both attacks,” Tisch said in the statement. “The NYPD is currently evaluating whether this is a potential hate crime.”
At the Friday news conference, New York Attorney General Letitia James said she has been asked not to draw conclusions about the attack.
“Antisemitic acts have been growing in the city of New York,” she said. “Acts against the Asian community have also been on the increase.”
“It’s important that I stand with my Jewish friends, that I stand with my Asian friends,” James added. “Hate will not be tolerated in this city and/or in this state.”
“I will use every tool in my toolbox to protect them every day,” James said of both the Jewish and Asian communities in New York.
Thursday was the Jewish holiday Tisha B’av.
Rabbi Yosie Levine of the Jewish Center in New York said Grunhaus was walking home from shul when he was stabbed, just 200 feet outside of the Jewish Center.
Tisch said Thursday that while Morales does not have a known mental health history with police, “the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor.”
A bystander led police to where Morales was hiding, Tisch said, and she described that person as a good Samaritan.
There was no evidence Wednesday that either victim knew each other or Morales, she said.
The attacks happened about two blocks apart, according to police. The first was at 84th Street and Central Park West, and the second was at 86th and Central Park West, police said.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he had been briefed on the stabbings. He said he was grateful the victims were stable and he thanked police officers.
“The NYPD’s initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor. They are also evaluating these stabbings as potential hate crimes,” he said in a statement.
“These hateful and despicable attacks have no place in our city,” Mamdani said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also condemned the attack and said: “The strength of New York has always been our ability to live together across every faith and background.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/2-men-injured-stabbings-central-park-police-sources-say-rcna588973
U.S. sets new tariffs at 10% to 12.5% on 60 trade partners
These new duties took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday, just as the previous tariffs expired.
The U.S. trade representative announced a wave of tariffs on dozens of economies Thursday to replace President Donald Trump’s temporary 10% tariff, which expired at midnight ET.
Sixty trading partners, including all of America’s most important ones, will face tariffs of 10% to 12.5%, according to a fact sheet. The new duties took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday.
Some of the trading partners facing a 10% tariff include Canada, Mexico, India and the United Kingdom.
The U.K. tariff closely mirrors a deal that Trump and then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer reached last year to lower tariffs on U.K. imports to the U.S. to 10%.
Taiwan and the European Union, which is the largest single U.S. trading partner, will face up to a 12.5% tariff rate. The new rate announced Thursday appears to lower the 15% cap Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed upon last year.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said it had carried out monthslong investigations into the trading practices of other economies to impose the tariffs. The wave of levies will be enacted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a different statute from how most tariffs have previously been authorized.
In February, the Supreme Court struck down most of Trump’s tariffs that were imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The court ruled that the Trump administration exceeded its authority.
The administration says that under the statute, it found that the 60 economies have failed “to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”
Key trading partners, such as the E.U., strongly rejected that accusation.
“You can’t say that for the European Union,” E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told the Reuters news agency on the sidelines of ASEAN meetings in Manila.
“If you compare our labor laws to the ones of the United States, I mean, we have paid vacations, we have very good labor conditions for our employees, so it’s not really grounded,” she added.
Some, however, noted they would make little difference to current levies.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a news release, “The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same.”
Greer’s probe into the 60 trading partners has been ongoing since mid-March, as the administration considered which tariff statute to turn to next.
The new duties include a wide swath of exemptions, including on fertilizers and some types of fuel, both of which are surging in price because of the war in Iran.
Also exempted from the levies are some foods, autos, metals and pharmaceuticals. On Tuesday, Trump separately announced on social media that “all Generic Drugs being brought into the United States will continue to have a TARIFF of ZERO PERCENT for a two year period of time.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-tariffs-60-countries-forced-labor-rcna588972
FDA panel recommends loosening regulations for some peptides amid surge in interest
A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted on Thursday to broaden access to at least four peptides, amid a surge of interest in the unapproved therapies.
The vote took place during a two-day meeting discussing whether compounding pharmacies can fill prescriptions for some unapproved peptides.
Peptides are short strings of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, linked by chemical bonds. The human body naturally produces some peptides, and more than 80 peptides have been approved for use by the FDA. Those approved peptides can be found in things like insulin, skincare products and GLP-1 medications.
Recently, there has been a surge in demand for unapproved peptides, which are typically sold as "research use only" and lack scientific evidence, such as clinical data or human trials, to back up their claims. Some unapproved peptides advertised by influencers online claim to be able to slow aging or increase muscle growth. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he is a "big fan" of the unapproved therapies and that he has used them to help with injuries.
FDA advisory panel reviewing seven peptides
The panel reviewed four peptides during the first day of its two-day meeting, and voted 8-6 that each should be added to a list of substances that can be safely produced by compounding pharmacies, which mix medications that aren't available from standard drugmakers. Patients will need a doctor's prescription and need to take the therapy for a specific medical condition. The decision does not constitute FDA approval. Telehealth companies are expected to increase marketing for the therapies following the ruling, The Associated Press reported.
In its first session Thursday, the panel discussed the peptide BPC-157, which is one of the most popular among longevity and wellness influencers. It is marketed as being able to heal injuries and reduce inflammation.
Among the 24 speakers who commented on BPC-157 were four scientists who said the drug should not be made more accessible. The remaining 20 were doctors, chemists and peptide business owners who were in favor of the peptide's approval. They used personal and patient anecdotes to explain why they believed access should be expanded.
NYU Langone's Dr. Rachel Pessah-Pollack told "CBS Mornings" that BPC-157 has only been tested in about 30 humans, as compared to the hundreds of thousands of patients GLP-1s were tested on.
"Anecdotes are not evidence," Pessah-Pollack said Thursday, ahead of the panel.
The other peptides added to the list are known as TB-500, MOTS-c and KPV. Three more peptides will be discussed on Friday.
Products sold on the "gray market"
Dr. Jessica Duncan, the chief medical officer for IVIM Health, a for-profit company that prescribes FDA-approved peptides, said she believes that because there is demand for the unapproved therapies, the FDA should work to ensure they can be provided by doctors.
"People want them. They have proven to us that they are going to seek them out," Duncan told CBS News before testifying at the panel. "What I'm asking and advocating for is that the conversation with them, the education that's provided, is in the exam room."
Many peptides can be purchased online, in a space known as the "gray market," which practitioners have called risky because of the potential for contamination or impurities.
"At this point, we all need to be wary about putting an injection in your body without actually knowing the product," said Pessah-Pollack. "I mean, they could have arsenic in it, they could have lead. So we all need to pause. We all need to speak to our doctors."
During the Biden administration, the FDA added nearly 20 peptides to the federal list of substances that should not be produced by compounding pharmacies. The FDA panel said at the time that the peptides did not meet the criteria for substances that can be safely compounded. FDA regulators said at the time that the substances "present significant safety risks" because of the lack of testing.
Many of the FDA advisers and internal staff present for that decision no longer work for the agency. More than half a dozen people with connections to the peptide industry were added to the panel before the discussion, according to the Associated Press, including doctors, pharmacists and consultants who work with the chemicals. All of those experts voted to allow pharmacies to produce their own formulations of BPC-157.
Former FDA official Dr. Peter Lurie, who now leads the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told CBS News in April that he believed Kennedy's statements made it unlikely that unapproved peptides would receive real scrutiny at the hearing.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-peptides-review-regulations-unapproved-therapies/
Nearly 150,000 mail ballots rejected in California’s primary despite efforts to count every vote
Nearly 150,000 California voters had their mail-in ballots rejected for the state’s June primary, a spike from recent elections even as the state attempts to make voting easier with the goal of boosting participation and counting every ballot.
California has become notorious for its ponderously slow vote counts that can drag on for weeks and sometimes longer, largely the result of multiple changes over the years that were intended to increase turnout but have done little to achieve that. Among the changes: Every voter receives a mail-in ballot that can arrive at an election office seven days late and still be counted, provided the envelope is postmarked by Election Day.
Yet even with that generous weeklong window, the primary driver of the higher rejection numbers is late-arriving ballots, according to data compiled by the secretary of state’s office. Voting experts suspect the main problem is postmarks on ballots that came after Election Day, making them ineligible to be counted. The culprit could be U.S. Postal Service changes that might affect the timing of when postmarks are applied.
According to state data, 148,241 mail ballots were rejected in the June election, or a rate of 1.73% of all mail ballots.
In raw numbers, that’s up from the 2024 primary, when 108,982 mail ballots were rejected, or a 1.56% rate. In 2022, 105,818 mail ballots were voided during the primary, or a rate similar to 2024.
Lateness accounted for 93,479 rejected ballots in June, by far the largest category for disqualifying a ballot. That was up from about 70,000 in the 2022 primary and about 76,000 in the 2024 primary, though turnout in those elections was smaller compared to last June.
Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, said the jump in rejected ballots because of lateness is a major concern that — along with postal procedures — might also be connected to a late surge in ballots in June. Many voters waited until the final days to make a decision in a wide-open and chaotic race for governor.
“Ballots rejected due to lateness are caused primarily to being postmarked too late to count, not because they arrived too late to count,” Alexander wrote in an email.
Rejection rates have fluctuated over time, but the growing number of those set aside for lateness compared to recent elections “does really demand the question why this is happening,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, a nonpartisan research group.
https://apnews.com/article/california-primary-rejected-mail-ballots-voting-2291684fe4544cab2301f8965abc8f79
Bro is central casting to play Superman.
'Alaska sends 3,000 letters asking voters to verify their citizenship ahead of this year's elections
Alaska has sent more than 3,000 letters to residents asking them to verify their citizenship ahead of this year's elections.
JUNEAU, Alaska – The state has sent more than 3,000 letters to Alaska voters asking them to verify their citizenship ahead of the Aug. 18 primary, a number a top state elections official said is unusually high.
The letters have raised concerns among some state lawmakers, including one who said some constituents who received them are U.S. citizens.
Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher told state lawmakers during a hearing this week that it appears “a lot of old data was picked up somehow" when the division conducted voter roll maintenance that compares its list with information held by the Division of Motor Vehicles. The process usually yields about 200 names for further review, she said.
Beecher estimated during Wednesday's hearing that the number of letters sent was around 3,500, but a Division of Elections spokesperson, Steve Kirch, on Thursday said the total was 3,048.
The revelation comes at a time of heightened sensitivity surrounding claims of noncitizen voting. Research and prosecutions have shown it to be extremely rare, but President Donald Trump and his allies have raised alarms since the presidential election cycle two years ago that noncitizen voting is widespread.
The president also has been trying to push voting changes through Congress that would require people to provide documents proving their citizenship to register to vote and a now-halted executive order that sought to create a federal list of verified voters, even though voter rolls are maintained by the states.
Citizenship verification 'is not disenfranchising' voters
The Alaska letter asks recipients to affirm their citizenship status via letter, phone or email, and Beecher said the division is not requiring paperwork or documentation. Those who receive the letter are moved to a list of “inactive” voters. If the division doesn't hear back from the recipient, they still would be able to cast a special kind of ballot that also requires voters to attest to their qualifications to vote, she said.
“It is not disenfranchising the individual from being able to vote, but it’s a measure the division has to take to make sure that we only have citizens voting,” she said.
People who respond to the letter to say they are citizens will be moved back to the active list, Kirch said.
State Rep. Andrew Gray, a Democrat, said the only people who had contacted his office about the letters were people who are citizens. Another Democrat, state Rep. Ashley Carrick, asked if the letters were related to Alaska's decision late last year to share detailed data about the state's voters with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Beecher said it was not: “It has nothing to do with that,” she said, adding: “The information that we have received is specifically from DMV.”
She said the Division of Elections has not heard from the Department of Justice “regarding any list or the list that we provided that they identified noncitizens on that.”
DMV says request it received was ‘nonroutine’
Alaska was one of at least 16 states that have provided or said it would provide to the Trump administration detailed information about its voters — including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, according to the Brennan Center. Alaska and Texas also signed agreements. The information is being run through a Department of Homeland Security program that checks for citizenship but has been criticized for its potential to flag eligible voters.
Voting and civil rights groups in Alaska earlier this year sued over the state's sharing of the information. That case is still pending.
In response to questions, the Division of Motor Vehicles released a memo Thursday saying the Division of Elections in March provided the agency “with a list of approximately 15,200 DMV license and identification applicants and requested that DMV provide citizenship information for these records.” The memo described it as a “nonroutine request.”
The memo said the Division of Elections followed up in June, seeking clarification. The DMV said it responded to say that data it provided “included only those records where DMV’s latest confirmed status for an individual was other than ‘Citizen.’”
Kirch said his agency had sent the DMV its “entire voter list and they ran ours against theirs.”
Officials unsure why so many voters had their status questioned.
https://abcnews.com/amp/US/wireStory/alaska-sends-3000-letters-voters-verify-citizenship-ahead-135037104