Israeli occupation forces killed nine Palestinians and injured at least twenty on Thursday during violent raids in the occupied city of Jenin and its refugee camp.
The raids began on the evening of January 25 and persisted into January 26, in what is being described as “one of the deadliest days” in the West Bank since last year.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), several have been detained throughout the raids and transferred for interrogation by Israel’s security service. As a result of the incursions, intense clashes broke out between Israeli troops and resistance fighters, several of whom sustained bullet wounds.
An elderly woman has also been reported among the dead, according to security officials. Eyewitnesses have referred to the situation as a “massacre.”
The Israeli army cut off the power supply to the Jenin camp, while also blocking journalists and ambulance teams from entering. Health officials have said that injuries are continuing to accumulate.
“There is an invasion that is unprecedented in the past period, in terms of how large it is and the number of injuries … The ambulance driver tried to get to one of the martyrs who was on the floor, but the Israeli forces shot directly at the ambulance and prevented them from approaching him,” Wissam Baker, head of Jenin’s public hospital, told media.
The Palestinian Authority said Thursday it was suspending security coordination with Israel after a deadly army raid in the occupied West Bank.
Washington condemned the decision, saying it was not the “right step.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due in the region next week pic.twitter.com/fjC7SpQoX2
Despite centering around Jenin and its camp, the Israeli raids also targeted several homes and refugee camps across the West Bank, including Ramallah’s Al-Amari camp and Jerusalem’s Shuafat camp, as well as the towns of Silwan, Sur Baher, Al-Tur, and Al-Isawiya.
In response to the Israeli aggression, the Palestinian resistance managed to down a drone as it was flying over the Jenin refugee camp.
According to reports, an Israeli soldier was killed and another injured in the confrontations. Another report says that the Jenin Brigade of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) resistance movement detonated an explosive device inside an Israeli military jeep, resulting in “casualties in their ranks.”
WATCH: Palestinian fighters shot down an Israeli drone that was surveying the area as Israeli forces raided the Jenin refugee camp.
The raid resulted in the deaths of nine Palestinians in what has been described as a “massacre” by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s office. pic.twitter.com/kkpUWpO8ww
“The military operation in Jenin was launched after intelligence from the Shin Bet about the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement’s intention to carry out a major operation against Israeli targets … the operation aimed to arrest a prominent member of the movement,” Israeli media reported.
The military ended up withdrawing from Jenin, however, the injury toll is expected to rise.
Middle-Aged Tech Mogul Spends $2 Million Per Year To Achieve ’18-Year-Old’ Body
A 45-year-old tech mogul worth nine figures says he spends around $2 million per year to ‘bio hack’ his body so that he has the fitness of an 18-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old, and the heart of a 35-year-old.
Bryan Johnson, who sold his company Braintree Payment Solutions to Ebay for $800 million when he was in his 30s, has been sticking to an aggressive daily routine that was crafted by his team of 30 doctors and regenerative health experts, Bloombergreports.
Every morning, Johnson wakes at 5am, downs two dozen supplements, works out for an hour, and then drinks a green juice concoction that includes collagen peptides and creatine. He then brushes and flosses, rinsing with tea-tree oil and antioxidant gel.
Then, before bedtime, Johnson wears special glasses that block out blue light for two hours while monitoring vital signs.
He also goes through monthly medical procedures to gauge his progress, which include MRIs, colonoscopies, blood tests and ultrasounds. He tracks his weight, BMI, blood glucose levels and heart rate variations on a daily basis.
When he goes to bed, Johnson is hooked up to machine that tracks the number of nighttime erections (why though?).
Here’s Johnson in 2017, before he began the health quest:
Earlier this week, the Notre Dame Law Review hosted its annual Federal Courts symposium (which results in an annual federal courts issue of the journal).
The keynote of the event was a question-and-answer session with Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, moderated by Notre Dame Dean Marcus Cole.
During the session, Justice Kavanaugh discussed multiple administrative law topics, including Chevron, the Major Questions doctrine, and the APA, as well as other topics related to legal education, including the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings.
Of note, Justice Kavanaugh did not disparage Chevron, or suggest that it needs to be curtailed, but said that he is a “footnote 9 person,” in that he thinks courts have to carefullly scrutinize the relevant statutory language, using all of the traditional tools of statutory construction. A consequence of this approach, he explained, is that courts will not be in a position to consider deferring to agency interpretations nearly as often, so there will be less need to cite or reference Chevron as such. By contrast, non-footnote 9 people, Justice Kavanaugh suggested, are more willing to defer to agencies in the face of complex statutory schemes.
On the Major Questions Doctrine, Justice Kavanaugh referenced his own writing as a judge on the D.C. Circuit, and older cases such as the Benzene decision, and argued the doctrine embodies a common sense intuition that Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes,” and has much in common with other presumptions that are routinely applied in statutory interpretation, such as the presumption against retroactivity.
Colorado appears ready to join other states in clamping down on Second Amendment rights. A draft of the “Mass Shooting Prevention Act,” expected to be introduced in the upcoming legislative session, was made public and Second Amendment Advocates are concerned.
“This bill uses the most insane parts of the laws from California and New York,” Taylor Rhodes, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO), told The Epoch Times. “This doesn’t just ban many commonly owned pistols and shotguns; this will ban almost 70 percent of all firearms overnight.”
Rhodes was made aware of the bill draft almost three weeks ago. He said the proposed legislation is designed to greatly diminish Second Amendment rights in Colorado.
“You might as well call this the ‘Gun Owners Get Out of Town Bill,’” Rhodes said.
The proposed law expands the definition of “assault weapons” to cover a wide array of commonly owned rifles, pistols, and shotguns. In addition, parts that could be used to convert a semiautomatic weapon into a so-called “assault weapon” would also be outlawed. The only exceptions would be guns owned before the law was enacted, which would be grandfathered. However, that too comes with a catch.
Guns owned before the law’s enactment can only be kept if the owner has proof of ownership before that date. The law doesn’t say what constitutes proof, but it does outline what will happen if the gun owner doesn’t have proof.
Without adequate proof of ownership, the gun owner would be required to surrender the gun to law enforcement, who would hold it for up to three business days. The gun would be confiscated and destroyed if the owner could not provide proof on the fourth business day. The gun owner could face criminal prosecution, including fines of up to $1,000 for violations between July 1, 2023, and Dec. 31, 2024. The penalties increase to $5,000 after Jan. 1, 2025.
Rhodes said a gun owner would have to carry proof of ownership whenever they had a gun since a police officer could demand to see proof at any time. This could be a problem for people who did not buy the gun they are holding.
“What if you inherited your grandfather’s shotgun 30 years ago?” Rhodes asked.
The fines for Federal Firearms License holders who sell a banned gun are even steeper.
A licensed gun dealer who sells or attempts to sell a banned gun after July 1, 2023, faces a fine of $250,000. Subsequent violations will result in a fine of $500,000.
Rhodes said RMGO lawyers are already drafting a lawsuit because the law is almost guaranteed to pass the General Assembly and be signed by Gov. Jared Polis. According to Rhodes, the “Bloomberg lobby” has invested heavily in Colorado state elections and is reaping the benefits.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg started “Everytown for Gun Safety.” The nationwide organization raises volunteers to push for gun control in their communities and provides backing for political candidates who support the group’s gun control agenda.
“These politicians are nothing more than elected activists,” Rhodes said. “We know the realities in Colorado right now, and we are ready to sue.”
Travis Couture-Lovelady is the Colorado state director for the National Rifle Association. Like Rhodes, he sees the proposed law as nothing more than an effort to control law-abiding citizens by denying their Constitutional right to self-defense.
“A ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ will do nothing to reduce violent crime or enhance public safety, but it will stop law-abiding Americans from exercising their Second Amendment rights,” Lovelady wrote in a statement released on Jan. 23.
Laws Counterintuitive to Rulings
Rhodes said the proposed legislation makes little sense in light of recent Supreme Court decisions that affirmed the individual’s right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
In the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, the court ruled that the Second Amendment was describing an individual right. More recently, in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the high court justices struck down New York state’s overly restrictive requirements for individuals carrying weapons outside their homes.
Since then, lawmakers in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, and Oregon, among other states, have adopted gun control laws that appear to be opposed to the court’s rulings. Many of those laws are now the subject of lawsuits.
One lawsuit filed in Illinois has more than 800 plaintiffs from 87 of the state’s 102 counties suing to overturn the state’s newly enacted gun ban. More than 90 Illinois sheriffs stated they would not enforce the law because they consider it unconstitutional.
Rhodes believes gun control advocates are pushing back just as hard, hoping for success on at least one or two legal points. He said most gun control organizations, like Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, are well-funded and feel they have little to lose.
What They Can Get Away With
“They want to see what they can get away with. For them it’s not that big of an issue because they’ve got more money than Kellogg’s got cornflakes,” Rhodes said.
Larry Correia is a novelist and Second Amendment advocate based in Utah. While he mainly writes in the fantasy/science fiction genre, his non-fiction work centers on the Second Amendment. His latest book, “In Defense of the Second Amendment,” was set for release on Jan. 24 by Regnery Press.
Correia wrote the book to provide Second Amendment supporters with facts to show people the truth about firearms.
“We’ve got the facts on our side. I want to provide those facts for the people who need them. I want to move the dial for the ‘fence sitters,’” Correia told The Epoch Times.
While the move toward stricter gun laws may seem counterintuitive given the court’s recent actions, Correia said the laws are likely elements in more comprehensive strategies. The fact that the courts have been ruling against them may have gun control advocates in “fight-or-flight” mode. It could be as Rhodes proffered that they “are throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.” Or, Correia said, the court battles may be the objective.
Well Funded Groups
Rhodes pointed out that many gun control movements are well-funded. Correia agreed, saying it might be to wear Constitutionalists down and deplete their resources.
The International Monetary Fund is now reportedly talking about a fresh multiyear package to help cover Ukraine’s budget and for war recovery totaling as much as a whopping $16 billion.
Citing officials privy to IMF deliberations, Bloombergdetails that “If approved, the three- to four-year program — worth $14 billion to $16 billion total — will assume a disbursement of $5 billion to $7 billion in the first year.
The plan could be finalized by the end of March, with a first tranche payment released as early as April.
However, the IMF has pointed to a number of conditions which must be met, such as G7 endorsement for the package, and other donors coming forward to vouch for sustaining the country’s immense and growing debt.
An official IMF statement only indicated it “remains closely engaged” with Ukraine and said cooperation “could pave the way toward a fully fledged program” – but the fund didn’t confirm to Bloomberg the potential size of the loan.
Billions upon billions in international aid has already flooding into Ukraine, some of it for civilian relief and some of it for weapons. The US alone in Ukraine reached nearly $50 billion in 2022 in specifically military aid, with other types of aid going beyond that.
Ironically news of the potential impending IMF mega-package for Ukraine comes the same week the war-ravaged country is back in the news related to a major corruption scandal, resulting in forced resignations and firings of some dozen high-ranking officials.
Kiev of course is attempting to show the world it’s finally getting serious about anti-corruption initiatives in order to keep billions from the West flowing in.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) failed to meet a Jan. 24 deadline to hand over materials requested by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability relating to the discovery of classified documents in President Joe Biden’s former office, a committee spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times.
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) asked Acting NARA Archivist Debra Steidel Wall in a Jan. 10 letter (pdf) to provide various information related to the classified records by no later than Jan. 24.
The information requested by the lawmaker included all related documents and communications between NARA and the White House, among NARA employees, between NARA and the Department of Justice (DOJ), and between NARA and any outside entities—including Biden’s attorneys—relating to the documents found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington.
Those documents were initially discovered on Nov. 2, 2022, a week before the midterm elections, but the findings weren’t made public until two months later.
In a statement to The Washington Examiner on Jan. 24, a committee spokesperson said GOP investigators plan to conduct a transcribed interview with NARA’s general counsel soon, which would provide lawmakers with a more detailed timeline as to how the discovery of the classified documents was handled.
NARA officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
On Jan. 16, Comer accused NARA of failing to be “transparent with the American people” in a post on Twitter, adding that many unanswered questions about the documents remain.
In response to Comer’s Jan. 10 letter, Wall said the agency must first consult with the DOJ before it can hand over information related to the discovery of the Biden classified documents to Republican lawmakers.
“I want to express my commitment to working cooperatively with you and your staff on this and all matters of concern to the Committee on Oversight and Accountability,” Wall wrote in a Jan. 17 letter (pdf) to the lawmaker. “Our desire to provide you with as much information as we can, however, must also be balanced with the need to protect Executive branch equities, particularly as they relate to ongoing criminal law enforcement investigations by DOJ.”
Wall added that the agency must first consult with the DOJ regarding the release of any such records.
“DOJ has advised it will need to consult with the newly appointed Office of Special Counsel (SCO) in DOJ, to assess whether information can be released without interfering with the SCO’s investigation,” Wall wrote.
After the initial documents were found at the Penn Biden Center in November 2022, a second batch was discovered from Biden’s time in the Obama administration at his residence in Wilmington, Delaware, the White House said.
Additional documents were later found at the property shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur, a former federal prosecutor in Maryland, as special counsel to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law regarding the handling of the documents.
In a Jan. 22 interview for “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News, Comer also took aim at the White House, who he accused of “stonewalling” the Republican-led probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
During that interview, the Kentucky lawmaker also said that he would be sending letters to the Secret Service requesting further information regarding the documents, including any type of correspondence, emails, and documentation that could help GOP lawmakers determine who may have had access to the newly discovered documents.
“Hopefully, the Secret Service will work with us, despite the fact that this White House is not,” Comer said.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment, although the White House counsel’s office has previously said that the president is committed to operating with the Justice Department’s investigation into the classified documents.
The documents were initially found on Jan. 16 at Pence’s home in Indiana, in the wake of the documents found at Biden’s former office and residence, Greg Jacob, one of Pence’s lawyers, wrote in a letter to NARA.
“Near Miss”: Asteroid To Make One Of ‘Closest Ever’ Approaches To Earth On Thursday
An asteroid about the size of a big truck will buzz the earth on Thursday – coming within 2,200 miles of the planet’s surface in one of the closest passes ever recorded, according to scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The asteroid, 2023 BU, will travel over the Pacific Ocean west of southern Chile this afternoon according to JPL’s Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer.
Not to worry (of course they’d say that) – but the near-Earth object poses no danger, according to Farnocchia.
“It’s not going to break up,” he said. “It’s going to zoom past Earth, say hello and move on.”
And even if it did enter Earth’s atmosphere, it would have burned upon entry and turned into a fireball.
“It’s not going to get close enough for that,” the scientist continued, adding that the flyby will be the fourth-closest approach ever recorded – with the first two in 2020 and 2021, the WSJreports.
2023 BU was first spotted by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, from his observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea, on Jan. 21. More observations were reported to the Minor Planet Center, a clearinghouse for the position measurement of small celestial bodies. And after the discovery was announced, observatories around the globe added to the findings, helping astronomers refine 2023 BU’s orbit, according to NASA.
NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, which is based in Southern California and called Scout, analyzed the data and quickly predicted the near miss. -WSJ
The Scout impact detection system was developed by Farnocchia, who says he received an alert from the system while having dinner.
“When you see that alert, you just want to make sure that it’s real,” he said. “So usually I just go and see the data and confirm it’s real and that everything is checked out.”
“Some of them actually can come really close to the Earth, and some of them might never come close to the Earth. That is just the first cutoff to split objects that could be potentially interesting and the ones that certainly are not.”
A Utah plastic surgeon, along with three others, is facing charges for allegedly administering fake COVID-19 vaccines to children, destroying vaccines, and distributing falsified vaccine cards.
Dr. Michael Kirk Moore, the owner of the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah in Midvale, has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to court documents (pdf).
Moore’s office manager Kari Burgoyne, receptionist Sandra Flores, neighbor Kristin Andersen, and the Plastic Surgery Institute are also charged in the case.
The defendants are accused of running a vaccine scheme out of the physician’s business.
Moore and Andersen were allegedly members of a “private organization seeking to ‘liberate’ the medical profession from government and industry conflicts of interest,” the documents state.
In May 2021, Moore signed an agreement with the CDC to administer COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination cards. Court documents claim that Moore and Burgoyne then ordered “hundreds of doses of COVID-19 vaccines,” which they began receiving at the plastic surgery center in October 2021.
Working the Plan
After receiving the vaccine doses, the doctor and three others started notifying “fraudulent vax card seekers” that they could “receive fraudulently completed COVID-19 Vaccination Record Cards from the Plastic Surgery Institute without having to receive a COVID-19 vaccine,” the documents state.
Those seeking fraudulent vaccination cards were required to pay $50 cash or make a $50 donation to Moore and Andersen’s private organization.
Burgoyne allegedly managed the “day-to-day logistics of the scheme,” while Andersen handled the screening process. Once a person was successfully screened and had made their $50 payment, Andersen would send them forms to complete.
“Flores and other employees would then provide the Fraudulent Vax Card Seekers with the completed COVID-19 Vaccine Record Cards without administering any COVID-19 vaccine to them,” the document reads.
The group also gave fake vaccines to children when requested by the minors’ parents.
“Dr. Moore, Burgoyne, and Flores also arranged, at times, to administer or have others administer saline shots to minor children at the request of their parents so that the minor children would think they were actually receiving a COVID-19 vaccine,” according to the document.
The names of the fraudulent vaccination card seekers were uploaded to the Utah Statewide Immunization Information System.
Between Oct. 15, 2021, and Sept. 6, 2022, the Plastic Surgery Institute allegedly received about 2,200 doses of the vaccine and destroyed nearly 2,000 of them at a value of more than $28,000. The doses were destroyed “usually by drawing them from the bottle and then squirting them down the drain from a syringe.”
At least 1,937 fraudulent vaccination cards were allegedly sold at $50 each for a total of $96,850. The vaccination cards and the vaccine doses amounted to a combined value of nearly $125,000.
Undercover Agents
The scheme fell apart when an undercover agent managed to complete the “referral only” process and acquire a fake vaccination card.
A second agent went through the process and then asked Flores if his children could also receive a similar vaccine record card.
Flores “wrote on a Post-it note that ‘with 18 & younger, we do a saline shot,’ indicating that minors could receive saline shots and obtain the cards without receiving the vaccine,” the court papers say.
Fire Sale: Bel-Air Land Hits Auction Block At 70% Discount
One of the largest undeveloped plots of land in one of the wealthiest enclaves in Los Angeles is being sent to the auction block Tuesday at a whopping 70% discount versus the 2013 asking price of $125 million.
Senderos Canyon is the largest untouched Bel Air acreage left, containing 260 acres in an area where homeowners have included Ronald, Nancy Reagan, and Elon Musk.
Today’s minimum bid at auction is $39 million, down from $60 million last year. The property was listed in 2017 for $75 million and initially had an asking price of $125 million in 2013.
“The seller wants to move on,” Scott Tamkin, the Compass Inc. agent who has the listing, told Bloomberg.
Unlike some of the other land-only listings, Senderos Canyon has no entitlements, meaning the buyer could spend millions of dollars and years securing permits. Hence, no developer wants to purchase the land to build a massive compound or a bunch of McMansions.
Misha Haghani, the founder of Paramount Realty USA, the auction house conducting the sale, said, “Bel-Air’s not going anywhere,” and the land would be “a safe haven” play for a high net-worth individual to shelter money during high inflation and economic storms.
Meanwhile, Stephen Shapiro, co-founder of Westside Estate Agency, a luxury brokerage with offices in Beverly Hills and Malibu, said the heavily discounted auction is a sign of desperation:
“An auction is like your last shot … Good luck with that.”
Paramount Realty requires those interested in the property to submit sealed bids by March 15.
“Anyone who buys it is rolling the dice” on development, said Shawn Bayliss, executive director of the Bel-Air Association, a neighborhood group.
The auction comes as high mortgage rates pressure the housing market in what’s expected to trigger a downturn this year. Many economists are mixed about whether home prices will crash. The owner of Senderos Canyon wants to unload the property before real estate turmoil strikes.
A California judge on Wednesday halted the state’s so-called COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation law, which was challenged by doctors in two lawsuits, claiming it violates their constitutional rights.
In Hoeg v. Newsom, five doctors alleged that the state law, AB 2098, is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. A separate related lawsuit, Hoang v. Bonta, makes similar allegations.
Both lawsuits sought a preliminary injunction to prevent California from enforcing the law.
The five doctors, Tracy Hoeg, Ram Duriseti, Aaron Kheriaty, Pete Mazolewski, and Azadeh Khatibi, filed their lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials, including the president and members of the Medical Board of California.
They argued the law prevents them from providing information to their patients that may contradict what the law permits or prohibits. They also alleged the law was used to intimidate and punish physicians who disagreed with prevailing views on COVID-19.
Judge William Shubb, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his ruling (pdf) it was plausible that the medical board would determine their conduct violates AB 2098, and therefore the doctors’ fears are reasonable “given the ambiguity of the term ‘scientific consensus’ and of the definition of ‘misinformation’ as a whole.”
Shubb noted that this weighed in favor of the plaintiffs having standing.
“Because the definition of misinformation ‘fails to provide a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice of what is prohibited, [and] is so standardless that it authorizes or encourages seriously discriminatory enforcement,’ the provision is unconstitutionally vague,” Shubb wrote. “Accordingly, the court concludes that plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their vagueness challenges.”
The Law
Newsom signed the bill into law in September 2022, and it took effect on Jan. 1, 2023.
The law defines misinformation as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus,” and prohibits physicians from disseminating “misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”
Doctors who deviate from the established U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance by attempting to assess and advise their patients as individuals may run afoul of the new law.
The state medical board is required by law to act against any licensed doctor charged with unprofessional conduct.
The court’s ruling effectively halts the law while the legal challenge plays out.
The legal organization representing the doctors said their clients were put in a difficult position, fearing repercussions for acting in the best interests of their patients by giving them honest information, depriving them of their right to receive advice and hear treatment options without fear of professional discipline.
According to American Civil Liberties Alliance (ACLA), the First Amendment, which protects Americans’ rights to free speech and expression, applies to minority views and majority opinions.
The doctors alleged they have been threatened by other doctors and individuals on social media to use AB 2098 to have their licenses taken away, according to ACLA.
