The wrestling star, who also alternated among the personas of Mankind, Dude Love and Cactus Jack, said, "I no longer wish to represent a company that coddles a man so seemingly void of compassion." read more
The U.S. Coast Guard has allowed a new workplace harassment policy to take effect that downgrades the definition of swastikas and nooses from overt hate symbols to "potentially divisive" despite an uproar over the new language that forced the service's top officer to direct that both would remain prohibited.
Donald Trump could be forced to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth if he goes ahead with his $10billion lawsuit against the BBC. Lawyers for the broadcaster are said to be considering launching an aggressive defence. And they could make the US president face questions about his actions during the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021. A source close to the case told the Mirror: "The moment Trump filed this case, he opened the door. He thinks he can attack the BBC for $10bn. But he could expose himself to questioning that could finally pin down what he did, what he knew and when."
The commander of the arm of the U.S. military responsible for President Donald Trump's illegal military occupations of American cities said he is willing to conduct attacks on so-called designated terrorist organizations within the U.S. This startling admission comes after months of extrajudicial killings of alleged members or affiliates of DTOs in the waters near Venezuela, which experts and lawmakers say are outright murders.
In public, the White House says it is confronting Venezuela to curb drug trafficking. Behind the scenes, gaining access to the country's vast oil reserves is a priority. read more
NPR did a good piece on this this morning. www.npr.org
"Two to three hundred thousand people die every year, that we know of, so we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction," Trump said.
In fact, Trump's numbers are wildly inflated. According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl killed roughly 48 thousand people in the U-S last year - a 27 percent drop from the year before.
Experts also say fentanyl would be difficult to use as a weapon of mass destruction. There is only one documented incident worldwide, in 2002, where the Russian government weaponized fentanyl in gas form. There have been no cases reported in the U.S.
"It is not evident that there is any basis or need for, or net benefit to, officially designating fentanyl compounds as weapons of mass destruction," concluded a 2019 report by the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the National Defense University.
Jeffrey Singer, a physician and an expert on street drugs at the Cato Institute, said people are dying from fentanyl in the U.S. because of widespread opioid addiction, not because cartels are deliberately weaponizing the drug.
"I don't know how you can equate smugglers meeting market demand and selling something illegal to someone who wants to buy it as an act of war," Singer said.
Most drug policy experts also say designating fentanyl as a WMD isn't likely to cut the supply of drugs on American streets or slow US overdose deaths.
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"Whatever actions are taken in the Caribbean have no effect on fentanyl," she said. Cartels operating in the Caribbean region are heavily involved in cocaine trafficking, Felbab-Brown said, but much of that illegal product goes to countries other than the United States.
Others shared the view that the military strikes are likely to be ineffective and could even be counter-productive.
"All we're doing is making the cartels come up with more potent and powerful forms of drugs to smuggle," said Singer, at the Cato Institute.
His fear is that more cartels will shift drug production away from cocaine - a risky but far less lethal street drug " and will pivot to dealing deadlier synthetic substances such as fentanyl, methamphetamines and nitazenes that can be produced and smuggled more easily.
"The added risk makes it necessary for them to do that," Singer said.
