Danish Navy Intercepts, Detains Iran-Flagged Cargo Ship
Denmark detained a container vessel previously blacklisted by Washington under last year’s sweeping Iran sanctions on Thursday, amid suspicions it was operating under a false flag.
The Nora was seized after authorities determined it was allegedly sailing under the flag of Comoros without authorization. The ship is now anchored in Danish waters pending further investigation, according to reports. It actually appears to be a box ship transporting containers at the time it was intercepted. It raised the Iranian flag under deeply suspicious circumstances, as a patrol boat eyed the vessel, Danish officials say.
The Danish Maritime Authority believes it to be part of Iran’s so-called shadow fleet of tankers. “The Danish Maritime Authority reports that the vessel has been detained due to incorrect registration,” the agency said.
Several months ago the vessel went through a name change, which Washington officials believe was in order to keep shipping sanctioned Iranian and Russian exports, and to evade European suspicions while traversing regional waters.
The vessel is said to currently anchored east of Albaek in the northernmost part of Jutland.
It’s possible the vessel will eventually be released, as the Danish government explained the ship will be detained until Iran confirms to the agency that the container ship is legitimately registered and certified.
According to more details via a maritime monitoring publication:
Denmark’s TV 2 reports the vessel had gone dark while it was in St. Petersburg, Russia, in mid-January and then sailed west into the Baltic and reached Skagen, where it stopped on January 22. The following day, it anchored less than 20 miles east of Aalbaek, Denmark, where it has remained for the past 28 days.
A Danish patrol ship was spotted near the vessel along with a Danish Armed Forces sea drone. The Danish Maritime Authority reports it questioned the vessel’s registry in Comoros and was informed by the authorities that the ship was “not correctly registered.” Apparently, when they questioned the vessel further, it suddenly raised an Iranian flag, prompting the detention.
Danish outlet TV 2 further reports that the Cerus/Nora had transited Danish waters at least 10 times over the past year during repeated voyages to Saint Petersburg – and each time the vessel allegedly went dark, ceasing transmission of its position data as it neared Russian waters.
BREAKING: Danish authorities have detained the 226-meter container ship Nora, now flying the Iranian flag, east of Aalbæk, after it was found not properly registered with its claimed flag state. Previously sailing under the Comorian flag, the vessel suddenly changed its… pic.twitter.com/vjh2qaOJOm
The Trump administration is meanwhile contemplating whether to escalate its military pressure on Iran by beginning to directly seize Iranian oil exports. This would be seen by Tehran as an immediate act of war.
Escobar: Munich (In)Security Conference Targets Re-Colonization Of The Global South
Authored by Pepe Escobar,
The path towards 5th Generation War will accelerate. We are entering the next stage of an “omnipresent battlefield.”
No one ever lost money betting on major farce taking over every Munich (In)Security Conference. But the 62nd edition this past weekend did send the Stupidity-O-Meter off the charts.
First of all, the context:
The “rules-based international order” was always a sham and it has now collapsed, as announced in Davos.
Eurasia vs. NATOstan has metastasized into Empire of Chaos, Plunder and Permanent Strikes (with NATO as minor sidekick) vs. the Primakov Quartet, RIIC (Russia-India-Iran-China) and the Global South.
The complex context of course opened the gates for a parade of out of context vociferating nullities, including; the Bratwurst Goldman Sachs Chancellor; the Toxic Medusa in Brussels; that ghastly Estonian with the IQ of a dismembered worm; an array of British twats; and of course the sweaty sweatshirt terrorist actor in Kiev.
Predictably, the assembled EUrochihuahuas applauded with torrents of yappin’ the spokesman for His Master’s Voice, expressing their sense of “solace” and “reassurance”; after all the neo-Caligula envoy did not threat to invade, annex or sanction anyone – at least for the moment. He even got a standing ovation.
So this is how the indebted-to-oblivion Empire of Chaos and its minions plan to reverse “the West’s managed decline”; to revive “the West’s age of dominance”; and to “renew the greatest civilization in human history”. The Global South has been warned.
China’s Wang Yi was there – but his words of common sense were drowned. No Russians – of course; the recurrent theme of every MSC is to blast Russia like Kingdom Come. And no Iranians – of course, with the exception of the Clown Shah.
Needless to add, there was absolutely no link whatsoever established between the horrors of the Epstein dossier and that death cult in West Asia.
Omnipresent battlefield ahead
Munich has nothing to do with “dialogue”, much less “security”. It is essentially a schmooze fest for the industrial-military complex; heavily tax-subsidized warmongering think tanks; all sorts of harcore militarists; and gutter – mainstream – press.
It will be quite enlightening to hold Munich in contrast to the back-to-back kabuki unrolling this week on Iran and Ukraine – conducted on the imperial camp by those real estate Bismarcks, Witkoff and Kushner. There are no illusions whatsoever – in Tehran or in Moscow.
Neo-Caligula is in fact absolutely terrified because the death cult in West Asia put him between a heavy rock and a very hard place.
He can’t find an acceptable “deal” that allows him to declare victory on Iran over a nuclear agreement that he, himself, destroyed in the first place during Trump 1.0. Iran won’t accept capitulation on any front, especialy because the three fronts – no nuclear enrichment, minimalist ballistic missile program, and no support for the Axis of Resistance – were framed by the death cult in West Asia.
So the only way out is war, as war criminal Netanyahu impressed on neo-Caligula face to face in the White House. There’s no way the US can get away with a “win” scenario – and they were all gamed. Iran has all it takes to make neo-Caligula’s massive armada look like the doomed Spanish Armada.
On Ukraine, proverbial Russian patience is demonstrating signs of strain. Lavrov has been on the record stating that the level of reconciliation and where that process currently stands between Trump 2.0 and Russia has gone nowhere.
At the same time, the SMO – 4 years in effect next week – seems to be no closer to a serious conclusion. There are only two stark options:
1.Even if there is some sort of peace brokered by US-Russia negotiators, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that the Kiev-NATO axis will stop attacking Russian targets, terror-bombing cities and villages, and of course impose “European troops” in a dodgy DMZ.
2.That leaves the really realistic option: to go all the way. That may take years.
Russia must be prepared for extra pain.
Neo-Caligula – surrounded by rabid neo-cons and fierce industrial-military complex interests – will be forced to tighten the oil trade blockade on Russia.
The US for all practical purposes continues to run the proxy war against Russia. US forces in Europe are split between 80% in the office and 20% in the field. US satellite systems get the coordinates for strikes against Russian targets across the Russian Federation; these are processed in Germany by those “in the office” and then transmitted to US advisors on the ground in Ukraine. These are the guys who insert the coordinates in HIMARS. None of that will change in the foreseeable future.
The path towards 5th Generation War will accelerate. We are entering the next stage of an “omnipresent battlefield” – as defined way back in 1999 by PLA colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui.
EUrochihuahuas, meanwhile, will make a play for the Black Sea. The Romanians want to set up a European Maritime Security Hub for the Black Sea based on the port of Constanta. That will become a key military infrastructure, part of the EU Black Sea Strategy adopted in May last year.
Predictably, there’s a direct link to connectivity corridors.
EU military will be in theory “protecting” the Middle Corridor – or Trans-Caspian International Transport Route.
That’s one of the key logistics corridors of the New Silk Roads between China and Europe, bypassing – what else – Russian routes.
The writing is on the wall for Russia. All the way to Odessa – or bust.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
The British media has been consumed the last week over a scandal involving political operatives working for the British Labour Party who hired a PR firm to investigate seven reporters—one of whom is me. One close advisor to Prime Minister Starmer has resigned, and the British government has launched an investigation to uncover these attacks against the media.
A British Labour Party official denied during a phone call that I was a focus of their attention when I called for an explanation a couple days ago. I’m releasing one of the documents leaked to me from a London reporter that shows I was one of the British Labour Party’s targets.
The document is marked “STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.”
I became a Labour Party “significant person of interest” after I began reporting on the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), in 2023. The CCDH was created by a British think tank called Labour Together, which was run by Josh Simons in 2023. Simons hired the PR firm APCO to spy on myself and other reporters.
Simons is now a Member of Parliament and posted on X “APCO were asked to look into a suspected illegal hack.” However, the Simon’s memo discusses nothing about a hack.
Simons did not return repeated requests for comment that I sent to both his government and private email.
According to emails leaked to me, APCO’s work for Labour Together was overseen by Tom Harper, a former reporter for the British Sunday Times. Tom Harper did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
I became interested in CCDH because American legacy media such as The New York Times and Washington Post were quoting CCDH as purported experts on everything from vaccines, to online hate, misinformation and disinformation, both antisemitism and Islamaphobia, climate denial …. pretty much everything and anything.
But despite living for a decade in DC, I had never heard of CCDH nor their CEO Imran Ahmed.
So what was going on?
In a 2023 investigation for Tablet, I traced CCDH back to London, where they started sometime around 2018. Imran Ahmed, I had learned, was a UK political operative who had worked for the British Labour Party. And Ahmed’s best buddy was another British Labour Party operative named Morgan McSweeney who ran a think tank called Labour Together. McSweeney is widely credited as the architect of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s rise to power, and he served as Starmer’s chief of staff until earlier this month, when he resigned because of a separate scandal connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
Both Ahmed and McSweeney hid that they were behind CCDH for several years, although it later came out that CCDH was based inside McSweeney’s Labour Together think tank. When CCDH landed in America in 2021, they immediately got the attention of the Biden White House and multiple Democratic Party members of Congress. I found this bizarre.
DC is crowded with nonprofits and think thanks fighting for public attention. Yet this tiny nonprofit, run by a guy from London with no DC experience, was getting quoted by White House officials. Here’s how I explained this in Tablet:
For a tiny, unknown, nonprofit to gain so much attention in D.C.’s crowded, competitive policy space is akin to a pudgy, amateur athlete catching the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl, while setting a new world record in the marathon, all in one week.
Digging through CCDH’s tax records, I found a possible explanation for CCDH’s magical success. CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, who once worked at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank founded by former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta that supported the Biden administration.
Clark, I figured, must have introduced Ahmed to the Biden White House and Democratic Party officials in DC.
I published some further investigative details about CCDH, here at The DisInformation Chronicle, about a week after my Tablet investigation. In this piece, I reported that CCDH’s reports were rather flimsy and that CCDH’s “head of research” was some British dude named Callum Hood who had no employment history except working at CCDH. I later reported that Callum Hood was also a former Labour Party operative.
Both my investigation in Tablet and my report here at The DisInformation Chronicle stirred up APCO. Here’s a screenshot of what APCO wrote about me in their report to Labour Party offficials.
A whistleblower inside CCDH read my reporting and contacted me in 2024. We spoke dozens of times on the phone, and the whistleblower sent me tons of internal CCDH documents and several of Imran Ahmed’s emails. Based on these documents, I wrote a piece titled, “Election Exclusive: British Advisors to Kamala Harris Hope to “Kill Musk’s Twitter,” that rocketed around the globe.
Citing these documents I released, the State Department began deportation proceedings against Imran Ahmed a few days before Christmas.
The BBC interviewed me about Imran Ahmed’s deportation and I told them it was time for Ahmed to go back to England, because Americans were not going to tolerate his agenda to censor U.S. citizens.
“We have a very special relationship with the British government,” Undersecretary Rogers told me, declining to detail her discussions with Starmer officials. “The issue has been communicated.”
To download the Labour Party’s document on investigating reporters, click the link below.
The DisInformation Chronicle is a community-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
IMF Urges Beijing To Curb Industrial Subsidies As Flood Of Chinese Goods Crushes Global Industrial Bases
China’s factory overcapacity is the result of Beijing’s long-running industrial policies. Years of state support have built more factory capacity than domestic demand can absorb in the world’s second-largest economy, flooding global markets with low-priced goods, from EVs to TVs. The end result is a growing risk of hollowing out industrial bases worldwide, and our latest example this week has washed up on Europe’s shores in the form of EVs.
January registrations of Chinese EVs across Europe were certainly eye-opening, signaling the decline of Europe’s industrial base (read the note here). As Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey recently warned, “China would love to wipe out the American automotive industry, partly for economic reasons, because it also means we will never be able to fight a war against them…”
It appears the rest of the world is finally getting the memo after more than a decade of Chinese overcapacity flooding global markets and pressuring industrial bases worldwide into collapse.
The International Monetary Fund warned this week that Beijing should significantly scale back state support for industry, citing spillover risks that could undermine manufacturing bases abroad.
China’s industrial policies “are giving rise to international spillovers and pressures” and, compounded with soft domestic demand, are making the world’s second-largest economy “more reliant on manufacturing exports as a source of growth,” the IMF said.
“Industrial policy has enabled tech innovation in some sectors, but overall the impact on the economy has been negative,” said Sonali Jain-Chandra, mission chief at the IMF for China and Asia Pacific, who was quoted by the Financial Times. She pointed to “resource misallocation” and “overspending.”
IMF data show that China spends roughly 4% of GDP subsidizing companies in critical industries that, in turn, export goods worldwide. It stated that the figure should be reduced to about 2%.
At this point, China should be retooling its economy to boost domestic demand, yet Beijing is leaning heavily on supply-side measures to sustain its industrial dominance.
France’s Emmanuel Macron has bemoaned “unbearable imbalances” in trade, while other European leaders and industrial insiders warned last week that carbon costs are squeezing EU industrial competitiveness and need to be fixed urgently.
Meanwhile, the IMF has urged Beijing to move toward a “consumption-led growth” model for its economy, which would involve demand-side reforms to support household consumption.
If countries such as those in Europe fail to respond effectively to the flood of cheap Chinese goods, their industrial bases could suffer lasting damage, potentially proving disastrous in wartime. Under President Trump, the US began to reverse course and repair its industrial base as unipolarity gives way to a dangerous bipolar world.
As part of the US campaign to engineer a regime change in Iran, the US military and intelligence community are using Operational Preparation of the Environment aka OPE. OPE is defined in joint publications (e.g., JP 3-05 Special Operations) as non-intelligence activities conducted prior to or in preparation for potential military operations to set conditions for success. It encompasses shaping the operational environment through intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, information operations, civil affairs, psychological operations, and other preparatory actions—often in denied or politically sensitive areas.
I believe that one of the major OPE efforts is to convince the US public that the overwhelming majority of Iranians despise the Islamic Republic and want it overthrown. In my opinion, a major player in this OPE is a polling outfit known as GAMAAN. GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran)collaborates with Psiphon VPN, which is widely used across Iran. GAMAAN findings have been consistent in painting a picture of massive opposition to the Iranian regime.
According to GAMAAN polls taken prior to 2025, a significant majority of Iranians — around 70% — oppose the continuation of the Islamic Republic. The highest level of opposition, 81%, occurred during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in late 2022. Support for “the principles of the Islamic revolution and the Supreme Leader” has decreased from 18% in 2022 to 11% in 2024. Opposition to the Islamic Republic is higher among the youth, urban residents, and the highly educated. An overwhelming majority of Iranians (89%) support democracy. Gamaan
Only about 20% of Iranians support the continuation of the Islamic Republic. When asked about preferred alternatives, about 26% favor a secular republic and around 21% support a monarchy. For 11%, the specific form of the alternative system doesn’t matter. About 22% report lacking sufficient information to choose an alternative system.
But what are the funding sources for GAMAAN and Psiphon VPN? Let’s start with GAMAAN. GAMAAN describes itself as an independent, non-profit research foundation registered in the Netherlands. It emphasizes its academic credentials (e.g., founded by scholars at Dutch universities like Tilburg and Utrecht) and innovative online methods (e.g., anonymity sampling via VPNs like Psiphon) to overcome self-censorship in authoritarian contexts.
GAMAAN operates under the supervision of a board including Dr. Ammar Maleki (founder and director), assistant professor of comparative politics at Tilburg University, and Dr. Pooyan Tamimi Arab, associate professor of secular and religious studies at Utrecht University. Maleki is an assistant professor of Comparative Politics and a self-described activist for democracy in his native Iran. Tilburg University Critically, he does not hide his political stance — his Tilburg University profileexplicitly states that he is “a pro-democracy activist and political analyst of Iranian politics” and that he tries “to have an impact on political debates around democratization of Iran.”
This is where the picture becomes more contested. GAMAAN has relied on US government-funded VPN provider Psiphon to disseminate its surveys; collaborated with theUSAID-funded Tony Blair Institute; and collaborated with and received funding from historian Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is in turn supported by the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Psiphon is owned and operated by Psiphon Inc., a Canadian corporation based in Ontario. Psiphon was originally developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, with version 1.0 launching on December 1, 2006, as open-source software. In early 2007, Psiphon, Inc. was established as a Canadian corporation independent of the Citizen Lab and the University of Toronto.
It has a notable funding history. In 2008, Psiphon, Inc. was awarded sub-grants from the US State Department Internet Freedom program, administered by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In 2010, Psiphon began providing services to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (US), the US Department of State, and the BBC. More recently, in April 2024, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) announced increased long-term funding for Psiphon, with subsequent OTF awards totaling US$18.54 million for 2024 and US$5.87 million for 2025.
The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is administered by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency of the US government. USAGM provides OTF with its primary funding through annual grants, which originate from Congressional appropriations under the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs budget. OTF operates as an independent nonprofit corporation (since 2019) but remains a grantee under USAGM’s oversight and governance, as authorized by Congress (e.g., via the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act).
So while Psiphon Inc. is technically an independent Canadian company, it has historically been substantially funded by the US government and other Western institutions — a fact worth noting given its role as the methodology partner for the GAMAAN polling inside Iran. In other words, it is a cut out that, in my opinion and based on my experience, is supporting a CIA information operation to portray Iran as a country on the precipice of overthrowing the Islamic Republic.
There is an alternative polling database that paints a radically different picture of the mood in Iran with respect to the Islamic Republic… The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland has conducted a separate series of surveys using phone-based methods, which show more moderate results. Their findings from 2023 and 2024 found that about 75% of respondents expect Iran’s constitution and political system to be about the same in ten years, and only 17% agreed with protesters’ calls for the Islamic Republic to be replaced. However, three in five now think the government should not be strict in enforcing Islamic laws, distinctly up from 2018, and support for demands that the government fight corruption has been consistently near-unanimous since 2018.
On the protests themselves, asked in 2024 to think about waves of demonstrations over the past ten years, two thirds say their main objective was to demand that officials pay greater attention to people’s problems, while only one in five think their main objective was to demand greater freedoms or bring about change in Iran’s system of government.
President Pezeshkian, based on the polls from 2024, was viewed favorably by 66% of those polled at the start of his term… and 70% expressed confidence that he would be an honest and trustworthy president, though only a quarter were very confident. Majorities expressed some confidence that he can improve relations with neighboring countries and protect citizens’ freedoms, notably women’s rights, but majorities are not confident that he can lower inflation or improve relations with the West.
There have been no new polls in the wake of Israel’s surprise attack on June 13, 2025. Based on my conversations with both Nima and Professor Marandi, the reaction in Iran has been similar to what happened in the United States in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks… National unity increased.
The failed color revolution launched on December 28, 2025 by the United States and Israel has reinforced support for the Islamic Republic. President Pezeshkian has openly admitted his government’s failures on the economic front and he has taken some steps to institute reforms. A more important development was the signing of the Trilateral Security Agreement with Russia and China at the end of January. Those two countries are now providing more resources and support to stabilize the Iranian government and improve the economic lives of the Iranian people.
Donald Trump’s threats to attack Iran are backfiring among the majority of the population in Iran. Yes, there are some Iranians who still want to bring an end to the Islamic Republic, but they are dramatically outnumbered. Remember the boost in popularity that George W Bush enjoyed in the aftermath of 9-11? He even picked up support from Democrats who had previously despised him. That same phenomena has happened in Iran. Prior to the June 13, 2025 attack, Iranians under the age of 50 had no vivid memory of Iran/Iraq war — where Iran was attacked with the encouragement and support of the United States. The June 2025 attack, coupled with the foreign instigated late December 2025 protests and violence, have awakened a new sense of nationalism among the Iranian public that has strengthened support for the Islamic Republic.
The belief in the West that Iran is more vulnerable now than at anytime in the last 46 years is the creation of a US funded propaganda campaign that relied on an ideologically biased pollster to produce results that have been used to convince most Americans that Iran is yearning to breath free… All we have to do is kill off the leadership in Iran.
California Ranks Worst State For Air Quality, Wyoming Cleanest
Wyoming’s air contains less than half the particle pollution found in California.
Across the country, fine particle pollution levels range from just over 4 µg/m³ to nearly 12 µg/m³, a gap shaped by wildfire exposure, population density, and industrial activity.
For the analysis, states were analyzed using 2022 to 2024 average fine particle pollution (µg/m³).
The U.S. average stood at 8.8 µg/m³, exceeding the World Health Organization’s (WHO) air quality guideline of 5 µg/m³. That means the average American is breathing air that falls short of global health standards.
Below, we rank states from best to worst by air pollution levels. Where does your state rank?
Rank
State
Fine particle pollution (µg/m³)
1
Wyoming
4.1
2
Hawaii
4.7
3
New Hampshire
5.0
4
South Dakota
5.7
5
Alaska
5.9
6
Maine
5.9
7
New Mexico
5.9
8
Colorado
6.0
9
Vermont
6.0
10
Montana
6.5
11
Nebraska
6.6
12
Rhode Island
6.7
13
Virginia
7.2
14
Maryland
7.4
15
Utah
7.5
16
Florida
7.6
17
Idaho
7.6
18
Missouri
7.6
19
Alabama
7.7
20
Massachusetts
7.7
21
Washington
7.7
22
West Virginia
7.7
23
New York
7.8
24
Tennessee
7.8
25
North Carolina
7.9
26
New Jersey
7.9
27
Connecticut
8.1
28
Kentucky
8.1
29
Oregon
8.2
30
Mississippi
8.3
31
North Dakota
8.3
32
Iowa
8.4
33
Louisiana
8.4
34
Minnesota
8.4
35
Nevada
8.4
36
South Carolina
8.4
37
Arkansas
8.5
38
Oklahoma
8.5
39
Wisconsin
8.6
40
Arizona
8.7
41
Kansas
8.7
42
Georgia
9.2
43
Texas
9.4
44
Indiana
9.5
45
Delaware
9.7
46
Ohio
9.8
47
Illinois
10.3
48
Michigan
10.4
49
Pennsylvania
11.0
50
California
11.7
—
U.S. Average
8.8
Wyoming has the best air quality in the U.S., known for its vast stretches of land and the nation’s smallest population.
Adding to this, Wyoming’s city of Casper has the lowest year-round particle pollution across U.S. metros. Cheyenne, meanwhile, ranked eighth overall.
Hawaii ranks second by particle pollution, at 4.7 µg/m³. The state’s low population density, along with strong winds and rainfall, plays a key role in its air quality. While rain helps to clear away pollutants, trade winds bring in fresh air and mitigate the accumulation of air pollutants.
Overall, just three states—Wyoming, Hawaii, and New Hampshire—have air quality that falls within WHO’s guidelines.
In contrast, California has average particle pollution of 11.7 µg/m³, the worst nationwide. Moreover, 88% of Californians live in areas with unhealthy air quality. Several factors drive up pollution in the state including tailpipe emissions, high population density, and its hot climate.
States at the bottom of the rankings tend to combine large populations, dense transportation networks, and significant industrial activity. Trailing California at the bottom of the rankings are Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the world’s most air-polluted cities.
Under President Donald Trump’s second term, the emphasis for NIH funding has shifted to “provable, testable hypotheses, not ideological narratives,” he said, which is resulting in widespread reforms to the agency.
Bhattacharya, who obtained both a doctorate in economics and a medical degree from Stanford University within three years of each other, outlined changes that the NIH has implemented in his first year as the agency’s director and talked about his vision for the next three years in an interview with Epoch Times Senior Editor Jan Jekielek.
The NIH has been instrumental in medical advances for decades, Bhattacharya said, but in the 21st century, it became “much more of a staid institution, not willing to take intellectual risks.”
During the same time, the agency “was willing to take risks on dangerous gain-of-function and other social agendas, like DEI, that it had no business really engaging in.”
“I think the NIH now, under my leadership, under President Trump’s leadership, and under what Secretary [Robert F.] Kennedy is looking over … is focused on actually addressing the chronic health problems of this country, reversing the flatlining of life expectancy, and making good on its mission … research that improves the health and longevity of the American people, and the whole world,” he said.
One of the 13 agencies managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH is the largest supporter of biomedical research globally, providing 85 percent of all biomedical research funding worldwide, according to Bhattacharya.
It funds about $50 billion in scientific research via grants to hundreds of thousands of researchers at academic institutions and hospitals, he said.
The NIH is not an agency that makes decisions or policies about public health directly, Bhattacharya said, noting that he intends to “remove the politicization of science that has existed for decades.”
Over the past 15 to 20 years, the NIH has incorporated political rather than scientific agendas, Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.
“Probably the most prominent example of this is DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion,” he said.
“If you were a researcher outside the NIH, the ticket to getting sort of extra, relatively easy funds was to promise to do DEI research. Looking into it, much of that research had no real scientific basis at all. I don’t even characterize this as science.”
As an example, Bhattacharya used a project that studied the question: “Is structural racism the root reason why African Americans have worse hypertension results than other races?”
“The problem with that hypothesis is that there’s no way to test it,” he said. “If structural racism is the cause, then what control group can you have to test the idea that that is true? … None of that actually translated over to better health for anybody, much less for African Americans.
“Scientists of the country understand that if they want NIH support, they need to propose projects that have the chance of improving the health of people rather than achieving some ideology that should not belong at the NIH.”
The NIH has redirected its funding since Trump took office for his second term.
That includes allocating funds for “early career scientists,” Bhattacharya said.
There should be “fundamental changes” with the way the NIH funds educational institutions, Bhattacharya said, and he intends to work with Congress “to make [this] happen.”
On Jan. 5, a federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration cannot reduce the amount of money the NIH pays grant recipients for indirect costs, including administration and facility maintenance.
The ruling applies to three lawsuits filed by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and 21 other states, as well as hospitals, schools, and the associations that represent them.
The NIH published a guidance document in February 2025 to limit how much grant funding could flow to research institutions to cover their indirect costs. These are costs that cannot be directly attributed to an individual research project and include expenses related to funding equipment, facilities, and research staff.
The guidance document states that these indirect costs could not exceed 15 percent of funding for direct research costs, regardless of the costs incurred at universities. The NIH stated that Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Harvard charged in excess of 60 percent for indirect costs, even though they had billions of dollars in endowments.
Attorneys for those who filed suit said small universities don’t have such large endowments and that if the guidance took effect, there would be many layoffs, stalled clinical trials, and laboratory closures.
“If you don’t have amazing scientists who can win the grants, you’re not going to get the facility support. But in order to attract excellent scientists to your institution, you have to have excellent facilities. It’s the kind of Catch-22 that guarantees that our funding from the NIH is going to be concentrated in relatively few institutions,” Bhattacharya said.
Scientists at schools such as the University of Alabama, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Kansas deserve access to funding like Stanford and Harvard, he said.
The NIH must be “very careful about how we fund research relationships with China, especially post-pandemic,” Bhattacharya said.
“The U.S. invested in the Chinese biomedical research enterprise. Almost every single top Chinese biomedical research scientist of note was funded in some part by the NIH. Many were trained in the United States, so we invested heavily in that,” he said.
“Post-pandemic, and especially given the geopolitical circumstances we are in now, it looks, in retrospect, like it wasn’t all that wise an investment.”
The NIH must implement more secure measures with foreign research, he said, referencing the collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“In the case of Wuhan, what happened was that the NIH funded … Eco Health Alliance, which had a sub-award relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Bhattacharya said.
“When the pandemic happened, and the NIH had an interest in getting the lab notebooks of what exactly was studied in Wuhan, the Eco Health Alliance essentially delayed reporting at all about what it knew had happened,” Bhattacharya said.
“They ultimately said, ‘Oh, well, we don’t control Wuhan Institute of Virology. We can’t get the lab notebooks.’”
He noted that the NIH “funded research in collaboration with China that was actually quite dangerous and may indeed have led to the pandemic.”
Under Bhattacharya, the NIH now has more stringent auditing processes with domestic and foreign institutions.
“If it is NIH-funded, then [the domestic and the foreign institutions] have to have direct auditing relationships united with the NIH,“ he said. ”Then the NIH can shut off money to the foreign institution, if it’s not cooperating. … It’s called a sub-project system. It’s one of the first things that I did.”
Tesla Scores FCC Waiver For Wireless Cybercab Charging System
On Wednesday, Tesla’s first Cybercab officially rolled off the production line in Texas. The Model Y robotaxi is a two-passenger, self-driving EV with no steering wheel or pedals, though it will have a human “safety monitor” in most cases.
Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab! https://t.co/TFSVQcbME5
What’s more, Musk confirmed that they will cost under $30,000– something he was challenged to do by YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who vowed to shave his head on camera if Musk could pull off that price point before 2027.
Marques Brownlee in October 2024 on the Cybercab being delivered before 2027 for $30,000:
“There’s no way they’re actually going to be able to do that. If they do, I will shave my head on camera. I’m that confident they won’t do it.”
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted Tesla approval to use Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio technology in its wireless EV charging system – granting the company a waiver so that Cybercabs recharging pads can be installed on fixed outdoor equipment, which is major.
“The Tesla positioning system is an impulse UWB radio system that enables peer-to-peer communications between a UWB transceiver installed on an electric vehicle (EV) and a second UWB transceiver installed on a ground-level pad, which could be located outdoors, to achieve optimal positioning for the EV to charge wirelessly,” the company said in the FCC document granting approval.
The FCC today officially granted @Tesla a waiver allowing it to use Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio technology for its wireless EV charging system that will be used to wirelessly charge the Cybercab.
Normally, this kind of radio must be handheld and can’t be installed outdoors on fixed equipment. Tesla’s charging pad is fixed and could be outdoors, so they needed an exception.
The FCC said yes because:
• The signal is very low power
• It only turns on briefly while parking
• It works at very short range
• It won’t interfere with other systems
More information from the filing: “The Tesla positioning system is an impulse UWB radio system that enables peer-to-peer communications between a UWB transceiver installed on an electric vehicle (EV) and a second UWB transceiver installed on a ground-level pad — which could be located outdoors — to achieve optimal positioning for the EV to charge wirelessly.
Prior to the UWB operation, the vehicular system uses Bluetooth technology for the vehicle to discover the location of the ground pad and engage in data exchange activities (which is not subject to the waiver).
When the vehicle approaches the ground pad, the UWB transceivers will operate to track the position of the vehicle to determine when the optimal position has been achieved over the pad before enabling wireless power charging.”
In its waiver request, Tesla states that the UWB signals occur only briefly when the vehicle approaches the ground pad; and mostly at ground level between the vehicle and the pad, and that the UWB signals are then significantly attenuated by the body of the vehicle positioned over the pad.
BREAKING: The FCC today officially granted @Tesla a waiver allowing it to use Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio technology for its wireless EV charging system that will be used to wirelessly charge the Cybercab.
We assume that in the not-too-distant future your human-skinned Tesla Optimus will have its own cute little charging pad at home, whichever model you choose. Cyber-Fleshlight not included.
A Minnesota autism center for adults and children, which has been operating for more than 20 years, is facing closure in the wake of the massive fraud scandal in the state that dates back more than a decade and involves more than $9 billion of U.S. taxpayer money.
The Holland Center is one of many legitimate centers in the state, which collectively serve thousands of disabled people. Founder, owner, and CEO Jennifer Larson built the Holland Center for her autistic, non-speaking son, who is now 25 years old.
She said she has recently been forced to put hundreds of thousands of her own dollars into keeping the center afloat because the state didn’t pay a single claim for nearly two months.
Because of the payment delays, Larson said autism centers like hers are being forced to reduce hours, cut staff, and close in some instances. Families are scrambling for help, disabled children and adults are regressing, and parents are leaving jobs to care for their disabled loved ones.
Larson told The Epoch Times her facility can’t continue much longer.
“The feds say it’s the state. The state says it’s the feds,” Larson said.
“The kids are going to be the collateral damage.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services paused child care and family assistance funds to Minnesota in early January due to the alleged rampant fraud. The state is appealing.
The Minnesota Department of Human Services told The Epoch Times via email that the federal government’s threat of withholding funds is “not impacting the current payment situation.”
However, Larson’s center accumulated nearly two months of unpaid claims from Dec. 5 to Jan. 29, totaling more than $600,000.
Beginning in late December 2025, the state began using a new pre-payment review vendor called Optum, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) “at every step” of its claims and reimbursement processes. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had announced the contract with the new system in late October 2025.
“They implemented it because of the fraud. Obviously, the state wasn’t catching the fraud in the 300 or 400 centers that popped up in the last three years,” Larson said. She blames the Minnesota government for turning a blind eye to the “crime ring” involving fraud at Somali-run autism centers to an immense scale.
Neither Walz nor his office could be reached for comment during multiple attempts via emails and phone calls.
Now, she said, Optum is causing the delay of claims with few or unclear explanations in the review process.
“The state has failed and lost millions and millions of dollars in the system, so, clearly, the state wasn’t going to be able to tell Optum what to look for because they didn’t know what they were doing,” Larson told The Epoch Times after she recently testified in Congress.
“All of us, for the first round, nobody got anything. Everything was flagged.”
Larson told a House subcommittee hearing on Jan. 21 that her center and numerous others in Minnesota are facing collapse after becoming collateral damage from the massive fraud scandal.
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) asked Larson: “Ms. Larson, none of this would have happened if the fraud did not occur, is that accurate?”
“Yes,” she responded. “What happened in Minnesota had nothing to do with the ethical, longstanding autism providers.”
Larson said in her testimony that the state government’s “clumsy response” to fraud failed to distinguish between criminals and caregivers.
She said abrupt disruption or loss of service can destroy weeks or years of progress for disabled children and adults, causing lifelong consequences.
Payment Process
The Minnesota Department of Human Services told The Epoch Times that it sent the first batch of more than 100,000 claims to Optum for review in late December 2025.
The department said every two weeks, Optum receives batches of claims from the state. The system analyzes and flags any that need further review. Unflagged claims are paid after the initial analysis, the Minnesota Department of Human Services said.
The agency will continue sending payments for unflagged claims on regular two-week cycles. A provider will receive an update every two weeks on a flagged or suspended claim, accompanied by reason codes, the department said.
“If a claim is flagged, we may need additional information and documents from the provider before payments are made, which may cause further delay,” the Minnesota Department of Human Services said. Claims in Optum are listed as suspended until the state reaches a payment decision.
The department did not provide detailed answers on why the Holland Center or other similar, longstanding facilities might have their claims flagged.
The agency said it did not wish to disclose what kind of identifiers cause it to suspect someone is billing for services they did not provide, but officials generally look for “patterns of concern—claims that fall outside expected norms,” some of which could be blamed on administrative errors or poor documentation rather than intentional fraud.
“Optum helps the state of Minnesota identify potential fraud, waste, and abuse by conducting pre‑payment reviews,” the company said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times. “Optum has no authority to approve, deny, delay, or suspend claims, and payment decisions are made exclusively by [the Minnesota Department of Human Services] and the Office of Inspector General.”
Most claims should be paid within 30 days, and legitimate claims that may have been flagged within 90 days, as required by the federal government, according to the agency.
Financial Hit
Meanwhile, with a payroll of $250,000 every two weeks, Larson has been forced to ask many of her employees to take unpaid leave.
After nearly two months of unpaid claims, her center was partially paid on Jan. 29, bringing the owed amount down to about $300,000, Larson said. She said there’s been little to no word from state or health officials on why her claims were flagged in the first place.
Larson doesn’t expect to get another payment for two weeks, putting her in a several-hundred-thousand-dollar deficit she doesn’t think will ever rebalance.
She’s spent so much of her own money to keep the center’s lights on, Larson said, that she’s been forced to cut back on other bills to make ends meet. Fortunately, Larson said her landlords have been understanding of the situation.
New Centers
Years ago, when Larson witnessed new autism treatment centers popping up around her area and the state, she was initially relieved because, to her, it meant more help was coming for disabled children and adults.
“There’s a need, and there’s a high prevalence of autism in the Somali community in Minnesota,” Larson said. “And I know that and I service a lot of the kids, but we can’t take them all. We’ve always had a waiting list.”
A 2023 study by the University of Minnesota showed autism rates in 4-year-olds to be much higher among Somali children compared to other races and ethnicities. The report found 1 in 18 Somali children had autism, compared to 1 in 64 for white children, 1 in 31 for Hispanic children, and 1 in 30 for non-Somali black children.
But when hundreds of autism centers popped up, it was a red flag for Larson.
“No one wants to talk about it because everyone’s scared of saying anything wrong,” Larson said. “That’s why we’re here. It’s because everyone’s too afraid to say something.”
Independent journalist Nick Shirley, who brought national attention to the alleged Minnesota fraud at day care centers with his viral video posted Dec. 26, 2025, attended the congressional hearing with Larson.
“What we saw in Minnesota is how complicit the government has been in enabling this fraud to happen. Quality ‘Learing’ Center had over 90 violations, yet they continued to give that daycare $1.9 million,” Shirley said in his testimony.
Meanwhile, the closure of Holland Center would dismantle a lifetime of work for Larson that all started with the birth of her son.
Do Democrat Cities And States Love Rolling In Their Own Filth?
Were Democrats raised in a barn? It’s far worse – they were raised in places like San Francisco where sanitation standards are not far from street poop capitals like India.
There’s just something about left wing government that attracts a stench. Maybe it’s the laziness and the entitlement of socialism. Maybe it’s the inevitable economic malaise beating people down until they no longer care about the state of their surroundings. Maybe leftists simply revel in decay, like pigs in their own filth.
Examples of this lackadaisical gutter dweller mindset are rampant. Wherever Democrats are in control, crime and a river of putrescence follows. Everyone is familiar with San Francisco’s infamous sidewalk poop problem; so much so that the city’s “poop tracker map” became a meme. Tuberculosis outbreaks have also increased by 25% since 2020 and rare disease clusters are making more frequent appearances in areas where third world immigration is rampant.
Los Angeles is also experiencing a worsening crisis of illegal dumping, trash accumulation, and human waste on the streets, with reports rising over 20% by late 2024. The problem is fueled by homeless encampments, overflowing bins, and construction debris, causing public health hazards, rat infestations, and severe neighborhood blight. Compared to two decades ago, LA has seen a 450% rise in sanitation threats from trash dumping to sewage spills.
Sadly, the problem does not stop with California.
Oregon and the city of Portland were once considered one of the best regions to raise a family only 20 years ago. Today, Oregon is ranked the fourth worst state in the country and Portland has become a cesspool. Widespread crime, drug use and homelessness have sunk the quaint Northwest city into despair, all stemming from the dominant rise of woke politics.
Seattle, WA is managing a significant, ongoing public health crisis involving illegal dumping, trash accumulation, and human waste on streets, particularly around homeless encampments . This has resulted in biohazard conditions for certain parts of the city.
In more recent news, New York City under socialist and third world immigrant Mayor Zohran Mamdani is already hitting a literal wall of trash. This problem is not a new one and has persisted under previous Democrat run governments, but it seems to be particularly rancid with Mamdani at the helm.
New York municipal services are struggling with winter snows and there are no contingency plans in place to manage NYC refuse. This has resulted in mountains of garbage being frozen into snow piled sidewalks. Furthermore, as the snow melts, another problem has been revealed: Tens of thousands of piles of animal (and human) feces are defrosting in the streets.
New York City is covered in poop. This is what happens when you elect a useless mayor. pic.twitter.com/BlkbJWjvWd
Finally, there the national news story of Maryland’s massive sewage spill into the Potomac River, which has compelled the Trump Administration to intervene. Over 240 million gallons of raw sewage has made the river toxic and Democrat Maryland Governor Wes Moore has done little to address the danger. The environmental hazard has been ongoing since January. Water treatment infrastructure in the state has reportedly been neglected and many systems have not been replaced since the 1970s.
Is widespread filth a deliberate agenda of progressive societies? Or, does left wing ideology inevitably lead to third world potty standards no matter the intention? Conservatives are often mocked by the political left for “backward facing” social policies, but it’s hard to blame right-wing people for clinging to nostalgia. The past is clear evidence that things can be far better, economically and socially.
Why would conservatives pine for a future which is undeniably inferior and stinks of ass?
The bottom line is, there are better ways to manage US cities and their infrastructure. Conservatives states and cities show this on a daily basis. Democrats simply do not want to listen. For whatever reason, they love the smell of their own farts.
