[FoxNews] Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson referred to the takeovers as 'teen trends' and called them 'unsafe'
Hundreds of young people filled the streets and sidewalks in Chicago last week in what Mayor Brandon Johnson is calling "teen trends" that he warned can turn deadly.
Video, obtained by Fox News from ChitownCrimeChasers, showed the teens filling streets and sidewalks on March 30, clustering around parked vehicles and moving through intersections.
That sounds an awful lot like what used to be called wilding when it was mobs of violent minority teens attacking bystanders in Central Park in the late 1980s and earlyish 1990s..
Other footage from that night captured different individuals dancing and socializing in the city's streets, while other moments showed people climbing on cars and brief altercations within the crowd.
In Hyde Park, residents say the March 30 takeover lasted for hours late into the night.
One resident, Jason Hale, said his car was among roughly 30 affected by crowds in Chicago that night.
"Yeah, it’s bad. The hood is messed up, terrible. A thousand worth of damage, dents everywhere, footprints everywhere," Hale told FOX 32 Chicago.
Video shows groups of teens standing and moving on top of parked vehicles as crowds formed around them.
Chicago police confirmed to the local outlet that three curfew violations were issued in connection with the gathering. A 16-year-old girl was also charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and disorderly conduct.
Teen takeover triggers chaos in Chicago Loop before curfew orderVideo
City officials and police have described these gatherings, which are often organized through social media, as part of a broader, growing trend across Chicago.
Recent events have drawn large crowds to neighborhoods including downtown and Hyde Park, with activity ranging from social gatherings to more chaotic crowd movement.
Johnson released a public service announcement telling parents to not let their kids attend the increasingly popular "teen trends across the city."
"We're currently tracking five. That's right. Five teen trends across the city this weekend," the mayor said in an April 3 message. "I'm calling on all parents. Check in with your children. See where they plan to be this weekend. Please, do not allow your child to attend any of these trends this weekend."
"They're unsafe, and they can turn deadly. Our police officers will be out enforcing the city's 10 p.m. curfew," he said.
[DM] A powerful explosion near a major bridge close to the Panama Canal has left one person dead and multiple people injured.
The fuel tanker blast caused apocalyptic scenes, with passengers on a bus crossing the Bridge of the Americas coming close to being engulfed by the fireball and clouds of smoke.
Passengers could be seen getting up from their seats and moving quickly away from the windows as the flames and black smoke appeared to close in on them just after 4pm yesterday.
The man killed is believed to be an employee at a complex where tanker trucks are supplied with fuel.
Firefighters took three hours to put out the blaze and make the area safe.
A spokesman for Panama's Fire Brigade Service confirmed: 'Unfortunately, a person has died, possibly a collaborator of the company, who was trapped at the time when the fire and subsequent explosion of tanker vehicles occurred.
He said two of the people injured were civilians and the other two firefighters who were 'out of danger.'
More than 70 firefighters and 45 emergency response vehicles were sent to the scene in an initial mobilisation.
According to Bomberos Panama, the inferno, caused by the explosion of multiple tanker trucks, 'spread quickly following the initial detonation, generating multiple explosions and a dense column of smoke that covered the area, while vehicles traveling down the road were left in the middle of the emergency.'
The Ministry of Public Works announced the temporary closure of the bridge following the fire.
'This preventive measure is taken with the aim of ensuring the safety of the drivers, while the specialised technical teams carry out the relevant pathological technical inspection to verify the structural conditions of the bridge,' the ministry said.
'The crossing will remain closed until it is confirmed that traffic is completely safe and technical results are provided to support it.'
The Bridge of the Americas, completed in 1962 at a cost of £15.2million, was closed after the incident so officials could check for structural damage.
Unconfirmed local reports said the explosion occurred when workers were transferring fuel to a tank.
#1
The bridge was built over the tankfarm. Not optimal, but the amount of workable shoreline in the canal is limited, what with it being a canal and all.
Tanker ships tie up there, and offload to the tank farm, were it is then loaded into tanker trucks for distribution. You know, like gas stations.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
04/07/2026 13:35 Comments ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
04/07/2026 13:37 Comments ||
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#3
Shred without comment:
The base assumption here has to be gray zone warfare. This could have shut down the Panama Canal, which would make it difficult for the US to export oil & gas to Asia, during a time of very short supplies. It would have compounded the problems with the Strait of Hormuz. 1/ https://t.co/2rc6xjtEaq
[ZERO] On a Tuesday night in a dorm room, a student opens TikTok for a "five-minute break."
The first clip is a montage of rubble and sirens.
The second is a professor-style explainer, neatly captioned, delivering a single moral conclusion.
The third is a shaky phone video of a confrontation on another campus—shouts, police lights, a crowd surging like weather.
The student doesn’t search for any of it.
They don’t even follow the accounts.
The feed arrives already confident about what matters.
This is the political technology of our moment: the system that decides—thousands of times a day—what you see next.
THE INFLUENCE STACK
For most of the past century, influence meant broadcasting. You bought a newspaper, aired a radio spot, printed leaflets, argued in the town square. Feedback was slow, indirect, and expensive.
Today, influence runs on a different stack. It is microtargeting—figuring out which slice of the population to target. It is recommender distribution—determining what to place in front of the target group and in what sequence. It is measurement of effects—watch time, rewatches, scroll-hesitation, comments, shares. And it is iteration—rapidly adjusting what works and discarding what doesn’t.
Once those pieces lock together, persuasion stops looking like a party debate. It takes on the appearance of a thermostat: sense the room, nudge the temperature, sense again.
[LAist] Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach is a big sports fan, so there was no question that when tickets for the Olympic Games went on sale, she'd be signing up.
She scored a slot in the first ticket drop, which launched Thursday, and logged on right at 10 a.m., hoping to score tickets to the Opening Ceremonies and some finals too. After battling her computer to get through "access denied" screens and a lost shopping cart due to a 30-minute time limit, she bought 16 tickets.
It was only when she was about to purchase that she noticed the service fees, which were around 24% of each ticket. One $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.
"It's insane," she said of the fee. "I don't understand what the service is."
#7
Are they buying the tickets directly from the Olympic committee or is this going through Ticket Master? It sounds like Ticket Master to me.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/07/2026 11:32 Comments ||
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#8
Yeah, trying to log on at 10 a.m. while everybody else is also trying to log on. Then the servers, which are undoubtedly Microsoft and buggy under the best conditions, are unable to cope with the volume. I've been there, done that, with Ticket Master. Makes me wanna go to the box office and stand in line. And you know the fix is in. Apart from the service fee, you know the best tickets are going to the people who either have the big money or the right connections or both...or else the criminals who buy in bulk and then scalp the tickets for really big money. Good thing I'm not really interested in the Olympics anyway but there have been some concerts I would have liked to see.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/07/2026 11:43 Comments ||
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#9
Just cancel the service fee, and raise the price of the tickets to $100,000 each. Price is worth it, since this is California, after all.
#10
I call this the stupidity charge. If you're stupid enough to go along with this, ...
Posted by: ed in texas ||
04/07/2026 13:38 Comments ||
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#11
Totally unrelated to "gouging."
Post-disaster consumer screams, "REEEEEE!
Rising prices can't happen to MEEEEEE!"
So his Snowball in Hell
(Sacramento) sez, "Well...
"Public service [we: "Fecklessness!"] fee?"
An interesting response to this story from two days ago.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A Chinese researcher at the University of Michigan took his own life after being subjected to 'hostile questioning' by federal agents, it is claimed.
Danhao Wang,
…in our archives spelt Danho Wang…
an assistant research scientist in the school's College of Engineering, died on March 20 after falling to his death on campus.
Police said they are investigating his death as a 'possible act of self-harm', with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs claiming he took his own life after 'hostile questioning'.
A statement, which did not name Wang, said that the postdoctoral scholar died by suicide 'after being subjected to hostile questioning by US law enforcement'.
It added: '[This] calls into question once again the impact and legitimacy of unwarranted US interrogation and harassment targeting Chinese researchers and students.'
The statement also called on America to conduct a 'full investigation' and to provide Chinese authorities and Wang's family with a 'responsible explanation'.
Police said that an individual was found inside the atrium in the UM George G Brown Building in Ann Arbor on March 19 and was later pronounced dead.
Karen Thole, College of Engineering Dean, identified the researcher as Wang in an email to the entire college, seen by MLive.
In it, she said: 'Dr Wang was a promising and brilliant young mind, whose research into wide bandgap III-nitride semiconductor materials and devices published in Nature stands as a landmark, uncovering for the first time the switching and charge compensation mechanisms of emerging ferroelectric nitrides.
'His loss is felt deeply not only by those who knew him here at the University, but also [by] everyone who understands his potential to have contributed to breakthroughs in science that would have positively impacted people around the world.
'This is an active police investigation and we have no further information to share regarding the circumstances surrounding his death.
'In the age of AI and misinformation in unfortunate situations like these, incorrect information can spread quickly, and we must let the investigators complete their work and refrain from speculation until the facts are known and made available.'
After his death, a university workers' union advised all of its members not to speak to federal authorities.
According to a research profile for Wang, he previously worked for the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province.
In a post on X, the Consulate General of China in Chicago added: 'The incident occurred at a US university within our consular jurisdiction, and we are deeply saddened by the heartbreaking death.
'China solemnly calls on the US to carry out a full investigation, give the family of the victim and the Chinese side a responsible explanation, stop any discriminatory law enforcement targeting Chinese students and scholars in the US, and stop imposing wrongful convictions.'
His death came just days after the University of Michigan's interim president Domenico Grasso appeared before a House Committee on Education and Workforce.
He appeared to address concerns that Chinese espionage was being carried out within American universities.
Grasso told lawmakers that international students were crucial to the school and referred to the continued need for partnerships between the university and foreign nations.
In a statement, he added: 'We stand committed to protecting the interests and security of the United States.
'This commitment is illustrated by our decision to end a relationship with a university in China that is seen as a potential threat to America’s interests.
'We made this decision after discussions with this Committee and the House Select Committee on the CCP.'
#4
He was involved in interesting science, but not the kind of science that the Feds are gonna take you out if you dont cooperate. I could be wrong, but i dont think so.
Cool: Ferroelectrics allow non‑volatile memory to be built directly into the transistor.
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.
