[ZERO] The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday announced that it has frozen all federal childcare funding for the state of Minnesota, citing rampant fraud allegations largely attributed to the Somali community.
In a post on X, Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O'Neill wrote that "You have probably read the serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade," which resulted in the following:
1. I have activated our defend the spend system for all ACF payments. Starting today, all ACF payments across America will require a justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state.
2. Alex Adams and I have identified the individuals in @nickshirleyy 's excellent work. I have demanded from @GovTimWalz
a comprehensive audit of these centers. This includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations, and inspections.
3. We have launched a dedicated fraud-reporting hotline and email address at https://childcare.gov Whether you are a parent, provider, or member of the general public, we want to hear from you.
"Funds will be released only when states prove they are being spent legitimately," O'Neill said in a follow-up comment.
And just so you know how the MSM is playing it, CBS News writes:
CBS News conducted its own analysis of day care centers mentioned by Shirley. All but two have active licenses, according to state records, and all active locations were visited by state regulators within the last six months. The analysis found dozens of citations for safety, cleanliness and other issues, but no recorded evidence of fraud.
#1
...Until, of course, some Federal judge says otherwise.
On the other hand, I've believed for some time now that the President and his team are waiting for just the right stupid decision to tell said Federal judge to go jump in the lake.
[ABC] Tatiana Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, has died following a battle with terminal cancer.
"Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning," the JFK Library Foundation said in a statement on Tuesday. "She will always be in our hearts."
The 35-year-old environmental journalist revealed in an emotional essay in The New Yorker last month that she was diagnosed with a "rare mutation" of acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024 after giving birth to her second child.
She wrote in the essay, "During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe. My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me."
[US News] Two West African nations have issued a simultaneous ban on American citizens in a diplomatic tit-for-tat move, amidst heightened tensions with both the United States and Europe, and as Russia seeks to increase its economic and geopolitical influence in the region.
Mali and Burkina Faso made the move in response to the Trump administration's Dec. 16 expansion of travel restrictions to more than 20 countries. The policy particularly affected the African continent, with Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Niger, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan also being subject to travel restrictions.‘DEPART IMMEDIATELY': STATE DEPARTMENT WARNS AMERICANS AS AL QAEDA THREATENS TO OVERRUN AFRICAN NATION
The Trump administration cited the persistence of armed attacks in both nations as part of the rationale for its decision:
"According to the Department of State, terrorist organizations continue to plan and conduct terrorist activities throughout Burkina Faso. According to the Fiscal Year 2024, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Entry/Exit Overstay Report ("Overstay Report"), Burkina Faso had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 9.16 percent and a student (F), vocational (M), and exchange visitor (J) visa overstay rate of 22.95 percent. Additionally, Burkina Faso has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals."
Regarding its decision to include Mali on the list, it stated:
#1
Burkina Faso has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals."
I recommend using the Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS). Some of the early 'out of cycle' systems no longer used, could be taken out of warehouses at Bragg and put to excellent use.
#9
^While I'm hardly an expert, I've been trying to follow whats been going on in the Confederation of Sahel States (Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso), including watching Traore's infamous recent "Black Winter" Pan African speech on YouTube. You can't say the guy doesn't have charisma. Or lots of fans. (Mostly young and female. But what's a dictator in his prime to do?) Be Obama
Personally, I'm kind of torn on the matter. In theory, I would very much like to leave the Sahel completely alone. The French have been mucking about there for a couple of centuries, made a mess of it, and I don't blame the locals for wanting them and the West out of their business.
Unfortunately, I suspect their "business" includes the genocide of Christian minorities and the Tuareg. And the part none of the CSS states are saying out loud is that their real enemy is actually Nigeria, who - despite all of their failings - looks more and more likely to get a seat at the world's adult table this century. But countering Nigerian influence doesn't fit the Pan African narrative, so Traore doesn't say it out loud. Because politics is politics.
Side note: Weirdly, the Sahel has a flourishing underground rock scene of kids in vans playing gigs. Kind of like 70's garage rock with Arab and African influences.
#10
Traore's Black Winter speech. Note the one white guy in the audience. If he isn't an old school Russian diplomat I'll eat my hat.
Also, they dress snappy in the CSS; at least at formal meetings. I like it better than the Western informality we've seen too much of lately. Or traditional garb.
[NYP] Most Fed officials believe additional interest rate cuts are appropriate as long as inflation continues to cool, according to minutes from the Federal Reserve's meeting of Dec. 9 and 10.
Policymakers slashed interest rates earlier this month to a target range of 3.5% to 3.75% in a 9-3 vote – the most dissents since 2019 as officials debated whether to prioritize inflation fears or concerns around the labor market.
Fed Governor Stephen Miran dissented in favor of a more aggressive half-point cut, while Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid voted against the decision in favor of keeping rates on hold.
[ZERO] Starbucks is quietly shrinking its physical footprint in some of the nation’s largest cities, signaling a major shift for a brand that spent decades in near-constant expansion, according to WSMV. The company intends to eliminate about 400 US locations, with the heaviest impact in major metro areas. Closures are already underway — New York City alone has lost 42 stores.
Company leaders say the move reflects changing consumer patterns and a tougher business environment. Urban markets are saturated with competitors, foot traffic has not fully recovered as remote work remains common, and operating costs continue to climb. Going forward, Starbucks plans to concentrate on a smaller number of higher-performing locations and introduce new store formats beginning in 2026.
#1
1st a question.
Will the one in the CIA HQ in Langley be closing?
Also for what it's worth dept.
A growing number of Christians see the mythology siren symbol as a religious issue and avoid Starbucks.
Then there are those that have tried to tie the symbol with the image of Jesus and have the Islamics reading their association of the symbol to Jesus and avoiding it.
In My Case
I also see a ridiculously priced cup of coffee and a company that funds the wrong causes using their prices. ie. $$$$$ for GAZA Meals which we know ended up being used or pocketed by Hamas leadership.
The last cup I purchased was back around 2001 at the Atlanta Airport. I have had better Mess hall coffee.
#7
Lewis Black joked that the next step for them was to open up franchises in the bathrooms of their other franchises.
Starbucks had reached saturation and also might be cutting stores where there is union activity. It would all make sense if we coukd see the right pivot table.
I don't go there unless I am dring a thirsty daughter. Their logo is one of the issues that I have with them. We have a Dunkin in town so there is no reason to bother with them.
Starbucks is definitely not going away. Women are loyal to them. Women still buy stuff a Victoria's Secret even after Epstein. Women are mysterious to me.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/31/2025 11:25 Comments ||
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#8
I always thought McDonalds sells pretty good coffee.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/31/2025 12:50 Comments ||
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#9
I never thought about the logo. Now that I look closely, it looks like a mermaid doing what junior high school boys like to see. No need to be any more specific than that.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/31/2025 12:55 Comments ||
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#10
For perspective, one site (Scrapehero) says they have 17,000 locations in the USA.
From what one of my daughters (who no longer works there) tells me, retaliatory closing of union stores seems like a strong possibility.
First time I ever went to one was while looking for something cheap in Geneva (It was, relatively. Ironic.). Second time was to visit my daughter at work. That's it.
Posted by: James the lesser ||
12/31/2025 13:09 Comments ||
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#11
I'm with Abu. McDonalds does have good coffee for a chain restaurant (but that's about the only menu item tolerable there).
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/31/2025 14:20 Comments ||
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#12
the McDonalds partnership with Krispy Kreme ended a few months ago
sad
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/31/2025 16:22 Comments ||
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#13
I make all my own coffee in an aero press, excellent taste with a good generic preground and very flexible with flat white/ con leche/ espresso etc styles. Very affordable.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The bourbon buzz is fading fast.
Another American spirits maker has gone bust, adding to growing signs that the US whiskey and bourbon boom has sharply reversed.
Ohio-based AM Scott Distillery, which filed for bankruptcy on December 22, is the latest casualty in an industry struggling with falling demand at home and overseas.
The downturn has been worsened by a Canadian backlash against US tariffs that has specifically targeted American bourbon.
Founded in 2022 in Troy, Ohio, AM Scott produces gin, vodka and a range of bourbon and rye whiskeys. The company says it will continue operating while it restructures and cuts costs.
Its collapse comes just a week after Jim Beam, one of America’s most famous bourbon brands, announced it would halt production for at least a year at its historic distillery in Clermont, Kentucky — a rare retreat for a nearly 230-year-old name.
Together, the moves highlight a perfect storm battering the American whiskey industry.
For years, distillers raced to expand production, betting that demand for bourbon would keep climbing at home and abroad.
Instead, Americans are drinking less, younger consumers are turning away from booze, and exports have been battered by trade retaliation, with Canada leading the backlash.
Sales of American whiskey more than tripled between the early 2000s and the pandemic, fueled by cocktail culture and a lockdown-era buying frenzy.
Distilleries expanded aggressively, laying down millions of barrels that must age for years before they can be sold. But that gamble is catching up with them.
Kentucky alone now has 16 million barrels of bourbon aging in warehouses — more than triple what it was 15 years ago — just as Americans and others are buying less alcohol overall and retailers are sitting on excess stock.
Industry data show American spirits exports fell 9 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2025, with US whiskey hit especially hard.
The steepest drop came from Canada, once one of the industry’s most important markets, where exports collapsed by as much as 85 percent after trade tensions and retaliatory boycotts tied to policies under President Donald Trump.
Other major export markets are also buying less.
Shipments to the EU, the UK and Japan — which together account for the bulk of US spirits exports — have all fallen sharply this year, cutting off a key pressure valve for producers drowning in too much whiskey.
Americans are also changing how they drink.
Polls show people are consuming less alcohol than they have in decades, driven by health concerns, rising prices, and competition from alternatives like ready-to-drink beverages, cannabis products and weight-loss drugs.
Younger drinkers, especially Gen Z, are drinking less frequently and tending to buy higher-end bottles in smaller quantities.
That shift is particularly painful for brands like Jim Beam, which still rely heavily on high-volume, lower-priced staples such as its White Label bourbon.
The slowdown is not limited to Jim Beam. In recent months, Diageo paused distilling at its George Dickel facility in Tennessee.
Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel’s, announced layoffs affecting about 12 percent of its workforce.
Several smaller whiskey companies have entered receivership, and contract distillers say orders have fallen sharply as brands pull back.
In August, Luca Mariano Distillery in Danville, Kentucky, filed for bankruptcy under the weight of roughly $25 million in debt.
Earlier in the year, the $250 million Garrard County Distilling operation was shut down after it failed to pay its lenders.
And in late 2023, the historic Kentucky Owl brand, founded in 1879, also collapsed, blaming falling sales and a cyberattack that brought production to a halt.
Whiskey expert Fred Minnick said the move echoes previous boom-and-bust cycles the industry has seen before.
‘It’s a sad day for bourbon, to be honest with you,’ Minnick told the New York Times. ‘For this to happen is a real punch in the gut.’
#1
I could be wrong but it seems a lot of new whiskey brands, not just bourbons, but all kinds of new whiskey brands have come onto the market in the past several years. I wonder if increased competition makes things difficult for old timers like Jim Beam.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/31/2025 1:15 Comments ||
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#2
^ To me, Beam was best for a whiskey/coke. Most of the new stuff is meant neat or on rocks
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/31/2025 2:38 Comments ||
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#3
There are indeed a lot of new liquor brands and companies, Abu Uluque. Whiskey, bourbon, even moonshine. I think during Covid a lot of people thought about what their life dream was, and decided to go for it, or tried to turn a side hustle into a main gig.
Very much “If not now, when?” And after the expansion, the culling.
#4
One of the more unusual side effects of GLP-1 drugs is a total aversion for alcohol consumption. Some hard core alcoholics just up and quit. "Experts" have no explanation for this.
About 12% of current US adult population is currently taking a GLP-1 according to a recent poll.
#6
I'm definitely not responsible for the decline, but I only stock high class bourbon and American whiskey.
The quality is actually improving. Of course no ice will ever touch these.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
12/31/2025 6:38 Comments ||
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#7
I recall some distillers discovered they could make hand sanitizer for early covid.
Seems like a stretch, but I like to blame stuff on the covid frenzy.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/31/2025 8:50 Comments ||
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#8
At Beam, what is being barreled today will not sell before 2028. I understand that the Canadian tarrifs still have an impact. The cutbacks are probably based on longer term trends like people giving up booze and getting a taste for boutique labels. Beam has a market position similar to Budweiser before beer drinkers developed taste buds. Beam produces a quality product but they are recognizing a change in the market that they have likely watched for a decade.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/31/2025 11:09 Comments ||
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#9
Damn NN2N1 , who the fuck you trying to kill?
Posted by: chris ||
12/31/2025 11:18 Comments ||
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#10
Well, I never had any use for Canadian Club. I would say that, at least here in California, the Japanese are making some serious inroads with some very good whiskeys.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/31/2025 13:01 Comments ||
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#11
Interesting note on GLP-1 drugs and alcohol consumption. Is it a physical effect or is just mental -- ie if I'm giving up pizza and ice cream, why should I go for the empty calories in booze?
Posted by: Regular joe ||
12/31/2025 13:24 Comments ||
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#12
I've been on Ozempic since 14 July 2025. I was hoping to lose weight. First effect I noticed was 2 weeks later when my appetite just up and gone. I had to remind myself every few hours to eat something, anything to keep up my strength. I gave up nothing. I learned how easy it is to lose weight when you no longer get hungry. I strongly suspect something like that happens to alcoholics suddenly losing interest in booze when they take Ozempic or other GLP-1 drugs.
[SDUT] Actually sounds like a game-changer
"It's a new paradigm" for how people fight the flu, experts say
Inside a single-story brick building in Sorrento Mesa is a small lab sprinkled with beakers, test tubes and incubators that is worth billions of dollars.
This is where Cidara, a small San Diego pharmaceutical company, created what the scientific community has talked about for decades — a kind of universal flu shot that fights all forms of influenza.
The most recent clinical trial was so successful that pharmaceutical giant Merck recently announced it would buy the company for $9.2 billion. Just to keep it off the shelves. 'efficacy trials'
"It’ll be a new paradigm," said Dr. Robert Schooley, professor of infectious diseases at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. "It’s hard to see a blind spot on the basis of that phase 2b trial, and I understand why Merck was optimistic enough to purchase the whole company."
GOING VIRAL
For centuries, the human body has been playing cat and mouse with the flu.
Influenza mutates. The human immune system adapts.
Each year, the cycle begins anew in Asia, where novel strains first take hold. After a relatively quick study, Australian hospitals choose what they think is the strain of the season, like Vogue picks the color of the year. Those hospitals then create "this year’s vaccine," and the rest of the world follows.
While vaccines do aid in prevention, studies show that they only work 30% to 60% of the time for healthy individuals and even less for those over 65, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
But this new flu preventative isn’t a vaccine — it’s an entirely new antiviral drug class.
Cidara was founded on the concept of applying immunotherapy approaches to infectious disease, explained Dr. Jeff Stein, CEO and co-founder of Cidara.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND CD388
When a virus enters the body, it attaches to the cell, enters inside, multiplies hundreds of times, then "clips itself off the surface of the cell," to infect others, Schooley explains.
Cidara’s proprietary molecule, CD388 prevents the virus from "unclipping ... so the virus is no longer infectious," Schooley said.
Since the 1940s, vaccines have been the primary way people fight the flu. By introducing a weak or inactive virus, the immune system will recognize and learn to defend against those strains. So, the next time the body encounters that specific virus, it will "remember" how to fight it.
Unlike vaccines, CD388 works directly against every strain. By attacking a protein that is essential for replication, the molecule works against every influenza mutation, Stein explains.
In the latest phase 2b trial, 5,000 participants received varying doses of the drug. At the highest dose, the drug showed 76% efficacy —surpassing the 60% threshold for herd immunity. Moreover, the results proved to be extremely reliable. The study published its findings with a statistical significance of 0.0001.
"I’m not aware of anyone who is developing a similar modality," said Stein. "There could be competitors attempting to replicate in stealth mode, but they have to play catch-up."
CD388 probably won’t replace vaccines — at least not yet — explained Davey Smith, an infectious disease specialist and translational research virologist at UCSD.
"We have decades of experience with vaccines, studying how safe they are. We don’t have the same data for this particular drug. Can somebody get this year after year? What does that look like? All of those questions will come with time," Smith said. "We will see how it does in a bigger trial."
After the COVID vaccines, longitudinal data is critical.
Stein is equally as cautious. He knows that the FDA is stringent and success is slim — about 10% of drugs get FDA approval.
"You can always be surprised by a trial. It’s in Merck’s hands now," said Stein.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/31/2025 08:48 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1765 views]
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#1
I wonder how Smith and Stein felt about the safety and efficacy of the various COVID vaccines?
[BBC] It sounds like science fiction - a factory, located hundreds of kilometres above the Earth, churning out high-quality materials.
But a Cardiff-based company is a step closer to making this a reality.
Space Forge have sent a microwave-sized factory into orbit, and have demonstrated that its furnace can be switched on and reach temperatures of around 1,000C.
They plan to manufacture material for semiconductors, which can be used back on Earth in electronics in communications infrastructure, computing and transport.
#3
Current flu shots….100% worthless. Covid shots worse than worthless. I’ll keep my powder dry and let the “academics” experiment on themselves first.
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.
