“Somali pirates have hijacked an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, according to multiple Somali security officials that spoke with the BBC. The Yemeni coastguard earlier said the tanker MT Eureka had been hijacked and was headed towards Somalia. Sources said it was overrun by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, near the port of Qana. The pirates departed a remote coastal area near the seaside town of Qandala, which sits on the Gulf of Aden, according to three separate security officials from the semi-autonomous Puntland region who spoke with the BBC. It marks the second hijacking of an oil tanker in the area in a 10-day period, following the hijacking of Honor 25 by Somali pirates on April 22. Honor 25 was carrying 18,500 barrels of oil bound for Mogadishu.” (05/02/26)
“Two makers of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone asked the Supreme Court on Saturday to block an appellate court ruling that cut off mail-order access to the drug just a day earlier, in what was the biggest jolt to abortion policy in the U.S. since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Danco Laboratories asked the high court for an emergency pause on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, saying the appellate ruling ‘injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.’ GenBioPro, which makes a generic version of mifepristone, made a similar request.” [editor’s note: While this pill does work a bit further along than Plan B, it is useless if not taken in the early part of first trimester; it is not a late term procedure and should not be anyone’s business – SAT](05/02/26)
“May Day is for the workers. In some beautiful future, every worker will get May Day off. One day. But not yet. For now, it can also serve as a day when you remember the workers who are still working, and think about how you could make their lives better. On my way from Brooklyn to the May Day rally in Washington Square Park yesterday, I saw all the people working who make New York City work. The Mexican construction crew sitting in a line against a concrete wall on my block, covered in dust, taking a break from building the building across the street. The woman selling them lunches out of a big plastic cooler. The woman pulling hot metal trays out of the steam table at the restaurant on the corner.” (05/02/26)
“China tries to control exports of its rare earth minerals. The United States restricts certain exports of advanced computer chips. Even a few West African countries that dominate cocoa production often collude to control prices for the world’s chocolate-makers. Yet history teaches that a zero-sum mentality of resource manipulation or price-fixing among rivals often ends up pushing consumers to find creative ways to adjust. Cartels or monopolies then crack apart. The natural state of free competition in a market returns. And the notion that one can only get ahead if somebody else loses starts to recede. A good example of how mercantilism can melt away could be happening now. On Tuesday, one of the world’s top oil producers, the United Arab Emirates, announced it is quitting OPEC, along with the cartel’s stringent quota system among member states to rig global petroleum prices.” (04/29/26)
“That’s one way to cook the books. A former Chick-fil-A employee was arrested for stealing $80,000 with a mac & cheese scheme at a Texas restaurant, police say. Keyshun Jones was fired from the store in Grapevine, outside Dallas, last November, but authorities say he would repeatedly slip back in, enter food orders on the register, and refund them to his personal credit card, Fox 4 reported. Jones was taken into custody on April 17 after allegedly ringing up 800 orders of mac and cheese, according to the outlet. Investigators began investigating the fromage fraud after the restaurant reported hundreds of phony refunds. Security camera footage shows Jones behind the counter carrying out the bogus transactions, prosecutors say.” (04/29/26)
“A leading preoccupation of the first Trump administration has all but slipped from view. Except when ostensible conservatives speak out against it, the major media have scarcely breathed a word on the subject. But it’s still there, 30 feet tall, aspirationally 1,952 miles long, obliterating habitats, dividing families, and sucking down public funds faster than a carrier-based air squadron. The media’s lack of attention is understandable. All-too-real wars of choice and metaphorical wars against science, universities, and the environment have dominated our airtime and the headlines. The rise of a new medievalism in medicine and the abrogation of international trade and security agreements have also won attention. Add to all of that a federal paramilitary kidnapping people, even from what still passes for the halls of justice, while murdering the occasional protester, and one’s journalistic cup runneth over.” (04/30/26)
“The case against a West Virginia library worker charged earlier this year after allegedly posting a threat on social media pertaining to President Donald Trump has reportedly been dismissed. The prosecuting attorney in Jackson County lodged a motion to dismiss without prejudice on April 16, WOWK reported, noting that the filing indicates that the individual, Morgan Morrow, had not been appropriately Mirandized during interrogation. ‘The case has been dismissed. We believe Miss Morrow never should have been charged at all, and we’re glad this is over,’ the woman’s defense attorney, Mark Atkinson, noted, according to the outlet.” (04/30/26)
“As Dr. Anthony Fauci’s right-hand man, David Morens, was charged this week with conspiracy and destruction of federal records in the COVID-19 cover-up, another scandal over the vaccine was unfolding on Capitol Hill. According to a new Senate report and congressional testimony on Wednesday, Biden administration health officials deliberately ignored warning signs of possible serious reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine, including heart attacks, strokes, Bell’s palsy and sudden cardiac death. … when the FDA’s senior medical officer, Dr. Ana Szarfman, whose job was to monitor the vaccine data for warning signs, repeatedly raised the alarm throughout 2021, she was ignored, and emails show her colleagues tried to stop her from using a newer, more accurate statistical methodology to investigate the data.” (04/29/26)
“California regulators apologized to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk this week as they settled a lawsuit that claimed a state agency showed political bias against the rocket company and its chief executive. As part of the settlement, the California Coastal Commission acknowledged its members made ‘improper’ statements about Musk’s political beliefs at a 2024 hearing on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch program. ‘The commission agrees that it may not consider irrelevant factors in performing its function and specifically agrees that it will not take into account the perceived political beliefs, political speech or labor practices of SpaceX or its officers in considering any regulatory action concerning SpaceX,’ the commission said in federal court documents filed Tuesday. SpaceX had sued the commission over its opposition to expanding the launch schedule for Falcon 9 rockets from the Vandenberg Space Force Base on the Southern California coast near Santa Barbara.” (04/29/26)
“More than four months after Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin announced that he was breaking his promise to release its autopsy report on the 2024 election, the decision remains highly controversial. Arguments swirl around whether it’s wise to proceed without public scrutiny of what went wrong during the last presidential campaign. But scant attention has focused on how hiding the autopsy provides an assist to Kamala Harris, who currently leads in polling of Democrats for the party’s 2028 nomination. As Harris eyes another run, she has a major stake in the DNC continuing to keep the autopsy under wraps — and has a lot to lose if it reaches the light of day. She must feel gratified when Martin defends keeping the autopsy secret, saying that the party should not ‘relitigate’ the 2024 election and claiming that release of the 200-page document would result in ‘navel-gazing.'” (04/30/26)
