After the FBI seized Joseph Ruiz's life savings during a raid on a safe deposit box business in Beverly Hills, the unemployed chef went to court to retrieve his $57,000. A judge ordered the government to tell Ruiz why it was trying to confiscate the money.

It came from drug trafficking, an FBI agent responded in court papers.

Ruiz’s income was too low for him to have that much money, and his side business selling bongs made from liquor bottles suggested he was an unlicensed pot dealer, the agent wrote. The FBI also said a dog had smelled unspecified drugs on Ruiz’s cash.

The FBI was wrong. When Ruiz produced records showing the source of his money was legitimate, the government dropped its false accusation and returned his money.

Ruiz is one of roughly 800 people whose money and valuables the FBI seized from safe deposit boxes they rented at the U.S. Private Vaults store in a strip mall on Olympic Boulevard.

The Supreme Court will hear a case concerning a Mississippi abortion law on December 1, the court announced on Monday, teeing up one of the most substantial cases of the term in which the justices are being asked to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Mississippi case -- the most important set of abortion-related oral arguments the court has heard since 1992 -- comes as states across the country, emboldened by the conservative majority and the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the high court, are increasingly passing restrictive abortion-related regulations, hoping to curb the constitutional right first established in 1973 in Roe and reaffirmed in 1992 when the court handed down Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Roe v. Wade is the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide prior to viability, which can occur at around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Four amateur astronauts returned from a three-day private spaceflight this weekend overflowing with enthusiasm about the experience. "Best ride of my life," said Dr. Sian Proctor shortly after emerging from the Crew Dragon capsule.

Future customers for such a free-flying orbital experience, however, weren't waiting for the initial reviews to express their interest in going to space. Even before the Crew Dragon spacecraft splashed down on Saturday night the Inspiration4 mission had already ignited a firestorm of interest.

IT HAS BEEN a summer of floods. Northern Virginia at the end of last week, and Texas at the beginning, thanks to Tropical Storm Nicholas. Louisiana and New York City last month, following Hurricane Ida. New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, after Tropical Storm Henri. North Carolina, from Tropical Storm Fred. Deadly flash floods caused by heavy rains in Tennessee.

The floods swamped roads, toppled trees, crushed houses, and killed close to 100 people—but as the water recedes, authorities are watching for signals of a second, slower-moving harm. Wherever water has invaded buildings, mold and fungi follow. They are deadly to people with damaged immune systems and dangerous even for the apparently healthy. Yet we have not built the surveillance systems that would reveal how serious their effect may be.

The esteemed New England Journal of Medicine posted a correction last week and now admits the COVID vaccine may not be safe for pregnant women.

The study was updated after it found that 104 of 827 pregnant participants experienced a spontaneous abortion after receiving the COVID vaccine. That is roughly 1 of 8 pregnant women losing their baby after getting the vaccine.

Mixed martial arts rising star "Suga" Sean O'Malley commented critically on transgender fighter Alana McLaughlin's victories over female fighters.

“I don’t think that’s OK,” O’Malley said of McLaughlin's victory during an episode of his podcast. “I just don’t think that’s OK ... In just competing in sports, I mean, especially mixed. It’s like she had testosterone for, who knows, 20 to 30 years of her life and now I’m a girl.”

“You could tell that’s a dude,” O’Malley added. “A jacked girl. I mean, look at those arms.”

Last week, the special counsel appointed to oversee the probe into the FBI's investigation of former president Donald Trump indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Republicans and Trump allies are optimistic about the latest development in John Durham's investigation but are still concerned that Attorney General Merrick Garland might halt the investigation to protect allies and even the president himself.

FBI notes appear to suggest that as vice president, Joe Biden played a role in the Democratic Party project to smear Trump as a Russian asset by raising the obscure, disused, 18th century statute the Logan Act as a possible vehicle for prosecuting Michael Flynn for speaking with the Russian ambassador to Washington — even after FBI case agents had cleared Trump's incoming national security adviser of wrongdoing.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am a liberal, White, upper-middle-class parent, and we live in a mixed-income, racially integrated urban neighborhood. When it came time to enroll our daughter in high school, we selected a school that was majority Black because it was close by, and we rejected the notion of getting caught up in which magnet school was most prestigious. Our daughter had a horrible time there—she was harassed so much that we had to pull her out, and other non-Black students there were victimized because of their race. I am struggling to make sense of the experience. I think she’s managed it well and hasn’t let it affect her general views on race, and I believe I’m doing the same, but mostly I am just so angry that our daughter had to endure this, and I feel guilty that I put her in this position.

It's not just Evergrande that is about to keel over. Overnight, one of its smaller peers, Shanghai-based Sinic Holdings Group which focuses on the development of residential and commercial properties in China, was halted trading after it shares cratered in a freak 87% plunge on Monday afternoon. The plunge slashed the market value to just under $230 million, which is laughable for a listed developer in the city.

There was no reason for the selloff - an officer at the firm’s Hong Kong office said there’s no one to attend to media inquires which is probably not a good sign - which was attributed to the general panic resulting from Evergrande's imminent default, nor did the company give a reason for the trading halt in Hong Kong.

As futures indicated, the US cash equity open was greeted by an avalanche of selling, breaking the S&P back below its 50DMA...

This was the second largest sell-program in history with TICK crashing to -2067 (record low as -2069 on 5/11/21)...

In retrospect, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan picked a great day to take a holiday, which as we noted last night hammered Hong Kong stocks more than 3%, slamming the Hong Kong property sector and sending Evergrande - which is expected to default within hours to a bank loan due Monday while crucial interest payment deadline on its offshore bonds looms on Thursday - to its lowest market cap ever (it closed down 10.2% just off the worst levels of the day) before the rout spread to European bourses and US equity futures as Evergrande's escalating liquidity - and now solvency - crisis spread beyond the sector.

Democratic Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano has called out President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to make an appearance at his town as it battles with an overwhelming illegal immigrant crisis that has left Border Patrol agents struggling to process thousands of people.

More than 15,000 illegal immigrants, including Haitian, Cuban, and Venezuelan nationals, have illegally entered the United States in recent days and taken shelter underneath the border bridge connecting Del Rio, a Texas town of about 35,000 people, to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico.

While numerous official figures and congressmen, including Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have visited the town, shared images, and urged the Biden administration to take action, both Biden and Harris have been noticeably absent.

No matter how the Evergrande drama plays out, whether it culminates with an uncontrolled, chaotic default and/or liquidation which sparks a crash in real estate values, or with Beijing blinking and bailing out the core pillar of China's housing market, remember that Evergrande is just a symptom of the trends that have whipsawed China's property market in the past year, which has seen significant contraction as a result of Beijing policies seeking to tighten financial conditions as part of Xi's new "common prosperity" drive which among other things, seeks to make housing much more affordable to everyone, not just the richest.

Clueless economists are wringing their hands about the labor shortage without looking at the underlying causes, one of which is painfully obvious: the American economy now only works for the top 10%; the American Dream of turning labor into capital is now reserved for the already-wealthy.

As a result the Smart Crowd is opting out of the conventional workforce's debt-overwork-deadend-treadmill. What clueless economists, pundits and politicos don't dare acknowledge is that credentials and hard work are not a ticket to middle-class security; they're a ticket to impossible workloads demanded by global corporations and high-cost lifestyles anchored by student-loan debt, high rents and out-of-reach real estate.

Six senior Evergrande executives are facing "severe punishment" for securing early redemptions for themselves on investment products which the imploding Chinese real estate giant told retail investors they couldn't repay on time.

According to the Financial Times, over 40 group executives had personally invested in its investment products - with six of them securing early redemptions. All six will return the money.

"All funds redeemed by the managers must be returned and severe penalties will be imposed," said the company, which has offered to repay investors with discounted apartments and parking lots.

An armed man who was filmed being detained at the Capitol rally in support of Jan 6 suspects appears to have been inadvertently exposed as an undercover law enforcement officer by his fellow police.

Marathon negotiations between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia that spanned over 10 years dashed all hopes that had been placed on them in the face of the Ethiopian insistence on refusing to sign any binding agreement on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

For many decades, Ethiopia has viewed Egypt and Sudan as seizing its right to the Nile waters, which has caused the poverty it has suffered from for a long time. It also believes that the time has come to act in what it believes of its ownership of the Blue Nile River.

On the other hand, Egypt sees “absolute Ethiopian control without agreements or restrictions as an existential threat to the Egyptian people.” Fears are rising about the destruction of the already meagre Egyptian agricultural area and the decrease in the quotas of water allocated for drinking, as Egypt relies almost entirely on the Nile River, which provides more than 90% of the country’s water needs.

Western civilization and culture have been infected by a mindset that prizes ideology over competence and virtue over reason. And democracy is only a good idea if and when it serves elite interests. Then there is an issue of competence. Competence used to be rewarded, now incompetence is overlooked when serving ideology.

Leaders of various Syrian tribes have held a gathering in the capital Damascus, pledging to work with the army to expel foreign troops and return occupied territories to the state control.

Tribal leaders and elders categorically rejected Friday attempts by foreign forces and their Takfiri mercenaries to partition Syria, stressing that they will join forces with Syrian army troops to confront separatist plots.

They called on foreign occupation forces and their mercenaries to leave Syria, saying the Syrian nation suffers from harsh economic and social difficulties as a result of their presence and arbitrary measures.