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The idea of mining the Moon, once a concept of science fiction, is now approaching reality. According to Yury Borisov, head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the race to explore and develop the Moon’s resources has begun.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, highlights the resources identified on the Moon’s surface, based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey as of 2022.

Key Resources on the Moon

The Moon is almost entirely covered by regolith, a layer of pulverized rock that could serve as a versatile construction material. It has potential applications in building bases, landing pads, and roads.

Additionally, NASA is developing technology to process at least 15 metric tons of ice from the lunar south pole by 2030, aiming to produce at least 10 metric tons of oxygen and 2 metric tons of hydrogen. Radar signals suggest the presence of ice in numerous polar craters and surrounding areas. These resources could be crucial for sustaining life and fueling rockets.

Hydrogen could also be used to generate water, though it is relatively scarce on the Moon. Extracting just one liter of water would require processing approximately 100 truckloads of regolith.

Among the Moon’s most abundant resources is solar energy. The technology to harness it is well-developed, with its first successful use on the lunar surface achieved in 1966 by the Soviet Union’s Luna 9 mission.

How Close Are We to Utilizing Lunar Resources?

While solar energy is readily available, technologies for extracting minerals and water from the Moon are still in development. However, progress is being made by various national space agencies, including NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, the China National Space Administration, the Israel Space Agency, and the Indian Space Research Organization. Several commercial ventures are also working to advance lunar resource extraction.

If you enjoyed this post, check out Visualized: Every Moon in the Solar System on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The Swedish Ministry of Justice has introduced a new proposal to tighten citizenship requirements by raising the minimum income threshold for applicants.

Under the draft memorandum, individuals seeking Swedish citizenship would need to demonstrate an annual income equivalent to three income base amounts — translating to a gross monthly salary of approximately SEK 20,000 (approximately €1,830).

The government says the move is designed to reinforce the value of Swedish citizenship and ensure that applicants are firmly rooted in the labor market.

“Being granted Swedish citizenship is something you should feel proud of,” said Migration Minister Johan Forssell. 

“We are tightening the requirements to make it more meaningful and to ensure that those who become citizens have made an effort to become part of our society.”

This proposal is part of a broader integration strategy supported by the ruling coalition and the right-wing Sweden Democrats which keep the government in power, and aims to strengthen societal cohesion.

Forssell emphasized that the new requirement aligns with existing standards for self-sufficiency and is intended to motivate migrants to seek employment and settle in regions with better job opportunities.

The memorandum also outlines the government’s intention to exclude certain types of income from the annual calculation — though a final decision on that will follow a referral process. If passed, the new rules would take effect on June 1, 2026.

This development follows a series of tougher immigration and integration policies, including a sharp increase in the minimum wage requirement for work visas introduced in 2023. That policy was widely seen as a move to deter low-skilled migration while attracting highly qualified professionals.

Government data published in 2023 revealed that a disproportionate number of unemployed and benefit recipients in Sweden come from migrant backgrounds, leading to the government doubling down on policies aimed at reducing welfare dependency and promoting economic integration.

Figures provided in September of that year showed that 300,000 people in Sweden were registered as unemployed with the Swedish Public Employment Service.

“Just under half of those unemployed have non-European ancestry,” a government fact sheet stated, adding that “60 percent of all grant recipients in Sweden have foreign origins.”

Read more here…

Authored by Robert Aro via the MisesInstitute,

You wake up tomorrow, finding that in a vote you never thought possible, Ben Bernanke (D), former Chair of the Federal Reserve, has just been installed as President of the United States. Making matters worse, the election in 37 days will secure his position, possibly for the next five years. The other wrinkle, New York City, in addition to all swing states, needs to vote Republican in order to remove him.

…That’s basically what elections are like in Canada… 

Looking at the projections, which were highly inaccurate for the American election, Canada has 343 seats in Parliament to fill (electoral ridings).

CPC (Conservatives/blue) have 126 versus LPC (Liberals/red) having 185; it’s a First Past the Post (FPTP) system, so first to 172 votes takes all. Playing around with the numbers sheds light on the issue, i.e., it seems slanted towards one party. For example, even if the Conservatives win the four maritime provinces considered Liberal strongholds, and Manitoba (MB) in the middle, they’d still only have 162 votes and inevitably lose.

Testing various combinations, the election truly hinges on winning in at least one of the three biggest cities, Toronto, Montreal, and/or Vancouver. Toronto for example had 25 ridings last election.

Like the USA, major cities are notorious for voting “left,” as last election all votes in Toronto went to the Liberal Party.

Naturally, the riding lines rely on guesswork and the bias of its creators. Although the majority of Canadians couldn’t even tell you whose job this is, the calculation looks something like this:

The formula yields some interesting results. Looking at the voter results from 2021:

It’s not uncommon that the party who wins the popular vote manages to lose the election. In 2021 with almost 300,000 less votes than the Conservatives, the Liberals won, ruling over a country of 38 million people via 5.164 million voters.

The election process never seemed quite right in Canada. Through various X posts and the Joe Rogan interview where Elon Musk discusses his experience with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the election strategy becomes quite elucidating. In the interview, Elon says (1:05:30 min) that without massive entitlements to draw foreigners, Democrats would lose a massive number of voters. 

A recent headline from Reuters gives great context:

New York State’s top court on Thursday struck down a New York City law that would have permitted more than 800,000 legal non-citizens to vote in municipal elections.

Musk spoke of this again just last week to Ted Cruz, saying:

By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants.

Should humanity have a future, one can only imagine how this epoch in time is described, where elected officials happily flooded their countries with foreigners in an attempt to enshrine the vote in their favor.

The abstract from the 177-page UN report titled: Replacement Migration, from 2000, illustrates the idea. Based on predictions by the few, being an aging and declining population, requires:

… comprehensive reassessments of many established policies and programmes [SIC], including those relating to international migration. Focusing on these two striking and critical population trends, the report considers replacement migration for eight low-fertility countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and United States)…

Comparing population vs. GDP in Canada, this migration theory thus far has not proven itself accretive to the country’s GDP.

It’s actually worse when considering GDP includes government expenditures; the more money the government spends or wastes, the higher GDP becomes. 

So where does this leave the Conservatives? In 2025, they’d have to penetrate one of the largest three cities, like Toronto, since this small geographic area controls more voting power than several provinces combined.

See below for 2021 federal election result for Toronto and surrounding areas:

Importing voters is a costly endeavor, and on a long enough time-scale will unequivocally lead to cultural suicide as the native-born population is replaced. The First Nations of Canada have already been grossly displaced and culturally decimated over a few hundred years; we do not have to go through this process again in the 21st century.

One strategy to engage Torontonians could be direct honesty. Immigration is an economic issue among others. The reality is that resources are finite, and living in Canada is a privilege. This isn’t about singling out any group; it’s simply that unchecked mass immigration, exceeding our growth and GDP invariably leads to negative economic outcomes. It’s important to acknowledge that newcomers chose to leave their home country for a reason, and that our shared home in Canada is something we must work to protect.

While I typically focus on the Federal Reserve, this issue demands attention. Ultimately central banking plays a role in all government atrocities. In this regard, if governments relied solely on tax revenue, and couldn’t rely on a central bank, they’d be held to a higher standard. They wouldn’t be able to print money out of thin air to cover the cost of migration, especially if the purpose is to sway elections amidst a Government declared national housing crisis.

On Tuesday Reuters is reporting one of the first high-level meeting between US government representatives and the post-Assad government in Syria.

Jolani’s (al-Sharaa) Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is still officially a US-designated terror group, but its Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shiban met with US Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Levant and Syria Natasha Franceschi on the sidelines of a March 18 European donors conference in Brussels on March 18.

This was reportedly for the US side to convey a list of demands, vowing that in return the HTS Syrian regime could receive sanctions relief.

The far-reaching sanctions in question had targeted the Assad government, but for years has unleashed broader suffering among the Syrian population – including lack of electricity, fuel shortages, limited medicines, and runaway inflation.

Interestingly one of the key demands is for the destruction of any remaining chemical weapons stores. Since Assad’s ouster on December 8, Israel has bombed the country repeatedly, targeting former army bases as well as known chemical weapons production sites.

The US is also reportedly demanding that foreign fighters not be installed in top government posts – though this has already happened. Self-declared President Sharaa (Jolani) himself is a former ISIS and AQ operative.

According to more details of the US list via Al Jazeera:

Syria has already appointed some foreign ex-rebels, including Uyghurs, a Jordanian and a Turk, to its defence ministry — a move that alarmed foreign governments.

Washington also asked Syria to appoint a liaison to assist US efforts to find Austin Tice, the US journalist who went missing in Syria more than a decade ago, according to the two US officials and both sources in Washington.

In return for fulfilling all the demands, Washington would provide some sanctions relief, all six sources said. The sources did not specify what relief would be offered, and said Washington did not provide a specific timeline for the conditions to be fulfilled.

Another question which remains will be the fate of Syria’s oil and gas fields in the northeast. Currently they are under US military occupation, and historically have provided enough energy to satisfy Syria’s domestic needs. 

Syria: A pro-Julani outlet with 364 thousand followers blurred the photo of Kaja Kallas after the EU pledged €5.8 billion. pic.twitter.com/LZsDgAK7y0

— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) March 18, 2025

The Syrian Kurds have just struck a deal for integration into Syrian state institutions. This means the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) will have closer cooperation with Damascus, possibly eventually handing over the oil fields.

Authored by Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

In 1974, Congress created the Legal Services Corporation to connect lower-income Americans involved in civil disputes with free legal help. The law that established the agency stipulated that authorization for its funding would expire in 1980, when lawmakers were required to vote on whether to keep it alive.

They never did. Still, Congress has funded LSC every year since. In fiscal 2025, its 51st year, LSC’s 135 employees will spend 95% of its now $560 million annual budget paying legal groups to represent Americans in cases such as eviction, domestic violence, and disputes over government benefits, according to Ron Flagg, the agency’s president since 2020.

“LSC would welcome reauthorization,” Flagg said. “We haven’t hidden from it. Every budget cycle, we go through an exhaustive process before Congress appropriates funds — dozens of meetings with leaders of both parties. We demonstrate our return on investment, how we help 2 million Americans get life-saving legal help.” 

The Legal Services Corp. now stands as America’s oldest “Zombie” program, but it’s far from unique. At a time when the Trump administration is moving aggressively to scale back government, including eliminating the entire Education Department, it’s sobering to note that 1,503 agencies or programs live on despite expired authorizations, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Another 155 will expire on Sept. 30. The Zombies, nearly half of which have been officially dead for more than a decade, persist in a budgetary netherworld. In a deep dive last year, CBO analysts were able to find dollar amounts for 491 of the programs, with total expenditures of $516 billion. They don’t know how much funding the other programs received. 

The total federal budget in 2024 was $6.8 trillion, meaning expired Zombie programs take up at least 8% of the budget, and likely much more.

“A lot of programs don’t get reauthorized because Congress is okay with how they’re operating,” said Josh Huder, former congressional staffer now at the Georgetown University Government Affairs Institute. “They continue to get annual appropriations because most members think they’re worthwhile.”

Many Zombie programs now soak up far more funding than lawmakers originally envisioned. The Federal Election Commission, for example, was expected to spend $9.4 million per year before its authorization expired in 1981. Yet the agency continued to receive funding and spent $95 million in 2024, auditors at government watchdog Open The Books found. The Federal Communications Commission was originally allocated $339.6 million per year. Its funding authorization expired in 2020, yet it spent $28.4 billion last year.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency hasn’t addressed the Zombies that are prowling the federal spreadsheets. Given DOGE’s headlong push to first root out alleged waste, fraud, and abuse and ask questions later, experts say, Zombies may offer a ripe target. 

“One could imagine that if DOGE is clued into the notion of expired authorizations, they’ll think a program is defunct,” said Sarah Binder, senior fellow at Brookings and professor of political science at George Washington University. She said this would be a mistake. “If Congress is still appropriating money to the programs, they’re not Zombies. They’re living, breathing agencies.”

Binder says the fault lies not with the agencies, some of which have become important enough to be household names, but Congress. Lawmakers have made it so difficult to accomplish their most fundamental tasks, such as funding the government for another year, that they hardly ever get around to doing other important things, such as reauthorizing existing programs. 

The Foreign Relations Authorization Act, for example, expired in 2003. Yet in 2024, Congress spent $38.4 billion on 24 of the law’s programs, allowing legislators to influence the White House’s foreign policy and security assistance to other nations. 

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, now led by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), supported the funding of 346 expired programs, more than any other committee, the CBO found. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, now chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), spent more identifiable money than any other group: $153.5 billion. 

“Congress’ job doesn’t stop when they allocate the money,” said Casey Burgat, professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. “They have to oversee it. And when they fail to do that they open themselves up to somebody else doing that. In this case, an aggressive executive branch in the form of DOGE.”

Of the 1,503 agencies or programs, 22 remain alive that required a reauthorization vote as long ago as the 1980s, according to the CBO. In addition to the Legal Services Corp., whose authorization expired in 1980, and the FEC (a 1981 reauthorization deadline), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees the country’s power grids (1984) and the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, whose data informs U.S. policymaking (1984), are among the Zombies pushing middle age. 

Congress has appropriated annual funding for EIA since its inception in 1977, the agency said in an emailed statement. “Subsequent legislation has continued to direct EIA to conduct data collection, analysis and dissemination activities consistent with our mission as the nation’s premier source of energy information.” Spokespeople for the FEC, FERC, and the CBO declined to comment.

Another Zombie, the U.S. African Development Foundation – whose authorization expired in 1987 – made headlines earlier this month when its officials blocked DOGE staff from entering their offices in Washington.

Congress has a history of denying or skipping reauthorizations. In the 1980s and 90s, former North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms became famous for holding up authorizations of the State Department, which he often found insufficiently vigilant against Communism. The frequent flare-ups between Helms and the diplomats of State earned him the nickname “Senator No.” And NASA, the widely respected space program, recently went through periods of time when Congress funded it but didn’t reauthorize it.

The CBO’s list of 1,000-plus agencies and programs with expired reauthorization deadlines offers a window into the variety and volume of federal government activity, from grants to remove lead from drinking water and protect against radon to collecting statistics on prison rape. Lawmakers seem to be nursing a mild obsession with fish. Over the years, they’ve funded without reauthorization a herring study, for instance, and programs to help Atlantic striped bass and tuna thrive. It seems part of a larger interest in wildlife, which includes conservation programs for elephants, rhinos, and tigers and the control and eradication of the venomous brown tree snake, an invasive pest infamous for devouring a scary chunk of Guam’s bird population. 

Environmental and health programs populate the list, from monitoring water quality at beaches and the Energy Star appliance program to medical care for children with asthma and funding for the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. There are also provisions for improving airport security, protection for railroad first responders, and working capital for the Department of Homeland Security. Like a cherry on top, there’s also funding for the Office of Government Ethics.

Congress, whose 29% job-approval rating in February was the highest in four years, would probably “have a hard time assembling a list of programs that they’ve authorized,” said Burgat of George Washington University. “It’s a power void.”

‘Congress Doesn’t Have the Time’

‘DOGE steps into that vacuum with constitutional limitations. In 1974, Congress enacted the Impoundment Control Act, which prohibits presidents from refusing to spend the money that Congress allocates. 

The Trump administration has challenged the constitutionality of the impoundment law, and DOGE is an ongoing test of the separation of powers between the legislative branch and the executive.

“Authorizations and appropriations are both law,” said Brookings’ Binder. “As long as Congress is voting to spend money on these programs, it would be an impoundment to close them. It would be unconstitutional.”  

To remedy the situation, Congress would have to go through the list of Zombies and decide whether to reauthorize each one, a tedious process that evidently has hovered nowhere near the top of its priority list. “Congress doesn’t have the time to do good institutional housecleaning,” Binder said. “There are a lot of little programs, but also a good deal of big ones. They don’t have the capacity to keep tabs on the authorizations.”

For now, Ron Flagg of Legal Services Corp. waits with a cautious optimism, wary about how DOGE will perceive his agency but confident that after a half century, LSC has the ability to stand up for itself.

“During the first Trump administration we got a raise in money because Congress members don’t view our work as a partisan issue,” Flagg said. “LSC has an ability to go to Congress with the facts. We publish grants, we tell you how many people were served and how many cases were closed and how technology has been advanced and how funding has been leveraged by volunteers. We’re able to make those points to Congress as part as the annual funding process. 

“I’m not sure other agencies have the same ability to advocate for the quality of their work.”

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao compares how the state income taxes have changed between 2000 and 2025. The visualized value is the difference in the top marginal tax rate, measured in percentage points (pp).

We also published just the current top rate in 2025, earlier this month for further context.

Current and historical data for this map is sourced from the Tax Foundation and Tax Policy Center.

Changes are not compared for four states—Rhode Island, Vermont, North Dakota, and Colorado—since their 2000s tax rates were charged as a percentage of federal liabilities owed.

As a result, they have been grayed out on the map and are not discussed in this article.

States Income Tax Burdens Have Broadly Fallen Since 2000

Led by Iowa (-5.18pp), 23 states reduced their top marginal income tax rate since 2000.

Furthermore, two states (Tennessee and New Hampshire) removed income taxes entirely, joining six others that do not tax incomes.

State	Code	2000 Top Rate	2025 Top Rate	Change
Alabama	AL	5.0	5.0	No change
Alaska	AK	0.0	0.0	No income tax
Arizona	AZ	5.0	2.5	-2.54 pp
Arkansas	AR	7.0	3.9	-3.10 pp
California	CA	9.3	13.3	+4.00 pp
Colorado	CO	% of federal liability	4.4	n/a
Connecticut	CT	4.5	7.0	+2.50 pp
Delaware	DE	6.4	6.6	+0.20 pp
Florida	FL	0.0	0.0	No income tax
Georgia	GA	6.0	5.4	-0.61 pp
Hawaii	HI	8.8	11.0	+2.25 pp
Idaho	ID	8.2	5.7	-2.50 pp
Illinois	IL	3.0	5.0	+1.95 pp
Indiana	IN	3.4	3.0	-0.40 pp
Iowa	IA	9.0	3.8	-5.18 pp
Kansas	KS	6.5	5.6	-0.85 pp
Kentucky	KY	6.0	4.0	-2.00 pp
Louisiana	LA	6.0	3.0	-3.00 pp
Maine	ME	8.5	7.2	-1.35 pp
Maryland	MD	4.8	5.8	+0.90 pp
Massachusetts	MA	12.0	9.0	-3.00 pp
Michigan	MI	4.4	4.3	-1.10 pp
Minnesota	MN	8.0	9.9	+1.85 pp
Mississippi	MS	5.0	4.4	-0.60 pp
Missouri	MO	6.0	4.7	-1.30 pp
Montana	MT	11.0	5.9	-5.10 pp
Nebraska	NE	6.7	5.2	-1.48 pp
Nevada	NV	0.0	0.0	No income tax
New Hampshire	NH	5.0	0.0	No income tax
New Jersey	NJ	6.4	10.8	+4.38 pp
New Mexico	NM	8.2	5.9	-2.30 pp
New York	NY	6.9	10.9	+4.05 pp
North Carolina	NC	7.8	4.3	-3.50 pp
North Dakota	ND	% of federal liability	2.5	n/a
Ohio	OH	7.2	3.5	-3.70 pp
Oklahoma	OK	6.8	4.8	-2.00 pp
Oregon	OR	9.0	9.9	+0.90 pp
Pennsylvania	PA	2.8	3.1	+0.27 pp
Rhode Island	RI	% of federal liability	5.99	n/a
South Carolina	SC	7.0	6.2	-0.80 pp
South Dakota	SD	0.0	0.0	No income tax
Tennessee	TN	6.0	0.0	No income tax
Texas	TX	0.0	0.0	No income tax
Utah	UT	7.0	4.6	-2.45 pp
Vermont	VT	% of federal liability	8.75	n/a
Virginia	VA	5.8	5.8	No change
Washington	WA	0.0	7.0	+7.00 pp
West Virginia	WV	6.5	4.8	-1.68 pp
Wisconsin	WI	6.8	7.7	+0.88 pp
Wyoming	WY	0.0	0.0	No income tax

Note: Washington’s 7% tax on capital gains has been listed as an income tax by the source. This is discussed further in the next section.

Many states have switched to flat tax rates in the past 25 years, with Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Utah reducing both the rate and multiple brackets to just the one.

However, some argue that flat rates are regressive as it imposes a larger burden on low income households than higher incomes ones.

Only two states, Alabama and Virginia, have made no changes.

So, Who Increased Their Tax Rates?

Thirteen states and D.C. increased the top rate, with Washington (+7.0 pp) registering the most increase.

However Washington’s 7% flat rate is only applicable for earnings from stocks and bond sales that are above $250,000.

There is an argument that a capital gains tax is different from an income tax since it requires both a sale and declared profit to incur the tax. Furthermore, as far back as 1933, a statewide income tax in Washington was ruled unconstitutional.

However, to stay consistent with the source’s categories, it has been included as income. New Hampshire’s removal of interest and dividends tax is also counted as eliminating income taxes.

If not considering Washington, then New Jersey has seen the highest top rate increase (+4.38pp).

Finally, Massachusetts is the only state that switched from flat to marginal rates: putting in a 9% bracket for income above $1.8 million in a year.

Taxes play a huge role in how each state earns revenue. Check out: Every State’s Biggest Source of Tax Revenue for a quick overview.

Authored by Emel Akan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration on March 24 invoked the “state secrets privilege,” a move that could lead to the dismissal of the case against the government regarding the deportation of Venezuelan illegal immigrants to El Salvador.

The “state secrets privilege” is a legal doctrine developed by the Supreme Court to protect sensitive national security information from disclosure in civil litigation. Key cases, such as Totten v. United States (1876) and Reynolds v. United States (1953), established its application, allowing the government to withhold information in litigation if its disclosure would pose a national security risk.

By using this privilege, the Trump administration won’t have to provide information about deportees. Hence, the case against the government might be dismissed.

The government’s court filing stated, “The Executive Branch hereby notifies the Court that no further information will be provided in response to the Court’s March 18, 2025, Minute Order based on the state secrets privilege and the concurrently filed declarations of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

While courts must review claims of privilege, they avoid excessive scrutiny to prevent revealing classified information. Recent cases such as United States v. Zubaydah (2021) and Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga (2021) have further defined the scope of this privilege.

The government has used the privilege in a variety of cases, including those involving surveillance, government contracts, and national security threats.

The move comes after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg began weighing whether the government violated his order to turn around planes deporting illegal immigrants alleged to be gang members.

Boasberg asked for details about when the planes landed and who was on board. However, the Trump administration has said that giving that information would harm “diplomatic and national security concerns.”

On March 24, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard arguments on whether to stop Boasberg’s order blocking the Trump administration from deporting alleged members of a Venezuelan gang under the Alien Enemies Act.

U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett seemed skeptical of the administration’s position. U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, meanwhile, asked multiple questions of both sides and seemed sympathetic to the administration’s arguments.

At one point, Millett told Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign that “Nazis got better treatment” under the Alien Enemies Act than the way the administration treated suspected members of Tren de Aragua. The U.S. Department of State designated the Venezuelan gang and several other foreign gangs and cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in February.

The administration transferred hundreds of Venezuelan illegal immigrants to El Salvador—invoking the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II—shortly before Boasberg issued the written order that blocked such deportations.

Sam Dorman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

By Charles Kennedy of OiPrice.com

Russia on Tuesday said that it would not make public details of the 12 hours of talks with the U.S. on Ukraine which ended on Monday amid expectations that a joint U.S.-Russia statement would be issued shortly.

“After all, this is about technical talks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

“Technical – meaning the talks with getting into details so, certainly, the content of these talks will not be made public for sure. This is something that should not be expected,” Russian news agency TASS quoted Vladimir Putin’s spokesman as saying.

Peskov’s words raised doubts over whether any progress was made in Monday’s round of talks which took place in Saudi Arabia.

“Currently, the reports made [by the delegations] to their capitals are being analyzed, and only later it will be possible to speak of any understanding,” the Russian official said.

Peskov also declined to name which other countries could be involved in the talks.

The reports shared by the U.S. technical team with the Trump Administration seemed optimistic, sources with knowledge of the matter told CBS News on Tuesday.

The U.S.-Russia talks were held a day after separate U.S.-Ukraine talks on Sunday, which were described as “productive” by Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

“We have concluded our meeting with the American team.

The discussion was productive and focused — we addressed key points including energy,” Umerov posted on X on Sunday.

“President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s goal is to secure a just and lasting peace for our country and our people — and, by extension, for all of Europe. We are working to make that goal a reality.”

Last week, Putin agreed to impose a 30-day suspension on attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in exchange for an identical halt of attacks on Russian infrastructure from the Ukrainian side. However, hours after the Putin-Trump call last Tuesday, Russia and Ukraine traded accusations of hits on the energy infrastructure of the other.

Authored by Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon via The Epoch Times,

Almost two decades ago, Canada recognized that it needed to greatly bolster its defence capabilities in the Arctic.

“Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in 2007 when at Canada’s Pacific fleet in Esquimalt, B.C. 

“We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it.”

To put Canada’s claim to the Arctic on solid footing, the government announced the construction of a deepwater port in the Far North to house an armed fleet of Polar Class 5 Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships, capable of operating in ice up to one meter thick. By engaging in full operations on the East and West coasts throughout the year, Canada would be able to assert a credible claim.

“In defending our nation’s sovereignty, nothing is as fundamental as protecting Canada’s territorial integrity; our borders, our airspace and our waters,” Harper stressed.

Harper’s grand plans—they included other deep-sea ports and year-round roads to link Arctic ports with the Canadian south—never came to fruition. Canada still has no deepwater Arctic port. Rather than an Arctic flotilla engaging in full operations on both coasts, the most Canada often musters to signify its sovereignty in the High Arctic are abbreviated summertime visits. By that measure, Viking Cruises, which typically operates three or four Arctic cruises per year, has a comparable claim to the Arctic.

 

Harper was astute in recognizing the forces that would be descending on Canada’s Arctic. Foremost of those at the time was Russia, which has had by far the largest presence in the Arctic, and in 2007 planted a flag on the sea bed at the North Pole in preparation to claiming 460,000 square miles of underwater territory. But the United States, which hasn’t recognized Canada’s sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, has also been a rival.

Today, the claimants to the Arctic are ever more active. With United States Geological Survey research estimating that the north may contain 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered resources and with global warming expected to make Arctic resources exploitable, claims to the Arctic are mounting.

Russia is displaying its dominance with three dozen icebreakers, including four nuclear-powered icebreakers and a nuclear-powered cargo ship, giving it by far the world’s largest Arctic fleet. China has also emerged as a formidable entrant into the Arctic by asserting an entitlement to Arctic resources through a claim of being “a near-Arctic state.” China already has three icebreakers plying Arctic waters, with more on the way, including a nuclear-powered icebreaker expected this year. To surpass the rival fleets of both Russia and China, U.S. President Trump declared that he intends to build “40 big icebreakers.”

Canada, in comparison, has but two aging icebreakers near the end of their service life and has only recently ordered two new icebreakers, to be completed by 2030. If past experience is a predictor of future performance, however, those icebreakers won’t materialize—most of Canada’s Arctic initiatives lie moribund due to lack of funding.

Canada’s abject Arctic record was documented in a 2022 report by the Auditor General. The report stated that “long-standing issues include incomplete surveillance, insufficient data about vessel traffic in Canada’s Arctic waters, poor means of sharing information on maritime traffic, and outdated equipment. The renewal of vessels, aircraft, satellites, and infrastructure that support monitoring maritime traffic and responding to safety and security incidents has fallen behind to the point where some will likely cease to operate before they can be replaced.”

The Inuit have also become formidable players. Their Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents some 180,000 Inuit in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia, formally aspires to sovereignty. Once it determines that the time is ripe to declare sovereignty, potentially with backing by China and the U.N., Canada would have no ability to militarily prevent them from obtaining a foothold in its Arctic territory. Not that Trump would permit Canada’s north to fall into the hands of a group allied with China. To prevent it, Trump might decide to seize Canada’s northern territories, as he intends to seize neighbouring Greenland.

The Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Sovereignty in the Arctic correctly notes that “Sovereignty is a contested concept, however, and does not have a fixed meaning.” Canada’s strongest claim to sovereignty among the many different legal opinions as to what constitutes sovereignty is generally thought to rest on the United Nations Convention of the Law of Seas (UNCLOS), to which Canada is a party.

UNCLOS provides Canada with little solace, however. The United States is not a party to UNCLOS; Russia, which is a party, states it is considering leaving UNCLOS, and China, also a party, flagrantly disregards UNCLOS rulings with which it disagrees. Ultimately, the only law throughout history that determined sovereignty has been “might makes right.” On that criterion, Canada falls woefully, hopelessly short.

With Russia, China, the United States, and the Inuit all circling to establish or strengthen claims to sovereignty over Arctic resources, a future conflict appears inevitable. Canada must immediately step up its efforts in the region. As Harper said in 2008: “To protect the North, we must control the North.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and one of its offices have released a new tool that lets people see the levels of contaminants in various foods, such as fruits and vegetables.

The tool is an online searchable database that lists contaminant levels. Unveiled on March 20, it lets users filter by contaminant type as well as food category, with examples including milk, pistachios, and bananas.

“HHS is committed to radical transparency to give Americans authentic, informed consent about what they are eating,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “This new Chemical Contaminants Transparency Tool is a critical step for industry to Make America Healthy Again.”

Since being tapped by President Donald Trump to lead HHS, Kennedy has vowed to remove toxic chemicals from the U.S. food supply as part of an agenda dubbed Make America Healthy Again, also known as MAHA.

Trump in February, after Kennedy was sworn in, established the Make America Health Again Commission. He directed the commission to, among other tasks, “assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons.”

Kennedy recently met with executives from some top food companies and told them he wanted them to stop using artificial dyes. HHS is also trying to end a rule that lets food companies use additives without formal regulatory authorization.

The new searchable contaminant tool does not impose any new requirements. It consolidates information already available in various documents, including guidance the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published previously. The FDA is an office inside the HHS.

“Ideally there would be no contaminants in our food supply, but chemical contaminants may occur in food when they are present in the growing, storage or processing environments,” Dr. Sara Brenner, acting commissioner of the FDA, said in a statement. “Because many of the most nutritious foods can also contain contaminants, consumers should eat a variety of nutrient-dense foods across and within the main food groups of vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy and protein to help protect from possible exposure effects.”

The FDA said that it will keep monitoring the nation’s food supply through testing.

“Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, the FDA is committed to promoting radical transparency to make sure all Americans know what is in their food and Make America Healthy Again,” it said.