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The president of Cornell University has been accused of injuring two students during a heated parking lot clash after an Israel-Palestine debate.

One particularly deadly strain of hantavirus is transmitted by humans — and found in the area of Argentina where MV Hondius cruise passengers had previously visited.

Two-thirds of state voters believe New York's cost of living is out of control, a new survey released Tuesday found.

Germany's Silent Shift: From Entrepreneurs To State Dependence

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Germany affords itself a state bureaucracy that functions like an artificial labor market placed upstream of the private sector. The flight of hundreds of thousands into the arms of the state corresponds with the shrinking number of self-employed in the country. And policymakers are actively promoting this trend.

Let us begin with a piece of good news: according to a Bertelsmann survey, around 40 percent of Germans aged 15 to 25 can imagine starting a business as their personal life path. That is a surprisingly high figure in a country where young people not infrequently cite, half-jokingly and half-seriously, Hartz IV or the public sector as career goals.

Let us note: the embers of entrepreneurship in Germany are still glowing; economic autonomy and sovereignty still rank highly among the younger generation. However, it is questionable whether this will suffice to ignite, one day, a true founding boom in a country of climate transformation, deeply rooted faith in the state, and an expansive public sector—a boom that could force a turnaround and help erase the long-accumulated sins of climate socialists.

But we digress. Romantic youthful ideals carry little weight in the leadership circles of the Berlin Republic. There, the ideal of free enterprise collides with the cultural-political malaise of statism—one of many politically induced fault lines of our time. Entrepreneurial action, the free decision over the allocation of capital, inevitably carries conflict potential in a climate of manically enforced eco-transformation.

In attempting to transform the existing economic order into a system of state-directed energy production and centrally steered industrial output, policymakers are pushing a growing number of mid-sized enterprises either into insolvency or straight abroad. No one should be surprised by the country’s economic depression: there is a price to be paid for handing over the economic crown jewels—such as nuclear power or automobile manufacturing—to ideological zealots.

It is hardly surprising that the fury of the socialist “firewall cartel” is also directed at entrepreneurs, who serve as one of the silent barriers against the barbarism of socialism. In Germany, it is all too easy for politicians to distract from their own failures with envy debates, resentment, and instruments such as inheritance or wealth taxes. If you want to understand how this script works, recall the embarrassing entrepreneur-bashing by the labor minister and her finance minister just a few weeks ago. This is not an entrepreneur-friendly climate—neither fiscally nor socially.

One should therefore not be surprised: economic decline is inevitable, and it is increasingly visible in the compressed real incomes of citizens. They are grappling with a distorted labor market, rising inflation, and ongoing poverty migration—a toxic brew for a society that has, in large part, lapsed into an apathetic and strangely muted “degrowth mode.”

As mentioned: why still have entrepreneurs if, in the end, the state—with unlimited credit and the iron hand of the supreme regulator—directs economic activity? Economist Lars Feld estimated total subsidies last year at €321 billion, corresponding to seven percent of the country’s entire economic output. Put more bluntly: a Mount Everest of corruption money, actively tracked down by dubious subsidy entrepreneurs who, in doing so, help construct the redistribution machinery of the green transformation. A devilish system that casts anyone enriching themselves from taxpayers’ money in an extremely unfavorable ethical light.

Unsurprisingly, the number of self-employed in Germany has been declining since the onset of green transformation policies. While there were still 4.1 million self-employed in 2000, last year only 3.6 million freelancers, merchants, traders, and other independent workers earned their living at their own risk in the free market.

With the retreat of entrepreneurship, the country’s innovative power is also waning. Disruptive ideas now find venture capital elsewhere. At the same time, the public sector absorbs a significant share of those exiting the private economy amid the economic downturn.

Since the turn of the millennium, the number of public-sector employees has risen from 4.5 to 5.5 million—an increase of over 20 percent, despite the digital revolution, which should have made it possible to automate repetitive administrative tasks. Let us be perfectly clear: the state alone created 205,000 new public-sector jobs just last year. This is not meant as blanket criticism, but bureaucracy generates no economic value—nothing conceived by regulators and documentation clerks has ever survived in the market.

Bureaucratic obstacles, new levies, grotesque regulations—spewed out mechanically by an over-bureaucratized state apparatus—the overlapping layers of national and European administration drain scarce resources from the productive sectors of society, thereby fragmenting overall economic productivity. A vicious cycle that can only be broken by radical state reform, including cutting back bureaucracy by at least half of its disastrous output.

As if to prove that Germany has gone off the rails politically and culturally, employment in the NGO sector has grown from 2 million at the turn of the millennium to 3.5 million today. A particularly tragic development, as the productive middle class is often forced, through fiscal mechanisms, to finance its own parasitic antagonists. The peak was surely the ongoing spectacle of climate activists gluing themselves to roads, along with the hysterical Fridays for Future movement, whose manic-neurotic convulsions have left citizens—sometimes amused, sometimes annoyed, but always hoping for a return of conservative reason—speechless.

3.5 million people, most of whom are likely parked in unproductive extractive activities, sustain their economic existence by channeling the hard-earned money of employees and entrepreneurs into their own useless organizations. It is the very opposite—the absolute opposite—of a market-based society, at whose center should stand the innovative entrepreneur as the engine of progress and social stability, guided by a thymotic ethic.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 05:00

The US military said it launched another strike on a boat accused of ferrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea, killing two people Monday.

EU Going To War With VPNs In Bid To "Save The Children"

Western European governments and EU bureaucrats are advancing tighter regulations on VPNs as part of a broader push for "online age verification" and their ‘Chat Control’ agenda.  Privacy advocates and digital rights groups warn that Europe is drifting towards a surveillance and censorship regime similar to internet restrictions and firewalls used by Russia and China.

Last week European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen suggested that Brussels may need to address the use of VPNs to bypass the EU’s upcoming age-verification systems.  Speaking during a press conference on the EU’s new digital age-verification app, Virkkunen acknowledged that users could circumvent the system with VPNs and stated that preventing such circumvention would be among the ‘next steps’ policymakers need to examine.

🚨EU plans VPN crackdown: New age ID system “cannot be bypassed” via VPNs.

Couldn’t stop illegal migration, but suddenly goes full North Korea on controlling what Europeans read online. pic.twitter.com/Kn8OnygnWW

— Don Keith (@RealDonKeith) May 2, 2026

Her statements were delivered only two weeks after she shared a stage with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who called for a crackdown on web media companies to "protect children" from dangerous content.  The first stage of their agenda is a government created universal age verification app which web companies will be required to integrate.  Von der Leyen asserts that the new restrictions are designed to "defend children's rights" (how does restricting access protect rights?).

The Orwellian language of the EU is not coincidental.  "Child vulnerability" is a carefully chosen vehicle to manipulate public approval, opening the door to incremental government management of online content and discourse. 

Age verification sounds like a common sense reform in order to prevent children from accessing adult content, gambling sites, age limited products, etc.  Some states in the US require pornographic sites to use age verification, but not a government developed app.  However, their real target is social media.

The Commission has regularly expressed their intent to gain more regulatory control of platforms like X.  Formerly Twitter, Elon Musk's acquisition of the social media site triggered a sea change in online discourse, removing years of left wing dominance in Big Tech and allowing conservatives and centrists to have a greater voice.  Immediately after Musk bought Twitter, a firestorm began in Europe as leftist politicians sought to silence the platform. 

Their reasoning?  Any platform that allows conservative, nationalist and patriot views to be heard is, by default, dangerous and must be censored.  In particular, the European elites fear a generational break from the progressive movement, the first in many decades.  

This is why the leftist controlled Australian government established strict age verification laws last year - They categorize X as restricted, but not Bluesky, an extreme left-wing activist platform which enjoys more open access.  After a torrent of criticism, Bluesky enforced it's own age restrictions, but was not required to by the Australian government. 

Moderating media access is typically the realm of parents, not governments.  Furthermore, pressing companies to take more responsibility for age restrictions is one thing, but demanding everyone use an intrusive government created app is another.  

The plan is transparent; liberal governments intend to use age restrictions as an excuse to limit more conservative leaning content while giving leftist content free rein.  The crackdown on VPNs is clearly the second stage.  VPNs allow users to access websites without using their primary IP address which links them to their home address.  They can also be used to circumvent websites that are restricted in certain countries by using an IP from outside that country.   

In other words, VPNs allow for a moderate level of anonymity.  This is something most governments have been seeking to eliminate for years.  One state in the US (Utah) is also trying to target VPN companies for liability. 

These measures have elicited strong criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), cybersecurity experts, and VPN providers, who argue that the law is technically unenforceable and risks criminalizing ordinary privacy-conscious users. 

Meanwhile, in France, officials have also signaled that VPN restrictions could eventually follow the country’s planned social media ban for children under 15. French Digital Affairs Minister Anne Le Hénanff stated earlier this year that VPNs are ‘next on my list’ in efforts to prevent minors from bypassing online restrictions. 

It should be noted that the majority of European efforts to control social media access occurred in the wake of burgeoning conservative and nationalist movements successfully spreading online and overshadowing woke activism.  These movements commonly use online discourse to dismantle progressive talking points and propaganda and they are highly effective.  The political left has decided that if they can't win the debate fair and square, they will simply censor the debate so that no one can see how wrong they are. 

They will start with children and teens in the name of protecting kids from dangerous content, then expand their bureaucratic foothold into every corner of the web.  

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 04:15

Police is working to identify the juveniles seen in video weaving across the 300-acre facility.

EU Crime Report: Spanish Rape Reports Surge 322% Over Last Decade, EU Sees 150% Increase

Via Remix News,

New data released by Eurostat on Wednesday reveals a staggering rise in reported sexual crimes across the European Union, with Spain showing an increase far beyond the continental average.

Spain has seen one of the most significant shifts in reporting, according to Spain’s La Razon outlet. In 2024, the country registered “5,222 violations” compared to only “1,239 in 2014.” This represents a “322 percent increase,” a figure that sits “well above the 150 percent average in the EU.”

What Eurostat does not provide is data on who is committing these crimes. However, other sources have explored this issue.

As Remix News reported last year, a CEU-CEFAS Demographic Observatory report titled “Demography of Crime in Spain” showed that foreigners, who make up 31 percent of Spain’s prison population and commit per capita 500 percent more rapes and 414 percent more murders than Spanish citizens.

The highest rates are seen among Arabs and Latinos, with many of them hailing from countries in South America known for their extremely high crime rates.

While the murder numbers are stable in Spain at 300 per year, there has been explosive growth in attempted murders. Over the course of just four years, between 2019 and 2023, attempted murder cases nearly doubled, going from 836 to 1,507.

In just five years, penetrative rape cases also soared 143 percent, going from 2,143 in 2019 to 5,206 in 2024.

As Remix News has reported on in the past, in many Spanish states, the crime statistics show massive overrepresentation of foreigners in serious crimes like sexual assault, including in the Basque region.

In cases of robbery with violence, foreigners are 440 percent more likely to commit such a crime. Many such cases have made headlines in the Spanish media.

The study heads indicated that Spain’s aging population should have led to a decrease in crime rates, but the influx of migrants, amounting to 3.8 million per decade, has led to an “imported crime” problem.

The report confirmed a consistent pattern that violent crime is predominantly committed by young men. Specifically concerning nationality, the study indicates that foreigners have much higher crime rates than Spaniards, particularly for the most serious offenses against persons, such as homicide, rape, and robbery. This overrepresentation is noted to be especially pronounced among individuals of African and Latin American origin.

🇪🇸‼️ In Barcelona, North African migrants were caught on camera trying to bundle an 11-year-old girl into a car while she was on the way to the shop opposite her home.

Her mother speaks out, "She burst into the house in tears, trembling. That night, she couldn't sleep or eat. It… pic.twitter.com/9LL7lxHQUL

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 27, 2025

Data on the prison population supports this finding: in 2024, 31 percent of the prison population was foreign-born (excluding naturalized or second-generation immigrants). This proportion is more than double their share of the general population in the 20-69 age group, with North Africans and Latin Americans showing significant overrepresentation.

Rape and sexual crimes jump across Europe

According to the report, police forces across EU member states registered “more than 250,000 crimes of sexual violence” in 2024. Of these recorded offenses, “almost 100,000 (38 percent) were rapes,” marking a “150 percent more than a decade ago” increase.

The Eurostat statistical office highlighted a “sustained upward trend over the last ten years, with an average growth of almost 10 percent annually in sexual violence and 7 percent in rape”. In total, cases of sexual violence nearly doubled in the EU, seeing “124,350 more cases than in 2014,” while the number of rapes added “nearly 59,000 additional crimes in that period.”

However, Eurostat suggests these numbers may not reflect a simple increase in crime alone. The office noted that the surge “could be linked to greater social awareness, which would have impacted reporting rates.”

Read more here...

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 03:30

A blast at a fireworks factory in China's Hunan province has killed 21 people and injured 61, prompting a call from President Xi Jinping for a thorough investigation, state media reported on Tuesday.

“As talks are making process with Pakistan's gracious effort, the U.S. should be wary of being dragged back into quagmire by ill-wishers," Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Monday.

Dear Abby advises a woman on how to handle the financial situation of renovating the house with her husband.

Former 'Entertainment Tonight' producer Fran Weinstein details the alleged 1998 confrontation in her new memoir 'Tortured Soles.'

Former 'Entertainment Tonight' producer Fran Weinstein details the alleged 1998 confrontation in her new memoir 'Tortured Soles.'

Big Shake-Up: Putin Fires Head Of Aerospace Forces After Devastating Ukrainian Drone Attacks

There are reports out of Russia of another high level firing within the defense ministry. This time, President Putin has reportedly sacked the head of Russia's Aerospace Forces, which is the armed services branch responsible for the country's air defenses.

Moscow-based news outlet RBC reports that General Viktor Afzalov has been replaced by Colonel General Alexander Chaiko. Afzalov had first been appointed to the command post in 2023.

Source: Russian Ministry of Defense

However, the Kremlin did not immediately comment on or confirm the shake-up, but it comes amid growing anger among the Russian populace and among leadership following a series of major Ukrainian drone attacks.

For example, the major Black Sea hub of the Tuapse Oil Refinery has been struck four times in the last several weeks, creating a local environmental disaster which has also seen days of large fires.

The recent series of highly destructive Ukrainian drone attacks has even reached faraway Perm, near the Ural mountains, where an oil complex there was reported struck.

These latest drone waves have not been stopped by Russian anti-air defenses, and Ukraine's cheap but highly capable drone attacks have appeared to easily thwart any countermeasures.

As for the new head of the Aerospace Forces, he takes command amid a high pressure situation. If he can't stop the ongoing drone onslaught, then he too could face quick removal:

Alexander Chaiko was born in 1971 in the Moscow region. He graduated from the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School. According to the Ministry of Defense website, he served in positions ranging from reconnaissance platoon commander to commander of the First Tank Army of the Western Military District. In 2001, he graduated from the Frunze Combined Arms Academy of the Armed Forces. In 2012, he graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff.

He held the positions of deputy commander of the combined arms army of the Central Military District, commander of the combined arms army of the Western Military District, chief of staff – first deputy, and commander of the troops of the Eastern Military District. In 2019, he was appointed deputy chief of the General Staff.

Chaiko has already been sanctioned by the European Union, as he's stood accused serving as a lead commander during the Russian occupation of Bucha - after which Moscow was accused of indiscriminate killings of civilians, which the Kremlin denies.

RBK reported that Colonel-General Aleksandr Chaiko (left) was appointed commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces, replacing Colonel-General Viktor Afzalov (right).

Chaiko is a former Ground Forces officer who began the 2022 invasion as commander of the Eastern Military… pic.twitter.com/3FOUfTI4KA

— John Hardie (@JohnH105) May 4, 2026

Meanwhile, last week Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky announced "a new stage in the use of Ukrainian weapons to limit the potential of Russia's war."

Despite Ukrainian forces being slowly rolled back on the battlefield in the east, drone warfare remains about the only leverage that Kiev has at this point.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 02:45

Germany's Inflation Scapegoat: Why Hormuz Is A Convenient Cover Story

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Over the weekend, economist Gerrit Heinemann warned in Bild of a drastic increase in food prices in Germany. The scholar from Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences focused his analysis on the massive rise in fertilizer prices. A significant share of these—estimated at roughly one third of global production—is transported through the Strait of Hormuz. Following the dual blockage of the strait, this sector too has entered a state of global scarcity, forcing farmers worldwide to adjust prices, which ultimately feeds through to consumer prices.

Heinemann concludes that Germany’s food price index could rise by as much as ten percent this year. In Berlin, a familiar narrative has already taken hold, and there is broad agreement: the Hormuz crisis alone is responsible for the disaster. Yet core inflation had already reached around 2.7 percent year-on-year in March. Price increases across the entire spectrum of goods—especially energy and housing, which has become scarce due to migration—have accompanied Germany’s economic decline for quite some time. Only the dramatic slump in private investment and general consumer restraint have slightly dampened price pressures in recent years.

What stands out in this development is the steady upward revision of inflation forecasts. In March, there was consensus between the Economics Ministry and leading research institutes that inflation would come in at around three percent this year. By early April, after one month of the Iran crisis, economists at the International Monetary Fund were projecting price increases of five to six percent.

Now comes the ten-percent hammer in food prices. One could also put it this way: the culprit for rising prices in Germany has been found. Media and government point at every opportunity to Washington, where the supposed architect of the disaster allegedly sits: Donald Trump. But does this thesis hold?

Simultaneous with the abrupt rise in inflation forecasts are the recurring downward revisions of Germany’s economic growth rates. After more than two decades of eco-socialist restructuring, loose monetary policy, and now rapidly expanding public debt, Germany’s economy can be described simply: it is retreating in a dramatic process of contraction, while prices will continue to rise amid a crisis of productivity and investment. Incidentally, food prices rose by more than 40 percent between 2019 and 2025 as financial markets and the broader economy were flooded with cheap credit during the lockdown period, as documented by the Federal Statistical Office.

Hormuz is a cheap diversion from the disastrous policies that the firewall party cartel has been pursuing for some time in order to build a new green socialism. We are witnessing a radical paradigm shift not seen since the end of the Second World War. It is common knowledge that cheap energy, technological openness, a functioning market economy, and stable money were the factors that once underpinned Germany’s economic success.

It is now proving costly to be at odds with its most important energy and raw materials supplier, Russia, and to have effectively declared perpetual conflict with Moscow. History teaches us that ideological fervor always goes hand in hand with fanaticism. Blowing up one’s own nuclear capacity was, quite literally, a reckless gamble—an act of blind ideological infantilism rarely seen anywhere in the world in our era.

Together with Brussels, Berlin is pursuing a scorched-earth policy when it comes to returning to a market-based energy framework and sound regulatory principles. No matter how hard the current energy crisis hits, German policymakers remain committed to their green-socialist ideology. By clinging rigidly to CO₂ rent-seeking, grotesque climate regulation, and an energy policy run amok, the country has maneuvered itself into a geopolitical straitjacket. Germany’s economy now has its back against the wall. And Berlin has found its solution: the German middle class will be bled dry to finance the capital’s debt excesses and conceal the scale of the disaster.

What is dramatically worsening the situation in recent weeks is a series of attacks worldwide on refinery infrastructure. Whether in the United States, Australia, or war-affected Russia, the problems are intensifying. For Germany, an additional blow is that Russia will halt the transit of Kazakh oil to the Schwedt refinery via the Druzhba pipeline.

It is high time to develop domestic energy resources—fracking gas and drilling in the North and Baltic Seas—to signal to markets and consumers that rational policymaking has returned. Only then could Germany credibly declare the end of its post-Enlightenment delusion. A Europe-wide initiative to finance and build nuclear capacity would be urgently required. Yet Brussels and Berlin have decided otherwise: if necessary, access to energy will be rationed. The expansion of eco-socialism is to continue at all costs—energy thus becomes an absolute lever of political power over citizens, who are suffering from the ideological rigidity and intellectual failure of European policymakers to reduce energy dependence through market mechanisms and negotiated solutions.

The inflation problem is self-inflicted. Only a completely distorted and ideologically colored media narrative surrounding the Iran crisis and the consequences of centralized energy policy has so far prevented the public from correctly perceiving the economic disaster. The year 2026 will likely be the year in which personal escapism carries severe monetary consequences.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden Tue, 05/05/2026 - 02:00

The Olympic freestyle skier put a spin on the Met Gala theme of "Costume Art." 

She looked adore-bubble. 

If he’s gonna play like this, Joel Embiid should issue a retraction. Tell Sixers fans to sell their tickets while they still can.

The team is retiring the beer skate. For now.

Trevor McDonald wasn’t the headliner of the Giants’ roster shakeup Monday, but credit the third newcomer of the day with making the moves look good.