Are the Armed Forces of Ukraine ready to mount such a high-stakes operation and what challenges will they face? Talk about a counteroffensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has been doing the rounds for months, but it is still not clear when it might begin or whether it will happen at all. Previously, RT analyzed the readiness of the AFU for such an operation, but this time we will discuss the main challenges that may prevent Kiev's troops from implementing or developing its political leaderships aims. And, perhaps most importantly, those of its Western sponsors. What is the AFU's main challenge in mounting this sort of endeavor? We currently do not have any idea of where the AFU's counteroffensive could take place, although Russian military bosses will be well aware of troop movements. If it involves an attempt to breakthrough the front line, then in addition to preparing reserves for battle, the AFU will need high-precision weapons. Ukrainian troops will have to use...

Veteran New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a column last week called "Requiem for the Newsroom." In it, she bemoans how the newsroom, once a purpose-driven place of clattering typewriters and eccentric personalities, has been replaced by work-from-home isolationists. The "percussive soundtrack" of the old newsroom, the "louche glamour," is gone, she lamented. Dowd is partly right on this. As I recently wrote in the Washington Examiner, today's journalists are boring compared to the crazy and swashbuckling writers of the past. The digital revolution keeps everyone's hands clean in today's media. However, Dowd never addresses what is killing newsrooms every bit as much as technology and good manners: corruption. The media are made up of ideologues, and they have become too corrupt to be trusted.

Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich says the "beautiful story" of how the trucker protest brought Canadians together for a common cause was the inspiration for her new best-selling book, Hold the Line: My Story from the Heart of the Freedom Convoy. "Well, I think it's just such a beautiful story ... of community and a nation coming together. I get messages from people all the time ... People, they want to know how I'm doing, how I'm holding up. This was a way of saying, 'Hey I'm doing okay.'" Lich spoke to The Post Millennial Thursday in an exclusive interview.

We have provided numerous explanations (see here, and here) and videos (see here and here) explaining why a vaccine that is actually merely a placebo will inevitably appear to have high efficacy if there is a time delay after vaccination during which the participant is classified as 'unvaccinated'. Some people have claimed that the examples - using hypothetical data - are unrealistic and that, with different assumptions about the underlying infection rate, the illusion would not happen. Not true. This example simulates a vaccine roll-out and efficacy evaluation which is essentially how all the 2021 observational studies of the Covid vaccines were conducted.

Fentanyl is fueling the worst drug crisis in the history of the US. New federal data shows the rate of overdose deaths linked to the synthetic opioid has skyrocketed over the last five years. According to a report released early Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics' National Vital Statistics System, the rate of fentanyl-related overdose deaths jumped 279% between 2016 and 2021, rising from 5.7 per 100,000 to 21.6 per 100,000.

A judge has ruled that the man convicted of fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester in Austin, Texas, back in July 2020 won't get a new trial. The decision on Wednesday comes after Daniel Perry's defense team requested a new trial and Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced he would pardon Perry, an Army sergeant. Perry, who is white, was convicted of shooting and killing Garrett Foster, also white, after protesters reportedly surrounded Perry's car, and Foster, who was carrying an AK-47 across his chest, attempted to talk to him. A jury found Perry guilty in early April.

In remote southeast Oregon, about the only place to stop for a hundred miles is the Oasis Cafe in Juntura. Travelers come in for coffee and to warm up near the wood stove. Locals gather here too. Rancher Glenn Harris sits down with a couple of his neighbors for a hot burger. He's talking about what everyone's talking about right now: How this bitter spring has been devastating for newborn calves. "We had about two feet of snow at least on top of five or six inches of ice," Harris said. "Those calves are born and they just melt right down to that ice."

Deadly escalation an effort to provoke major Russian response. Former CIA intelligence officer Larry Johnson says the decision to launch a drone attack on the Kremlin was made by the United States. The Wednesday attack, which was likely to have been targeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, was stopped by electronic warfare systems which disabled the drones before they could reach their target. According to Johnson, the attack must have been spearheaded by the Biden administration and the US military-industrial complex because "decisions on such attacks are made not in Kiev, but in Washington."

Guatemalan authorities evacuated more than 1,000 people and closed a road as Central America's most active volcano erupted Thursday, spewing thick clouds of ash over farms and towns not far from the capital city. Civil protection official Oscar Cossio said 1,054 people had been evacuated from five communities near the foot of the volcano and moved to a sports hall for shelter. He said that number was likely to rise as a full accounting of the evacuees was carried out. Guatemala's Conred disaster center said the volcano named Fuego, Spanish for "fire," was sending out "pyroclastic flows" -- a high-temperature mix of gas, ash and rock fragments "which descend with great speed down the flanks of the volcanic complex."

A dog was put down after a baby was killed and a woman was seriously injured in Waterloo, Iowa. In a news release, Waterloo Police Department said officers were called out Thursday just after 7 a.m. about an animal attack at 1280 Scott Avenue. Once officers and Waterloo Fire Rescue arrived at the scene, they found two victims inside the house that had been bitten by a dog. Police said, according to KWWL, that the 49-year-old woman was airlifted to the hospital for serious injuries. A 9-month-old baby was pronounced dead at the scene, police say.

The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh reports the Tucker County town of Davis officially received 20.3 inches of snow during the first three days of May. The accumulation is an all time record for anywhere in West Virginia for snowfall in the month of May. "We had started to make the transition. The trees had budded, flowers were coming up, and people were cutting their grass last week. All of the traditional signs of spring were happening and all of a sudden we had three days of snow," said Davis Mayor Alan Tomson. It wasn't just three days of snow. It was three days of driving, pounding, wet snow which quickly started to pile up each night.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck Japan on Friday. Officials said there was no preliminary damage and no tsunami threat. The earthquake struck Ishikawa prefecture near the central-west coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu, according to the US Geological Survey's earthquake information center.

Astronomers say that similar to the demise of ZTF SLRN-2020, the Earth too will face the same fatal fate - however, the end won't be claiming civilization for another roughly 5 billion years. Newly published findings revealed the moment in which astronomers witnessed the stunning celestial act of a dying star being completely engulfed by a nearby planet thousands of light-years away. Officials spotted the cosmic act in May of 2020 during observations in the constellation Aquila, which sits about 12,000 light-years away. Researchers had been investigating stellar mergers when they came upon the find. "Planets with short orbital periods (roughly under 10 days) are common around stars like the sun. Stars expand as they evolve and thus we expect their close planetary companions to be engulfed, possibly powering luminous mass ejections from the host star," write the study authors, who are from MIT, Harvard University, and Caltech.

Earlier this month, Larry Kudlow insisted that it is "it's incumbent on the U.S. government, no matter who's in power, to maintain the reserve currency status of the dollar." Kudlow laments that a toppling of the dollar from that perch "seems to be the direction we're going in." Kudlow's remarks came a day after Donald Trump declared that China is trying to displace the U.S. Dollar [sic] as the NUMBER ONE CURRENCY" and that if this occurs, it would be the biggest defeat for our Country [sic] in its history." Neither Trump nor Kudlow actually explain why maintaining reserve currency status is so important. After all, it's clear that it is not necessary for a country's currency to be a reserve currency in order for that country to have a high standard of living and a high degree of economic freedom. We could simply look to Norway and Switzerland to see that.

"When honest people say what's true ... they become powerful.... That's the iron-law of the universe, the truth prevails." Tucker Carlson Can we stop pretending that Tucker Carlson was fired because of the Dominion lawsuit? That's a bunch of baloney. Carlson was fired because he used his prime-time platform to expose the crimes and illicit goings-on of the most powerful men, corporations and agencies in the world. That's why he was fired, because he revealed the truth about big pharma's toxic injections, Fauci's deranged lockdowns, Brandon's police-state surveillance, the expansive deep-state censorship program, CRT, BLM, ESG, George Floyd, drag-queen children's hour, the oddball cult of trangenderism, Ukraine's crummy dictator-president Zelensky and all the other pernicious inanities that are being used like a wrecking-ball on the nation's moral and historical foundation. Tucker exposed them all. That's why he was fired. It had nothing to do lawsuits or disgruntled employees...

As on several prior occasions, liberal Bundestag vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki has used his parliamentary prerogatives to put a question to the German Health Ministry, and compel an answer. He asked what study results the Ministry could cite to demonstrate the efficacy of face masks. Lauterbach's crack team of virus understanders responded that, uh, it is a very complicated problem, and, in truth, well, actually, nobody really knows what effect masks really have. This is because "the effectiveness of individual measures ... cannot be examined in isolation, but only in conjunction with the other measures in place at any given time." In other words: they got nothing. After years of making kids mask for hours on end in school, and imposing arbitrary but quite obnoxious mandates on airplanes and public transit and clinics, they have no idea whether it did anything, and no plans even to find out whether it did anything. Suddenly all that manic masking enthusiasm has just evaporated....

Zelensky may be the target of last night's drone attack against the Kremlin. Last week's telephone call between Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and China's President Xi Jinping was certainly one of the most significant events since the beginning of Russian military intervention in Ukraine. The call, as we now know, was initiated by President Zelensky, without consulting his handlers in the Biden administration or NATO. President Xi accepted the call but made the subtle point of conducting it through a Russian and not Ukrainian language interpreter. According to Chinese government readout of the conversation, Xi warned Zelensky not to support US policy on Taiwan, and offered to send a peace delegation to Kiev in order to help broker an end of hostilities in Ukraine. No cards left to play The significance of this call could be hard to overestimate, including the fact that Zelensky took the initiative without consulting his western sponsors. If he risked their wrath by calling...

Microbial DNA preserved in the teeth of ancient humans and Neanderthals has been used to reconstruct molecules produced by ancient bacteria. The approach could help us discover new antibiotics or other useful molecules in microbes that may have gone extinct thousands of years ago. The search for unknown microbes might normally send researchers to tropical islands or hydrothermal vents. Pierre Stallforth at Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany and his colleagues went hunting back in time. They looked to the microbial DNA preserved in the calcified tooth plaque from 34 ancient humans and 12 Neanderthals, including one that was 102,000 years old. The ancient DNA came fragmented in millions of short, often degraded, sequences. Assembling these into sufficiently complete genomes is a "multidimensional jigsaw puzzle", says Stallforth.

The U.S. approved the first vaccine for RSV on Wednesday, shots to protect older adults against a respiratory virus that's most notorious for attacking babies but endangers their grandparents, too. The Food and Drug Administration decision makes GSK's shot, called Arexvy, the first of several potential vaccines in the pipeline for RSV to be licensed anywhere. The move sets the stage for adults 60 and older to get vaccinated this fall but first, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must decide if every senior really needs RSV protection or only those considered at high risk from the respiratory syncytial virus. CDC's advisers will debate that question in June.

A Berlin court ruled on Thursday that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder does not have an automatic right to an office and staff in the German capital as a former chancellor. Schrder was challenging a decision last May by the Bundestag parliament's budgetary committee, which stripped the former chancellor of the priveleges. Schrder can still appeal Thursday's verdict, which may not be final. The court argued that only the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, could decide what it spent such money on, and that even if traditionally former German chancellors had received a small office and staff with seemingly no strings attached, as Schrder's legal team had argued, nowhere was this written into law.

A Russian delegation member who was attacked by a Ukrainian delegate at a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) in Ankara has been taken to the hospital as a precaution, the Russian embassy's spokesperson Irina Kasimova told TASS. "A Russian delegation member was attacked by a member of the Ukrainian delegation. Our staff member is currently at the hospital where he is being examined; he has also received consular assistance," she said. The embassy stated that it would "properly draw the Turkish authorities attention to this outrageous incident."

After months of calls, requests, and demands for her to resign, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is stepping down. Her resignation is effective June 1. Gardner, the city's first African American chief prosecutor, tweeted her resignation letter to city residents at 3:44 p.m. In the letter, she drew a connection to her presence in power and the Missouri Legislature's efforts to take over both the circuit attorney's office and turn control of the city's police force back over to the state. "It is not the first time the legislature has proposed bills that would take away our city's power that has happened in nearly every legislative session since I took office. It is also clear to me, however, that as long as I remain in the office, it will not be the last," Gardner said. "... I can absorb those attacks, and I have. But I can neither enable nor allow the outright disenfranchisement of the people of the City of St. Louis, nor can I allow these outsiders to effectively shut down...

Ukraine is denying Russian officials' claims that it attempted to carry out a drone attack on the Kremlin on Wednesday. The country's leaders say that they only see downsides to attempting such an attack, since it'd likely invite Russian escalation. "Russia is clearly preparing a large-scale terrorist attack." Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter this morning after videos of the claimed attack circulated on social media. "Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation," he asserted. "What for? This does not solve any military issue. But it gives [Russia] grounds to justify its attacks on civilians." Podolyak wrote that he believes the attack indicates "the guerrilla activities of local resistance forces."

A Frenchman has been arrested and fined after he plowed his car through a border checkpoint separating Poland from Russia's Kaliningrad Region. The man reportedly told security officers that he planned on building a new life outside the EU. The man pulled up at the Grzechotki checkpoint on Tuesday morning, but was turned away as he lacked the proper documents to leave Poland, Polish border officials said in a statement. The man turned back, but returned in the afternoon to the checkpoint, which separates northern Poland from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. This time, he accelerated and rammed his Citroen through the barrier, before stopping when border guards deployed a spike strip.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has confirmed that no women in fact have penises, in a political statement that will somehow manage to cause controversy. Britain's Conservative Party Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has confirmed in an interview his understanding that 100 per cent of women do not have penises, a statement that marks the latest chapter in one of the country's most bizarre political controversies in its centuries-long history. Despite how obvious many will find such an observation, such a view is not held by some on the country's increasingly sex-politics-obsessed left, with a Green Party member of Scotland's devolved parliament claiming instead that biological male rapists have the right to call themselves women while in prison. Speaking to the political news and opinion blog ConservativeHome, UK PM Sunak agreed with the point put to him that 100 per cent of women do not have penises.

A New York Supreme Court judge on Wednesday threw out the $100 million lawsuit brought by former President Donald Trump against The New York Times concerning a 2018 report on his taxes. Trump filed the lawsuit against the liberal paper, as well as his estranged niece, Mary Trump, in Sep. 2021, accusing them of "tortiously breaching and/or interfering with his contractual rights and otherwise maliciously conspiring against him" for the report on his taxes. Justice Robert R. Reed said in his ruling that Trump's claims against The Times "fail as a matter of constitutional law." He added that the Times' reporting was at "the very core of protected First Amendment activity."

'I spent over 50 years as a physician and educator at Penn Med. Now I'm using civil rights legislation to protect the profession and American patients.' For better or worse, I have had a front-row seat to the meltdown of twenty-first-century medicine. Many colleagues and I are alarmed at how the DEI agenda which promotes people and policies based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation rather than merit is undermining healthcare for all patients regardless of their status. Five years ago I was associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, and prior to that, codirector of its highly regarded kidney division. Around that time, Penn's vice dean for education started to advocate that we train medical students to be activists for "social justice." The university also implemented a new "pipeline program," allowing ten students a year from HBCUs (historically black colleges or universities) to attend its med school...

New York, beginning in 2026, will prohibit gas stoves and heating systems for new construction of buildings seven stories or less, according to reports. The Associated Press reported that a law negotiated between New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and fellow party members in the legislature is included in the state budget. The legislation also gives the Empire State a head start in the race among several states looking to pass similar bans they say are intended to reduce emissions from buildings. New York plans to phase in the elimination of fossil fuel heating devices in 2026, when newly constructed buildings must have electric-powered induction ranges and heat pumps. Buildings that already have gas elements will be grandfathered in under the new law. Hochul spoke to reporters on Tuesday just before legislators began voting on the budget.

The Biden administration is planning to temporarily deploy 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of an expected surge in migrants. The announcement comes as Title 42, a policy that allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the border and blocks them from seeking asylum, is set to expire May 11. A U.S. official told The Hill the troops would be deployed for 90 days to assist with work including ground-based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support, but they would not be doing law enforcement work. The troops are meant to station at the border until U.S. Customs and Border Protection can more adequately address its needs through contracted support, according to the official. DHS officials have predicted that attempts to cross the border could climb following the end of the policy, which was first implemented under the Trump administration.

Andrew Bridgen has been expelled from the Conservative Party after raising concerns about coronavirus vaccine harms. Mr. Bridgen was stripped of the Tory whip and forced to sit as an independent MP in January after tweeting that the Covid vaccines were the "biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust", a statement he attributed to an unnamed cardiologist and endorsed.

As the US continues its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, it also continues preparations for a similar conflict with China using the island province of Taiwan as its proxy of choice in Asia. Toward this end, the US continues flooding the island province with billions of dollars worth of weapons. One of the more recent announced weapon sales was 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles.

The agency relied on American cyber dominance to stir unrest across the globe, two Chinese internet security entities have claimed The CIA has been attempting to foment "color revolutions" around the world for decades using a technical, a report by two Chinese cybersecurity entities has claimed. The document was compiled by China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and cybersecurity company 360, and was released by the Global Times on Thursday. It alleges that Washington's tech advantage allowed it to hold sway over institutions and individuals across the globe that use US-made digital equipment or software. According to the report, the CIA has attempted to overthrow governments in at least 50 states, with the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, the 2014 'Sunflower Revolution' in Taiwan, and the 2009 'Green Revolution' in Iran allegedly among the most notable examples.

Doctors will be free to prescribe ivermectin 'off-label' from June 1st 2023, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) announced today. This is a reversal of a national ban on off-label prescribing of ivermectin, which the TGA enacted on September 10th 2021, in an attempt to prevent doctors from prescribing the drug to treat Covid. At the time, the TGA stated that the restriction was necessary because: People would be at risk if they took ivermectin instead of getting vaccinated;People who took ivermectin may choose not to get tested or to seek medical care if they had symptoms;Social media posts were promoting higher doses of ivermectin than what is normally recommended for approved uses;There had been a 3-4 fold uptake in ivermectin and the TGA was worried about a shortage disadvantaging vulnerable people who really needed the drug.

A total of 340 people were killed by lightning strikes in the country from April 2022 to May 3, 2023. Among them, 274 people, including 239 men and 35 women, died due to lightning strikes during the period from April to December last year. Save the Society and Thunderstorm Awareness Forum (SSTF) published the death toll during an awareness program involving 300 farmers on Thursday. The SSTF has been monitoring casualties from thunderstorms since 2019. Dr Kabirul Bashar, president of the organization, and General Secretary Rashim Mollah demanded steps from the government to reduce the number of deaths from lightning.

At least two persons were killed in sudden lightning near Sahar Gurujang village on Wednesday under Pallahara police station in Angul district. The victims have been identified as Dhaneswar Dehury (50) and Madan Mohan Sahoo (43) of Sahar Gurujang village. According to villagers, both of them had gone to the nearby field to work with the help of a machine when they were suddenly hit by a bolt of lightning. The unconscious duo was shifted to Pallahara hospital where they died. According to P Tuddu,the IIC of Pallahara police station, the two farmers were working in the field when they were hit by lightning. They passed away in hospital where they were taken in an unconscious state. The bodies have been sent for post mortem, he added.

In a 'business deal of the century' brokered by the Swiss government, Switzerland's largest bank and its financial pride and joy was acquired by its smaller rival USB for a meagre $3.2 billion. The current affairs sections of the leading news agencies have recently been populated by the breaking news that Credit Suisse had to be sold but to the lowest bidder this time or so it seems. Though this takeover deal, brokered in such a frantic haste over the course of just a few days by the Swiss government stands in silent testimony of this colossal collapse, there is a question hovering in mid air, why did Credit Suisse have to be sold so suddenly 'at such short (banking) notice', given that the giant bank has existed for 166 years with a superb banking tradition among other cutting-edge world banks? If we want to answer this question, we need to bear in mind that the bank at the moment of its acquisition had more than $100 billions in its assets so its financial balance was rather...

The FBI has a document detailing a 'criminal scheme' where Joe Biden gave a foreign national cash for access when he was vice president, Republicans said in a bombshell development in the investigation into the president's family. A whistleblower has come forward with stunning claims that a file 'includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme (involving Biden) was employed as well as its purpose', top GOP members of the House and Senate have said. Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., have now issued a subpoena to the FBI demanding the internal document be handed over. It is a significant update in the Republican 'influence-peddling' probe into the Biden family and come just hours after a report said prosecutors were close to deciding whether to criminally charge Hunter Biden in his tax and gun probes. The House Oversight Committee has accused multiple members of the Biden family - including Hunter and Hallie -...

The hospital had been used to house yellow fever patients before falling into disuse in 1900, then gradually slipping below the waterline in Dry Tortugas National Park off the coast of Florida. For more than 100 years, the sparkling turquoise waters of Dry Tortugas National Park in the Florida Keys have concealed a grim historical relic. Beneath the waves, archaeologists recently discovered the remains of a submerged 19th-century quarantine hospital and adjoining cemetery. According to a statement from the National Park Service, park staff, alongside members of the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center, the Southeast Archaeological Center, and a University of Miami graduate student, made the discovery while conducting a survey in August 2022.

Local parents Dave and Stacey Martin, who raised their daughter on Disney movies that glamorized rebelling against parents, are flabbergasted to see their teenage daughter now rebelling against her parents. "I just don't get it," said Dave Martin to reporters. "Every movie and song she listened to growing up featured positive messages about listening to her heart, and now she won't listen to me! It's so weird!" Sources say Dave's conflict with his daughter came to a head last night when she defied her father like Moana to sneak out of the house like Ariel, which led to her meeting a strange man just like Pocahontas, only to hang out with the wrong crowd and get gender-confused like Mulan. "What on earth could possibly be influencing her to behave so recklessly?" said Mr. Martin. At publishing time, the parents had addressed the situation by making their daughter stay home all weekend and do chores like Cinderella.

The U.S. Navy confirmed to Breitbart News on Wednesday that it used a drag queen influencer as one of its "digital ambassadors" to attempt to recruit "a wide range of potential candidates." The influencer is active-duty U.S. Navy Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, whose stage name is "Harpy Daniels." Kelley served as part of the Navy's pilot ambassador program from October 2022 to March 2023 and has openly performed as a drag queen for awhile, but garnered broader public attention this week after a video of him circulated on social media. Kelley announced in November 2022 in a video on his Instagram page that the Navy asked him to be their "first" "Navy Digital Ambassador."

Regional lender PacWest Bancorp has become the latest American bank to be caught up in the worst crisis in the sector since 2008. The bank has confirmed it is in talks with potential partners and investors about strategic options, following a 60% stock rout. Shares in the bank nosedived in after-hours US trading on Wednesday over reports the Los Angeles-based lender was mulling a sale. PacWest's shares were down as much as 48% in early trading on Thursday. "The bank has not experienced out-of-the-ordinary deposit flows following the sale of First Republic Bank and other news," PacWest stated on Wednesday. "Our cash and available liquidity remain solid and exceeded our uninsured deposits," it added. According to the lender, discussions with potential buyers and investors "are ongoing" and the company will continue "to evaluate all options to maximize shareholder value."

Regional lender PacWest Bancorp has become the latest American bank to be caught up in the worst crisis in the sector since 2008. The bank has confirmed it is in talks with potential partners and investors about strategic options, following a 60% stock rout. Shares in the bank nosedived in after-hours US trading on Wednesday over reports the Los Angeles-based lender was mulling a sale. PacWest's shares were down as much as 48% in early trading on Thursday. "The bank has not experienced out-of-the-ordinary deposit flows following the sale of First Republic Bank and other news," PacWest stated on Wednesday. "Our cash and available liquidity remain solid and exceeded our uninsured deposits," it added. According to the lender, discussions with potential buyers and investors "are ongoing" and the company will continue "to evaluate all options to maximize shareholder value."

Three bodies were found on Wednesday by security personnel in Nepal after six people went missing while picking a precious Himalayan herb meant for vitality, as avalanches struck two remote mountainous regions of the country, media reports said. Yarshagumba is a half herb and half insect, believed to have the power to increase vitality and sexual energy. The herb, also known as caterpillar fungus, is found in the high Himalayas. Security personnel found the bodies of two women and a man, who were among the five people who went missing on Tuesday in an avalanche which occurred in the mountainous area of the Darchula district, MyRepublica newspaper reported.

The calendar may show spring is halfway to summer, but it's still snowing in California. In the Sierra Nevada, the Heavenly ski resort at Lake Tahoe reported Wednesday that 15 inches of snow had fallen over 48 hours, burnishing the epic snowpack left by a relentlessly wet winter. Northwest of Tahoe, 5.5 inches was recorded over two days at the University of California, Berkeley, Central Sierra Snow Lab, raising its season total to 743 inches. "Another 2.6" of snow over the last 24 hours brings our 2-day total to 5.5" and our season total to 743," researchers at the lab tweeted. "As expected, we're still seeing melt but the rate has slowed due to the clouds and cooler temps." Strikingly, winter weather advisories were to take effect Wednesday night in Southern California mountain ranges. Forecasters predicted 4-8 inches of snow above 6,000 feet and local totals up to 14 inches.

Helping your mother make pancakes when you were three...riding your bike without training wheels...your first romantic kiss: How do we retain vivid memories of long-ago events? As described in a paper published online today in Neuron, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have found the explanation. "The ability to learn new information and store it for long periods is one of the brain's most remarkable features," said Robert H. Singer, Ph.D., co-corresponding author of the paper. "We've made a startling discovery in mice regarding the molecular basis for making those long-term memories." Dr. Singer is professor of cell biology and in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience, chair emeritus of anatomy & structural biology, and director of the Program in RNA Biology at Einstein.

The corruption engaged in by the Democratic Party leadership appears to be never-ending and no one is ever held accountable. A recent report described how Michael Morell, the former acting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, colluded with Antony Blinken, who was then a senior official in the 2020 Joe Biden presidential campaign, to prepare and find signatories to a letter to discredit those seeking to exploit the emerging Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which was threatening to do real damage to the Biden electoral prospects. Following in the footsteps of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, which sought to use fabricated information from the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump and some of his advisors, Blinken suggested that Morell promote the argument that the laptop story involved Russia and should be dismissed as little more than a disinformation operation ordered by President Vladimir Putin. At the time, there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Russia had had...

More than 6,500 rapes and sexual assaults have been recorded in hospitals in England and Wales, over nearly four years, with only 4.1% of suspects known to have been charged. A Women's Rights Network report, authored by University of Reading Professor of Criminology, Jo Phoenix, found that one in seven of these crimes occurred on hospital wards. Shocking crimes, including the rapes of several children under 13, have been disclosed by 35 police forces, responding to Freedom of Information requests sent to 43 forces across the U.K. Professor Phoenix said, "The figures are shocking and prove that NHS Trusts are failing in their duty to protect both patients and staff. Further, the fact that 95.9% of all reports were either no-further-actioned or not recorded is also truly appalling. Although there are no reasons given within the research for this alarmingly low figure, what is clear is that there appears to be ingrained inertia in dealing with this safeguarding and policing failure."

Twenty-one bodies have been exhumed in eastern Kenya in an investigation into a cult whose followers are believed to have starved themselves to death, police sources have said. On Saturday officials reported seven deaths in connection with the inquiry after the arrest of Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who reportedly told followers to starve themselves in order to "meet Jesus". "In total since yesterday, we have 21 bodies," a police source told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity, after exhumations in the Shakahola forest outside the coastal town of Malindi.

In 2021 I published an article titled 'The Fed's Catch-22 Taper Is A Weapon, Not A Policy Error' in which I outlined the deliberately engineered trap the Federal Reserve has created for the American economy. Specifically, I confronted the issue of strangled liquidity through increasing debt costs vs continued money printing and inflation. It's an issue that Jerome Powell warned about in 2012, years before he became Fed Chairman; the consequences of creating a stimulus dependent system and then abruptly cutting off the life support. As soon as he was installed as the head of the central bank he implemented the very policies he predicted would cause a crash. The result? We just saw the beginning of the end with the latest banking crisis involving companies like SVB, First Republic and Credit Suisse - It's not just US finances, but banks around the world that rely on liquidity injections from the Fed to stay afloat. The central bankers addicted the system to cheap easy debt and now...

America's military is the only branch of the federal Government that the American people respect, and "The military" is also the most respected of all institutions in America. The military is also the most corrupt part of the federal Government, and the only part of the federal government that's so corrupt that it has never been audited. Although the U.S. Congress recently required it to pass an audit i.e., to become approved by an independent team of auditors as to the completeness and honesty of its financial records the five audit-attempts that were then made all failed and had to be aborted, and no audit has yet been successfully completed on the most corrupt and publicly respected branch of the U.S. federal Government. Instead of the military getting less money in the federal budgets as a consequence of that, it still keeps getting not only increasing budgets but an increasing proportion of the Government's money. It gets rewarded as - if it weren't what it is. And what it...

Firefighters in Italy have carried out dozens of rescues and evacuations after flooding and landslides in areas of the Emilia Romagna region. On 03 May 2023, Vigili del Fuoco, the fire and rescue department in Italy, reported 400 interventions due to flooding and landslides in the Emilia Romagna region in the north of the country.

Update, 03 May 2023: Early on 03 May 2023 the Uganda Red Cross Society reported at least 6 people died after heavy rain triggered landslides in Kisoro District in Western Uganda Region. Five members of the same family died when a landslide struck their home in Biizi village in Murora Sub-County. Another person died in a separate incident in Gihuyaga village, also in Murora Sub-County. One person was injured and taken to hospital. Original report, 01 May 2023: Heavy rain had triggered flooding and landslides in 3 districts of Uganda since 24 April 2023. Homes have been destroyed and at least 6 people have died, with 3 others reported missing.

A whale has died after becoming stranded off the East Yorkshire coast. The 55ft (17m) long creature was confirmed dead off Bridlington's South Beach at around 18:00 BST on Tuesday, British Divers Marine Life Rescue told the BBC. It was believed to be a male fin whale, the world's second-largest animal after the blue whale. Bridlington's mayor Mike Heslop-Mullens had earlier urged people to keep away while efforts were made to save it.

President Joe Biden announced plans to lift the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for federal employees on Monday. The White House said the vaccination requirement would end for federal employees and contractors on May 11 when the national coronavirus emergency is also due to end. It also applies to international travelers. "While vaccination remains one of the most important tools in advancing the health and safety of employees and promoting the efficiency of workplaces, we are now in a different phase of our response when these measures are no longer necessary," the White House said.

We received 5 reports about a fireball seen over FL and GA on Wednesday, May 3rd 2023 around 09:40 UT. For this event, we received 2 videos.

Berlin will deal with its shortage of skilled workers by attracting more foreigners, Labor Minister Hubertus Heil told the FT. Germany will drastically ease entry and citizenship requirements for foreign workers in a bid to deal with serious shortages in its workforce, Labor Minister Hubertus Heil has told the Financial Times (FT) in an interview published on Tuesday. Berlin will develop one of "Europe's most modern immigration regimes," he said, referring to new immigration legislation expected to be passed by lawmakers this month.

The US Navy invited an active-duty drag queen to be a "Digital Ambassador" - as part of a recent drive "to attract the most talented and diverse workforce" and combat plunging recruitment. Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, who identifies as non-binary, was appointed as the first of five Navy Digital Ambassadors in a pilot program that ran from October to March. Kelley, whose stage name is Harpy Daniels, has shared their journey on TikTok and Instagram, where they described how they began performing onboard and became an "advocate" for people who "were oppressed for years in the service."

Dr. James Lindsay, author, cultural critic, mathematician, was asked to speak at Northwestern University by the campus-based chapter of Young America's Foundation, but that talk was condemned by university officials, who sent out an email condemning him for bringing "antithetical" views to the liberal, Chicago-area campus. YAF promotes conservative values and principles. The email sent by the office of the president said that while it is "vital" for universities to allow open debate, that discourse can also sometimes be "antithetical" to the values the university holds. "There's a clear dichotomy between the Woke and not-Woke students," Linsday told The Post Millennial.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says he could see 30% of back-office functions replaced by AI over 5 years. IBM Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna has revealed plans to pause hiring for about 7,800 positions that could be replaced by artificial intelligence systems over time, according to a Bloomberg news report published Monday. Krishna said that hiring in back-office functions like human resources will be suspended or slowed, affecting roughly 26,000 non-customer-facing roles. That will include not replacing current roles vacated by attrition. "I could easily see 30 percent of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period," Bloomberg quoted Krisha as saying in an interview.

Widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking a dozen cigarettes daily, costing the health industry billions of dollars annually, the U.S. surgeon general said Tuesday in declaring the latest public health epidemic. About half of U.S. adults say they've experienced loneliness, Dr. Vivek Murthy said in an 81-page report from his office. "We now know that loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience. It's like hunger or thirst. It's a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing," Murthy told The Associated Press in an interview. "Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that's not right. That's why I issued this advisory to pull back the curtain on a struggle that too many people are experiencing."

An initial study of dark energy with eROSITA X-Ray telescope indicates that it is uniformly distributed in space and time. When Edwin Hubble observed distant galaxies in the 1920s, he made the groundbreaking discovery that the universe is expanding. It was not until 1998, however, that scientists observing Type Ia supernovae further discovered that the universe is not just expanding but has begun a phase of accelerating expansion. "To explain this acceleration, we need a source," says Joseph Mohr, astrophysicist at LMU. "And we refer to this source as 'dark energy,' which provides a sort of 'anti-gravity' to speed up cosmic expansion." Scientifically, the existence of dark energy and cosmic acceleration are a surprise, and this indicates that our current understanding of physics is either incomplete or incorrect. The significance of the accelerating expansion was underscored in 2011 when its discoverers received the Nobel Prize in Physics. "Meanwhile, the nature of dark energy has...

Artifacts made of stone, bones or teeth provide important insights into the subsistence strategies of early humans, their behavior and culture. However, until now it has been difficult to attribute these artifacts to specific individuals, since burials and grave goods were very rare in the Paleolithic. This has limited the possibilities of drawing conclusions about, for example, division of labor or the social roles of individuals during this period. In order to directly link cultural objects to specific individuals and thus gain deeper insights into Paleolithic societies, an international, interdisciplinary research team, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, has developed a novel, non-destructive method for DNA isolation from bones and teeth. Although they are generally rarer than stone tools, the scientists focused specifically on artifacts made from skeletal elements, because these are more porous and are therefore more likely to retain DNA...

Treasury ministers appear to have broken government guidelines by failing to publish details of their department's spending for several months, and in some cases more than two years. Public records show the Treasury is the worst department in Whitehall for publishing key data on what its officials are spending public funds on, despite its role overseeing spending across government. The gaps add to concerns about high spending levels and low transparency at the Treasury, including during the period for which Rishi Sunak was chancellor. Earlier this year it emerged Sunak's Treasury had spent 3,000 on photographs to hang on the department's walls and 4,500 on rooms in Venice for a G20 meeting.

Sweden's parliament has been hit by a cyber attack that has disrupted access to its web page. The web page was partially down on Tuesday and appeared slow on Wednesday. "The analysis shows that it is a denial-of-service attack," a parliament spokesman said. "Right now the web page can be slow and it can be difficult to watch our web casts."

TWO girls have been seriously injured in a horror knife attack outside a primary school. The youngsters, age 7 and 8, were reportedly airlifted to hospital after the rampage outside the Protestant School Neukoelln in Berlin. One of the girls has been left with life-threatening injuries, while the other was said to be in a "serious" condition. A 39-year-old suspect was arrested at the scene, police said.

The attack against the Kremlin has been regarded by Moscow as a terrorist act and an attempt on the life of Vladimir Putin. In the early hours of May 3, two Ukrainian UAVs approached the Kremlin - an iconic landmark in the city of Moscow that serves as the official residence of the Russian president. The approaching drones were spotted by Russian security personnel on-site who immediately moved to intercept and neutralize the threat through the use of electronic warfare equipment. As a result, both UAVs were downed, their debris scattering on the Kremlin's premises. The Kremlin press service stated that no injuries or "material damage" were caused by this attack.

Should the actions of a handful of criminals be used as an excuse to take away the rights of millions of innocent people? Any reasonable person would say no, but when it comes to gun related violence the standards of logic tend to go out the window. There are many government officials that view each major shooting as a gift - They believe that tragedies are political capital, a tool for leveraging away our freedoms. In many cases of mass murder in the US the first inclination of the corporate media and the political left has been to rush to conclusions. They immediately blame conservative political motivations for the attacks, while also blaming our 2nd Amendment rights in general. If the shooter turns out to be anti-conservative or doesn't fit the racial mold, they simply stop reporting the story. The agenda is obvious - To paint conservative men as a dangerous monolith plaguing the rest of society. Why do they pursue this particular narrative, though? Perhaps because,...

Washington's poor decision-making is starting to catch up with it, as nations choose to pursue peace without American interference As Washington's influence in the Middle East declines, countries throughout the region are taking to compromise, rapprochement, and peace talks, inflicting a blow to the US narrative that seeks to depict its role as a stabilizer and democracy advocate. Under the leadership of US President Joe Biden, there has been a notable downgrade in the status of the West amongst various long-time Middle East allies. As the US-led West exerts the majority of its efforts on the war in Ukraine, its poor decision making in the Middle East has finally begun to catch up to it. The first major blow to Washington's influence came in the form of a Chinese-mediated agreement to end a decades-long feud between major regional actors Iran and Saudi Arabia, one which led to the severing of ties in 2016. This has a number of implications for US power in the region.

As Ukraine sells off public assets in a privatization spree, US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are in talks to run its oil and gas industry, and the IMF is imposing the Washington Consensus. As the war in Ukraine drags on, the government is selling off state assets in a big privatization spree. US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are participating in discussions to take over the Eastern European nation's oil and gas industry, as Kiev pushes to increase production to replace Russian energy exports. This comes soon after Ukraine's Western-backed leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, sent a friendly video message to a US corporate lobby group, thanking companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, and promising "big business" for others. In September, Zelensky also symbolically opened the New York Stock Exchange, announcing that his country is "open for business", offering more than $400 billion in...

The new subpoenas are part of the House Republican majority's broader investigations into the alleged 'weaponization' of the federal government against conservatives. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed three government agencies on Friday as part of a Republican-led investigation into allegations of censorship. The subpoenas were sent to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA); and James P. Rubin, Special Envoy and Coordinator for the State Department's Global Engagement Center. Jordan, R-Ohio, is requesting they provide his committee with communications between their agencies and private companies and third-party groups to determine if the agencies "coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies in order to censor speech," Jordan wrote in letters announcing the subpoenas.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made one of the biggest campaign promises yet and that's he will pardon whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange if he's elected as President. In his latest tweet, Kennedy expressed that the United States doesn't celebrate free speech but rather persecutes journalists and whistleblowers. Kennedy tweeted "Instead of championing free speech, the U.S. actively persecutes journalists and whistleblowers. I'll pardon brave truth-tellers like Julian Assange and investigate the corruption and crimes they exposed."

Polish Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Glinski has lamented the fact that there is still a "threat" that relations between Russia and EU countries could return to the way they were before the current rift. He blasted opposition parties in Poland, as well as "half of Europe," for harboring hopes of improving ties with Moscow. Speaking to the Kurier Lubelski news outlet, Glinski was asked if he believed that Warsaw was "in danger" of returning to "naive" politics when, for example, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was invited to meet with Polish ambassadors in Warsaw in 2010 in an effort to improve bilateral relations. "Unfortunately, the threat of a return to these relationships still exists," he replied. Glinski claimed that the government's "political rivals" as well as their voters are "hostage to interest groups that only think about ending the war in Ukraine as soon as possible and continue to be a client of Russia and do business with it," adding that "half of Europe is like...

Sweden has significant reasons to reconsider its EU membership as the bloc is increasing its influence on member states' internal affairs, particularly immigration policies, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Akesson, has argued. Writing for the Aftonbladet daily in an op-ed published on Tuesday, Akesson claimed that "EU membership is starting to look dangerously like a straitjacket" for Sweden as the balance of power shifts from Stockholm to Brussels. Akesson has been in charge of the Euroskeptic, right-wing Sweden Democrats (SD) since 2005. The party is currently the second largest in the country. The MP said that the EU should focus on trade between member states, although he claimed it would be naive to hope for any serious changes in this area in the near future.

Britain only has 22 hours' worth of ammunition, a former senior army officer has told Sky News Britain's military would run out of ammunition within 22 hours of combat in the event of a war, retired General Rupert Jones has told Sky News. Previous estimates have put the number even lower. Speaking to Jones on Wednesday morning, Sky News presenter Kay Burley said that she had been told "our entire supply of ammunition here in the UK could be used up in something like 22 hours, if there was a war like we've seen in Ukraine." "Yes," Jones confirmed. "The UK and many of our allies are woefully underprepared, and we need to commit far more money into these sorts of ammunition stocks." "It also tells you the huge amounts of ammunition that are being expended in Ukraine," he added, citing figures from a British think tank that put Kiev's consumption of artillery shells at between 4,000 and 7,000 per day, and Russia's at 20,000.

Nordstrom is planning to close both of its Downtown San Francisco stores, choosing not to renew its lease obligations at its location in the Westfield Mall. It will also close a second nearby Downtown Nordstrom Rack. The retailer confirmed the closures on Tuesday. In an email to employees, the company's chief stores officer wrote that "the dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years, impacting customer foot traffic to our stores and our ability to operate successfully." The two planned closures represent about 357,500 square feet of retail space, according to the San Francisco Business Times, which first reported Nordstrom's plans. The Westfield mall Nordstrom and the Nordstrom Rack will close at the end of August and on July 1, respectively.

The Treasury Department warned lawmakers on Monday that without congressional action to lift or suspend the debt limit, the country will be unable to pay its obligations as soon as June 1. In a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged Congress to resolve the current brinkmanship over the federal borrowing limit, warning that waiting until the last minute could have adverse impacts on the economy and the nation's credit rating. Yellen had previously warned Congress in January that the United States had reached its $31.4 trillion debt limit and that the Treasury Department would take "extraordinary measures" to buy time for Congress to act. Since then, the agency has collected the tax filings of millions of Americans, allowing the Treasury to better predict when it will be unable to pay its bills.