“Italian police have arrested a Ukrainian man suspected of coordinating the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines, Germany’s prosecutor general said on Thursday, adding that he would be brought before a German judge after being transferred. Seen by both Russia and the West as an act of sabotage, no one has ever taken responsibility for explosions that severely damaged pipelines carrying gas from Russia to Europe in September 2022, marking a major escalation in the Ukraine conflict and ramping up an energy supply crisis on the continent. The suspect, identified only as Serhii K. under German privacy laws, was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the German island of Bornholm in September 2022, a statement from the prosecutor’s office said.” (08/21/25)
“Individual doctors are better positioned than ‘experts’ a thousand miles away to evaluate their patients, their patients’ needs, and their patients’ risk levels, and offer their best advice on whether to undergo any medical procedure. And individual patients — or, in the case of children, their parents/guardians — are the ones entitled by right to weigh the benefits and risks, seek advice or not, and make the decisions. When a vaccine is administered, it’s injected into the patient’s body, not RFK’s body or the AAP’s body. Does the phrase ‘my body, my choice’ ring any bells?” (08/21/25)
“A classified Israeli military database shows the vast majority of Palestinians killed in Gaza are civilians, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call. Figures reviewed by the outlets revealed on Thursday indicate that, as of May 2025 – 19 months into Israel’s war on Gaza – Israeli military intelligence had listed 8,900 fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as confirmed or ‘probably’ dead. Over the same period, Gaza’s health authorities recorded at least 53,000 deaths from Israeli attacks, meaning that named fighters accounted for just 17 percent of those killed, with civilians at about about 83 percent of the total death toll. Conflict researchers say that ratio is almost unparalleled in modern warfare. Only the Rwandan genocide, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, and Russia’s 2022 siege of Mariupol recorded a higher civilian death rate, the authors noted.” (08/21/25)
“Easily one of the worst and most cynical plays in modern politics is the practice of ‘nutpicking.’ Partisans will treat the loopy utterance of some random member of the other team as broadly representative of the entire movement, thereby seeking to discredit it (and its saner and stronger players) and to reassure their comrades that everyone on the other side is a whackadoodle freak not worth engaging. … the nutpickers have found their way into the tariff debate, as fans of the president’s trade policies — including the vice president himself — have seized on a few recent events to declare victory over all ‘the economists’ who, blinded by ideology and ivory tower groupthink, confidently predicted this spring that the tariffs would usher in economic doom for the country. The victory dance, however, is proving not just cynical and myopic but alarmingly premature.” (08/21/25)
The former top aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams ran lucrative and audacious bribery schemes out of City Hall — selling off her help as a public official four different times to people willing to shower her with money or gifts, according to a series of indictments unsealed Thursday. Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the former chief adviser to the mayor, is accused by a grand jury of helping friends secure lucrative city contracts and expediting their regulatory issues with city government in exchange for cash payments to her son, lavish karaoke parties, free home renovations, nearly $10,000 worth of seafood for city events and even a guest appearance on the TV show ‘Godfather of Harlem.’ Lewis-Martin … ‘overrode other City officials’ expertise and decision making to ensure that certain required actions were accomplished for the benefit of her co-conspirators,’ prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office wrote in a sweeping and detail-rich summary of the indictments.” (08/21/25)
“A troubling new piece of legislation continues to make its way through the British parliament. Dubbed the ‘Banter Bill,’ the Employment Rights Bill would criminalize any speech that might be considered offensive by any passerby. As Dominic Green reports for The Free Press, under this proposed law, ‘Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting.’ Under this standard, whether a certain sentiment (for instance, that Britain should reduce immigration) is legal will now depend on whether someone in the vicinity takes offense. Unfortunately, this new subjective standard for what types of speech are allowed isn’t restricted to Great Britain. In the United States, more and more states are experimenting with a similar system.” (08/21/25)
“A federal judge in Miami late on Thursday ordered the closure of the Trump administration’s notorious ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ [concentration camp] within 60 days, and ruled that no more detainees were to be brought to the facility while it was being wound down. The shock ruling by district court judge Kathleen Williams builds on a temporary restraining order she issued two weeks ago halting further construction work at the remote tented camp, which has attracted waves of criticism for harsh conditions, abuse of detainees and denial of due process as they await deportation. In her 82-page order, published in the US district court’s southern district of Florida on Friday, Williams determined the facility was causing severe and irreparable damage to the fragile Florida Everglades.” (08/21/25)
“Until recently, economists — or at least development economists — assumed that birthrates were too high. While they rarely argued for this anti-natal premise, economists’ cost-benefit analyses routinely put ‘fewer births’ on the benefit side of the ledger. Since education, especially female education, seems to strongly reduce fertility, economists standardly named lower fertility as a major social benefit of education, especially female education. … Over the last decade, happily, economists have at long last largely abandoned their casual anti-natalism. Some top economists are now curiously talking about how to raise birthrates. Their tone, however, remains pessimistic …” (08/21/25)
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two redistricting bills into law on Thursday after the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature passed them earlier in the day. The legislation is in direct response to Texas’ Republican-controlled House passing a new congressional map at the urging of President Trump, and the consequences of both could prove pivotal in the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election.” (08/21/25)
