Dec. 30 (UPI) -- A federal judge ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials can access Medicaid data to find immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
By law, undocumented immigrants can't access Medicaid benefits, though some states have state-funded plans for everIn July, 20 states filed a lawsuit challenging the policy of the Department of Health and Human Services allowing the Department of Homeland Security "unfettered access" to Medicaid health data.
The states are asking the court to declare that HHS's transfer of Medicaid data to DHS is unauthorized and block its use for the purposes of immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria partly denied the states' request for a preliminary injunction on Monday. He said "basic biographical, location, and contact information" is legal. But he left the injunction in place for any medical information.yone.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] A powerful M7.1 solar flare occurred on the Sun. The Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported this on its website on December 31.
According to the report, the flare's power was approximately 70% of the highest X-class threshold, and its peak was recorded at 4:51 PM Moscow time. Scientists assigned this flare the second-to-highest power class (M), making it the most powerful in the past three weeks. Eight other normal solar flares (class C) also occurred on the same day.
However, experts believe the likelihood of magnetic storms and bright auroras on New Year's Eve itself is low due to the significant distance of the active regions of the Sun from the Sun-Earth line.
[FoxNews] China will begin charging a 13% value-added tax on contraceptives starting Jan. 1 while exempting childcare services from the same tax, a move authorities say is part of a broader effort to boost births as the country faces a sustained population decline, according to the BBC and The Associated Press.
The tax overhaul, announced late last year, removes exemptions that had been in place since 1994, when China was still enforcing its decades-long one-child policy.
Alongside the new tax on contraceptives such as condoms and birth control pills, the Chinese government is exempting childcare, marriage-related services and elderly care from the value-added tax (VAT), the BBC reported.
Beijing has been pressing young people to marry and have children as it grapples with an aging population and a sluggish economy. Official figures show China’s population has shrunk for three consecutive years with about 9.54 million babies born in 2024.
That figure is roughly half the number of births recorded a decade earlier, when China began easing limits on family size, according to national statistics cited by the BBC and the AP.
China’s population pressures have been mounting for years. Births fell from about 14.7 million in 2019 to roughly 9.5 million in 2024. In 2023, India officially overtook China as the world’s most populous country.
The new tax on contraceptives has drawn ridicule and concern inside China. On social media, some users joked about stockpiling condoms before prices rise, while others argued that the cost of contraception is insignificant compared with the expense of raising a child, the BBC reported.
"I have one child, and I don’t want any more," Daniel Luo, a 36-year-old resident of Henan province, told the BBC. He said the price increase would not change his family plans, comparing it to small hikes in subway fares that do not alter daily behavior.
Health experts echoed those concerns in interviews with the AP, warning that higher prices could reduce access to contraception and contribute to more unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. China recorded more than 670,000 cases of syphilis and over 100,000 cases of gonorrhea in 2024, according to data from the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration.
China has also reported some of the highest abortion numbers in the world. Between 2014 and 2021, authorities recorded between 9 million and 10 million abortions annually, according to the National Health Commission. China stopped publishing abortion data in 2022.
Demographers and policy analysts remain skeptical that taxing contraceptives will meaningfully raise birth rates. Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told the BBC the idea that higher condom prices would influence fertility decisions amounts to overthinking the policy.
Value-added tax revenue, which totaled close to $1 trillion last year, accounts for about 40% of China’s tax collection, according to figures cited by the BBC.
Henrietta Levin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) described the move as symbolic, reflecting Beijing’s attempt to lift what she called strikingly low fertility numbers. She also cautioned that many incentives and subsidies depend on provincial governments that are already heavily indebted, raising questions about whether they can fund the measures adequately.
Public health experts interviewed by the AP said the policy could disproportionately affect women, who shoulder most responsibility for birth control in China. Research released by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2022 found condoms are used by about 9% of couples, while 44.2% rely on intrauterine devices and 30.5% on female sterilization. Male sterilization accounts for 4.7%.
Some women say the tax revives resentment toward the government’s long history of involvement in reproductive decisions. The Communist Party enforced the one-child policy from roughly 1980 until 2015 through fines, penalties and, in some cases, forced abortions, according to the AP. Children born outside the policy were sometimes denied household registration, effectively rendering them non-citizens.
Concerns about further state intrusion have also surfaced in recent months. The BBC reported that women in some provinces have received calls from local officials asking about menstrual cycles and pregnancy plans. A health bureau in Yunnan province said the information was needed to identify expectant mothers, a move critics say risks alienating the very families Beijing hopes to encourage. bb
#1
One child policy was intended to reduce their population.
It's working!
There are, what, a billion some Chinese?
Waaaay too many. They aren't much bigger than we are. And most of us is Alaska.
#2
If the CCP is planning an Invasion or WW-III they will need more bodies.
Military Age numbers are only 9% of the population.
male 504,637,819,
female 476,146,909
But Note: due to the once needed 1 child act, BEFORE the USA started using the CCP to supply everything. The population is now top-heavy in military age MALES.
BTW:
Back in 12-2024, the CCP started a crack-down on military age persons to register for the Mandatory Military Draft Registration.
#3
Starbucks is awful no matter where in the world they are. They don't even sell cofffee, try to order some.
Americano is not coffee, it's an espresso diluted with hot water.
#4
I was shitting on Starbucks before they even got to NO, and stepped it up from from there. ["Charred sardine roast, hardy har har."] However...
To Herb a barista of Safi
Replies, "Anti-anti-salafi,
If you're speaking for you,
That is not strictly true!"
[Starbucks carte offering "Freshly Brewed Coffee"]
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — The Trump administration has told another coal-fired power facility to remain open, this time ordering the owners of a Colorado electricity generating unit to keep it running beyond its Wednesday retirement date.
Compliance will cost Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and the other owners of the Craig Station power plant in northwestern Colorado. The plant owners will need to fix a broken valve that put the power plant's 446-megawatt Unit 1 out of operation on Dec. 19, Tri-State said in a statement.
The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright follows recent Department of Energy moves to keep coal-fired power stations open in Indiana, Washington state and Michigan despite efforts by their owners to close them.
It's part of President Donald Trump's push to revive the U.S. coal industry at a time when many utilities are shifting to cheaper, less-polluting energy sources such as natural gas and renewables. The administration, meanwhile, has blocked renewable energy, including wind power.
[Montgomery Advertiser] An apparel manufacturing plant in Alabama will be shutting down its operations just after Christmas, leaving hundreds of Alabamians laid off.
Renfro Brands, a company that designs and manufactures socks, legwear and other apparel, internally announced to its workforce that their operations at their Fort Payne, Alabama, plant — which specifically handles knitting and finishing operations — will be closing by the end of the year.
The Fort Payne location's 455 employees will be laid off following the closure.
A spokesperson for the company said that all of the company's manufacturing endeavors will be consolidated in Cleveland, Tennessee, over the "next several months" for efficiency purposes.
[NYP] Around 40 revelers were killed and another 100 injured, most of them seriously, after an explosion ripped through a packed bar in a Swiss Alps resort town during a New Year's celebration, officials said.
The deadly blaze erupted around 1:30 a.m. at the bar "Le Constellation" in the ritzy ski resort town of Crans-Montana in the Valais Canton.
While the cause of the fire remains unclear, it appears to have been an accident. So was Great White's. Doors locked?
#1
Wife said 'narrow stairway and narrow door at the top.'
We don't like crowds.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/01/2026 11:10 Comments ||
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#2
[NYP] Witnesses believe the explosion was triggered by sparklers being held too close to the ceiling, which set the roof on fire, according to reports.
“At the moment we are considering this a fire and we are not considering the possibility of an attack,” prosecutor Beatrice Pilloud stressed at a press conference, adding that authorities had opened a full investigation
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/01/2026 11:39 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Sparklers are lame … and evidently deadly
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/01/2026 12:45 Comments ||
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#4
Shades of the Grove. November 28, 1942. Slow day at Treblinka, looks like... roughly a thousand Bialystokers? Gotta love perspective.
isn’t playing over a controversial billionaire tax plan that’s seen some of California’s richest people packing their bags.
Thiel Capital, the PayPal co-founder’s investment firm, is opening a new office in Miami as reports surface that he is especially peeved about the 5% wealth tax that could hit him with a $1.2 billion bill, according to a Wednesday press release.
The firm signed a new lease this month in the Wynwood area of Miami, per the release.
"Mr. Thiel has established a significant presence in Miami over the last several years, maintaining a personal residence in the city since 2020," the firm announced. "Founders Fund, the venture capital firm cofounded by Mr. Thiel and of which he serves as a partner, has maintained an office in Miami since February 2021."
Thiel, who owns a home in the Hollywood Hills, is among the ultra-wealthy Californians taking steps to change their residences in the event the billionaire tax is approved by voters.
#2
And the billionaires who aren't leaving have battalions of lawyers and financial advisors working on ways to avoid the tax. This reminds me of the 2000 California energy crisis -- California enacted a peachy new electricity supply system but in a totally unexpected development the energy suppliers actually read the rules and gamed them for massive profits.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/01/2026 8:34 Comments ||
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#3
The South African-ization of California continues apace.
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.
To everyone...
