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WHAT IS HE REAL REASON FOR $6 Diesel..it is NOT the Iran War!

So here we are, with diesel at $6 a gallon.

Listening to the political conversation, you could easily come away thinking this all started when Iran went to war. In fact, it didn’t. Iran supplied the shock, but we had already built the vulnerability, which is a key distinction.

Yes, the war in the Middle East has disrupted oil flows and tightened global supplies. The Energy Information Administration says that tight global distillate supplies and elevated crude prices are pushing diesel prices higher. U.S. distillate inventories have fallen below their five-year range, while the loss of significant refining and petroleum-product supplies worldwide has tightened the market.

However, while that explains why diesel prices are so high right now, it doesn’t explain how we became so vulnerable to price shocks.

The reality is that America still produces enormous quantities of crude oil. The trouble is that crude oil is not diesel. Before it reaches the tank of the truck delivering your groceries, somebody has to transport it, refine it, and distribute it—and that brings us to the question nobody seems especially interested in asking:

What happened to the refineries?

The newest major U.S. refinery came online in 1977.

There is a technical footnote here. A 45,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Galveston began operating in 2022. Forty-five thousand barrels a day. In the world of American refining, that is practically a microbrewery.

The newest refinery with significant downstream capacity, then, is Marathon’s Garyville, Louisiana, refinery, which began operating in 1977. It has since been expanded to roughly 617,000 barrels per day.

That is one heck of a long stretch between major new refineries.

For decades, we made the fossil-fuel business increasingly difficult, expensive, and politically uncertain. Different presidents pursued different policies, but the general direction was the same: away from fossil fuels. It’s been exceptionally bad in those Democrat-run states, which expressly announced their desire to decrease fossil fuel production. California, for example, had 38 operating refineries in 1982; as of this year, it has only 12, a 68% reduction in capacity.

However, unlike California, a government does not have to announce, “Shut it down.” There are quieter ways to accomplish much the same thing. Make the business harder and more expensive through regulation. Make construction of a new refinery so uncertain, and potentially so unprofitable, that sinking billions of dollars into the industry’s future starts looking like a bad bet.

And of course, investors notice these things changes and react accordingly.

They notice when politicians describe an industry as yesterday’s technology. They notice when regulations increase costs, when permitting becomes a years-long obstacle course, and when a multibillion-dollar refinery has to be evaluated against the possibility that the political environment will turn against it before the investment has paid for itself.

At some point, a perfectly sensible question arises: Why build another refinery?

But before asking why nobody is building new refineries, take a look at what happened to the ones we already had. They’re a loud warning to investors about what will happen to their money.

In 2025, LyondellBasell ended refining operations at its Houston refinery, which had a capacity of about 264,000 barrels per day. Phillips 66 shut its Los Angeles refinery, another 139,000 barrels per day. Valero’s 145,000-barrel-per-day Benicia refinery followed.

No slogan is necessary here. The arithmetic speaks quite nicely for itself.

The EIA says U.S. operable refining capacity fell by more than 250,000 barrels per day between January 2025 and January 2026, with two fewer operable refineries.

Iran did not shut down Houston, Los Angeles, or Benicia. Iran did not decide America should not build another major refinery.

And Iran did not spend decades telling investors that fossil fuels were an industry on its way out. EVERY DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION DID THAT…fossil fuels are bad…omitting to say that the world economies would grind to a halt if everything we produce from fossil fuels was not available.

Now we are surprised that the cushion is gone. However, this is exactly what happens when an industry becomes less attractive to investors. Eventually, the investors behave accordingly.

Bill Clinton brought a new generation of environmental and fuel regulations. Barack Obama imposed additional regulatory pressure, although American oil production nonetheless rose dramatically during his presidency. Joe Biden openly discussed transitioning away from the oil industry and paused new federal oil and gas leasing while his administration reviewed the federal program.

We saw different presidents with different policies, but the investment signal was clear enough. And, logically enough, investors listen. So, now we have a geopolitical crisis, and everybody has suddenly rediscovered the importance of energy security.

The White House currently describes domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics capacity as essential to national defense.

Its April determination cited constrained financing, long lead times, permitting and infrastructure bottlenecks, and supply-chain limitations as obstacles to expanding that capacity.

Good. Because that is the problem. But recognizing the problem today does not erase the road we traveled to get here.

Trump is president during this crisis, so he owns the response. But voters must remember he didn’t create the decades of accumulated refining constraints that existed before he entered the White House, although you wouldn’t know it from the political sales pitch from the same people who spent years pushing America toward reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

The people who gave us six-dollar-a-gallon diesel now want to be elected because diesel is six dollars a gallon. The architects of the vulnerability are campaigning on its consequences.

Diesel moves trucks. It powers tractors and construction equipment. It moves freight, supports manufacturing, and provides backup power. When diesel becomes more expensive, those additional costs eventually filter into almost everything those machines touch.

So this is about more than diesel. It’s about the cost of pretending infrastructure doesn’t matter until the day you desperately need it.

You cannot spend decades discouraging an industry from expanding and then profess astonishment when it stops expanding. You cannot tell investors that an industry is disappearing and then complain when they stop building the infrastructure that industry needs. And you cannot shrink the cushion for years and then blame the next geopolitical crisis because the cushion is gone.

Before accepting the next political sales pitch about who can fix the six-dollar diesel problem, perhaps we ought to look at the whole receipt.

The people who gave us $6 per gallon diesel now want to be elected because diesel is $6 per gallon. There is something almost impressive about that chutzpah.

Iran supplied the shock, but we built the vulnerability, and it has far-reaching consequences. Diesel moves trucks, powers tractors and construction equipment, moves freight, supports manufacturing, and provides backup power. When diesel gets more expensive, the added cost works its way into almost everything those machines touch, usually sooner than people expect.

You cannot spend decades discouraging an industry from expanding and then be genuinely surprised when it does not expand very much. You cannot keep telling investors that an industry is on its way out and then complain when they decide not to put billions of dollars into new infrastructure for it.

And if you spend years reducing the cushion, well, the next geopolitical crisis is going to hurt more than it otherwise would have.

CHINESE MOTHERS GIVE BIRTH IN USA TERRITORY AND HAVE NEW CITIZENS

The tiny island where Chinese mothers travel to give birth to American babies

Saipan has become a hotspot for birth tourism, raising concerns Beijing is breeding passport-equipped spies

The president signed an executive order declaring his intention to end birth tourism on Aug 6

mber 2026 12:00pm BST

On a sticky summer’s day in July, a blue-and-white handbag stuffed with cash was shoved into Melanie’s* hands.

It had been given to her by a 36-year-old Chinese woman as she was rushed into surgery for a C-section.

Melanie had been called to the main hospital on the remote island of Saipan to translate for the woman, who had travelled alone from China to give birth in the US territory, automatically giving her baby US citizenship.

“She told me she came for the US passport,” Melanie said. “She said, ‘I don’t have too much money, but I want to give my kids two choices: China or another country. The US passport gives me two countries.’”

Melanie speaks both English and Chinese, a skill that has become increasingly vital on Saipan as translators help pregnant Chinese women to navigate the island’s one hospital and tiny clinics. view of Saipan, with the Imperial Palace Resort Hotel & Casino in the distance, the tallest structure on the island Credit: Peter Blakely for The Telegraph

The network of translators – some of whom are freelancers and some of whom work for birth tourism companies – has become part of the birth tourism economy.

“In China, most cities are very poor, so they don’t want to stay there,” Melanie explained. “If they can’t get to the US, then they come to Saipan.”

Melanie said she would prefer not to reveal the name of the woman or her baby. That is not unusual.

Melanie doesn’t work for a birth tourism company, but the hospital often calls her in to act on new mothers’ behalf.

Many of the women who come to Saipan specifically to give birth to American children are reluctant to discuss what they are doing, wary of drawing attention to a practice that has become increasingly controversial on the tiny Pacific island, and that Donald Trump is at pains to outlaw.

On Aug 6, the US president signed an executive order declaring his intention to end birth tourism.

Travelling to the US explicitly to give birth, thus gaining automatic citizenship for your child, is an exploitative practice, Mr Trump said, adding that “American citizenship embodies a sacred bond between the American people and their nation”.

“Under Secretary Rubio’s leadership, the department of state is taking action around the world to stop this abuse, dismantle birth tourism networks, and hold accountable those who try to scam our system,” a state department spokesman said.

Although it is a 30-hour flight away, Saipan has been a US territory since 1986.

Despite being only 5 miles wide, with a population of just 50,000 and almost no economy to speak of, the island occupies one of the most militarily and geographically significant positions in East Asia.

Some 1,700 miles away from Taiwan, 1,800 miles from China and 1,400 miles from Japan, it is the US front line of Western democracy in East Asia, and an hour’s plane journey from Guam – where the US has established a major military base.

Saipan’s unique geographical position meant that it played a key role in ending the Second World War. In 1944, the US captured the island from Japanese soldiers.A US coast guard manning his machine gun in Saipan whilst wearing a Japanese silk kimono, during the Pacific Campaign of World War Two Credit: US Coast Guard/Getty Images

Its neighbouring island, Tinian, became the site from which Hiroshima was bombed owing to its proximity to Japan.

But what was once considered a useful US outpost in the East has become a potential point of risk thanks to unique visa regulations which, unlike anywhere else in the United States – or indeed the West – allow Chinese tourists to visit the country virtually visa-free.

Now, experts are worried that Saipan is being exploited as an easy route into the US, that birth tourism has enabled the Chinese government to breed spies with American passports, and, perhaps most alarmingly, that the island may be subject to a Chinese soft-power campaign that could leave the US vulnerable to attack.

On the muggy day in July that Melanie rushed to the hospital, the Chinese woman she was translating for told her she had saved up for more than five years to have her baby in Saipan.

The handbag she was given was stuffed with cash and a credit card to pay for the birth.

The woman had come alone and had no one to hold it while she went in for the C-section. She gave birth to a son.

“She didn’t look rich, only regular,” Melanie said. “She said she would pay for everything. She had enough money, and then she could get a birth certificate and the baby’s passport.”

In total, Melanie has translated for four Chinese mothers who gave birth to American babies on Saipan this year alone, but she believes there are more than 10 translators who do the same job on the island.

There are suggestions that the same practices could be happening on the nearby island of Guam too, but stricter visa rules there make it less common.

The run-down island of Saipan was once the heart of garment making, where brands could employ cheap Chinese workers but keep “made in the USA” labels in their clothes.

However, the island has fallen into disrepair, and its economy has all but disappeared following a series of sweatshop scandals in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the loss of its preferential access to the US market in 2005.Saipan has struggled economically since its garment industry collapsed in the early 2000s Credit: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post

Across the island, paint peels from the walls of squat blocks of flats and shops that stand crumbling against the backdrop of the sparkling blue ocean.

Birth tourism began on Saipan in 2009 after the island’s economy was wiped out.

Chinese tourists were deemed to be a major cash cow for the island’s flailing economy and, under the Obama administration, were allowed into the territory for up to 45 days without a visa.

At its height in 2018, 581 babies were born as a result of “birth tourism”, making up 46 per cent of the total births, according to numbers released by the Commonwealth Health Corporation, the only hospital on the island.

The visa limit was capped at 14 days in 2024 in an effort to reduce birth tourism, but pregnant tourists continue to travel to the island, data show.

In 2024, 58 births were attributed to residents classified as tourists, making up 10 per cent of the total births. Last year, almost 50 women visited Saipan as tourists to give birth, accounting for 8 per cent of the total number of babies born across the island that year.

Mr Trump has faced hurdles in trying to crack down on the practice on the US mainland – in which he claims migrants travel illegally to the States and start families – let alone overseas.

U.S. HAS LOST 25% OF ITS $30-$50 MILLION (EACH COST) REAPER DRONES

U.S. military has lost roughly 25% of its Reaper drones as Iran war depletes arsenal

The aircraft, which cost up to $50 million each, have seen heavy use around the Strait of Hormuz — but they are relatively easy targets for Iran and its proxies.

A U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, in December. (Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP/Getty

The U.S. military has lost at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones during the war with Iran, or roughly 25 percent of its fleet, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The Reaper is used to conduct surveillance and targeted strikes, and it can cost between $30 million and $50 million depending on the type of sensors and weapons it carries, according to the Air Force. The potential taxpayer cost of recent losses is over $1.3 billion for that weapon system alone.

The aircraft have seen heavy use around the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route that has become a major flash point in the conflict — and a key obstacle to negotiating a lasting peace deal. But the drones fly slowly and often at low altitudes, making them relatively easy targets for Iran’s military and its regional proxies in Yemen and Iraq.

A fourth U.S. official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Pentagon data, said that not all of the lost Reapers were shot down. An unspecified number crashed after their operators’ communications link to the drones failed, the official said.

The Reaper joins a growing list of U.S. weapons and munitions that have been drained by the Iran war and years of American military support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

In the Iran campaign’s first month, U.S. forces fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 1,000 Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, significantly cutting into stockpiles of a key long-range strike capability and the military’s most in-demand air-defense systems, The Post reported previously.

Such shortages have constrained President Donald Trump’s military options as tensions with Tehran remain high and forced U.S. commanders in the region to change defensive tactics and hold missiles in reserve if they determine that an incoming Iranian missile is unlikely to harm anyone.

The Pentagon, which declined to comment for this article, has consistently denied reports that its weapons stockpiles are running low. At the same time, the Trump administration has asked Congress for tens of billions of dollars in funding to offset costs incurred by the Iran war and to replenish supplies.

As The Post reported last week, Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the state of the U.S. stockpile. The encounter occurred July 31, on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

The shortages have appeared to embolden Iran, which has intensified its demands for control of the Strait of Hormuz and reparations for damage the country has sustained since Trump ordered the start of hostilities on Feb. 28.

There were approximately 185 Reapers in the U.S. military fleet — 165 in the Air Force and 20 in the Marine Corps — before the conflict began, according to public budget data and the services. That figure does not include Reapers operated by U.S. intelligence agencies. To date, none of the Marines’ Reapers have been lost, a spokesman, Lt. Col. Joshua Benson, said in a statement. Those operate primarily in the Asia-Pacific.

In May, Lt. Gen. David Tabor, a senior Air Force officer at the Pentagon, told the Senate that the number of remaining drones had fallen to about 135. At the time, Tabor told lawmakers he was “concerned” about the losses and that the Air Force was exploring how to quickly replenish its fleet.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a White House event with President Donald Trump on Aug. 3. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Pentagon is phasing out the General Atomics-produced Reaper and envisions a replacement fleet of less expensive armed surveillance drones that can swarm their targets.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to shore up lawmaker support for a $67 billion Iran war supplemental budget that it says is vital to restocking the Pentagon’s arsenal. Even if Congress approves the funding, it will be years before stockpiles depleted by the conflict in Iran and the munitions sent to Ukraine are reconstituted.

Hegseth told the Senate in July that the Pentagon would have to curtail military trainings without a quick infusion of additional funding as the Iran war strains the defense budget. He estimated that the conflict would cost $37.5 billion through the end of September, though that total does not include the cost of rebuilding U.S. bases in the Middle East damaged by Iranian strikes.

Republicans in Congress are divided on the best strategy to secure the war-related funding and have left Washington for their August recess.

DINOSAURS WERE KILLED BY HEAT BY ASTEROID HIT????

Dinosaurs were roasted to death by asteroid dust cloud

Researchers say ejected dust acted like lid on a pot, trapping heat and ‘charbroiling’ anything that could not reach safety

Picture of a raptor dinosaur observing asteroid crashing to earth — Dinosaurs that survived the asteroid crash were ‘baked or fried’ by the heat trapped underneath the resultant dust cloud Credit: mikdam/iStockphoto

d 28 July 2026 4:52pm BST

Dinosaurs roasted to death in a hellish “oven” created by superheated dust when an asteroid hit Earth 66m years ago, scientists believe.

When the Everest-sized space rock hit the planet at 45,000mph, it vaporised anything in its path and ignited landscapes within a 900-mile radius.

But planetary scientists at Purdue University, in the United States, believe some dinosaurs may have survived had it not been for a suffocating cloud of ejected dust, which sat like a lid over Earth and prevented the blast heat from escaping into space.

Dr Alexandria Johnson, an expert in atmospheric sciences, said: “Anything that couldn’t shelter itself somehow – underground or underwater – would have got baked or fried.”

The Chicxulub asteroid sent more than 240 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, some of which condensed into droplets of rock – spherules – which fell back to Earth, heating the air further.

Prof Brandon Johnson, of the department of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue, said: “With the dust cloud trapping thermal radiation, it was like the surface and everything on it was being charbroiled – and that’s what killed the dinosaurs and all the other animals.

“It’s not the blast wave from the impact or the fireball – those don’t go very far. It’s the global ejection of this vapour plume material that makes this a global extinction event.

“Without the dust cloud, it would have been bad. It would have killed a lot of creatures, but it wouldn’t have been a planetary catastrophe.”

The Chicxulub impact near the Yucatán Peninsula is believed to have killed about three-quarters of all living species, including most of the dinosaurs. Only the avian dinosaurs survived.

Previously, experts believed the asteroid triggered giant tsunamis and created a cloud that blocked the sun for years, causing plummeting temperatures and killing plants that starved dinosaurs that ate vegetation. When the plant-eaters died, the meat-eaters also died.

But the new study suggests that, for most animals, the apocalypse probably occurred much more quickly.

The Chicxulub asteroid near the Yucatan Peninsula is believed have killed about three-quarters of all living species Credit: Roger Harris/Science Photo Library

Researchers calculated that the heat trapped by the fine dust meant the dinosaurs received a dose of thermal radiation 17 times more than the amount that would be lethal to humans.

The intense heat was enough to ignite grass, pine needles, lichen and maybe even wood, causing widespread wildfires and turning Earth into a fiery oven from which only burrowing animals, and those in the sea, could escape.

“It probably looked more like hell,” said Prof Johnson. “The clouds would have blocked daylight so to any animal, like humans, that don’t see far into the infrared, the surface would have probably looked dark.”

Scientists knew that the impact had melted rocks and sent detritus showering down to Earth because spherules have been found in the gills of paddlefish, which probably died on the day the asteroid hit.

The spherules, about half the size of a grain of sugar, were made up of material of terrestrial origin – not from the asteroid itself, but almost certainly the deadly cloud that it created.

Dr Johnson looked at the physical properties of these particles and the dust cloud as a whole to determine how it would have handled heat.

She found the cloud layer was so impermeable that it trapped almost all of the heat from near the surface of the planet, the dust essentially acting like a lid on a pot, cooking Earth’s inhabitants on the surface.

The dust could have taken years, or even decades, to settle, and the particles themselves could have caused ongoing health problems for survivors.

The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

AI IS TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE-IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE!

Amid the broader debate over artificial intelligence’s economic disruptions, the healthcare sector is quietly demonstrating some of the technology’s most concrete applications. Rather than the job losses feared in other industries, hospitals report AI augmenting physicians, streamlining routine tasks and accelerating innovation in ways that could improve outcomes while controlling costs.

At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, roughly 150 AI models are now in use. A tool called Record Time helps internists distill hundreds of pages of external medical records into searchable summaries, saving five to 30 minutes per patient, according to CNN.

“AI can step in and do a lot of the tedious work that very specialized doctors or medical professionals do to speed up that process – get to more accurate diagnoses, faster so you can treat more people,” Jason Droege, CEO of Scale AI, said.

Mayo is also testing AI for early pancreatic-cancer detection, potentially years ahead of conventional diagnosis, and for identifying atrial-fibrillation risks that could prevent strokes. The clinic partners with Microsoft and other firms to train models on its vast trove of patient data.

Radiology, once predicted to be AI’s first casualty, tells a similar story of augmentation rather than obsolescence – though the most-cited evidence comes from an interested party. A report from Build American AI – a nonprofit advocacy arm of Leading the Future, the $100 million pro-AI super PAC backed by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI executives – finds the U.S. radiologist workforce in Medicare-affiliated practices grew 17.3% between 2014 and 2023. At Mayo itself, the group says, the number of radiologists expanded 55% since 2016. The organization does not disclose its donors and lobbies for federal preemption of state AI rules, so the figures warrant independent checking against Medicare provider data.

Utah recently became the first state to allow an AI system from Doctronic to renew prescriptions for chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. In the pilot’s first five months, the AI recommended approval in 72% of cases, with physicians concurring 91% of the time; it escalated the rest when complications appeared, Forbes reports. The program targets established medications, maintains human oversight and bars controlled substances.

Tampa General Hospital estimates that an AI-enabled sepsis-detection system it built with Palantir has helped save 886 lives since August 2022, cutting early sepsis deaths by 68%. The figure is the hospital’s own assessment of a system developed with a commercial partner.

In drug development, AI’s impact may prove most transformative. A TD Cowen survey of biopharma leaders found executives expect the technology to compress preclinical costs and timelines by as much as 70%, powering in-silico modeling that simulates thousands of experiments rapidly, Axios reports. Respondents expect new drug programs to expand more than 10% in the coming years.

Yet inside the very institutions championing AI, opposition is already brewing.

Mayo Clinic’s former Director of Research Operations Traci Tamiko Eto sued the hospital earlier this month, alleging she was retaliated against for raising privacy and oversight concerns around some Mayo AI systems. Mayo Clinic spokesperson Andrea Kalmanovitz said the hospital doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation but underscored that it is “committed to the responsible development and deployment of AI, with privacy, security, transparency and compliance embedded throughout our processes.”

“Our research and clinical innovation are conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and we remain steadfast in upholding the trust patients place in us and respecting their privacy,” Kalmanovitz said in a statement.

TINY NATIONS OFFER CITIZENSHIP!

E.U. tells Caribbean nations: Stop selling citizenship or we’ll require visas

The bloc is giving five nations two years to phase out citizenship by investment or lose visa-free travel to the 29-country Schengen area.

July 18, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. EDTToday at 5:00 a.m. EDT

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Basseterre Bay in Saint Kitts and Nevis. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group/

The European Union is giving five nations in the Eastern Caribbean two years to end their lucrative citizenship-by-investment programs or lose visa-free travel to the bloc, their leaders say.

The nations — Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia — generate significant revenue through their programs. Foreigners who invest in their economies, buy real estate or pay their governments directly gain passports that allow visa-free travel to more than 140 countries and territories, including much of Europe. Costs begin at $200,000.

Each of the five received a letter from Brussels last month advising that new E.U. rules make the existence of such programs grounds for suspending visa-free access, according to the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. The bloc gave them until June 1, 2028, to phase out their programs.

Their prime ministers are coordinating a “collective response,” they said in a statement. After meeting last week in Dominica, they are planning “a high-level mission to Brussels” at the “earliest appropriate opportunity” to meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and other senior E.U. officials.

E.U. officials did not respond to requests for comment. The bloc has long been wary of citizenship-by-investment programs. Critics say insufficient vetting of applicants can enable money laundering and terrorist financing and increase the risks of identity fraud and illegal immigration.

Several E.U. member states offer residence-by-investment programs that can lead to citizenship. President Donald Trump last year introduced a $1 million “Trump gold card” promising a direct path to U.S. citizenship within weeks “for all qualified and vetted people.” (As of May, one person had been approved, the Department of Homeland Security said in a legal filing.)

“Investment migration is a well-established global practice, not a Caribbean peculiarity,” Didacus Jules, director general of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, told The Washington Post. “More than half of the world’s states offer some form of access to residence or citizenship through investment.”

The European Commission acknowledged in December that the five nations had taken steps “to strengthen due diligence and information-sharing,” but said the programs “continue to raise concerns due to high volumes, short processing times and low rejection rates.”

Together, the five have issued more than 100,000 passports, according to the commission. Prospective citizens generally are not required to be present in the country to apply; only Antigua and Barbuda requires them to ever visit. Passports are typically issued within a year, and rejection rates are typically in the single digits.

Such programs have long suffered a “bad image,” said Jean‑François Harvey, an attorney whose multinational firm specializes in business immigration.

Harvey Law Group serves more than 100 clients seeking Caribbean citizenship each year. Some want to live there, Harvey said, “but the vast majority … want a second citizenship for estate and tax planning, and for safety.”

Hugh Jorgensen, program lead for corrupt money flows at Transparency International, said such programs can also be exploited by criminals. The main risk, he said, is that “what is being sold is not the actual citizenship in the country itself, it’s what the citizenship offers in getting access to other countries.”

Citizens of the five nations enjoy visa-free travel to the Schengen area, which includes 25 of the 27 E.U. member states. The majority of applicants to at least four of the five in 2024 came from countries for whom the bloc requires visas (Grenada released only partial data), the commission reported. They included China, Syria, Iraq and Nigeria.

Criminals can use citizenship by investment to “launder their proceeds in these countries, or simply escape their own jurisdiction where they are facing criminal charges or at risk being arrested,” Jorgensen said.

“Many countries have tried these in the past and brought them to a conclusion because it’s not worth the risk,” he said. “This is not a long-term economic solution.”

Harvey said his firm turns away applicants who have undisclosed criminal convictions or are unable to explain the source of their funds. “At least a dozen times a year, we refuse clients because we’re not comfortable representing them,” he said. “Sometimes, clients have a bad profile.”

Jules of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States defended the integrity of the five nations’ programs.

“Investment migration, in its various forms, is a widespread and legitimate instrument of economic policy,” he said in written responses to The Post’s questions. The region’s programs “are distinguished less by what they offer than by their fiscal significance for small island developing states — and, increasingly, by the depth of the regulatory architecture that governs them.”

He noted that citizenship by investment in the Eastern Caribbean predates the visa deal with the Schengen area. The programs were established, he said, “as sovereign economic development tools to attract investment, diversify economies, and generate non-tax revenue. Visa-free access has enhanced their attractiveness, but it is not the foundation upon which they were built.”

Revenue from the programs made up an average of about 6.5 percent to the nations’ gross domestic product between 2019 and 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund. Dominica’s program generated more than 30 percent of its GDP in 2022.

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, TRUMP’S BIGGEST SUPPORTER, DIES OF A HEART ATTACK AT AGE 71

Lindsey Graham answer media questions near a damaged Russian vehicles exhibition in central Kyiv© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

The haunting final photos of Lindsey Graham appeared to show no sign of the “brief and sudden illness” which claimed his life.

The South Carolina Senator passed away on the evening of Saturday, July 11, his office confirmed in a statement, without sharing further details about his cause of death. There have been unconfirmed reports that Graham suffered chest pain at his home in Washington, D.C. after returning from Ukraine.

It has been reported he suffered chest pains and a cardiac arrest before his death at the age of 71. The last public photos of Graham were taken during his diplomatic visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, July 10.

• Lindsey Graham the latest politician to fall ill without explanation

Zelensky shared a series of photographs documenting their meeting on his official social media account on X. During the visit, the pair discussed foreign policy, with Graham visiting the president’s office and looking at damaged Russian vehicles in central Kyiv.

Graham spoke to the press in the Ukrainian capital, announcing a new agreement with the Trump administration regarding a Russia sanctions package, which he noted was designed to give “tools to President Trump to end this war.” Graham, who was also photographed holding the P1SUN Ukrainian interceptor drone developed by SkyFall, engineered specifically to track down and destroy Russian drones, said during his final press conference in Kyiv, “I’m pleased to announce, as of about 30 minutes ago, we’ve reached agreement with the White House on a version of the Russian sanctions bill that they will support.”

Lindsey Graham answer media questions near a damaged Russian vehicles exhibition in central Kyiv© AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

He added, “It means it’s gonna become law. So when I get back to Washington, I’m gonna go with Senator [Richard] Blumenthal to the Republican and Democratic leader to see if we can find time to move this Russian sanctions package that would give tools to President Trump to help end this war.”

On Friday, an announcement was also shared on his official website, with a joint statement from Senator Graham, Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). “We are proud to announce that we have reached an agreement with the Trump Administration to move our updated Russia sanctions legislation forward,” the statement read.

“We are very pleased with this significant progress and expect to roll out the legislation very soon. As Russia intensifies its slaughter of civilians, it is imperative that the legislative and executive branches work together to create tools to exact a heavy price on those who buy Russian oil and natural gas, fueling the Putin war machine.”

On Friday, Graham also continued banging the drum about modern infrastructure investment in his state, sharing the news that the US Coast Guard has awarded a $230 million contract for new operational support facilities at its base in Charleston, South Carolina.

Graham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 10© Ukrainian Presidential Press Off

The senator’s last tweet, before his death was announced on Saturday, read, “Great news to see the continued investment in Coast Guard Base Charleston! As Chairman of the Senate @BudgetGOP Committee, I was glad to secure this historic funding for the Coast Guard as a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Last week, Graham also shared his last Instagram post – a video marking the 250th anniversary of American independence. “One nation, under God,” he captioned the post. “Here’s to the next 250 years of freedom.”

The senator visited SkyFall’s drone production facility© SkyFall

Announcing his death, Graham’s office said in a statement, “On the evening of Saturday, July 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness. Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.” The Washington Post has since reported the senator suffered chest pains before experiencing cardiac arrest.

The sparse statement from Graham’s office, which did not explain his death, comes during a stretch of concern about a lack of transparency about lawmakers’ health. Rep. Tom Kean Jr, a New Jersey Republican, was absent without explanation for months before returning to Congress and disclosing that he had been diagnosed with depression. Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was hospitalized weeks ago for undisclosed health reasons.

The senator visited SkyFall’s drone production facility© SkyFall

Graham was elected to the US Senate in 2002 and was running for a fifth term. He had been a close ally of President Donald Trump and a longtime hawk on Iran. As a member of the US House in the 1990s, he backed policies aimed at isolating the country and limiting its missile and nuclear programs.

He also cheered on Trump’s decision to strike nuclear sites last year and had been been a supporter of the latest conflict that started a few months ago. Graham, who was most known for his hawkish foreign policy positions, mounted a brief bid for the party’s presidential nomination during the 2016 campaign and later was a vocal critic of Trump, the eventual GOP nominee.

BROWN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, ARE DUMBER THAT YOU IMAGINE…SO MUCH FOR PRESTIGE LABEL

Brown’s ‘elite’ students scored 96 on a test with AI and 48 without it…

Brown used to represent the pinnacle of American education. Just saying that name, “Brown,” meant serious scholarship, fierce competition, and students who had fought with their smarts to earn their place among the brightest minds in the country.

Families pay a jaw-dropping amount of money for that reputation because a Brown degree is supposed to prove something to the world.

But lately, that prestigious reputation has been taking a brutal beating, especially after this latest cheating scandal… more on that later.

So, why has Brown gone from glistening, well-respected ivy to dusty, second-class weeds? Well, there are probably a lot of reasons, but the main one has to be these three letters: DEI.

Brown has spent years making diversity and inclusion a central part of its academic mission. Excellence has taken a backseat to their new purpose: charity.

Brown’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion describes itself as a “critical leader.” The university says DEI is essential to advancing knowledge and understanding. Of course, they can’t explain how accepting people based on skin color or sexual preference over excellence and IQ is advancing knowledge.

But Brown made a choice. They placed all of their eggs in the DEI basket, and now, they’re paying the price.

As a matter of fact, when President Trump signed an executive order targeting these unfair, dangerous programs, Brown administrators were reportedly prepared to fight any action they believed compromised the school’s very important mission.

Brown has made it very clear what it considers worth defending.

What isn’t clear is whether academics, integrity, and actual learning have been protected with the same level of passion or if any of that is even part of the mission these days.

And that brings us to the cheating scandal now blowing up at Brown. It started in one of the university’s toughest economics classes, where the difference between what students could do at home and what they could do sitting in a classroom (without AI) was quite a shocker.

The take-home midterm average was 96 percent, and forty students got perfect scores.

That’s pretty impressive, right?

Well, when Professor Roberto Serrano decided to move the final back into the classroom, eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, nine students didn’t show up, and the class average crashed from 96 percent to a horrific 48 percent.

As it stands now, Brown is looking like a wildly expensive “credential factory” that just got caught selling the appearance of Ivy League excellence.

Did the universities’ DEI culture and DEI students and staff cause students to cheat? Probably, but honestly, that’s not the argument here.

The story here is less about the students cheating and why and more about these once well-respected institutions revealing their true priorities through the things they fight hardest to protect. Brown has feverishly defended DEI as part of its actual “academic mission.” Meanwhile, the professor at the center of this scandal says the administration’s response to very obvious mass cheating has been pretty weak.

So, how did all of this go down?

It started after a deadly shooting on Brown’s campus. Professor Serrano decided to make the spring midterm and final take-home exams.

Serrano noticed that many of the answers were technically correct but strangely written. When he and his grad students dug deeper, it was clear that ChatGPT was likely the culprit.

Professor Serrano didn’t throw out the midterm right away. He gave the students a chance to prove the scores were legit. He moved the final back into the classroom and told them it would only count if their results were somewhere in the same ballpark.

That’s when the whole thing blew up.

The course… typically attracts few students, but very good ones. [Serrano] has never had more than 30 students enrolled at a time, and on some occasions he had only eight. This semester, probably because of the new evaluation system, 86 students signed up for the class. The results of the midterm exam, which was administered on March 5, were extraordinary, with an average score of 96 out of 100. Forty students scored a perfect 100.

This was indeed extraordinary, because as Serrano told Inside Higher Ed, “Historically the average grade in the midterm of this course has ranged between 65 and 80 [percent], and this exam was harder than the exams I wrote in the past, because… take-home is an opportunity to challenge the class a little bit more, given that you’re giving the students unlimited time.”

Beyond the numbers, many of the answers, even when correct, felt slightly off. They had a “very convoluted style,” Serrano said. When he and his grad students ran the exam questions through ChatGPT, they received similar results.

A suspicious Serrano decided that he would make the final exam in-person; he would see if students did similarly well on it. He emailed his class, telling them, “I am not declaring [the midterm] void for now. I am going to give the class a chance to prove me wrong. That is, if the distribution of the final exam is roughly similar to the distribution of the midterm, I will count the midterm. Otherwise, which is of course what I expect to happen, I will declare the midterm void and reweigh the final accordingly.”

Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. Of those 27 students, El País noted, “22 had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.”

Among those who took the test, the average score plunged—from 96 all the way down to 48.

Maybe these students aren’t a bunch of dummies. Some of them might be really clever. But being smart and actually learning something aren’t the same thing. This scandal makes it look like plenty of students figured out how to work the system without ever really learning the material.

Brown didn’t suddenly develop this crisis because ChatGPT popped on the scene. AI exposed how much of the university’s “celebrated excellence” is based on grades, credentials, and appearances rather than academic excellence.

The professor who exposed all of this understands something about genuine academic work that his students don’t.

Serrano went blind from retinal dystrophy when he was seventeen. He could’ve decided that was the end of his academic future, but he didn’t. He learned Braille, kept going, and made it to Harvard… on his smarts and merits, not DEI.

That probably explains why he couldn’t shrug off what happened in his classroom.

TBDH:

After a short-lived crisis, he decided [blindness] would not stop him. He learned Braille, and his excellent academic record opened up the doors of Harvard. “Of course it affects my life, but one shouldn’t over-dramatize. We economists understand reality as a set of people responding to optimization problems with restrictions. I view my disease simply as one more restriction that I have to deal with, and I optimize based on that,” he says.

DEI is a major part of this collapse in excellence. It helped create a university culture that fixates on how students feel inside the institution, but does Brown care nearly as much about what those students can actually do?

Brown’s own research shows that students know AI is weakening them, yet they keep using it anyway.

More than half of the undergraduate students surveyed said they intentionally use generative AI either daily or weekly. Graduate and medical students reported even higher usage.

Great, so medical students are skating by on AI. That’s good to know.

The students know the shortcuts are making them less capable, but the pressure to compete, save time, and protect their grades keeps pulling them back to it.

So we have to ask: Are these exceptionally smart students who are under a lot of pressure, maybe a little lazy, and looking for a shortcut? Or are these DEI students, admitted under lowered standards, who are now in way over their heads and using AI as a life preserver just to stay afloat?

TBDH:

As a university, Brown is grappling with hard questions about AI use at the moment. It recently released a provost-led report (PDF) on “Generative AI in Teaching and Learning,” which found that it’s not just professors who have concerns.

Even though “56 percent of undergraduate respondents [at Brown] and 67 percent of graduate and medical student respondents reported intentionally using GenAI tools daily or weekly,” the report notes that large majorities of students also have “concerns about the impact of GenAI use on their learning” and a “fear of negative consequences for their cognitive capacity.”

Serrano shares those concerns, and he wants universities as a whole to stand up for human thought. That’s why he’s not letting this story go, despite what he contends is a fairly tepid reaction from Brown administrators.

“We cannot afford to have a society in which a significant fraction of our best young minds think that cheating is okay,” he told Inside Higher Ed. “That leads to a declining society, to a failed society.

“We cannot choose to become idiots.”

One could argue the university’s DEI mission is creating a whole bunch of idiots.

Brown has fought hard to make DEI part of the school’s front-and-center identity. It’s spent years talking about making students feel welcomed, valued, represented, and empowered. That all sounds great in a brochure.

But an Ivy League school is supposed to expect something from the students lucky enough to be there. It should care about honesty, effort, excellence, and big consequences when students cheat.

Sure, Brown still has the Ivy League name, the prestige, and the massive price tag.

But excellence and high-achieving greatness have been diluted by DEI, AI, and cheating scandals.

TIRES AND ALZHEIMER RISK???

Learning What Substance Is Suspected of Causing Alzheimer’s May Throw You Into an Existential Crisis

If you drive, your car’s tires are shredding more than just tread: they may be mincing up our grey matter too.

New research by a team in China discovered an alarming link between a chemical commonly found in tires and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The chemical, called 6PPD-Q, is formed when fine tire particles meet ozone. That happens anytime new chunks of tire are exposed to the air, meaning the particle may be nearly ubiquitous in car-heavy environments.

According to the findings, recently published in the journal Open Medicine, when the ozone-treated chemical meets our brain cells, it can cause oxidative stress — wear and tear, basically — and inflammation, while also reducing how effectively individual cells “communicate” with one another. These factors strongly correlate to the development of early-stage Alzheimer’s, suggesting anyone who regularly comes into contact with rubber tires may be inadvertently exposing themselves to brain-altering chemicals.

For those in car-dependent regions of the world like North America, that’s a pretty significant chunk of the population.

The chemical makes its way into our brains through our blood, which it enters primarily when we breathe in dust particles laden with 6PPD-Q. Other avenues of exposure include crops and soil, stadium turf, working near highways or with cars, and contact with recycled tire products.

While scientists already knew that 6PPD-Q interacts with the brain somehow, the chemical’s newfound molecular connection to Alzheimer’s is significant. Using machine learning software, the team mapped how effectively the chemical binds to five “Alzheimer predictor genes,” finding that 6PPD-Q forms strong bonds with three.

Beyond humans, 6PPD-Q run-off from roadways is having a sizable impact on fish populations, notably salmon. One 2022 study on the environmental journey road runoff takes described the substance as a “highly toxic tire-derived chemical,” which has caused “mass mortalities of coho salmon,” specifically.

Going forward, scientists still need to conduct broader lab tests on human cells in order to figure out how severely various quantities of 6PPD-Q contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. Only then can we get a sense of just how risky it is to burn rubber.

111,000,000 AMERICANS ARE NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE!

111 Million U.S. Adults Do Not Have a Job and America Spends More Than a Trillion Dollars per Year on a Social Safety Net for Them

Did you know that the number of Americans that are out of work right now is far higher than it was at any point during the Great Recession? I know that sounds crazy, but I will prove it to you in this article. A whopping 111 million Americans do not have a job, and we are spending more than a trillion dollars a year on the social safety net that supports them. Of course we cannot afford to do this, because the national debt has already reached 39 trillion dollars and it is growing at an astounding rate. If we do not fix our economy, disaster is inevitable.

The bureaucrats in Washington keep telling us that the unemployment rate is low even though there are vast numbers of adults all around us that are not working.

The way that they are able to do this is by dumping almost everyone that is not working into a category known as “not in labor force”.

This allows them to keep the official rate of unemployment suppressed even as the labor force participation rate hits an insanely low level…

On the surface, a June drop in the unemployment rate helped provide some upside to what was an otherwise downbeat jobs report — but it was for all the wrong reasons.

That’s because the decline in the jobless level to 4.2%, the lowest in a year, came largely from an exodus of workers from the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data Thursday.

In fact, the measure of the working-age population either employed or looking for a job slid to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021. Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, it was the lowest labor force participation rate in exactly 50 years.

Today, there are just over 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed.

That doesn’t sound bad at all.

But they rarely mention those that are considered to be not in the labor force. This is how the Federal Reserve defines that category…

Persons who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work.

As you can see from the chart below, the number of people that they have been dumping into that category has grown dramatically since 1990.

Right now, there are 104 million Americans that do not have a job that are considered to be not in the labor force…

When you add the 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed to the 104 million Americans that are considered to be not in the labor force, you get a grand total of 111 million Americans that do not have a job right now.

At no point during the Great Recession did that combined figure ever reach 100 million.

That is how bad things are in the U.S. at this moment.

Of course the 111 million Americans that are not working need to be supported somehow.

Some of them are supported by other family members that have incomes coming in.

But most of them are either partially or totally supported by our social safety net.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, we spend more than a trillion dollars a year on more than 80 different social safety net programs…

Buying Americans out of poverty is undermining incentives to work, with families living in poverty relying more on taxpayer-funded welfare checks than income from work, according to a newly released report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Costing well over $1 trillion, America’s social safety net encompasses more than 80 federal programs, and is discouraging beneficiaries from seeking income from work.

The report, which was requested by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08), shows low-income families are becoming increasingly dependent on government transfers. In 1979, families living below the poverty line earned about 60 percent of their income from work. In 2021, that number dropped to an all-time low of around 25 percent. The report also shows how the dramatic increase in dependency on government transfers for low-income families was accelerated by COVID-era benefits.

Read that first paragraph again. I had no idea that it was this bad.

If the federal government was not supporting them, tens of millions more Americans would be living in poverty right now.

So what would our society look like if we stopped borrowing gigantic mountains of money to fuel this system?

And each day, even more Americans are losing their places in the middle class because they are getting laid off.

In fact, it is being reported that Microsoft is preparing for yet another round of massive layoffs…

Microsoft is reportedly planning another round of layoffs, expected to be announced as early as next week.

The cuts will impact thousands of roles across sales, consulting, and the Xbox gaming division. Total layoffs will amount to less than 2.5%% of the company’s workforce.

Microsoft employs roughly 220,000 people across the globe. The company eliminated approximately 15,000 positions just last year — 6,000 layoffs in May 2025 and another 9,000 layoffs in July 2025.

But if we just throw the entire country into the “not in labor force” category, we can pretend that the unemployment rate is at 0.0 percent and that everything is just fine, right?

What a joke.

Of course most Americans that are actually working are really struggling these days.

Home prices in the U.S. have risen by about 60 percent since the beginning of the last pandemic, and at this stage housing in the U.S. is more unaffordable than it has ever been before…

Home prices have grown by roughly 60 percent since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to JP Morgan data. Mortgage rates are historically high, and have been so since 2022. And the U.S. homeownership rate hit its lowest level since 2019 last year, at 65 percent, according to Census data.

“I think right now the housing market is pretty unprecedented,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, told Newsweek. “We have the highest home prices that have ever been on record, along with pretty high mortgage rates. The mortgage rates aren’t the highest we’ve seen on record—they exceeded 18 percent in 1981—but they are higher than they have been for the last 10 years or so.

“And so housing affordability has gotten really bad, especially for young people who don’t already own homes. Breaking into the housing market is incredibly tough.”

How are young adults supposed to purchase homes in this environment?

Home prices have risen far faster than incomes have, and this has “put homeownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans”…

Back in 1975, a typical home cost about 2.4 times as much as the average under-40 household earned in a year, a standard measure of housing affordability, according to a new report from Pew Research Center.

By 2019, that price-to-income ratio had risen to 2.9. In 2024, it reached 3.5.

Over the past decade, home prices have risen much faster than wages. The rising ratio of price to income, coupled with elevated interest rates, has put home ownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans.

This is one of the biggest reasons why young adults are so angry.

They simply can’t afford to live normal lives.

Last year, the percentage of first-time homebuyers dropped to the lowest level ever recorded…

First-time buyers represented only 21% of all home purchasers in 2025, a record low, according to the National Association of Realtors. The typical age of a first-time buyer climbed to 40, an all-time high.

Meanwhile, virtually everything else is becoming more expensive too.

For example, the price of ground beef is up 13 percent over the past year, and that price of steak is up 16 percent over the past year…

The average price of ground beef was $6.75 per pound in May, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, up nearly 13% from a year ago and just below April’s record high of $6.90. Beef steak prices averaged $12.80 per pound, up 16% from a year earlier and the second-highest level on record.

Tens of millions of Americans are deeply hurting right now, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

This is why I rant about the economy so much.

I hear from so many people out there that are in very real pain.

Decades of very foolish decisions have resulted in decades of economic decline, and now we really have reached a breaking point.