Matthew Morales boarded the Metro Red Line at MacArthur Park as classical music blared over the station loudspeakers.

It was rush hour on a Tuesday afternoon, and Morales made his way to a back corner seat and unfolded a tiny piece of foil with several blue shards of fentanyl. As the train started west, he heated the aluminum with a lighter and sucked in the smoke through a pipe fashioned from a ballpoint pen.

Doors opened and closed. A few passengers filed in and out. A grain of the opioid fell to the floor. He concentrated on trying to pick it up, then lost track, as his body went limp. His shoulders slumped and he slowly keeled forward.

By the time the train arrived at the Wilshire/Western station, Morales, 29, was doubled over and near motionless, his hand on the floor. The train operator walked out of the cabin, barely glancing at him as she passed — as if she encountered such scenes all the time.

After agreeing with Saudi Arabia in December to buy its oil for Chinese yuan instead of just US dollars, while at the same time Russia is successfully cooperating with Saudi Arabia and Iran in the oil sector, Beijing is helping a historic reconciliation between the two major Muslim countries. Chinese efforts are all the more impressive when considering the persistent efforts of the US to cause conflict between the two countries instead of reconciliation.

It is hoped that reconciliation will lead to a huge blow to the hegemony of the US dollar. In Beijing on March 17, following negotiations in Iraq and Oman during the previous two years, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia announced an agreement which includes the restoration of diplomatic relations, a confirmation of respect for the sovereignty of states and non-interference in their internal affairs, and agreements on security, economy, trade, investment, science and culture.

In short, with the mediation of China, the two regional powers, often framed as having a Sunni-Shi’a rivalry, made it official that they are embarking on a new path of improving relations instead of further spoiling them for the sake of serving Western interests that are contrary to the interests of the Islamic World.

Big Four firm KPMG was the auditor for SVB and Signature Bank.  It recently gave these companies clean bills of health in their 10K filings.  Two weeks later, SVB became the second largest bank in US history to fail and Signature Bank the 3rd largest bank in history to fail. 

Update(1017ET): What's being described as an initial, informal meeting between Presidents Xi and Putin is underway at the Kremlin. While the expected cordialities and expressions of closer relations were exchange, among the most notable early statements came from Putin, who said he's "open" to peace talks with Ukraine and China's mediation efforts.

"We have a lot of joint tasks, goals," Putin told his Chinese counterpart while also congratulating him on re-election as the head of the Chinese state for a third 5-year term. Xi in return said "Russia succeeded in promoting prosperity under Putin’s leadership." Putin further expressed that "we will discuss your initiative [on Ukraine] which we view with respect."

"We are open for a negotiating process on Ukraine," the Russian leader added. He noted to Xi that "we have looked at your proposals for the resolution of the Ukraine conflict" and previewed that "we will discuss this question."

Many Americans say it’s the biggest problem our country faces today: the fentanyl plague, which has already taken thousands of American lives.

Concerned citizens also believe the Biden administration hasn’t done enough to combat the epidemic, which critics say has exploded due to a seemingly endless border crisis.

But one border state has just taken action — and it should save many lives.

Texas is always on the frontlines of the illegal immigration battle, as they share a border with Mexico. The Lone Star State sees the worst of the crisis, and they’ve called it an “invasion” more than once.

That’s why Governor Greg Abbott and other lawmakers have taken matters into their own hands. If the federal government won’t protect us, Texas will.

The Manhattan district attorney supposedly preparing to arrest Donald Trump for allegedly hiding hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels received $1million from a political action committee funded by billionaire George Soros. 

Alvin Bragg, who was elected Manhattan DA in November 2021, had been involved in numerous investigations into Trump and his family before being sworn in last year, even bragging he had sued Trump 'more than 100 times' while serving in the NY Attorney General's Office. 

While campaigning to become the next Manhattan DA, he received more than $1million in support from the Color Of Change PAC, a racial justice group which receives funding from Soros, a Hungarian-born billionaire financier-turned American  mega donor. 

“JPMorgan, the world’s largest bank by market capitalization, was Epstein’s bank of choice between 1998 and 2013, well after Epstein’s Florida prosecution for soliciting prostitution with a minor. That relationship has been under a newfound spotlight after Epstein survivors and the Virgin Islands sued JPMorgan Chase late last year, claiming that it ‘facilitated, sustained and concealed’ Epstein’s abuse,” the outlet added.

JPMorgan has denied the allegations from the U.S. Virgin Islands and filed a counteroffensive against Staley, claiming he “concealed his personal activities” with Epstein.

Staley and Epstein exchanged roughly 1,000 emails between 2008 and 2012. Newly unsealed information reveals an odd exchange between Staley and Epstein, where they make references to Disney characters, according to Fox News.

“These women were trafficked and abused during different intervals between at least 2003 and July 2019, when Epstein was arrested and jailed, and these women received payments, typically multiple payments, between 2003 and 2013 in excess of $1 million collectively,” according to the unsealed passages.

Whether or not Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg really is about to arrest Trump this week, as has been reported, over trumped-up hush-money charges relating to a one-time assignation 17 years ago with porn star Stormy Daniels, Friday’s leak from the court could not have come at a better time for President Biden. 

The story that the first former president in American history would be charged with a crime, fingerprinted, put in a holding cell and maybe even perp-walked to humiliate him before the world is a dream come true for salivating Trump-haters. 

But, more significantly, the story took the spotlight off the bombshell bank records released the previous day by the House Oversight Committee, showing $1,065,000 had been funneled from a Chinese energy company, through Biden intimate Rob Walker, to four immediate family members of Joe Biden: his son Hunter, brother James, and Hallie Biden, the widow of his late son Beau, who also is Hunter’s former lover. 

Also listed as a recipient of the Chinese money, which was doled out to the four Bidens in regular small increments between March 6 and May 18, 2017, was an as-yet-unidentified family member, listed only on bank wires as “Biden.” 

Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing to campaign extensively when President Biden launches his much-anticipated re-election bid, despite concerns in the Democratic Party that her performance in office, criticized by some as uneven, has made her a liability.

Ms. Harris plans to visit urban centers of swing states to persuade Black voters, young people and other liberal constituencies to re-elect Mr. Biden, according to people familiar with discussions about her campaign efforts. She will lead the administration’s advocacy for abortion rights, tout the administration’s climate investments and echo Mr. Biden’s pledge to protect Medicare and Social Security. 

Joe’s shared some questionable content on Twitter —and was checked by the community.

According to a Fox News report, President Joe Biden shared a dubious “fact” on Twitter about how much America’s billionaires pay in taxes —and Twitter was having none of it.

“Look, I think you should be able to be a billionaire if you can earn it, but just pay your fair share,” Biden’s tweet read. “I think you ought to pay a minimum tax of 25%. It’s about basic fairness.”

Community notes flew in with this helpful gem: “This is incorrect. Avg income tax rate in 2020 was 13.6%. Top 1% of taxpayers paid a 25.99% avg rate, more than eight times higher than the 3.1% avg rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers. It increased from 20.1%/2019 to 22.2%/2020”

Additionally, the world’s richest man and Twitter CEO himself, Elon Musk, weighed in on the claim, saying “I paid 53% taxes on my Tesla stock options (40% Federal & 13% state), so I must be lifting the average! I also paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022. @CommunityNotes, is the 3% number cited above accurate?”

Among the thousands of businesses that will face some form of financial compensation following the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), recipients of federal bailout money will include mainstream media outlets, social media companies, and the business interests of several Democratic elected officials across the country.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, while SVB was most well-known for having numerous tech companies among its clients, the bank also did business with several mainstream media outlets as well. Two examples are BuzzFeed and Vox. On Monday, BuzzFeed revealed to its investors that, of the $56 million in cash that the company held at the end of 2022, the majority of it was being held at SVB. The news capped off a disastrous year for BuzzFeed, as 2022 saw the company lose an estimated $201.3 million, as well as the firing of 40 percent of its newsroom staff, and its stock price plunging by 90 percent.

Vox also admitted to banking with SVB prior to its collapse, though it would not reveal the exact amount. A Vox spokeswoman claimed in a statement that the company does not expect “any significant impact,” and has instead simply faced a number of “logistical issues such as the temporary suspension of accounts and company credit cards.” Vox Media is the parent company of numerous other left-wing media publications, including the titular Vox, New York Magazine, Polygon, and the Verge.

Speaker McCarthy at House GOP gathering says that he doesn’t believe anyone should protest if Trump is arrested/prosecuted and that Trump doesn’t either. (Trump earlier truthed “Protest!”) He said he has not spoken with the former president.

After a bunch of repeated tests, it became clear to me that if you ask ChatGPT to deliver a complete application, it will fail. A corollary to this observation is that if you know nothing of coding and want ChatGPT to build you something, it will fail.

Nearly 800,000 people signed up to join the North Korean military in a single day, the country’s state-run media claimed Saturday. The North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun says 800,000 students and workers signed up to fight the U.S. on Friday, just one day after North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the sea between South Korea and Japan. The total number included many North Koreans who sought to re-enlist, the paper noted.

“The soaring enthusiasm of young people to join the army is a demonstration of the unshakable will of the younger generation to mercilessly wipe out the war maniacs making last-ditch efforts to eliminate our precious socialist country, and achieve the great cause of national reunification without fail and a clear manifestation of their ardent patriotism,” the state-run newspaper wrote.

According to Fox News, The North Korean military operates on a conscription system, with males required to serve for 10 years and females required to serve for 3 years.

Some rural communities in Michigan are not at all pleased with the latest moves by their Governor to allow Chinese-run companies to start building facilities in their areas.

Fox News reports that Governor Whitmer will allow these plans to go forward.

Residents are concerned about the recent rising tensions between China and the United States. Recent footage from a town hall meeting in Green Charter Township and Big Rapids in a rural Michigan county shows that more than 100 residents showed up to express their outrage at the proposal to allow Chinese-owned companies to move forward with plans to build factories in their area.

85 per cent of respondents polled on Donald Trump’s own Truth Social website think protesting against his arrest would be risking a January 6-style set-up, despite Trump himself telling them to go out and demonstrate.

On Saturday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday, citing “illegal leaks” from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation regarding payments allegedly made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election campaign.

Although many legal observers say the potential indictment of Trump is a political show trial and that in any other scenario the payments would represent nothing worse than a misdemeanor, Democrats remain desperate to prevent Trump from running for president again.

Leftist ‘thinker’ Sam Harris declared last week that conservatives should not be allowed to voice their opinions on issues such as the war in Ukraine, climate change, or vaccine safety.

Making the remarks on a podcast, Harris’ argument is that conservative commentators are making a living out of “not caring” and thus should not be allowed to influence anyone else’s opinion.

“We’re swimming in a sea of misinformation, where you’ve got people who are moving the opinions of millions of others, who should not have an opinion on these topics,” Harris proclaimed.

He continued, “There is no scenario in which you should be getting your opinion about vaccine safety or climate change, or the war in Ukraine, or anything else that we might want to talk about from Candace Owens, right?”

The announcement of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin is shaking Western war plans. After presenting a peace project, the Chinese government now demonstrates that it is considering Russian interests in the conflict as relevant, which is why the country’s president decided to go to Moscow. As well known, peace and Russian interests are inadmissible points for the Collective West, which is why an important American official has already publicly declared that any Chinese peace proposal must be automatically rejected by Ukraine. The case shows quite clearly that the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev is just a proxy for NATO, not having the capacity to decide sovereignly whether or not to negotiate an agreement.

According to John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, any Chinese ceasefire proposal must be considered unacceptable after Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow. Kirby believes that the Chinese gesture and conversations with Putin in person before Zelensky demonstrate that Beijing is writing a peace proposal that takes into account only Russian interests, possibly seeking to ensure the preservation of Russian territorial gains so far. That, for Kirby, would make any dialogue unfeasible.

More than that, the spokesperson sees the growing Russian-Chinese cooperation as an attempt to end the “rules-based order” and reverse the legacy of post-WWII international society. According to him, Russia and China “don’t like” the order built by the “US and its allies” and want to rewrite the world according to new guidelines with the current partnership being a part of this process.

If you asked Torsten Slok a week ago how the economy was going to fare this year, he would have told you he was expecting a no-landing scenario, whereby the Federal Reserve would tame inflation without triggering a downturn.

But all has changed following the collapse of three US banks over a matter of days. The chief economist of Apollo Global Management now says he’s bracing for a hard landing. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss his changing views.

China imported more gold from Switzerland last year and stepped up gold purchases from Russia, according to the latest import data releases.

Swiss exports of gold to China were at four-year highs in 2022, with China taking in 524 tonnes of gold worth around $33 billion. This is a massive increase from 354 tonnes reported in 2021 and the most since 2018, according to Swiss customs data.

China is the world’s number one gold consumer, followed by India, with a focus on retail investment and jewelry demand.

In a separate dataset published by Russia’s customs agency over the weekend, China also increased its purchases of Russian gold. China bought 6.6 tons of gold from Russia in 2022, which is an increase of 67% from 2021, local Russian media reported.

China’s central bank also stepped up gold purchases at the end of last year, buying 30 tons of gold in December, which followed its November purchase of 32 tons of gold — the People's Bank of China's first officially recorded purchase since September 2019. China's gold reserves now total 2,010 tons.