News From Around the Web
#10 2 Brothers Plead Guilty In Trump Media Insider Trading Case - James Farrell for Forbes and Larry Elder on X
Brothers Michael and Gerald Shvartsman pleaded guilty to insider trading after they together made more than $22 million by making illegal trades using non-public knowledge that Digital World Acquisition Corp was merging with Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of former President Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social. The Schvartsman brothers, both from Florida, each pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and sentencing is set for July 17. After being invited to invest in Digital World Acquisition Corp, they signed non-disclosure agreements and learned confidential information about the merger between Digital World and Trump Media—and then bought “millions of dollars” of Digital World securities ahead of a public announcement of the merger...
#9 Four More Pro-Life Activists Convicted Under FACE Act - Peter Pinedo for The National Catholic Register and Mike Davis, Kyle Seraphin and Garret O'Boyle on X
Four pro-life activists have been convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and now face prison time and thousands of dollars in fines. According to a Department of Justice statement released on Wednesday, the pro-lifers face a “maximum of six months in prison, five years of supervised release, and fines of up to $10,000.” The four activists — Eva Edl, 87; Eva Zastro, 24; James Zastro, 25; and Paul Place, 24 — were convicted of FACE Act violations in federal court on Tuesday for a protest held at a Tennessee abortion clinic in March 2021... The largest producer of fresh eggs in the U.S. said Tuesday it had temporarily halted production at a Texas plant after bird flu was found in chickens, and officials said the virus had also been detected at a poultry facility in Michigan. Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. said in a statement that approximately 1.6 million laying hens and 337,000 pullets, about 3.6% of its total flock, were destroyed after the infection, avian influenza, was found at a facility in Parmer County, Texas... Dozens of positions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion were shut down at the University of Texas at Austin, and many liberals were outraged and furious. On Tuesday, about 60 workers were fired over SB 17, legislation passed by Republicans to ban DEI at public universities. The law banning DEI went into effect on January 1 and has already led to controversy among some universities, which are resisting. The Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors and the Texas NAACP accused the university of racism after claiming that the workers fired had already been in compliance with SB 17... Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook appear to have briefly gone offline in a major outage at parent company Meta. The technical problems followed a similar widespread outage around a month ago. This week, users also reported problems with Instagram and its Threads microblogging platform. Meta had not responded to the issues at the time of publication. It is often late to announce issues – and usually does not give any information about how or why they happened... A fertilizer spill caused a massive fish kill in southwest Iowa last month. According to a recent Iowa DNR press release, agricultural company NEW Cooperative Inc. alerted the Iowa DNR of the inadvertent release of fertilizer on March 11. Around 1,500 tons or 265,000 gallons of liquid nitrogen fertilizer discharged into a drainage ditch before reaching the East Nishnabotna River. The release occurred after a storage tank valve was left open for a weekend. Officials immediately responded to the scene to stop the discharge and begin cleanup, but it appears they arrived too late to mitigate the effects of the spill. The liquid nitrogen killed almost all of the aquatic life in a 60-mile stretch of the East Nishnabotna and Nishnabotna Rivers downstream of the spill—all the way to the confluence of the Nishnabotna with the Missouri River in the state of Missouri. “I refer to this one as ‘the big one,’” Matt Combes, an ecological health unit science supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation, told The New York Times. “A near-total fish kill for 60 miles of a river is astounding and disheartening.” Populist firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., underwent surgery Tuesday to remove an acute blood clot, and she was subsequently diagnosed with May-Thurner syndrome, a rare condition that disrupts blood flow. Boebert, 37, was admitted to UCHealth Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colorado, after experiencing severe swelling in her upper left leg, her campaign said in a statement posted to Facebook late Tuesday. She underwent a CT scan, during which doctors found the clot. Marjorie Taylor Greene has introduced speculation that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is being "blackmailed" because she said his views have changed so much. Speaking to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson on his show Tucker Carlson Uncensored, the Georgia Republican, who has emerged as a vocal Johnson critic in recent weeks, said the Louisiana Republican "has completely changed his character," leading to speculation that he may be being "blackmailed." There has not been any evidence to substantiate this view. Newsweek contacted Johnson's office by email to comment on this story. "Mike Johnson has completely changed his character in a matter of about five months after he has become speaker of the House," she said. A woman who has befriended a family of robins during her coffee breaks has revealed that they now land on her head, sing to her, and are familiar with her daily routine. Fifty-eight-year-old Dawn Kiff began working as a cleansing operative in Shaldon, Devon, in southwest England, about nine months ago and has since spent a lot of time in and around the heavily forested Smuggler’s Tunnel area. Over the past month, Ms. Kiff has become a well-known face in the village as she has befriended a family of robins by feeding them during her coffee breaks.
#8 The Largest Fresh Egg Producer in the U.S. Has Found Bird Flu in Chickens at a Texas Plant - The Associated Press and Jordan Schachtel and Rep. Thomas Massie on X
#7 Liberals Melt Down After Dozens of Dei Workers Are Fired at the University of Texas at Austin: ‘All of My Group Chats Are Raging' - Carlos Garcia for Blaze Media
#6 Instagram, Whatsapp, and Facebook Go Down as Huge Meta Outage Takes Apps Offline - Andrew Griffin for The Independent
#5 Biden’s Tax-Hike Plan Would Cost the US Economy Nearly 800K Jobs - Megan Henney for Fox Business and Maria Bartiromo on X
President Biden has pitched an array of tax hikes targeting corporations and wealthy Americans, but the steeper levies could weigh on the already fragile U.S. economy, according to the Tax Foundation. Findings from the Tax Foundation, a group that advocates for lower taxes, found the higher taxes laid out in Biden's sweeping budget blueprint for federal spending in fiscal 2025 would reduce economic output by 2.2% in the long run, slash wages by 1.6% and kill about 788,000 full-time equivalent jobs...
The schemed famine has commenced in Oregon. Under the guise of water conservation and protecting groundwater, the state of Oregon has been aggressively closing small farms and market gardens. In the same way that big hospitals use government-issued certificates of need to block competing projects or land developers use eminent domain and fake blight to...
#4 Attack on Small Farmers: Update on Engineered Famine in Oregon - Tracy Beanz and Michelle Edwards for The HighWire and Steven Middendorp on X
#3 Iowa Fertilizer Spill Wipes Out River’s Aquatic Life, Killing Over 749,000 Fish - Sage Marshall for Field and Stream
#2 Lauren Boebert Has Surgery to Remove Blood Clot, Diagnosed With Rare Condition - Michael Dorgan for Fox News and Sharyl Attkisson and Julia on X
#1 Marjorie Taylor Greene Suggests Mike Johnson Is Being Blackmailed - Kate Plummer for Newsweek, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kanekoa the Great on X
And Now for Something Special
Woman Befriends a Family of Robins During Her Break, Now They Land on Her Head and Sing - SWNS for Epoch Share and YouTube
