“The Rev. Al Sharpton’s staff and advisers stood around him just outside the doors of a cozy theater, where some of his most fervent supporters waited to greet him in the newly renovated headquarters of the National Action Network. When doors flung open, Sharpton entered to a standing ovation that continued until he was perched behind a lectern, on a stage decorated with a floor-to-ceiling video screen. The audience was not anticipating a call for justice. Instead, the rabble-rousing youth minister turned go-to national advocate was there to declare his organization was officially an owner, no longer a renter, in the historically [b]lack Harlem neighborhood it has called home for more than two decades. ‘I want to make something permanent,’ Sharpton said recently to the gathered crowd of NAN board members, local clergy and other allies. ‘When people see that you’ve bought a building, they say, ‘Wait a minute, they’re not going nowhere.’’ (06/23/26)
“America’s most powerful central banker and an apostle of freedom and free enterprise, Alan Greenspan, passed away at age 100 early this morning. May he rest in peace. He served as Federal Reserve chairman between 1987 and 2006. Nearly 20 years. He was a great man. And a friend and mentor to myself and many other conservative economists. And during his period as Federal Reserve chairman, he prosperously piloted our economy through 3.2 percent annualized real GDP growth per year and an average of 2.5 percent inflation, even as he successfully navigated us through a number of crises. Meanwhile, job creation boomed during his tenure, stock markets soared, real incomes rose. Greenspan was at heart an old-fashioned conservative business economist with a strong belief in limited government, lower taxes, and minimal regulation.” (06/23/26)
“Oracle shed about 21,000 roles globally in the last year as the US technology giant reshapes its business around artificial intelligence (AI), the firm’s latest annual report shows. The software and cloud computing firm says it had around 141,000 full-time employees as of 31 May 2026, down from about 162,000 workers at the same time last year. The ‘deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce’, the report says. The cuts, which amount to about 13% of Oracle’s workforce, are part of a wider trend among tech firms as they spend hundreds of billions of dollars on building AI infrastructure like data centres. Amazon and Facebook-owner Meta have cut thousands of job in recent months as they invest heavily in AI.” (06/23/26)
“Newly elected British lawmaker Andy Burnham met the man he hopes to replace, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, on Tuesday as he prepares for a leadership contest in which he may be the only contender. Burnham is the strong front-runner to succeed Starmer, who announced Monday that he would step down within weeks after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public. Burnham, a former Cabinet minister who served since 2017 as mayor of Greater Manchester, won a special election last week for a seat in Parliament with the express aim of challenging Starmer for leadership of the Labour Party and the country. Burnham’s chances got a big boost on Monday when former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who was considered his main rival, announced his support.” (06/23/26)
“Donald Trump’s Iran deal (or perhaps we should say ‘capitulation?’) is a fiasco for the United States and Trump’s presidency, but it is widely viewed as a catastrophe for Israel. The more Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu tries to undermine the deal by mounting attacks on southern Lebanon, the more he enrages Trump, who keeps pointing out that the U.S. is Israel’s only ally in the world. Israel is now more isolated than ever. Israel was deliberately excluded from negotiations with Iran, because Israel was known to oppose any deal that would shorten the war. Nonetheless, in the deal the U.S. bound Israel to cease attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Recent polls conducted in Israel show that some 92 percent of Israelis believe that Iran won the war. Comparable majorities say Netanyahu’s launching of the war was a calamitous mistake and achieved none of its objectives.” (06/23/26)
“What makes J.D. Vance tick? Most Americans, whether or not they’ve read J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, have some idea of his remarkable journey from poverty in Middletown, Ohio, to the vice presidency of the United States. In some ways it’s the Horatio Alger tale to beat all Horatio Alger tales. A gambler who knew James David Hamel (as he was then known) as a child would have given million to one odds against his attending Yale Law School, making a ton of money in tech investing, and then becoming a United States senator and vice president of the United States. But that’s exactly what he went on to do …. Another thing he managed to do before age 41: publish two memoirs. His second, released last week, is called Communion, and traces Vance’s decision, as an adult, to be received into the Catholic Church.” (06/21/26)
“Japan has implemented a five-fold increase to visa fees for all foreigners, marking the first price hike in nearly 50 years. From 1 July, single-entry visa fees will be raised from the current 3,000 yen ($18.69; £14) to 15,000 yen, while multi-entry visas will now cost 30,000 yen, up from 6,000 yen. The visa fee revisions – the first since 1978 – were made to ‘reflect inflation and exchange rate fluctuations,’ Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters on Friday. ‘We do not anticipate that it will have an immediate impact on inbound tourism,’ he added. The Japanese yen has been weakening continually since 2021, and is now hovering near historic 40-year lows. This, along with a post-pandemic travel rebound, has led to a surge in tourists to Japan. The country welcomed a record 42.7m international tourists last year.” (06/22/26)
“If news reports are accurate, by the time you read this, Keir Starmer may no longer be the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Depending on the source, he has either decided to resign or is seriously considering it. In any case, the events in Britain over the last few weeks—the murder, enabled by the police, of Henry Nowak by the Sikh Vickrum Digwa; the attempted beheading of a man in Belfast by a Muslim immigrant; the release of a report on the systematic and protracted rape of young women and girls by Muslim ‘grooming gangs;’ the subsequent (and understandable) renewal of unrest over largely unchecked immigration; and the government’s increased efforts to limit and control speech—have likely doomed Starmer and the Labour Party, making it impossible for them to maintain or regain the trust of the people. None of this should really surprise anyone.” (06/22/26)
“Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire and meant it. He didn’t hedge, qualify, or wait for a focus group. He built the military, stationed Pershing missiles in Europe over fierce opposition, and helped accelerate the collapse of a system that had enslaved hundreds of millions. On American movie screens, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Sylvester Stallone played men who took responsibility, absorbed punishment, and didn’t apologize for their convictions. That wasn’t mere entertainment. It was a cultural argument, and it was winning. I arrived in California in 1990. The economy was thriving, the Republican Party was still competitive, and the state had a future worth arguing about. Thirty-five years of one-party rule later, California’s own Department of Finance confirms a net domestic loss of 216,000 residents in the year ending July 2025 alone — dead last in U-Haul’s outbound migration index for the sixth consecutive year.” (06/22/26)
“At least 13 people have been killed and 66 injured after an explosion at Qatar’s largest gas facility. The city’s main liquified natural gas (LNG) processing site suffered ‘a technical accident’ in Ras Laffan industrial zone on Sunday night, the interior ministry said, with the city’s skyline turning orange because of the explosion. Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said the explosion would not affect the country’s exports, adding ‘this was an accident and not sabotage or hostile in nature’. The Ras Laffan Port is the largest artificial harbour in the world and has the world’s largest LNG export facility. It was targeted by Iranian strikes earlier this year. The blast on Sunday rattled windows and was felt across central Doha, panicking residents more than 70km (43 miles) from Ras Laffan.” (06/22/26)
