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"SFPD used DNA analysis to determine that 'Jane Doe' was Lanier and closed the case after 53 years, bringing closure to her family."

EU Prepares For 'Potential' Talks With Putin As US Slowly Reduces Troops On Continent

A recent report in Financial Times indicates the European Union is preparing for "potential" future talks with Russia and President Vladimir Putin at a moment of extreme doubts over both US military commitments and Russia's intentions in Ukraine.

Putin himself during his V-Day speech Saturday hinted for the first time that the conflict may be 'coming to an end':

"I ⁠⁠think that the matter is coming to an end," Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

The Russian leader, however, added he would be willing to meet Zelensky only after the terms of a peace agreement had already been settled. The Kremlin had rejected US President Donald Trump’s August 2025 offer to hold a trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump.

"This should be the final point, not the negotiations themselves," Putin said after the Victory Day, which marks Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 in World War II.

Sputnik/Reuters

Also on Saturday, António Costa, the president of the European Council, said to a press conference the EU will only talk to Putin at the "right moment". Costa ultimately sees "potential" for direct EU engagement with Putin

"We need in the right moment to have talks with Russia to address our common issues with security," the EU president had said.

"We don’t want to disturb the initiative led by President Trump," said Costa at a ‘Europe Day’ celebration in Brussels. He also spoke of preparations aimed at being "ready to do what we need to do” regarding Europe’s security.

And separately an EU official said: "There will be a moment when the EU will need to speak to Russia because it’s an existential issue for Europe. Now it’s not the time."

President Trump has recently blasted NATO as a "paper tiger" (though it wasn't the first time) and has said the US is withdrawing 5,000 American troops from Germany.

In response, European governments have accelerated discussions on deeper EU military coordination, including joint defense initiatives which bypass US protection.

Currently, the three-day Ukraine ceasefire announced and backed by President Trump appears to have held throughout the weekend, as no drone attacks have been registered on Moscow or other parts of the country. 

Trump had presented this as a window and opportunity to achieve a more permanent truce, and Putin is without doubt seizing on the initiative, but surely wants a final settlement in line with Kremlin aims in Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 02:45

Is The Socialist-Islamist Alliance Finally Over?

Via Remix News,

Khalid Al-Hail is a defector from the Qatari ruling establishment, the president of the Qatar National Democratic Party, and the country’s most prominent opposition spokesman. Now living in exile in the United Kingdom, he is a successful international businessman and the leading advocate for democratic reform in Qatar, known for exposing the regime’s state-backed influence operations and media manipulation abroad.

I can’t believe how petty this sounds, but I really think western socialists are frightened that the fall of the Ayatollahs will split their vote base. Why on earth else would people whose hearts bled for Palestine be back out in the streets supporting a regime which has matched the death toll of Gaza in just a few months? The clue is in the prevailing ideology of the Western intelligentsia. The signs have been visible for years.

In 2022, a socialist political network within the European Union became embroiled in the so called ‘Qatargate’ scandal, involving cash bribes to close down debate about Qatar’s Human Rights abuses.

As Qatar’s democratic opposition in political exile, I was encouraged by a recent campaign to call the European Union’s attention to this and other abuses of Qatar’s governance in the West. Billboards decried the Al Jazeera Propaganda network, the human rights violations of Qatar’s indentured foreign workforce and Qatar’s constant support for proscribed terrorist organisations including the Taliban, Hamas and Al Qaeda – all of which has been going on for decades.

This is a message to the West and to my European friends!

The Al Thanis, Qatar's ruling family, are funding terrorism, subverting and corrupting the West, promoting Islamist propaganda, and committing human right abuses.

Help me free my beautiful country of these terrorists! 🇶🇦 pic.twitter.com/T2hF78zrsA

— خالد الهيل KHALID AL-HAIL (@Khalidalhail) May 8, 2026

But the synergy between borderless, European socialism and Qatar’s radical Wahhabi Islamism runs deep.

The reason left liberals stand shoulder to shoulder with Islamist causes is that both ideologies create the same problems for themselves, which can be explained away with the same PR.

Both respect ideology more than nationhood, so they naturally collaborate to attack any society with a strong cultural identity. Both share a Tabula Rasa concept of humanity, resenting freedom of the individuals to express Petit Bourgeoisie or Haram political values. Both interpret justice through the lens of doctrine and revelation, so neither can accept equality under the law. Both are therefore incapable of building or sustaining societal contracts and wealth. Both are in denial about that fact and cover their failures by taking what free societies have built and pretending that they created it themselves. Finally, they both have to silence anybody who exposes the obvious failures of their ideologies. The natural enemy of both is the individualist, independent, thinker who does not wish the state to interfere with his life.

What is unusual about Qatar is that it has a lot of money (I shall avoid saying ‘wealth’ – their resource of natural gas was handed to them by the British along with their state in 1971) so, unlike other Islamist regimes, they can buy strategic influence in the West. I’m not just talking about celebrities and broadcasters like Tucker Carlson. Qatar, a radical Wahhabi State and among the most extreme Islamist societies on Earth, sees that socialist political movements are equipped with idealistic students, newspapers and think tanks – so they have become a generous benefactors of universities, media networks and think tanks – their proteges forming a united front against Israel. 

Qatar also backs terrorist groups, colludes with the Muslim Brotherhood and houses Hamas operatives in Doha while securing exclusive reportage rights for Al Jazeera from the Gaza Strip. Al Jazeera’s Arabic language channel, which meets all the criteria under which RIA Novosti and Russia Today are banned, enjoys the same immunity in the EU as it appears to in the USA. That’s what expensive lobbying can do in democratic societies.

Recent events, however, threaten to break this uneasy Islamist-socialist alliance.

The 1979 revolution in Iran marked the first and only time an ancient, civilised and educated, country was totally subverted by radical Islam. When the Ayatollahs fall and the whole story of the long dark decades which followed is told in the West, it will strike a shattering blow to the marriage of convenience between the liberal left and Islamism.

I suspect that some more cynical Western political actors always knew this day was coming but just kept hoping that it wouldn’t arrive on their watch. Some are determined to ride the alliance into the ground and are now mobilising in full support of the Iranian Islamic regime which has killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in the last few months.

Spotted among a recent pro-Iranian regime march in London were Jeremy Corbyn – the former leader of the UK Labour Party – and Mothin Ali, the deputy leader of the Greens. Meanwhile Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York who appealed to Brooklyn LGBTQ liberals on a pro Palestine platform, has also expressed his disgust at the shaking of the Ayatollahs – as has the Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez who recently naturalised 800,000 illegals. When people complained that the foreigners bring crime to Spain, the far-left Más Madrid spokeswoman Tesh Sidi breezily retorted that they are no longer foreigners but now Spaniards.

Would these figures of the radical left ever apply their own logic to the new arrivals in Israel in 1947? No – obviously they couldn’t – which is to say that the union between those who are all giving of the shared Western inheritance and those who are all taking for Political Islam is now openly inconsistent with its own values.

The shaking of the Ayatollahs in Tehran will be an informative moment in the history of Western self-determination as well as Iran’s. As we saw with East European Communism, as we will see in Gender theory and much of the Net-Zero green agenda, an ideology truly collapses not because of its military defeat or political sabotage but because of its inability to justify its own excesses any further. A recent comment made by Qatar’s ex Prime Minister makes me realise how desperate the game is getting to keep the radical left and Islamists together.

‘As soon as we declare war on Iran, America will withdraw from the conflict, sell weapons to both sides and use our resources to defeat both sides and expand the Greater Israel Project.’

This level of paranoid insanity will always appeal to a few lunatics – but is surely too much, even for the socialist Eurocrats, academics and journalists who take Qatari cash bribes.

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 02:00

The "Doctor Strange" star allegedly ran a few red lights on his bike.

The "Doctor Strange" star allegedly ran a few red lights on his bike.

Frank Olivieri, owner of Philadelphia's iconic Pat's King of Steaks, will begrudgingly wear orange and blue while slinging sandwiches at Dario’s Pizza in West Hempstead after the Knicks' beat the 76ers.

The mother, who sustained several stab wounds in the harrowing attack, was rushed to a local hospital with serious injuries.

Spencer Jones’ first series as a big leaguer is in the books, but not before collecting his first career hit.

Victor Wembanyama had never been in this spot before.

It was the best Mother’s Day gift that Orioles pitcher Anthony Nunez could have given his sister-in-law on Sunday. 

Knicks star Jalen Brunson was captured sweetly celebrating the win with his family after he put up 22 points in 28 minutes in Game 4.

A Union Pacific worker stumbled upon the dead bodies in a train yard at a remote location near the Mexican Border.

On a day of few positives for the Mets, a displaced starting pitcher finally took a step forward.

Maris Nichols, 25, had been a biology teacher and football operations manager at Alexander High School since 2023.

Rabobank: "More War Seems Inevitable"

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Summit... then 'summit' worse?

“TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE,” was President Trump’s response to Iran’s belated reply to his peace proposal, which they have rejected as a “surrender.” Tehran thinks the US must do so instead: rather than handing over enriched uranium, pledging to never build a nuke, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and dropping ballistic missiles and support for regional terror proxies, Iran wants a permanent US retreat, reparations paid to it, and control of Hormuz.

More war, where the US takes control of the Strait and/or bombs the regime harder to encourage it to sign a deal, seems inevitable if one rules out a 1956-style retreat. Indeed, Israeli PM Netanyahu gave a TV interview to 60 Minutes where he stated the Iran war, while having achieved a lot, is “not over.” Markets are not going to enjoy the prospect of greater and longer disruption to global energy supplies.

However, new fighting may not be seen until the weekend. First, “because markets.” Second, as the US still doesn’t have everything in place it needs militarily to strike harder and for longer. Third, because over May 13-15, Trump will meet Xi in Beijing, where the focus will be on Iran as well as broader US-China relations.

As postulated since the early days of this war, its resolution may run through Beijing. China, like Russia, has influence on Iran via supplies of key military goods. In that regard, some see Trump going to China with Xi holding all the cards (because Iran holds a Strait.) Yet others think a sustained war that pushes global energy markets and the economy past a terrible tipping point might see Beijing offer to lean on Iran rather than supporting it like Russia vs Ukraine.

Naturally, that opens up chatter of a potential ‘Grand Bargain’ around the core interests of China, the US, and Russia (where President Putin presided over a deflated Victory Day parade and said the war with Ukraine may “be coming to an end.”) If you aren’t at this week’s table, you might be on it. In short, the focus should be on this summit and whether it leads to ‘summit’ better or worse for you.

Equally naturally, political dramas around the world mirror those in geopolitics.

Following a local election drubbing and the collapse of two-party politics, the ruling UK Labour Party will see a stalking-horse leadership contest against deeply unpopular PM Starmer. His potential rivals Streeting (in the cabinet), Miliband (in the cabinet and a former unpopular Labour leader himself), Rayner (not in the cabinet due to a tax scandal), and Burns (not in Parliament due to Starmer’s team) must decide if they will make their moves. Starmer is determined to cling on and will give a major speech today seen as determinative for who joins the fray. Financial markets will be worried about populist left policy direction under new leadership, where Labour is losing voters just as fast at it is to the populist right.

In Australia, the by-election in Farrer saw a seat formerly held by the Liberal Party leader taken by the populist right One Nation and the door opened to it joining the Liberal-National opposition coalition, reshaping Australian politics. This is ahead of a Labor Party budget tomorrow already seeing a populist left shift via cash handouts (when inflation is nearly 5%), and taxation of residential property and other assets.

Denmark’s Liberal leader has taken over coalition talks after the Social Democrat premier failed to secure a parliamentary majority. There appear few stable political combos on offer, and questions swirl as to whether the inclusion of the far right will be necessary to achieve one.

Germany’s far right AfD is at 28% in national polls, the most popular party, and 41% in an eastern state where an election will be held in September: add the far left, and populism is >50% of the electorate. There appear few stable German political coalitions that exclude the AfD.

In all these cases, as in the US, the market-friendly center is failing to hold and extremes on the left and right, and via sectarianism, are benefitting most.  

Meanwhile, a revolution may be taking place in the geoeconomic sphere. The CLARITY Act working its way through the US Congress as companion to the GENIUS Act that cements stablecoins into the financial system has disallowed USD stablecoins from paying interest; however, it allows the payment of scaled rewards and fees that are their functional equivalent when used in transactions. That might prove pivotal for these much-misunderstood new assets designed to steamroller the global Eurodollar financial architecture.

China is officially banning anything other than its official e-CNY, a CBDC, though Hong Kong is floated as a potential location that could perhaps issue Chinese versions of onshore mainland debt-backed stablecoins similar to those of the US. That could, in theory, propose an alternative payments infrastructure that isn’t hampered by China’s capital controls.

By contrast, the ECB has just stated stablecoins are not an efficient way to strengthen the international role of the euro vs. deeper capital market integration and a stronger safe asset base. That means its alternative to the USD is an EUR that looks more like it, which implies the matching ‘benefits’ of trade deficits, debt, and financialisation over net exports and the industrial production needed for remilitarisation – as the US tries to pivot hard the other way.

Indeed, the US is not only pushing for a $500bn increase in the Pentagon budget but seeing a shake-up of how it operates: bureaucrats will no longer negotiate defence contracts, with an elite private sector “Deal Team Six” to handle and approve negotiations; defence firms will have to build their own factories; those that fail to deliver goods will be held responsible and may be replaced with new contractors; and there will be no more ‘costs-plus’ overspending. “Despite paying companies to make weapons faster, scheduled delays were constant, and cost overruns were the norm, all while their CEOs got rich,” according to Secretary of War Hegseth.

“Because markets,” said shareholders. But perhaps no more. That’s summit else to chew on.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 23:37

An American passenger returning to the US from the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship has tested positive for the virus — with a second passenger also showing mild symptoms, according to authorities.

Liberty guard Marine Johannès knew there would be more of an onus on her to score in the team’s retooled offense this season.

Karl-Anthony Towns’ transformation has been remarkable.

America's 250th: Here's Where Celebrations Are Taking Place

Authored by Savannah Halsey Pointer via The Epoch Times,

Celebrations across the United States are expected in the coming months as Americans mark the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Americans can find parties, fireworks, sporting events, and opportunities to learn about history in various locations. The events are being hosted by individual states and the federal government, which established a task force for celebrations this year.

Days after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order “to provide a grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence on July 4, 2026.”

That order established the Salute to America 250 Task Force, or “Task Force 250,” for “engaging all levels of government, the private sector, non-profit and educational institutions, and every citizen across the country to celebrate this historic milestone.”

Washington

Many events have been planned in the nation’s capital for the lead-up to the anniversary on July 4—the date the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, which announced the 13 American colonies’ intent to separate from the British monarchy.

Events kicked off on Dec. 31 2025, with videos projected on the Washington Monument to detail the nation’s history—from its discovery as the “New World” to the present day. That ran through Jan. 5 of this year.

On May 17, the National Mall will host a National Prayer event with worship, testimonies, and music. “Streamed to parishes, the event is amplified through coordinated media and a lead-up series with pastors and partners highlighting the Church’s role in history and civic life,” the White House said.

On Memorial Day, May 25, there will be a Spirit of America Parade, honoring service members and their sacrifice.

The White House will also host an Ultimate Fighting Championship event called UFC Freedom 250. That’s scheduled to take place on June 14 on the South Lawn of the White House and feature an “unprecedented mixed martial arts event.” Confirmed fights include Alex Pereira versus Ciryl Gane for the interim UFC heavyweight title, and Ilia Topuria versus Justin Gaethje for the lightweight title.

The Washington Monument is illuminated with a projection of President Donald Trump's "Freedom 250" initiative during the New Year's Eve show at the National Mall in Washington on Dec. 31, 2025. Amid FARAHI/AFP via Getty Images

On July 3, the Official Countdown 250 Ball will take place at the Washington Hilton, about three blocks from the Mall. The black tie event will launch America’s 250th anniversary weekend.

The ball will feature six party zones, four live entertainment stages, premium open bars, the All-American Hero Lifetime Achievement Awards, and a signature midnight countdown to the moment America enters its 250th year.

Starting on June 25 and running through July 10 of this year, a large-scale celebration at the National Mall will feature pavilions for every state and territory, as well as themed exhibits to highlight topics such as arts, innovation, faith, and agriculture in the United States.

The fair will include live performances and traditional fair attractions, as well as interactive exhibits.

More than a million Americans are expected to head to the nation’s capital on July 4 for what the White House calls “one of the grandest displays of patriotism that the world has ever seen.”

The day will feature remarks from Trump and a fireworks display, which the White House is advertising as “the largest pyrotechnics display in the history of the world.” It will also include musical performances and ceremonies honoring both service members and everyday Americans.

North Dakota

In North Dakota, a new presidential library is slated to open in Medora on July 1. The library will feature exhibits on former President Theodore Roosevelt’s life and legacy, as well as galleries and interactive displays.

New York

On July 4, New York Harbor will host Sail 4th 250, an international event of tall ships and naval vessels from more than 30 nations. This event will include parades, performances, and public programming.

It will also include a naval review, showcasing U.S. ships’ power and capabilities.

Pennsylvania

The state of Pennsylvania has positioned itself as a centerpiece of the anniversary in materials about the city’s events, due to Philadelphia’s role in the founding.

The city is considered the birthplace of American independence, because the signing of the Declaration of Independence took place at Independence Hall on July 4, 1776. Additionally, Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital for portions of the Revolutionary era.

According to the city website, “Philly goes bigger than ever in 2026,” touting the largest Independence Day celebration in the nation, which will close out 16 days of festivities with a giant, free-to-attend event on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The city expects thousands to head to the City Center for the family-friendly event.

Freedom 250’s Timothy Crawford (L) and Nick Bravo (R ) brought their mobile museum “Freedom Truck” to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, on Feb. 23, 2026. Jacob Burg/The Epoch Times

Post-July Events

Throughout 2026, the White House’s Freedom 250 initiative has six mobile museums housed in double-wide tractor-trailers crossing the nation.

The “Freedom Trucks” will travel across all 48 contiguous states with their exhibits, visiting schools, parks, and community events. The goal is to reach millions with the interactive displays on American independence and notable figures from U.S. history.

On Aug. 22–23, Washington will play host to the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, which will be the first Indycar race on a street circuit around the National Mall. The White House called the event a “historic moment in American motorsport, designed specifically to celebrate the 250th anniversary.”

The track map of the upcoming Freedom 250 Grand Prix, in Washington on March 9, 2026. Featuring a 1.7 mile course with seven turns on the National Mall, the Aug. 23 event will celebrate America's 250th birthday. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

In the fall of 2026, the Freedom 250 initiative will launch the Patriot Games—a national competition for high school athletes from every state and territory. The event will pair mentors and students to compete for a $250,000 prize to be split between one male and one female winner.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 23:20

Technically, Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals was a road game for the Knicks.