[FOX] Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered an investigation into a Texas hospital Tuesday after it confirmed to Fox News that it advertised Spanish-language "Birth Packages in South Texas" on billboards in Mexico promoting childbirth services to pregnant foreign nationals near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mission Regional Medical Center confirmed to Fox News that it was responsible for the advertising campaign, which promoted deliveries starting at $3,950 for a natural birth and $5,525 for a C-section, and directed viewers to a website, havemybabyinTEXAS.com, which has since been taken offline.
The billboards also displayed a telephone number beginning with "001," the country code used to place calls to the United States from Mexico.
"The marketing materials regarding maternity services are no longer in use due to any unintended misunderstanding," a hospital spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News. "We do not support or facilitate any unlawful activity and work to comply with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations."
The spokesperson said the campaign included two billboards located within approximately 5 miles of the hospital near a U.S.-Mexico border crossing. The hospital said both billboards and the website were removed Monday after images began circulating on social media. The spokesperson also said the campaign began in 2021 but did not specify when the billboards were installed.
Abbott on Tuesday directed Texas Health and Human Services Commission Executive Commissioner Stephanie Muth to investigate Mission Regional Medical Center for potential violations of state law and contractual obligations.
[FOX] Cops in the United States, Canada, and Europe arrested 24 Indian criminals from three different murderous drug gangs who were welcomed by progressive governments as they imported millions of wage-cutting Indian migrants. Dot, not feather
Americans were already dealing with migrant Central American gangs, such as MS-13, and the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang welcomed by prior presidents.
The Justice Department reported the huge 50-site sweep on Tuesday:
Law enforcement in the United States, Canada, and Europe have arrested 24 defendants – 11 of them in California – connected to three India-based transnational organized crime groups charged with a litany of criminal acts, including the assassination in Canada in 2023 of a prominent Indian political and religious figure, the Justice Department announced today.
“Three defendants have been arrested in Canada, one defendant was arrested in Spain, and … Law enforcement is looking for 10 fugitives – seven in the United States, two in India, and one in Europe,” the statement said.
The chief target is the Indian “Bishnoi” gang, which now has a firm foothold in Canada. The department noted:
Lawrence Bishnoi, 33, of Punjab, India, a gangster long imprisoned in India, was a self-styled university student leader before tiring of politics and turning himself and his followers to crime, according to a nine-count indictment that a federal grand jury returned on July 1.
…
In private, Bishnoi presided over a sweeping criminal enterprise that spanned multiple continents. Using contraband cellphones and other voice-over internet protocol devices smuggled into his jail cell, Bishnoi personally directed political assassinations, murders, shootings, extortions, kidnappings, drug trafficking, human smuggling, and other crimes committed by members and associates of the Bishnoi enterprise worldwide.
The sweep also arrested members of the India-based Bhagwanpuria gang:
According to the indictment, in April 2026, Gurlal Singh, 22, of Stockton, California, a member of the Bhagwanpuria syndicate who is an illegal alien from India, threatened a victim and then provided the victim’s name to a corrupt law enforcement officer in India’s Punjab state. This ultimately led to the victim, the victim’s father, and the victim’s sister being falsely accused of the January 2026 murder of a victim in India identified in court documents as “B.S.” It also led to the corrupt law enforcement officer in India extorting the victim and the victim’s father in connection with that pending murder case. A separate member of the Bhagwanpuria syndicate, Gurdev Singh, 26, is alleged to have attempted to extort a family living in Ohio while he was being held in ICE custody, including by threatening to “put [] bullets in your kids.”
The sweep also arrested members of an ethnic Sikh drug-smuggling gang in Canada allegedly controlled by Ravinder Singh Dhanda. The statement said:
According to the indictment, Dhanda operated a drug distribution network that provided international smuggling services for bulk quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine to drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico … The cocaine and methamphetamine were concealed and transported on long-haul semi-trucks from the greater Los Angeles area – including Los Angeles, West Covina, Ontario, Fontana, and Perris – to the U.S.-Canada border.
The Indians’ drug-smuggling operation was aided by President Joe Biden’s deputies, who turned a blind eye to the huge inflow of Indian and Sikh migrant truckers.
The decision by Canadian elites to import Indian criminals supercharged violent crime — including shootings and auto theft — against Canadians in once-peaceful Canada.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
07/08/2026 01:49 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1972 views]
Top|| File under: Human Trafficking
A suspected burglar had his vehicle stolen while he robbed a business in a dose of instant karma so delicious even police couldn’t help but laugh as they slapped him in cuffs.
Jalen Godard, 29, called police to report his truck had been stolen from a Baltimore parking lot just minutes before they received a call about a burglary at a Verizon store on Baltimore National Pike.
Bodycam footage shared by the Howard County Police Department showed Godard approaching cops as they arrived at the scene.
[FOX] More than 900 New York City public schools do not have a majority of students passing state reading and math tests, according to a scathing new report.
That means more than 400,000 of New York City’s public school children are enrolled in institutions where fewer than half of the students passed math, reading, or both on state exams.
"Despite New York City’s international reputation as an economic power and cultural influencer, the city’s public school system, funded at twice the average rate of other American school districts, has struggled for decades to deliver results that at best are mediocre," researchers at Success Academy, a New York City-based charter school network, wrote in the report.
According to the findings, 906 schools — representing nearly half of all public schools across the five boroughs — saw fewer than half of their students pass state math or reading exams last year. When does the $36k per student become criminal fraud? When it's a non-Union or Charter school, I'm sure
[ZERO] Ask most Silicon Valley billionaires what they think about death, and you’ll get some version of a declaration of war. Peter Thiel has funded life-extension research for years and has spoken openly about wanting to "fight death." Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and a growing circle of biotech-backed investors have likewise poured billions into companies pursuing not merely longer life, but the possibility of radically slowing or even ending human aging.
Elon Musk - the wealthiest of them all and arguably the most publicly concerned with humanity’s long-term survival - has consistently argued almost the opposite.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in conversation with Larry Fink, Musk remarked, "There is some benefit to death."
He warned that dramatically extending human lifespans could lead to "an ossification of society," leaving institutions increasingly rigid and ideas "stultifying" as the same generation remained in power indefinitely.
While many technology leaders have invested extraordinary sums in extending the human lifespan, Musk has become the father of fourteen children and has consistently argued that building the next generation matters more than indefinitely prolonging the current one.
His reasoning is straightforward. Most people form their core worldview relatively early in adulthood and rarely change it fundamentally. If those individuals never leave positions of influence, society risks locking one generation’s assumptions permanently into its political, economic, and cultural institutions. In Musk’s view, mortality is not merely a biological limitation; it is one of the mechanisms by which civilizations renew themselves.
What makes his position especially interesting is that it is not rooted in scientific pessimism. During the same discussion, Musk suggested the opposite: Aging is probably a solvable scientific problem. He noted that virtually every tissue in the body appears to age in parallel.
"You’ve never seen someone with an old left arm and a young right arm," he observed, arguing that such synchronized aging hints at a common biological mechanism. Once that mechanism is understood, he speculated, the solution may appear surprisingly obvious.
The tension is striking. Musk appears to believe that aging is likely to become an engineering problem with an engineering solution. Yet he has shown remarkably little interest in dedicating his own fortune to solving it. His hesitation is philosophical rather than technological: He questions whether dramatically extending individual lifespans would ultimately strengthen or weaken civilization.
That places him in sharp contrast with many of his peers. For much of Silicon Valley, mortality has become the next great engineering challenge—a problem to be solved through biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and unprecedented capital investment. Musk has instead argued that society should be at least as concerned with preserving its capacity for renewal as with extending individual lives.
A second priority reinforces that distinction. Rather than focusing primarily on longevity, Musk has repeatedly argued that declining birth rates pose the more immediate civilizational threat. A society may someday conquer aging entirely, he has suggested, yet still decline if it ceases to produce enough children to replace itself. Extending the lives of existing people cannot compensate indefinitely for a shrinking number of new ones.
Taken together, his views form a coherent hierarchy of priorities. Aging is real and probably solvable, but not necessarily the most urgent problem. Indefinite life extension carries the risk of social stagnation. Declining fertility, by contrast, threatens the long-term continuity of civilization itself.
Whether one agrees with that hierarchy is another question. What is difficult to ignore, however, is that Musk’s own life reflects the priorities he describes. While many technology leaders have invested extraordinary sums in extending the human lifespan, Musk has become the father of fourteen children and has consistently argued that building the next generation matters more than indefinitely prolonging the current one.
That does not prove his family is a deliberate philosophical statement, nor does it reveal his private motivations. But it does reveal a notable alignment between his public arguments and his personal choices. Rather than devoting his fortune primarily to extending his own life, he has devoted a remarkable part of it to creating the generation that will outlive him.
Silicon Valley’s prevailing instinct has been to treat mortality as an engineering problem: extend the individual life for as long as possible. Musk has consistently offered a different answer. He sees death as one of the mechanisms by which societies remain capable of renewal, while viewing falling birth rates as the more immediate threat to humanity’s future. Whether that philosophy ultimately proves correct remains to be seen. What is already clear is that his actions are unusually consistent with his words. In that sense, Musk’s answer to mortality is not another decade of life. It is another child.
#2
Most people form their core worldview relatively early in adulthood and rarely change it fundamentally. If those individuals never leave positions of influence, society risks locking one generation’s assumptions permanently into its political, economic, and cultural institutions.
[NYP] Life isn’t so ruff for Lilo — at least, not anymore.
Three years ago, Luce Clark and her partner were traveling through the Indonesian jungle when they spotted a small white pup tumbling through the brush along a busy stretch of road. After being unable to find the family he belonged to, they took him home.
These days, the scrappy rescue lives in Toronto, where he starts his mornings with a raw-meat breakfast, a mix of supplements and a goat’s milk "latte" before winding down at night on a red light therapy bed.
"I feel like he is my child. I want to make him feel good," Clark, 27, told The Post. "Rather than waiting for any problems to arise, we’re using these small daily rituals so that hopefully, in the long run, we end up giving him a nice, long and healthy life."
[DM] New York City authorities announced that they were 'confident' the Midtown Manhattan skyscraper in danger of collapsing like a 'pancake' has been stabilized, while warning that movement could still occur.
Ahmed Tigani, the NYC Department of Buildings commissioner, said Tuesday evening that the emergency shoring measures installed at the former Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd Street were working.
'We've been monitoring the building for many hours,' Tigani said. 'We have not seen any movement.'
However, Tigani cautioned that authorities were still closely watching the 37-story building, both inside and outside.
'If there is any movement or if we sense any movement, we have protocols in place to make sure we're quickly removing people outside the building to evaluate and reassess,' he added.
A 'frozen zone' was enacted around the building, originally extending from 40th Street to 45th Street and from First Avenue to Third Avenue.
That displaced hundreds of locals, tourists and workers, with NYC authorities unable to explain for hours when they could return to Midtown.
#3
Mind you, the story is the building is undergoing conversion from offices to apartments. So they stripped out the walls, and this is what they find.
Would you consider getting an apartment in this building now?
Engineering is the process of learning how to do more with less.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
07/08/2026 8:49 Comments ||
Top||
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] One of the strongest solar activity outbursts of 2026 has ended. This was announced on July 7 by the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It followed a mild scenario. Only two outbreaks received the maximum score.
"One of the strongest solar activity surges this year, observed in late June and early July 2026, has ended," the laboratory said in a statement on its Telegram channel.
The increase in activity was caused by the formation of two large sunspot groups on the Sun. Because of them, the star broke a two-year record for the number of flares in a single day on July 5.
Earlier, on July 4, the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences recorded a strong magnetic storm of G3 level on Earth, which became the second most powerful since the beginning of the year.
[DM] An expensive restaurant in the Hamptons has been slammed after allegedly refusing to shelter people caught in an 80mph storm because they did not have reservations.
French bistro Le Bilboquet, nestled in Sag Harbor, is under fire for its rumored actions during the severe weather on Saturday amid July 4 celebrations.
The violent storm sparked chaos in the historic maritime village with reports of loose objects being whipped up in the winds and trees being uprooted.
Thousands had gathered in the area to watch the Independence Day firework display when the weather suddenly changed.
But as many in the crowd ran for cover, they were reportedly turned away from sheltering at Le Bilboquet.
'Emergency alerts went off on [the] phone informing us that there were 80mph winds and to take shelter.
'People were huddling inside their boats, and running, and screaming outside,' a source told Page Six.
'They wouldn't let people in. They were like, "Do you have a reservation?" They left people outside with 80 mph winds.'
[FOX] The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased two migrant detention centers in California for $1.5 billion, the agency confirmed to Fox News Digital.
The sale of the 2,560-bed California City Detention Facility and the 1,994-bed Otay Mesa Detention Center, two of the largest immigrant detention centers in the Golden State, closed earlier this month, according to a press release from Tennessee-based CoreCivic, the private prison company that sold the facilities.
DHS said it used funds from President Donald Trump's spending bill signed last summer to purchase the facilities as the administration seeks to continue the president's mass deportation agenda.
"The Department of Homeland Security purchased the California City Detention Facility and the Otay Mesa Detention Center," a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital. "This purchase was made possible by President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that allowed ICE to expand detention space to fulfill the president’s promise of mass deportations."
[FOX] Toyota is investing $3.6 billion to expand its San Antonio, Texas, assembly plant, a move expected to create about 2,000 new jobs and bring Toyota Tacoma pickup production from Mexico to the Lone Star State.
The automaker announced Monday that it will build a second vehicle assembly line at its San Antonio campus, allowing the facility to assemble the Tacoma alongside the Tundra and Sequoia.
As part of the expansion, Tacoma production will gradually transition from Toyota's Baja California plant in Mexico over the next four years, according to the company. Toyota will continue producing Tacoma pickups at its Guanajuato, Mexico, plant. Guanajuato is not in Baja California, Mexico
The project will add about 2.5 million square feet to the manufacturing campus, effectively doubling the site's size by 2030 and bringing Toyota's total investment in the San Antonio operation to $8.3 billion since construction began in 2003. Toyota previously moved Tacoma production from San Antonio to its Guanajuato plant in 2020.
#4
Toyota moved its American headquarters to Dallas about a decade ago, including consolidating much of its product development effort there. I believe they shut down everything they had in Northern Kentucky as part of that process.
[DM] Several people were wounded and a suspect was arrested in an apparent violent attack at a secondary school in the southern German state of Bavaria on Wednesday, police said.
'The arrested individual is a 16-year-old juvenile,' police confirmed in a post on X, later adding that there 'are no indications of additional individuals involved in the offence'.
While the full extent of casualties is still being clarified, two girls were confirmed as 'seriously' wounded, after police initially said 'several' people were injured.
More than 15 patrol cars were dispatched to the Welfen-Gymnasium in Schongau, southwest of Munich.
A police spokesperson told Bavarian broadcaster BR there were indications of a possible shooting spree, as officers urged the public to avoid the area.
Update at 1:45 p.m. EDT: Headline now says knife rampage, but nothing in the body of the article has been changed to support it. Also, two girls injured. The Mirror has been liveblogging the story:
What we know so far
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested after two 13-year-old girls were seriously injured at Welfen High School in Schongau, Bavaria.
Police said the suspect was carrying a knife and a firearm and believe he acted alone. Investigators are still working to establish exactly how the girls were injured.
Authorities said neither of the victims is in a life-threatening condition. Bavaria's interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the suspect is a Croatian national who had previously received psychiatric treatment.
Because the miscreant is Croatian, and therefore probably not a Moslem colonist, leaving this as Page 3: Non-WoT.
[NY Post] Socialist Commie virtue-signalling has a cost
President Trump threatened Wednesday to cut off “all trade” and tourism with Spain — citing Madrid’s refusal to boost military spending and its restrictions on US operations during the Iran war.
“Spain is a wasted cause. We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain anymore,” Trump declared at a press availability alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte ahead of a day of meetings at the alliance’s annual summit.
“Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They don’t participate, they don’t pay. I don’t want to have anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits… Watch them come running back,” said the president.
“We don’t have to trade with them. I don’t want to do any more trade with them, alright? Immediately. Don’t talk to them, they’re hopeless, bad people.”
[IsraelTimes] 2021 agreement doubled the original 50 million annual cubic meters specified in 1994 peace pact; the increase was repeatedly renewed until November, when fraying relations ended it
Jordan is furious about Israel’s continued refusal to renew a 2021 water agreement between the two neighbors, the Kan public broadcaster reported Monday.
The 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan mandates that Jerusalem supply 50 million cubic meters annually to its eastern neighbor. In 2021, during the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, Israel agreed to double the amount of fresh water it provides to Jordan, one of the world’s most water-deficient countries.
The 2021 agreement expired in late 2025 after a series of extensions, though Israel still supplies the initial 50 million cubic meters laid out in the peace treaty. Israel reportedly conditioned the supply of the additional volume on Jordan moderating its rhetoric toward Israel and restoring full diplomatic ties.
Seems fair to me. Otherwise, why should they bother?
A Jordanian source close to the royal family told the outlet: "The water issue is very important to us, and is part of the peace treaty."
Jordan’s King Abdullah declined repeated requests from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet in March, according to Israeli media reports. One of Abdullah’s demands for agreeing to a meeting was the renewal of the water agreement, the report said.
Energy Minister Eli Cohen had been renewing the additional agreement every six months, reportedly under pressure from the US and because Jordan helped shoot down Iranian drones fired at Israel, the Ynet news site reported. However,
you can observe a lot just by watching... Jerusalem became reluctant to continue the process in the face of repeated criticism of Israel by Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi.
All self-indulgences have natural consequences. His Excellency, the Foreign Minister, indulged.
The water issue is one of the topics that would be on the agenda of a possible trilateral energy summit that would be hosted by the United Arab Emirates, Ynet said.
Israel is interested in the summit, which would be held in Abu Dhabi and attended by the Israeli, UAE, and Jordanian energy ministers, the outlet reported, citing an unnamed Israeli official.
Israel has no obligation to provide the additional water but could do so if "there is goodwill between the two countries," the official said.
"Jordan needs the water, but when you help your neighbors, you expect warmer relations," the official said. "If there is a meeting, everything will be on the table — normalization, water, and strengthening bilateral ties."
The official noted that 2025 was Israel’s driest year in the past 100 years and that the government has placed a priority on refilling the country’s water reservoirs as well as supplying local agriculture.
Aside from the water agreement, talks would also be held at the summit on the so-called "Prosperity" initiative to build a desalination plant for providing potable water to Israel and Jordan, as well as a Jordanian solar plant that would supply electricity to both countries.
Israel, Jordan, and the UAE signed a declaration of intent for the project in 2021. If completed, Israel would provide Jordan with 200 million cubic meters of water each year, while Jordan would supply 600 MW of electricity.
According to the report, efforts would also be made to patch up relations between Israel and Jordan, which have not maintained ambassadors in each other’s countries since 2023, when the war against Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... started.
[Epoch Times] Ever since, the majority of drug-development efforts for Alzheimer’s have targeted the removal of amyloid deposits from the brain. However, even when these drugs effectively reduce the plagues, the clinical improvement in patients remains very limited. At best, they only slow the rate of decline—they don’t halt the progression of the disease, and are certainly not a cure.
In this study, they did not try to map the entire genetics of Alzheimer’s. Instead, they focused specifically on the overlap: genomic regions associated with both Alzheimer’s and obesity or diabetes. They identified 35 candidate genes across seven shared genomic regions.
The new study drew on an exceptionally large dataset from the European Alzheimer and Dementia Biobank, encompassing nearly 86,000 Alzheimer’s patients and close to half a million control subjects. Cunha and his colleagues combined this genetic data with maps showing where different genes are active across tissues and specific cell types.
In other words, while the brain is still part of the story, the genetic risk map—if we look at it as a clue to where the disease may originate—points primarily to the body’s boundaries with the outside world. Cunha repeatedly uses the term "barrier tissues"—tissues that are in constant contact with the external environment and filter what enters the body.
The lungs, for example, constantly encounter air, particles, viruses, and bacteria. "The lungs are the first immunological barrier these viruses encounter when they enter the body," he said. Similarly, the gut encounters food, toxins, and gut bacteria. The skin, too, is a first line of defense against the external world.
The idea that Alzheimer’s disease may not originate solely in the brain did not begin with Cunha. As early as 2002, a 25-year follow-up study of more than a thousand Japanese American men in Hawaii found that participants with lower levels of hs-CRP—a blood protein that signals inflammation—at midlife were at reduced risk of developing dementia later on.
In simple terms, inflammation levels measured many years before symptoms appear were linked to future dementia risk.
Subsequent studies have shown similar associations, though they stopped short of proving direct causality. For example, a 2020 study linked bacterial markers of periodontal disease to higher risk of Alzheimer’s, particularly in older age. Periodontal disease is a common disease that can cause bad breath, bleeding gums, gum recession, and, in severe cases, tooth loss. Quite lengthy. The original article seems to be in Hebrew. This article was originally published by Epoch Magazine Israel. Original article
#2
Monitor the causes of death of people living near an oil refinery or a contaminated WWII nuclear industrial site (St. Charles, Mo. for instance). Yes, diseases can "begin outside" the body.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..always the voice of sweet reason...
