The United States cancelled a joint amphibious landing drill scheduled for next month with South Korea, Seoul's Marine Corps said on Monday ... read more
After Republicans in Congress let enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans expire in January, millions of Americans including Button had to decide whether to keep insurance that often doubled or tripled in cost -- or risk going without it. ... Florida, whose large population of gig workers, entrepreneurs and small business owners relies heavily on the federal health insurance marketplace, has become one of the nation's most visible epicenters of that impact.
About a month after alleging Nevada had as many as 16,000 non-citizens on its voter rolls, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials admitted they had confirmed that only 185 were actually non-citizens, according to records obtained by the Guardian. read more
Shipments are still far below exports before the war, when about 20 million bpd of crude oil and products passed through Hormuz. read more
Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-Alaska) was endorsed by former Anchorage Mayor Dan A. Sullivan (R) last Tuesday as he prepares to face off against Dan J. Sullivan and Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) in November.
From NYC ...
NYPD reveals new details after people seen leaving sewer system near Penn Station
abc7ny.com
... The NYPD is investigating after three people were caught on camera climbing out of a manhole near Penn Station wearing overalls and headlamps last week.
Detectives believe many of the underground scavengers caught on camera are migrants searching for anything of value in the sewer system.
No arrests have been made in the most recent incident near Penn Station, but detectives have identified or caught up with the men involved in other cases. They were either charged with low-level crimes that were dismissed because they are first-time offenders or their prosecutions were declined altogether, detectives say.
The NYPD says it's looking into the video, which shows a group of people climbing out of the sewer on Seventh Avenue by 32nd Street last Tuesday at 4 a.m.
Police say they are looking for three people in the August 18 incident. Police are reviewing recovered surveillance video.
Detectives learned of a scavenger culture in places like Venezuela, which saw a surge of nationals into the city during the immigration crisis, beginning in 2022.
Inspections following recent incidents found no threat to the infrastructure.
City officials stress that sneaking into manholes is "both illegal and extremely dangerous."
"DEP works closely with our public safety partners to help ensure the safety and security of critical infrastructure throughout New York City. Entering the sewer system is both illegal and extremely dangerous. Sewers can contain numerous hazards, including noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks, and confined spaces. For these reasons, members of the public should never enter a pipe, drain, catch basin, manhole, or outfall," a DEP spokesperson said.
Matt McCann is a construction worker in the area and he says he's seen the underground trespassers before.
"I don't know what the hell they're doing down there because they get the waders on. You know, they got their coal miners caps going on," McCann said.
New York City's sewer system is made up of an elaborate and winding network of 7,400 miles of wastewater and stormwater pipes constructed in the 1800s. ...
Canadians broadly behind Carney's U.S. trade stance: polls
www.cbc.ca
... New polling shows some 76 per cent of Canadians support Prime Minister Mark Carney's decision to break off U.S. trade talks and to fight fire with fire on the tariff front. Other recent polling shows most Canadians no longer trust the United States. ...
Trump denies US pushed Canada on French language
www.politico.com
... President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning denied that the White House had sought to interfere with the French language spoken in Quebec, as the two countries trade jabs over who is at fault for the trade war. ...
Carney on Saturday lamented what he called "threats to the French language" and "the Quebec culture," telling reporters in French that they were "unacceptable" and helped spell "the end of this phase of the negotiations."
But the president rejected those claims, posting on Truth Social: "I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French!"
"In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing," he posted. ...
yeah... but....
What Pres Trump is denying was not PM Carney said.
PM Carney said nothing about Canadians speaking French.
From what I have heard reported, what Pres Trump apparently added to the negotiations (and at the last minute, so to speak) was for goods sold in the Quebec province to reduce or eliminate the need for labels to have French on them.
Who are Ontario's top trade partners?
www.funwithdata.ca
... Ontario imported $460 billion of goods and services in 2024 of which more than half ($243 billion) were from the United States. Motor vehicles and parts were the top products coming into Ontario from its largest trade partner followed by consumer goods. ...
Related ...
RFK Jr. may upend how vaccine recommendations are categorized
arstechnica.com
... Under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US health department is considering changing how vaccine recommendations are categorized and described.
The move creates the possibility that vaccinations currently considered "routine" or "universal" could be given new designations that sound less definitive or more conditional, such as "recommended with qualification" or recommended based on "shared clinical decision-making."
Kennedy has made no new rules or recommendations for the categories yet. ...
Related ...
Trump threatens to change Lake Ontario's name to "Lake America" amid trade fight with Canada
www.cbsnews.com
Soooo..., instead of using HOMES to designate the Great Lakes, if Pres Trump gets his way, we will be using SHAME to designate the Great Lakes?
Ex-FDA workers warn Trump cuts will increase risk of food safety lapses in US (January 2026)
www.theguardian.com
... Sweeping cuts and the "politicization of science" inside the Food and Drug Administration have increased the risk of safety lapses across the US, former agency workers warned.
Less than a year after Donald Trump returned to power, and his administration oversaw the firing and resignation of thousands of FDA employees, a listeria outbreak that killed six people and sickened 27 across 18 states due to contamination of prepared pasta meals underlined the danger posed by safety failings.
"Those kinds of things are going to keep coming," said David Harbourt, a former veterinary safety manager at the FDA, who was fired last year. The agency's work "has been compromised for at a minimum, the short term, hopefully not the long term", he claimed. "But it's those aspects of American people's lives that we almost take for granted that are going to be affected in a very negative way in the coming years."
About 19,700 employees worked at the agency before Trump officials introduced waves of firings, voluntary retirement and resignation programs. Thousands subsequently left, although some workers were later rehired.
"I am concerned that by letting go so many people, by offering early retirement, it's like that kids' game Jenga where you pile up all these wooden pieces," said Sandra Eskin, CEO of Stop Foodborne Illness, a non-profit, and former deputy under secretary for food safety at the US Department of Agriculture. "And if you pull one out from the bottom or even the middle, the whole thing falls apart. ...
Weren't some of the cuts in Pres Trump's bill delayed until after the mid-terms due to their unpopulatiry?
OK, found this ...
The Republicans Are Going to Kill People -- but Not Until After They Vote
newrepublic.com
... Now comes the biggest problem. When the Republican Congress enacted Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill in July 2025, it included massive cuts in the Medicaid program, totaling around $1 trillion over 10 years"but made sure to postpone them until 2027, conveniently after the midterm elections.
The cuts focused on adding onerous work and paperwork requirements, all designed to force recipients off the rolls, and will remove somewhere between 10 and 15 million people from the program, leaving them without any health coverage. That is in addition to the millions losing coverage or facing huge premium increases with the erasure of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
But the impact will go far beyond those directly losing their health insurance. Medicaid money does not go to Medicaid recipients. It goes to the providers. The loss of a major chunk of the money going out to them will have big reverberations.
The American health care system, unlike in most advanced countries, was jerry-built, a combination of public and private entities, and state and federal involvement. But the public and private are not separate. They are like the organs in the human body"if one declines or fails, it has huge impact on the others. And these cuts are going to reverberate in many catastrophic ways. ...
U.S. Appeals Court Strikes Down North Carolina's Voter ID Law (2016)
www.npr.org
...The appeals court noted that the North Carolina Legislature "requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices" -- then, data in hand, "enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans."[emphasis mine]
The changes to the voting process "target African Americans with almost surgical precision," the circuit court wrote, and "impose cures for problems that did not exist."
The appeals court suggested that the motivation was fundamentally political -- a Republican legislature attempting to secure its power by blocking votes from a population likely to vote for Democrats....
@#2
Along those lines ...
OpenAI 'temporarily slows' scaling efforts, also promises zero data retention for select frontier model customers
www.computerworld.com
... Analysts said the moves may be nothing more than positioning the company for its IPO, but that both changes are welcome news nonetheless. ...
Meanwhile...
From #1