Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding - Drain the Swamp?!

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/elon-musk-business-government-contracts-funding/

Elon Musk and his cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service team have been on a mission to trim government largesse. Yet Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers.

Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments, a Washington Post analysis has found, helping seed the growth that has made him the world’s richest person.

The payments stretch back more than 20 years. Shortly after becoming CEO of a cash-strapped Tesla in 2008, Musk fought hard to secure a low-interest loan from the Energy Department, according to two people directly involved with the process, holding daily briefings with company executives about the paperwork and spending hours with a government loan officer.

The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies

 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/

In a long tradition of “persecuting the refugee,” the State Department and FDR claimed that Jewish immigrants could threaten national security

Trump’s Threats Lift Canada’s Liberals From Almost-Certain Defeat

 https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trumps-threats-lift-canadas-liberals-from-almost-certain-defeat-d5837806?mod=hp_lista_pos2

Canada was set to hold an election this year that was going to be a referendum on the unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Now it’s all about President Trump.

Trump to pull nearly 1,660 Afghan refugees from flights, say US official, advocate

 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-canceling-flights-nearly-1660-afghan-refugees-say-us-2025-01-20/

Nearly 1,660 Afghans cleared by the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, are having their flights canceled under President Donald Trump's order suspending U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.

The group includes unaccompanied minors awaiting reunification with their families in the U.S. as well as Afghans at risk of Taliban retribution because they fought for the former U.S.-backed Afghan government, said Shawn VanDiver, head of the #AfghanEvac coalition of U.S. veterans and advocacy groups and the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. decision also leaves in limbo thousands of other Afghans who have been approved for resettlement as refugees in the U.S. but have not yet been assigned flights from Afghanistan or from neighboring Pakistan, they said.

What political scientists see as worrisome, Republicans see as welcome

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/26/trump-threats-democracy-experts-polling/

Many Trump supporters welcome a strongman government, with 55 percent viewing it positively.

Hey, RFK: Go to Texas and prove you mean it on vaccines

 https://nypost.com/2025/02/26/opinion/hey-rfk-go-to-texas-and-prove-you-mean-it-on-vaccines/

In seeking Senate approval to take his new job, Health Secretary Robert Kennedy insisted he’d come around on the safety and efficacy of (most) vaccines.

Now he has a chance to prove he really meant it.

The measles outbreak in Texas (and now New Mexico) just claimed its first life, an unvaccinated school-age child who’d been hospitalized in Lubbock last week.

It was the first US measles death since 2015.

More may be ahead: Most of the Texas cases are among the Mennonite faith community, where resistance to vaccinations is strong.

BBC Gaza documentary translates ‘Jihad’ to ‘resistance,’ ‘Jews’ to ‘Israeli army’

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/bbc-gaza-documentary-translates-jihad-to-resistance-jews-to-israeli-army/

The controversial BBC documentary on life in Gaza has again come under scrutiny, as a report Monday accused the film of “whitewashing” references to terrorism, Jihad, Hamas and prejudice against Jews in the English translation of the original Arabic dialogue.

The film, “Gaza: How To Survive a War Zone”, was pulled from BBC‘s online streaming service last week after a Telegraph report found that the documentary’s narrator was the son of a major Hamas governmental figure.

On Monday, a new report in the Telegraph found that the English translation of the film repeatedly mistranslated certain words in an attempt to “whitewash” the statements of the ordinary Gazans who were interviewed in the documentary.

RFK Dismisses Measles Outbreak That Killed Kid as No Biggie

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/rfk-claims-measles-outbreak-that-killed-first-us-kid-in-decades-is-totally-normal/

Donald Trump’s health secretary waved off the active Texas outbreak—where pediatricians on the ground have reported children being accepted into care unable to properly breathe—as a normal thing that happens every year.

“There have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country, last year there were 16,” he told a reporter from Trump’s cabinet meeting. “It is not unusual, we have measles outbreaks every year.”

His presence as a prominent figure in the anti-vax community has been credited with leading to an increase in the number of parents who now refuse to vaccinate their children—a movement that may now be causing a spike in measles cases.

Texas Measles Surge 'Inevitable' Due to Vaccine Exemptions, Experts Warn

 https://www.newsweek.com/texas-measles-surge-inevitable-vaccine-exemptions-2035228

Texas is facing its largest measles outbreak in nearly 30 years, with 124 confirmed cases as of February 25, 2025.

The outbreak coincides with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appointment as U.S. Health Secretary. While Kennedy has promised not to change vaccination schedules, his role has reignited debates on vaccine policies. In Texas, more vaccine exemptions has led to lower vaccination rates, meaning communities could be more vulnerable and the disease spreading more easily.

Looking at the data for Texas, it appears to pretty much fit the profile one would expect: high vaccine exemption rate in schools—one in five kids, apparently—85 of 90 cases unvaccinated, most cases—80 to 90—under the age of 18.

Masses of Israelis pay respects to Bibas family; funeral procession reaches cemetery

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-26-2025/

The funeral procession for Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas has arrived at the Tsoher Cemetery near Kibbutz Nir Oz.

The burial will take place in private. The eulogies will be broadcast.

5 Lessons We Learned From The Body Keeps The Score

 https://www.myndlift.com/post/5-lessons-we-learned-from-the-body-keeps-the-score

There aren't many books containing dense and scientific material that also manage to top the New York Times best-seller list for 150 weeks – that's almost three years – and counting. The Body Keeps the Score by psychiatrist and author Bessel van der Kolk is quite possibly one of the most popular mental health books in the last decade. The numbers speak for themselves; it has sold nearly two million copies worldwide!

Trauma, trust and triumph: psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk on how to recover from our deepest pain

 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/20/trauma-trust-and-triumph-psychiatrist-bessel-van-der-kolk-on-how-to-recover-from-our-deepest-pain

Van der Kolk’s insistence that no single treatment is likely to work alone, and no combination will be exactly the same for every patient, is iconoclastic enough on its own. Yet it is his engagement with what you could loosely classify as “hippy stuff” – eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing, yoga, bodywork (Feldenkrais, craniosacral therapy) and touch – that shows how unperturbed he is in going beyond the realm of classic psychiatry. His thinking on the body is so succinct and simple: if the body is storing trauma in its musculature, in its hormonal pathways, then it is the body that needs “experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage or collapse that result from trauma”, as he writes in his book.

ירושלים: החשוד התבצר בדירתו, הצית אותה – וחולץ במצב קשה

 https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1687459#:~:text=החשוד%2C%20שעל%20פי%20הדיווחים%20ביצע,הוא%20חולץ%20כשהוא%20מחוסר%20הכרה&text=כוחות%20משטרה%20וכבאות%20הוזעקו%20הלילה,חשוד%20במעשים%20חמורים%20שהתבצר%20בביתו.

החשוד, שעל פי הדיווחים ביצע מעשים חמורים, התבצר בדירתו בשכונת מאה שערים והצית אותה כשהכוחות ניסו לפרוץ פנימה. לאחר מאמצי חילוץ, הוא חולץ כשהוא מחוסר הכרה

Crisis with Hamas resolved: 4 dead hostages, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to be released in next 24 hours

 https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1cpxascyl

Israeli officials confirmed that agreements reached marking completion of Phase I of cease-fire deal: Hamas will transfer coffins containing 4 hostages to Egypt without a ceremony, and at the same time the prisoners will be released