The London Metal Exchange (LME) discovered “irregularities” with bagged nickel briquettes at one of its warehouses this week, which forced it to postpone a resumption of trading in the metal during Asian hours until March 27.

According to a statement from the LME, it had to cancel nine nickel warrants at one of its facilities after finding out that bagged nickel briquettes stored there were found to not have the weight specified in the contracts.

“The exchange has received information that a number of physical nickel shipments out of one specific facility of an LME-licensed warehouse operator have been subject to such irregularities,” the exchange said in the statement.

Gold prices continued to climb on Friday as investors turn their attention to safe haven assets amid concerns of further market turbulence triggered by the banking crisis in the US and Europe.

The precious metal has been extending gains since Monday, when it opened trading at $1,879 per ounce, to $1,936 on Friday afternoon, having started the day at $1,921.

Investors traditionally turn to gold in times of market uncertainty, to hedge risks. Throughout history, the precious metal has been seen as a reliable investment instrument during periods of economic instability, stock market crises, military conflicts and pandemics.

When thinking of a "National Divorce" the first thought is "secession," and in fact it is the first thing the media associates with calls to separate red states for blue states, as highlighted by an article over at the Daily Mail discussing how 66 million Americans agree with idea by Marjorie Taylor Greene regarding a national divorce.

The Daily Mail states "Secessionist movements are alive and well in Texas and eastern Oregon."

While technically secession is possible, the bar is so high, it isn't likely as the movement would need approval of both houses of Congress and then obtaining ratification by three fourths of the nation's legislatures, according to FindLaw.

Since a quarter of GOP voters are keen on the idea, and only 16% of Democrats favor the idea, the chances of getting both houses of congress and three fourths of the county's legislatures to agree on it, or anything for that matter, is highly unlikely.

A Twitter user asked ChatGPT to create a “social credit score” for a group of liberal, vaccine-pushing doctors versus a group of conservative doctors and others who oppose the way the coronavirus pandemic was handled — and the result shows leftists have already corrupted the AI program in order to push their agenda.

Simon Goddek, who describes himself as a science journalist, said he had asked the artificial intelligence chat producer from OpenAI to score a group of 20 people based on their discussions about the coronavirus pandemic.

He reported all the conservatives were given low social credit scores, with “main impact factors” such as “pseudoscience,” “right-wing propaganda,” “conspiracy theories,” “science skepticism” and “divisive politics,” while the left-wingers were found to be perfectly benign experts on virology, public health and science.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Saturday announced a congressional investigation into the local prosecutors reportedly preparing to indict former President Trump.

Driving the news: Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday he expects to be arrested on Tuesday as part of a Manhattan District Attorney investigation into hush money payments he allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

• Law enforcement agencies are reportedly preparing for the fallout from an indictment of Trump as soon as next week.

What they’re saying: McCarthy accused Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg of “an outrageous abuse of power” and of “pursu[ing] political vengeance against President Trump” in a tweet posted Saturday morning.

• “I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions,” McCarthy said.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who’s reportedly planning to prosecute Donald Trump over “hush” payments to Stormy Daniels made in 2016, sent an email to his employees Saturday afternoon outlining his plans to protect them from any physical threats arising from the arrest, and laughably claims that his office applies the law “evenly and fairly,” and that they “speak publicly only when appropriate.

Considering the number of charges he’s dropped and the percentage of felony charges he’s reduced to misdemeanor (52!), it’s crystal clear that the only people whose safety he cares about are the people in his office, and given the overall state of the city those words ring hollow.

Corey Cook still holds a fondness for her days living in Portland, where the downtown pubs and riverfront cherry blossoms made her proud to call the Rose City home during her 20s.

But as she started growing wary of the metro area’s congestion and liberal politics, she moved to the suburbs, then the exurbs, before heading east, eventually escaping Portland’s sphere of influence on the other side of the Cascade Mountains in 2017. But even here, where she now runs a Christian camp amid the foothill pines overlooking the Grande Ronde Valley, she cannot help but notice how the values of western Oregon are held over the eastern part of the state by way of laws making guns less accessible and abortions more accessible.

Unwilling to move east into Idaho, farther from her family, Ms. Cook, 52, now wonders if redrawing the state maps could instead bring Idaho’s values to her.

A protracted strike by rubbish collectors has added a new twist to France’s festering dispute over pension reform as the battle over President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular reform enters a make-or-break week with tonnes of uncollected garbage piling higher by the day.

“When the rubbish collectors go on strike, the trashers are indignant.” Jacques Prévert’s iconic play on words has long been a favourite slogan of the French left – and indeed of all advocates of workers’ right to lay down their tools in protest.

Two months into a bitter tussle over pension reform, and with garbage piling up in the streets of Paris and other cities, the French poet’s words resonate with a festering labour dispute that opponents of Macron’s reform have successfully reframed as a battle for social justice.

The fight over Macron’s flagship – and deeply unpopular – pension overhaul has now entered the final stretch, moving through tricky political territory in parliament even as unions and protesters continue to challenge it in the street.

When Peter Brimelow asked me to write about the Politically Correct drive to drop the term “illegal alien” in favor “undocumented immigrant” (increasingly, “migrant”) to describe someone who enters the country illegally, I hesitated. I wondered whether anyone doesn’t know that the Treason Lobby has changed the term to sell Amnesty to the American public. But then, there are still some people who don’t realize the Great Replacement is real.

When I began my career with the Border Patrol, I was a somewhat naïve college-educated recruit. The agency was overwhelmingly Mexican-American. Officially, the Border Patrol is 50 percent Hispanic, a self-reported number. My guess: It’s between 70 percent to 80 percent Hispanic. So, when my Mexican-American law instructor at the Border Patrol Academy repeatedly referred to illegal aliens as “wets,” I was surprised. Isn’t that “racist?” Apparently not, virtually everyone who worked the border called them wets, including the wets! “Soy un mojado,” (Spanish for “wet”) illegals would say when I caught them.

Another term heard inside the Border Patrol, but never outside it: “Tonk.” That’s the sound a black Maglite makes, I learned, when smashed on an illegal’s head in the quiet, still night. An older agent told me to say it’s an old acronym for “Temporarily Out of Native Kountry” if an outsider overheard the term.

Netflix has 'quietly canceled' a woke animated kids' show which features a bison who comes out as non-binary to its grandmother.   

Ridley Jones released its fifth and final season last week, which was not given any promotion, the show's creator Chris Nee claimed in a tweet. 

The two-time Kidscreen Award winner and Emmy nominee series received harsh criticism online following the release of Episode 8 of Season 5, 'Herd Day' which centers around a bison called Fred, who comes out as non-binary to their grandmother - who is voiced by Cyndi Lauper.

Webmaster addition: Get woke, go broke!

A bishop removed from his diocese by Pope Francis last year after opposing COVID vaccine mandates is speaking out about his widely criticized dismissal.

Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres broke months of silence with a statement on Thursday marking one year since “being ‘removed’ from my pastoral service as bishop of my beloved diocese of Arecibo, Puerto Rico.”

“I still feel the same perplexity that I felt when I was suddenly asked to resign and when, in a hasty way, the removal was carried out,” he wrote in a letter addressed to “all those who have been accompanying me spiritually.”

“After one year, I reaffirm exactly the same words of the public statement that I made on March 9, 2022,” he added. “In this time, I have discovered the meaning of witnessing the beatitudes rather than preaching them.”

In his March 2022 statement, the Arecibo bishop decried Pope Francis’ removal of him as “a totally unjust action.”

Lindsey Graham snapped at an audience member while claiming those who support family values should also back the U.S. sending billions of aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.

A man in the audience at the Palmetto Family Matters Conservative Forum in Charleston, South Carolina told Senator Graham that he is 'not a real conservative' and accused him of being a 'warmonger' during two separate outbursts.

The combative senator refused to let the attendee at the early presidential forum in his home state overshadow his wide-ranging discussion where he defended supporting Ukraine despite other Republicans calling for the 'blank check' to be rescinded.

Conservatives sounded the alarm following news that former President Donald Trump expects to be arrested on Tuesday based on “illegal leaks” from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Republican lawmakers and conservative figures and commentators said the predicted arrest of Trump, who is running for president in 2024, shows how the justice system is “weaponized against all Americans” and warned that the United States is turning into a “banana republic.” Even so, many conservatives wager an arrest would only further reveal the extent of Democrat corruption, ultimately skyrocketing support for Trump’s presidential run.

“Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who called for an immediate investigation into “if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.”

It was an extraordinary scene that epitomized the political storm France has walked into.

As Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne was making her way to the National Assembly's podium Thursday afternoon, lawmakers from the opposition stood up, chanting the Marseillaise and holding signs saying "no to 64 years" and "democracy."

The Assembly's president interrupted the session for things to calm down.

But when Borne took the floor a few minutes later, she still had to drown out the parliamentarians' boos.

"Based on article 49.3 of the constitution, I engage the government's responsibility," she yelled, announcing that a controversial pension reform increasing France's minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years would be pushed through without a vote in the lower house of parliament.

Etgar Keret is a superstar of Israel's literary scene. The Jewish Museum in Berlin is currently dedicating an exhibition to him titled "Inside Out" in which the author's work and life is presented. Keret, who was born in 1967 in Israel, is considered a master of short story writing and stands firm on his political views, including protesting the judicial reform in his country. "All the demonstrators have one thing in common," Keret said back in February in an interview with journalist Uri Schneider reporting for DW from Israel, "they don't want democracy to be robbed from them."

Keret is also one of the signatories of a letter to the ambassadors of Germany and the UK in Israel. In the letter, around 1,000 Israeli artists, writers and intellectuals called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inaugural visits to Berlin and London to be cancelled.

According to a report in the Israeli news outlet "Haaretz," the cultural activists who signed the letter say Israel is in the most serious crisis in its history and is "on the way from a vibrant democracy to a theocratic dictatorship." Prominent signatories include writer David Grossmann and sculptor Sigalit Landau. Nevertheless, Netanyahu arrived in the German capital on March 16 where he met German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Around 85% of plastic packaging worldwide ends up in landfills.

In the United States, which is by far the world's biggest plastics polluter, only around 5% of over 50 million tons of plastic waste produced by households in 2021 was recycled, accordingto Greenpeace. 

With plastic production set to triple globally by 2060, plastics made primarily from oil or gas are a growing source of the carbon pollution fuelling climate change. Much is also ending up in oceans and severly impacting marine life. 

Promises by major plastics producers like Nestle and Danone to promote recycling and include more recycled plastic in their containers have been mostly broken.

The plastics lobby, along with supermarkets in countries from Austria to Spain, sometimes avoid this responsibility by lobbying againstdeposit return schemes that include plastic bottles.

But there is hope. New universal plastic regulations are currently being negotiatiated as part of a global plastics treatyaiming to streamline the production, use and reuse of plastic using a circular economy model.

Democrats stole the election for the Globalist crime cartel and looted the Treasury and they are purposefully collapsing the USA. Watch.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Saturday slammed former President Donald Trump's statement that he expects to be arrested next week, calling it "reckless" and accusing him of inciting violence.

"The former president's announcement this morning is reckless: doing so to keep himself in the news & to foment unrest among his supporters," tweeted Pelosi, the former House speaker. "He cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections and incitements to violence. Rightfully, our legal system will decide how to hold him accountable."

Pelosi's tweets came after Trump announced he anticipates his arrest on Tuesday amid reports saying the Manhattan district attorney's office is preparing to issue an indictment for alleged hush money payments that Trump made as a presidential candidate in 2016.

Corrupt New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg received $1 million from Soros in his election for NYC DA.

As a result, New York City saw a rise in crime from 2021 to 2022.  The overall index crime in New York City increased in September 2022, by 15.2% compared with September 2021.

But crime can wait, DA Alvin Bragg has bigger fish to fry.  The corrupt Soros-funded DA is going after President Donald Trump.  And he is using Stormy Daniels as his means to get the former president.

Twitter moderators were instructed to censor truth-based posts which they felt could fuel vaccine hesitancy, internal company documents published Thursday by independent journalist Matt Taibbi show.

Screenshots from a guide outlining moderation policies appearing in the latest “Twitter Files” drop show moderators were instructed to flag “True content which might promote vaccine hesitancy.”

Webmaster addition: I want all those twitter mods who deleted true accounts of vaccine harm to realize that they are to blame for the deaths and injuries that might otherwise not have happened.

Law enforcement agencies are preparing for the possibility of former President Donald Trump’s indictment.

State, local and federal agencies are eyeing security measures in the event of Trump’s indictment, according to five senior officials cited by NBC News on Friday.

The indictment could come as soon as next week.

Trump would be charged with an offense related to alleged improper payments to pornographic performer Stormy Daniels, according to NBC.

Former President Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones a whopping $850,000 to keep her quiet over sexual harassment claims — but was never arrested for it.

The case stands in stark contrast to reports that former President Donald Trump will be arrested on Tuesday for an alleged $130,000 hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 over an alleged sexual encounter that the two had in 2006.

Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to charges over the payment in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison.

In 1998, the Washington Post reported, “President Clinton reached an out-of-court settlement with Paula Jones yesterday, agreeing to pay her $850,000 to drop the sexual harassment lawsuit that led to the worst political crisis of his career and only the third presidential impeachment inquiry in American history.”

The reported upcoming arrest of President Trump by hyper partisan Soros prosecutor Alvin Bragg is some Third World Banana Republic lunacy and a very, very dangerous road to go down.

Leftists in the United States are increasingly weaponizing investigations to persecute and prosecute political opponents. It must end.

The left’s conduct is similar to the conduct you find in a banana republic where the authoritarian state punishes its political enemies with criminal prosecutions in search of crimes.

It’s antithetical to America’s founding which rejected the idea and practice of those in power punishing political opponents for vague and ambiguous “crimes against the state.” Instead, the Founders chose to create a country of laws, not of men.

 Mexico's army has dramatically revised upward the number of drug lab raids it says it conducted under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, according to government data and leaked military documents reviewed by Reuters.

The documents, found among a trove of millions of emails leaked last year by the Guacamaya hacker group, show the upward revision being due to the army retroactively including hundreds of inactive labs on its seizures list under Lopez Obrador's presidency. Figures for the years of previous administrations were left unchanged.

Mexico's army, in a response to a freedom of information request in February, now says it seized 635 synthetic drug labs during 2019, 2020 and 2021 - the first three years of Lopez Obrador's administration - up from 104 busts it had previously reported for the same period.

Webmaster addition: Remember all those claims that Fentanyl was being made in China?

Former President Donald Trump said in a social media post early Saturday morning that “illegal leaks” from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicate that he will be arrested next week.

The remarks from Trump come after a report from NBC News said federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies were analyzing security assessments and making plans to prepare for the possibility that Trump could be indicted next week by a Manhattan grand jury in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment he allegedly made to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK,” Trump posted to his social media platform. “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

Webmaster addition: Trump is making a mistake by calling for protests. It opens the door for another false-flag riot staged by the government to discredit Trump supporters, and worse, in the confusion there could even be an assassination attempt on Trump himself!

Nearly 200 more banks may be vulnerable to the same type of risk that took down Silicon Valley Bank: The value of the assets they hold. 

There are 186 banks across the country that could fail if half of their depositors quickly withdraw their funds, a new study published on the Social Science Research Network found.

Even insured depositors — those with $250,000 or less in the bank — could have problems getting their cash if these institutions face the sort of run that Silicon Valley saw a week ago.

The concern is that these banks hold a significant amount of their assets in interest-rate sensitive financial instruments like government bonds and mortgage backed securities. The value of those older, low-interest investments dropped sharply as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates over the past year.

Paris police have banned gatherings in the city’s spots in areas around important government sites in an effort to end protests against France's plan to raise the state pension age by two years without a vote. 

"Due to serious risks of disturbances to public order and security … any gathering at Place de la Concorde and its surroundings as well as in the area of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées is prohibited," the police said, according to an AFP report. "People who try to gather there will be systematically evicted by the police." 

French President Emmanuel Macron has decided to push through the new legislation, which would raise the age of retirement from 62 to 64, using Article 49.3 of the constitution, which allows him to pass a law without a parliamentary vote. His decision has proven deeply unpopular, prompting nationwide protests. 

The total population of United States citizen children born to illegal aliens now far exceeds one year of American births, a March analysis shows.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) analysis estimates that about 5.4 million “anchor babies,” the term used to describe the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens who are awarded birthright citizenship, reside across the nation.

This indicates that the anchor baby population now exceeds the annual 3.7 million U.S. births by about 1.7 million. Put another way, the number of anchor babies in the U.S. is twice that of Chicago, Illinois’s resident population.