MicroWave

joined 2 years ago
 

A couple of 20-year-old developers make $500,000 a month promising to help men to stop watching porn, but exposed their private porn watching habits.

 

The U.S. Navy has refused near-daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The ‌Navy's assessments spell continued disruption to Middle East oil exports and reflect a divergence from Donald Trump’s statements that the U.S. is prepared to provide naval escorts whenever needed to restart regular shipments along the key waterway.

Shipping along the narrow strait has all but halted since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran more than a week ago, preventing exports of around a fifth of the world’s oil supply and sending global oil prices surging to highs not seen since 2022.

 

Uber launched a feature Monday to allow both women riders and drivers across the U.S. to be matched with other women for trips, expanding a pilot program aimed at addressing concerns about the safety of its ride-hailing platform.

The new feature is being rolled out nationwide despite an ongoing class action lawsuit against the policy in California, filed by Uber drivers who argue that it discriminates against men. Rival ride-hailing company Lyft is facing a discrimination lawsuit over a similar offering that it introduced nationwide in 2024.

 

Federal judge said prosecutors picked to replace Alina Habba repeated error of bypassing congressional approval

Three prosecutors installed by Donald Trump’s administration to lead the New Jersey attorney general’s office after the president’s former personal lawyer was disqualified from the role in December were also illegally appointed, a federal judge has ruled.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, handpicked the three to replace Alina Habba, who resigned after a succession of district and appeals court rulings that she was serving illegally because she never received Senate confirmation.

On Monday, federal judge Matthew Brann said Bondi’s actions repeated the same error of bypassing congressional approval for the appointments. He stopped short of ordering their removal pending a government appeal – but, in a blistering 130-page ruling, said overreach by the executive branch could jeopardise all of its cases before him.

 

Canadian police say they are investigating reports that a gun was fired at the US consulate in Toronto.

"Evidence of a firearm discharge has been located," Toronto Police Operations posted on X on Tuesday, adding that the report of gunfire was received just before 05:30 local time (09:30 GMT).

No injuries have been reported, and no suspect has been identified, the police statement adds.

It comes as Norwegian police investigate an explosion that occurred outside the US embassy in Oslo on Sunday. Officials there are seeking a suspect who they believe may have placed the improvised device in a possible act of terrorism.

 

The MIT professor who has been appointed by Robert F Kennedy Jr to review the safety of Covid-19 vaccines has failed to meet basic scientific standards in his own research on the topic, according to more than a dozen scientists and public health experts.

Retsef Levi, an operations management professor, is a member of the US health department’s vaccine advisory committee (ACIP) which is meeting later this month and – many experts fear – could seek to rollback recommendations on who should receive Covid-19 vaccines.

Levi, who holds Israeli and American citizenship, has claimed that Covid-19 vaccines are the “most failing medical product in the history of medical products”, despite a body of research that has shown they are safe and effective. A modeling study published in 2022 in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet estimated that Covid-19 vaccines saved nearly 20 million lives in the first year they were available.

 

Saudi Arabian state oil firm calls crisis by far the biggest the region has seen but firm can reroute 70% of exports and tap crude held in storage

Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for the world’s oil markets if the US-Israeli war with Iran continues to block shipping in the strait of Hormuz.

The world’s biggest oil company expects to be able to export about 70% of its usual crude output despite the stranglehold on the vital trade artery, but its chief executive warned that there would still be “drastic” consequences for the world economy if the disruption continues.

Oil shipments from the Middle East have been blocked from passing through the narrow waterway since the US strikes on Iran 11 days ago, erasing about 20m barrels of oil from the global market every day.

 

John Diehl admitted using federal pandemic loans for country club dues, cars and other personal expenses

A former Missouri state house speaker was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud for misusing federal Covid-19 relief funds for his personal benefit, including the payments of his country club dues and three cars.

John Diehl, the former Republican house speaker, received about $380,000 in federal loans for his law firm between 2020 and 2022 through a program intended to help cover operating expenses for businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

But Diehl admitted in a September plea agreement that he instead used the money for personal expenses such as country club dues, swimming pool maintenance, his home mortgage and vehicle payments for a Tesla, Audi and Jeep. Prosecutors said he used more than half the money to fund his law firm’s defined benefit plan, of which he was the only participant – and also paid off a civil settlement related to his time as state house speaker.

 

Standing alongside his son’s Ford pickup truck at a central Iowa gas station off Interstate 80, Francisco Castillo was not happy.

He had voted for President Donald Trump in the last election. He believed Trump had strengthened the economy in his first term, and he wanted more of that.

“I thought that he was going to bring some of those things back,” said Castillo, a 43-year-old factory worker. And now? “He said he was going to bring gas down, but the war in Iran is now making everything worse.”

It seems a country divided on so many fronts is finding common ground in pain at the pump, where the cost of the Iran war is hitting Americans squarely in the wallet and aggravating people across the political spectrum.

 

When Donald Trump’s most controversial aide starts advising officials not to listen too much to attorneys, it’s best not to look away.

In Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part II,” a character named Dick the Butcher tells a confederate, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” There’s long been debate over the meaning of the line, but the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a 1985 opinion that he interpreted it to mean that “disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”

This came to mind while watching White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller speak at the Americas Counter Cartel Conference on Thursday, in which he had quite a bit to say to a group of Latin American military leaders.

At the heart of Miller’s pitch was the idea that it was necessary to combat drug cartels, not through law enforcement techniques or border control, but rather by using deadly military force.

 

When the nation’s labor secretary flubs arithmetic while struggling to defend poor employment data, there’s a problem.

In mid-February, as Donald Trump’s State of the Union address neared, Peter Navarro, a leading White House voice on trade and economic policy, told Fox News that the U.S. economy was “perfect.” A week later, during JD Vance’s latest Fox News appearance, the vice president celebrated the “Trump boom” in the economy.

Soon after, the American public learned that economic growth during the first year of the president’s second term reached a nine-year low (excluding the pandemic). Late last week, the latest job numbers were even worse: The U.S. economy lost 90,000 jobs in February, and the unemployment rate inched higher.

Indeed, the closer one looked at the data, the worse the figures appeared. Trump has been in the White House for 14 months, and during that time the cumulative total is 150,000 jobs. In the last 14 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, by contrast, the American economy added 1.74 million jobs.

 

Critics put Donald Trump on blast on Monday after he posted a message on social media threatening Iran with “Death, Fire and Fury.”

Writing on his Truth Social website, Trump said any attempt to block oil shipments would lead to an attack “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” ― and so severe that it will be “virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again.”

Iran has responded to the U.S.-Israeli military campaign by threatening to attack ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, effectively cutting off some 20% of the world’s oil. That’s triggered wild fluctuations in the market for crude oil, rising gas prices at U.S. pumps and fears of further economic pain should the conflict drag on.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks for this comment. News about Iran seems to bring out extreme personalities lately it seems like.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Thanks! Appreciate the recognition.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks officer

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Thanks, that’s nice to hear from a fellow longtimer.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago (4 children)
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