Donald Trump on Saturday made it clear that former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is not on his running mate shortlist, quieting rumors that his campaign had been considering her as an option.

“Nikki Haley is not under consideration for the V.P. slot, but I wish her well!” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee wrote in a Truth Social post, signing the message “DJT.”

The comment came several hours after Axios reported that Haley was in the Trump campaign’s vice president conversation, citing two anonymous sources. Several media reports later echoed the rumors.

The political calculus behind a Trump-Haley ticket is plain to see.

Haley’s wealthy donor base could help Trump make up his fundraising problems, which are compounded by legal fees related to several ongoing lawsuits.

Plus, Haley, who has not yet endorsed the former president, could help win over Trump-skeptical Republican voters, whom President Joe Biden’s campaign has been vying for since Haley dropped out of the race.

Haley suspended her presidential campaign in March but is still racking up votes, including in Indiana’s Thursday primary, where she won almost 22% of the votes.

Despite the apparent political advantages, the bitter fight between Trump and Haley during the Republican primary ruled out her vice presidential chances.

“She is not presidential timber,” Trump said of Haley at a New Hampshire rally in January. “Now when I say that, that probably means that she’s not going to be chosen as the vice president.”

For her part, Haley repeatedly said she had no interest in the vice presidential seat while she was still on the campaign trail.

Trump’s veepstakes have been gathering more attention over the past several weeks, including from high-dollar donors looking to push their own recommendations.

Some names on the list include House Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., former GOP presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl. and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem had also appeared to be a VP frontrunner, though her chances seem to have weakened due to backlash about her new memoir, which contains anecdotes about her shooting and killing several of her family’s farm pets and an unverified story about meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“I liked her a lot,” Trump said in a Tuesday interview with Spectrum 1 News Wisconsin. “I don’t want to comment on anybody on the list. But she had a rough couple of days. I will say that.”

As all the VP hopefuls help Trump’s campaign, the former president has dragged out making a final call on his would-be running mate.

Nancy Pelosi and her husband attended a public debate at the Oxford Union in Oxford, England. The Oxford Union is a highly esteemed debating society and is one of Britain’s oldest university unions founded in 1823.

Nancy and Robert Pelosi attended the Oxford Union debate on April 25 on populism hours after she was interrupted by pro-Gaza protesters from Youth Demand who support Gaza militants and want to put an end to fossil fuels.

Winston Marshall is a popular writer, musician and podcaster. Marshall was part of the British folk rock group Mumford and Sons where he was lead guitarist and won a Grammy and two Brit Awards. Marshall was forced out of the band after posting a tweet saying journalist Andy Ngo was “brave” for his book which says far-left activists have “radical plans to destroy democracy”.

Winston Marshall participated in the debate on populism and its perceived threat by the global elites.

During his speech Pelosi rudely interrupted the brilliant young mind to argue that the violent and costly month-long protests and attacks on the City of Portland were not as devastating as the Jan. 6 protests and riot.

Here is the transcript.

Introduction: Populism is not a threat to democracy. Populism is democracy. I now look to Mr. Winston Marshall to close the case for the opposition.

Winstson Marshall: Ladies and gentlemen, words have a tendency to change meaning. When I was a boy, woman meant someone who didn’t have a cock. Populism has become a word used synonymously with racist, we’ve heard ethnonationalist, we’ve bigot, with hillbilly, red neck, with deplorables. Elites use it to show their contempt for ordinary people. This is a recent change, not Not long ago, Barack Obama, while still President at the North America’s Leaders Summit in June 2016, he took umbrage of the notion that Trump be called a populist. How could Trump be called a populist? He doesn’t care about working people. If anything, Obama argued he was the populist. If anything, Obama argued Bernie was the populist. It was Bernie who’d spent five decades fighting for working people.

But with Trump… Something curious happens. If you watch Obama’s speeches after that point, more and more recently, he uses the word populist interchangeably with strong man, with authoritarian. The word changes meaning it becomes a negative, a pejorative, a slur. To me, populism is not a dirty word.

Since the 2008 crash, and specifically the trillion dollar Wall Street bailout, we are in the populist age. And for good reason, the elites have failed. Let me address some common fallacies, some of which have been made tonight. If the motion was that demagoguery was a threat to democracy, I would be on that side of the If the motion was that political violence was a threat to democracy, I’d be on that side of the House.

January sixth has been mentioned, a dark day for America indeed. I’m sure Congresswoman Pelosi will agree that the entire month of June 2020, when the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, was under siege and under insurrection by radical progressives, those two were dark days for America. Yes?

Nancy Pelosi: It’s not. There is no equivalence there. It is not like what happened on January 6th which was an insurrection…

Winston Marshall: So you don’t agree. It’s fine. You don’t agree…

Winston Marshall: So you don’t agree. But you’ll condemn those days. My point, though, is that all political movements are susceptible to violence and indeed, insurrection. And if we were arguing that fascism was a threat to democracy, I’d be on that side of the house. Indeed, the current populist age is a movement against fascism. I’ve got quite a lot to get through. Populism, as you know, is the politics of the ordinary people against an elite.

Populism is not a threat to democracy. Populism is democracy. And why else have universal suffrage if not to keep elites in check? Ladies and gentlemen, given the success of Trump, and more recently, Javier Mallet taking a chainsaw to the state behemoth of Argentina’s bureaucratic monster, you’d be mistaken for thinking this was a right wing populist age. But that would be ignoring Occupy Wall Street. That would be ignoring Jeremy Corbin’s For the Many, Not the Few. That would be ignoring Bernie against the Billionaires, RFK Jr. Against Big Pharma, and more recently, George Galloway against his better judgment. Now, all of them, including Galloway, recognize genuine concerns of ordinary people being otherwise ignored by the establishment.

I’m actually rather surprised that our esteemed opposition, Congressman Pelosi, is on that side of the motion. I thought the left was supposed to be anti-elite. I thought the left was supposed to be anti-establishment. Today, particularly in America, the globalist left have become the establishment. I suppose for Ms. Pelosi to have taken this side of the motion, she’d be arguing herself out of a job. But it’s here in Britain where right and left populists united for the Supreme Act of democracy, Brexit. Polls have shown the number one reason people voted for Brexit was sovereignty for more democracy. Thank you. What was the response of the Brussels elite? They did everything in their power to undermine the democratic will of the British people, and the Westminster elite were just as disgraceful. As we’ve heard, David Cameron called the voters Fruitcakes, Loonies, and Closet Racists. The liberal Democrats did everything they could to overturn a democratic vote. Kirstama(?) campaigned for a second referendum. Elites would have us voting and voting and voting until we voted their way. Indeed, that’s what happened in Ireland and in Denmark. Let’s look at some of the other populist movements. The Hong Konger populist Revolt is literally called the Pro-Democracy Movement. The Pharma Revolt, from Netherlands to Germany, France, Greece to Sri Lanka, are taking their tractors to the road to protest ESG policy that’s floated down to us from those all-knowing infallible elites of Davos.

The trucker movement in Canada became anti-elitist when petty tyrant Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze their bank accounts, not the behavior of a democratic head of state. The gilets jaunes in France, Ulez in London, working people, protesting policy that hurt them. And how are they treated? They’re called conspiracy theorists. They’re called far-right by the mayor as well. Ladies and gentlemen, populism is the voice of the voiceless. The real threat to democracy is from the elites. Now, don’t get me wrong, we need elites.

If-when President Biden has shown us anything, we need someone to run the countries. When the President has severe dementia, it’s not just America that crumbles, the whole world burns. But let’s examine the elites. European corporations spend over €1 billion a year lobbying Brussels. Us corporations spend over €2 billion a year lobbying in DC. Two-thirds of Congress receive funding from pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer alone spent €11 million in 2021. They made over $10 billion in profit. No wonder then that 66% of Americans think the economy is rigged against them for the rich and the powerful. And by the way, we used to have a word for when big business and big government were in cahoots.

Let Let me read you some mainstream media headlines.
The New Yorker the day before the 2016 election, “The Case Against Democracy.”
The Washington Post, the day after the election, “The problem with our government is democracy.”
The LA Times, June 2017, “The British election is a reminder of the perils of too much democracy.”
Vox, June 2017. “The two eminent political scientists say the problem with democracy is voters.”
New York Times, June 2017. “The problem with participatory democracy is the participants.”

Mainstream media elites are part of a class who don’t just disdain populism, they disdain the people. If the Democrats had put half their energy into delivering for the people, Trump wouldn’t even have a chance in 2024. He shouldn’t He shouldn’t have a chance.

You’ve had power for four years. From the fabricated Steele Dossier to trying to take him off the ballot in both Maine and Colorado, the Democrats are the anti-Democrat Party. All we need now is the Republicans to come out as the Promonicist Party.

Ladies and gentlemen, populism is not a threat to democracy, but I’ll tell you what is. It’s elites ordering social media to censor political opponents. It’s police shutting down dissenters, be it anti-monicists in this country or gender critical voices here, or last week in Brussels, the National Conservatives Movement.

I’ll tell you what is a threat to democracy. It’s Brussels, DC, Westminster, the mainstream media, big tech, big pharma, corporate collusion, and the Davos cronies.

The threat to democracy comes from those who write off ordinary people as deplorable.

The threat to democracy comes from those who smear working people as racist.

The threat to democracy comes from those who write off working people as populists.

And I’ll say one last thing. This populist age can be brought to an end at the snap of a finger. All that needs to be done is for elites to start listening to, respect it, respecting, and, God forbid, working for ordinary people. Thank you.

Watch:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke out about the criticism flowing his way in recent months that has spilled into attacks on his friends and family.

The longest-serving justice on the current Supreme Court has been under fire for reports about lavish gifts from his friend and conservative donor Harlan Crow.

He has also refused to recuse himself from cases related to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, though his wife Virginia Thomas was involved in the fight to contest the results of the 2020 election.

Thomas made the comments at a judicial conference in Alabama, though he did not specifically address the controversies.

“My wife and I, the last two or three years, just the nastiness and the lies,” Thomas said. “There’s certainly been a lot of negativity in our lives, my wife and I, over the last few years, but we choose not to focus on it.”

Supreme Court justices don’t generally speak with reporters or in public, so Thomas’s comments are rare. He repeated that he and his wife try to ignore their critics.

“You don’t get to prevent people from doing horrible things or saying horrible things,” he said.

“But one, you have to understand and accept the fact that they don’t, they can’t change you unless you permit that.”

The conservative justice previously faced criticism for not disclosing years of gifts and trips from his friend Crow and other conservative donors.

Virginia’s controversy stems from text messages she made to former President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to pursue overturning the 2020 election after Trump lost to President Joe Biden.

Thomas is both the oldest and longest-serving Supreme Court justice. Former president George H.W. Bush appointed him in 1991 to succeed Thurgood Marshall, the nation’s first black Supreme Court justice.

The Eurovision Song Contest final gets underway in Sweden’s Malmo on Saturday, with thousands of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protesters expected to rally against Eden Golan’s participation amid the war against Hamas in Gaza.

Israel ranks with Croatia and Switzerland as one of the bookmakers’ favorites to succeed Sweden and win the colorful and kitschy competition watched by more than a hundred million people.

Police said up to 20,000 demonstrators are expected to rally against Israel’s participation in Malmo, whose more than 360,000 inhabitants represent 186 nationalities, many from the Middle East.

Sweden’s third-largest city is also expecting up to 100,000 fans from 90 countries, on the 50th anniversary of the iconic pop group ABBA’s Eurovision win with “Waterloo.”

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which oversees the event, confirmed in March the participation of Israel’s contestant Eden Golan, despite calls for her exclusion from thousands of musicians around the world. More recently, nine of the acts, seven of whom are finalists, have called for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza.

In video from Friday night’s rehearsal in Malmo, loud and prolonged booing could be heard when Golan came on stage.

קריאות הבוז לעדן גולן נשמעות היטב באולם במאלמו במהלך חזרת השופטים. אבל כפי שיעיד חצי הגמר, זה לאו דווקא אומר משהו על התוצאה pic.twitter.com/RdCN8zhK8s

— הקופסה 🎗 (@Hakufsah) May 10, 2024

The war started with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Terrorists also seized 252 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, not all of them alive.

In response to the onslaught, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza with the aim of toppling Hamas and securing the release of the hostages. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says over 34,000 have been killed in the coastal enclave since the start of the war. The figures have not been verified and do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Condemnation

Golan’s song is an adaptation of an earlier version named “October Rain,” which she modified after organizers deemed it too political because of its allusions to the Hamas onslaught.

The EBU insists it does not play politics.

This neutrality was challenged on Tuesday by Swedish singer Eric Saade, who took part in the opening number of the competition wearing a keffiyeh around his arm.

Two days later, the unions at Belgian broadcaster VRT briefly interrupted the transmission of the second semifinal to broadcast a message in support of the Palestinians.

“We condemn the violations of human rights by the state of Israel,” the message said in Dutch, accompanied by the hashtags #CeasefireNow and #StopGenocide.

Inside the Malmo Arena, where organizers have banned all flags other than those of the participating countries, it’s all neon lights, bright costumes and upbeat melodies.

Last year’s showpiece in Britain’s Liverpool “was a huge party, a celebration thrown in Putin’s face,” after Ukraine’s win, anthropologist and Eurovision specialist Lisanne Wilken told AFP, referring to Russia’s leader.

“This year it really is more difficult for Sweden to position itself,” she added.

Security tightened

To gain access to the Malmo Arena, the some 9,000 spectators have to pass through a reinforced security system designed in particular to discourage protesters from approaching.

Police have said there are no threats directed at the competition, but their presence has been strengthened with reinforcements from Norway and Denmark.

Golan has been accompanied by a heavy security presence throughout the competition, and has skipped almost all events in Malmo aside from the live shows and dress rehearsals, in light of a wide range of threats made against Israel’s participation.

Sally Sadler, a music fan from the United Kingdom, said the protests had dampened the spirit of Eurovision “a little bit.”

“But it’s all about unity and music. We’re all here together, all nations, for love not hate,” she told AFP.

For the fans, it is now time for rhinestones and lively rhythms and the 2024 edition offers a wide range of musical genres.

Several acts “are about mental health, many young artists express that they are not feeling well and are struggling with their identities,” Andreas Onnerfors, professor of the history of ideas and a Eurovision specialist, told AFP.

“Another clear theme is religious and spiritual allusions. Then there is the classic range of love songs from disappointment to innocent infatuation,” he continued.

While politics is mostly absent on stage, it is closer than organizers were hoping for.

At the press conference after the second semifinal, the Netherlands’ Joost Klein repeatedly covered his face with a Dutch flag, seemingly signifying he didn’t agree with being placed next to Golan.

Klein was absent from Friday’s dress rehearsal, with the EBU investigating “an incident” involving the artist.

The SVT state broadcaster suggested the incident in question had been a confrontation with an employee of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Greek singer Marina Satti appeared to pretend to fall asleep when Golan spoke during a press conference, while former Finnish Eurovision competitor Käärijä filmed a lighthearted video with Golan, before later disavowing the clip after it circulated online.

“Real Time” host Bill Maher wasn’t particularly thrilled with the testimony of adult film actress Stormy Daniels this week in the New York trial against former President Trump.

During a panel discussion Friday night, Maher reiterated his frustrations with how the criminal charges against Trump have been stalled, noting the recent developments with the Georgia and classified documents cases.

“So it’s Stormy or bust,” Maher quipped.

He then got serious, declaring “She’s a bad witness!” He backed up his argument by playing clips of his own interview with Daniels in 2018 while discussing her alleged affair with Trump, something Trump has long denied.

“You say it’s not a Me Too case,” Maher said to her at the time.

“It’s not a Me Too case,” Daniels responded. “I wasn’t assaulted. I wasn’t attacked, or raped, or coerced or blackmailed…. They tried to shove me in the Me Too box to further their own agenda. And first of all, I didn’t want to be part of that because it’s not the truth and I’m not a victim in that regard.”

Bombshell Bill Maher shows a clip from 2018 where Stormy Daniels denies being assaulted or coerced by Donald Trump, stating that her situation is not a “me too” case. Maher points out that Daniels is now saying something different.

pic.twitter.com/Jzo6HSmXre

— 1776 (@TheWakeninq) May 11, 2024

Maher reacted to the clip, “That’s not what she’s saying now.”

“She’s talking about ‘he was bigger and blocking the way.’ It’s all the Me Too buzzwords. She said, ‘There was an imbalance of power for sure.’ ‘My hands were shaking so hard.’ She said she blacked out. Blacked out? She’s a porn star!… Do you really think she blacked out? A porn star is used to having sex with people she doesn’t [like]… I just think she’s not a good witness.”

The HBO host was previously cheery at the beginning of the trial, hyping how it could be a real game changer in the presidential election.

“This one, I got to say I was always against [it] because I thought of all the ones you’re bringing, this is the least serious. … Now I think Trump could lose,” Maher said two weeks ago. “I’m turning on this one because it’s not what I thought it was going to be. And this David Pecker – I mean, brought down by a Pecker, this guy.”

“And by the way, if this goes that way and Trump loses, it’s going to change the whole election,” Maher later said. “A number of independents, a significant number, and Republicans say their vote will change if he is a convicted criminal. And he’ll look like a loser, not that he doesn’t already, but you know.”

“And Alvin Bragg is going to be the rising star of the Democratic Party because everyone said, ‘Not a good idea,’ including me. So, we’ll see,” he added.

A massive solar storm hit the United States and the rest of the globe Friday evening, becoming the biggest in decades.

The intensity of the solar storm painted the night skies in different colors — such as pinks, purples, and greens.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported late Friday that the solar storm would occur over a few hours and days, causing a flare of lights to bloom across the Earth.

“We anticipate that we’re going to get one shock after another, so we’re really buckling down here,” Brent Gordon, chief of the Space Weather Services branch of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said.

The rare solar storm can be seen in photos, capturing the night sky with hues of colors.

The City of San Francisco is providing free beer and vodka shots to homeless alcoholics at taxpayer expense under a little-known pilot program.

The “Managed Alcohol Program” operated by San Francisco’s Department of Public Health serves regimented doses of alcohol to voluntary participants with alcohol addiction in an effort to keep the homeless off the streets and relieve the city’s emergency services. Experts say the program can save or extend lives, but critics wonder if the government would be better off funding treatment and sobriety programs instead.

“Established in countries such as Canada and Australia, a managed alcohol program is usually administered by a nurse and trained support staff in a facility such as a homeless shelter or a transitional or permanent home, and is one method to minimize harm for those with alcohol use disorder,” the California Health Care Foundation explains in an 2020 article describing the pilot program.

“By prescribing limited quantities of alcohol, the model aims to prevent potentially life-threatening effects of alcohol withdrawal, such as seizures and injuries.”

The San Francisco managed alcohol program, or MAP, was established during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent vulnerable homeless people who were placed in isolation in hotel rooms from suffering from alcohol withdrawal. But the program, which started with 10 beds, has since been expanded into a 20-bed program that operates out of a former hotel in Tenderloin with a $5 million annual budget, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Alice Moughamian, the Nurse Manger of the Managed Alcohol Program and the San Francisco Sobering Center, explained in an October presentation that nurses provide clients with a motel room, three meals a day, and enough alcohol “to meet their addiction needs, but keeping someone at a safe level of intoxication.”

Initial success in stabilizing alcoholic patients prompted health officials to expand the pilot into a long-term program with 10 beds earmarked for “the Latinx and indigenous population,” while 12 additional beds are supported at the city’s traditional sobering center, Moughamian said.

Bryce Bridge, a social worker involved with the program, said during the presentation that once a client is identified as having alcohol abuse problems and admitted, they are assessed to determine individual needs. Clients are connected to a primary care doctor, provided resources to secure government identification if they lack a social security card or other documents and assisted with psychiatric care, wellness activities on site and other evidence-based treatments.

“We actually connect them to different community-based organizations that assist us with conducting art groups, and poetry groups and just kind of help them explore ways that they can express themselves,” Bridge said.

Bridge also said marijuana use is “fairly common in our sites” and said there is no policy prohibiting marijuana consumption, though health providers monitor that activity to prevent ill health effects or interpersonal conflicts.

While relatively unknown until now, the program is under fresh scrutiny after Adam Nathan, CEO of an AI company and chair of the Salvation Army San Francisco, made several social media posts criticizing what he witnessed at the location.

“Inside the lobby, they had a kegs [sic] set up to taps where they were basically giving out free beer to the homeless who’ve been identified with AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder),” Nathan wrote on X after visiting the hotel in Tenderloin where homeless alcoholics are served.

“It’s set up so people in the program just walk in and grab a beer, and then another one. All day,” he claimed.

“The whole thing is very odd to me and just doesn’t feel right. Providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn’t solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where’s the recovery in all this?” he asked.

The Salvation Army promotes abstinence for alcoholics and provides free adult rehabilitation programs.

Public health officials called some of Nathan’s claims misleading. In a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle, the health department said alcohol is dispensed by a nurse and homeless people who aren’t participating can’t just walk in to the facility and get a free beer. The program operates in a former Tenderloin tourist hotel that has a bar, but on-site taps are “inoperable and unused,” the statement reportedly said.

Still, the program has also received criticism from none other than San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who said in February that harm reduction was “not reducing harm” but “making things far worse.”

“Are we just going to manage people’s addictions with our taxpayer dollars in perpetuity forever? It seems like that’s basically what we’re saying,” said Tom Wolf, who is in recovery for heroin addiction, in a statement to the Chronicle. “I think we should be spending that money on detox and recovery.”

But recovery is not the point, according to Moughamian.

“Our goal at MAP is not to decrease the amount of alcohol that is consumed, or to taper someone towards abstinence, although both of these things have happened with clients in our program,” she said in the October presentation. “The goal is to mitigate the many health, legal and interpersonal harms associated with unsafe alcohol use.”

San Francisco health officials say the program has saved $1.7 million over six months in reduced hospital visits and police calls made by participants who previously heavily relied on emergency services. Officials said that after clients entered the program, visits to the city’s sobering center dropped 92%, emergency room visits declined more than 70%, and EMS calls and hospital visits were both cut in half, the Chronicle reported.

City officials have previously said that just five residents who struggled with alcohol addiction had cost the city more than $4 million in ambulance transports over a five-year period, with as many as 2,000 ambulance transports during that time, according to the Chronicle.

The San Francisco Fire Department has spoken positively about the program, telling the outlet the managed alcohol program “has proven to be an incredibly impactful intervention” at reducing emergency service use for a “small but highly vulnerable population.”

Other countries, including Canada, Portugal and the U.K. have adopted managed alcohol programs at a much faster pace than the U.S. Canada has more than 40 such programs, according to the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research.

A 2022 study of Canada’s managed alcohol programs found that homeless people suffering from severe alcoholism had a reduced risk of death and fewer hospital stays after participating.

Cops prevented a raging mob of Harlem locals from attacking a maniac accused of slashing an 11-year-old girl in the head on a spree through Manhattan Friday afternoon — leaving the youngster now afraid to go outside, her distraught mom said.

Shaquan Cummings, 30, allegedly preyed on the girl after flying through the 116th Street 6 subway platform around 2:15 p.m., moments after allegedly punching an unsuspecting 43-year-old woman around the street corner, according to sources.

The fiend — who has a lengthy rap sheet — knifed the youngster in the back of the head and cut her ear as she stood on a downtown platform holding her mom’s hand, sources said.

The child felt something on the back of her head, and when her mom turned around, she saw “a box cutter” before the suspect fled into the subway, sources said.

Her brave mother tried to chase down her daughter’s attacker, even hailing a conductor to stop a train from departing, but the Cummings still managed to get away, she recalled.

“It was traumatizing,” Gorzata Sladek told The Post Friday evening.

“Terrible. It’s terrible to see a little girl with her head cut, sliced in half and it’s just terrible.”

A UPS worker said the young victim was “scared and crying” while she was being treated by medics near a juice bar.

“Her head [was] bloody. Bleeding can’t stop. [She was] bleeding in her hand and her shirt … she was crying. Scared,” he added.

The girl has since undergone surgery that required multiple stitches and staples to fix the gash, but the emotional scars remain, according to her mother.

“She’s not doing well emotionally. She doesn’t want to go back to school. She doesn’t want to go outside anymore,” Sladek said.

Photos obtained by The Post show one of the blood-soaked victims sobbing as she’s gurneyed into the back of an ambulance.

Cops ultimately tracked Cummings down just a block away, back to the spot where he allegedly punched his first victim of the afternoon.

Wild video posted on social media shows the moment Cummings is surrounded by cops as the outraged mob tries to mete out street justice.

Watch:

This is another view of this afternoon’s mob scene in East Harlem, after a man punched a 43-year-old woman and then slashed an 11-year-old girl. Video from “queensmedia_nyc2” on IG.

Again: Note the absolutely absurdity of having that little police lady in that situation. She was… pic.twitter.com/A8UFlrWdte

— Crime In NYC (@CrimeInNYC) May 11, 2024

In the clip, one man appears to poke him with a cane as the alleged assailant cowers behind cops.

“Back up!” police shout at the crowd.

“You f–king piece of s–t!” one man yells.

“Don’t let him go!” says another man as police hold back the bloodthirsty mob.

Cops finally took Cummings into custody, who sources say has more than 20 prior arrests, including assault, criminal mischief and fare evasion.

Cummings’ last arrest was just two months earlier. He was given a desk appearance for an assault charge, according to law enforcement insiders.

He was charged Friday night with two counts of assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child.

Sladek only hopes for justice in the case, and for the streets to longer be a place where New Yorkers need to constantly look over their shoulder.

“You should be able to walk on the street and not worry that somebody will attack you and attack, actually, my daughter not even attacking a dog, but a little kid,” she said.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was suspended without pay from his WABC radio show over claims about the “stolen” 2020 election — deepening the legally embattled ex-lawyer’s financial woes, New York Post reported.

“He did it to himself,” radio station owner John Catsimatidis told The Post on Friday.

“I thought he was a great mayor for the city of New York so I always try to support him. But you can’t cross the line.”

Giuliani, 79, went on a “stolen election” tirade during the final three minutes of “The Rudy Giuliani Show” Thursday, violating a company-wide policy “not to state, suggest or imply that the election results are not valid,” according to Catsimatidis, who runs Red Apple Media.

Catsimatidis said he had sent Giuliani a letter warning him that he’s “prohibited from engaging in conversations relating to the 2020 Presidential Election” — prompting the mayor to allegedly fire off a defiant text to the billionaire.

“Please understand I am disregarding every order given in this letter,” he purportedly texted after his show.

Catsimatidis said he fired back Friday afternoon, “I’ve got to take you off the network effective immediately.”

“Does that mean you’re firing me?” Giuliani asked — to which Catsimatidis had not yet responded as of Friday evening.

Giuliani told The Post he had no idea the company policy existed, claiming he’s been talking about the 2020 election on the air for the past three years.

“They don’t want me to say it’s stolen, they don’t want me to talk about the election at all. It’s so broad,” he said.

“I am being told here to promise that I will engage in no conversations relating to the 2020 presidential election. Who the hell could promise that except a liar?” he said.

“It is a blow to me. Absolutely,” he said of losing the job. “This is a major screwing!”

Giuliani said he was making $15,000 a month from working at WABC, adding about the CEO of grocery chains Gristedes and D’Agostino Supermarkets: “He was paying me what I would regard as peanuts.”

He said that he still has shows on X and on Newsmax that generate income.

His on-air rant Thursday was edited out, said Catsimatidis, who said Giuliani had asked for more radio time slots in recent days.

“He wanted more hours on the air. We didn’t volunteer to give it to him,” Catsimatidis said. “He was pushing it very hard the last week or so.”

Giuliani now faces a mountain of legal bills to fight criminal cases in Arizona and Georgia, where he was charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election.

He also needs to pay attorneys to defend him against multiple civil cases, including by the voting machine firms Dominion and Smartmatic and a former associate who accused him of sexual assault.

Giuliani filed for Bankruptcy in New York in December, claiming he owed up to $500 million after a devastating $148 million civil court ruling against him.

In that case, the facts-challenged ex-attorney was ordered to pay two Georgia election workers he defamed after the 2020 presidential election.

Giuliani estimated at the time that he owed $153 million.

In January, he promised a New York bankruptcy court that he’d limit his spending to a sky-high $43,000 per month — but quickly failed to stick to the budget.

He reportedly blew through nearly $120,000 that same month, buying “60 transactions on Amazon, multiple entertainment subscriptions, various Apple services and products, Uber rides, and payment of some of his business partner’s personal credit card bill,” the New York Times reported last week.

Working as a lawyer himself is off the table, too. Guiliani, who is also a former federal prosecutor, had his law license suspended in New York City in 2021.

He faces disbarment for “his utter disregard for facts,” which “denigrate the legal profession,” a panel said last year.

Barron Trump is declining Florida’s offer to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention this summer, citing ‘prior committments,’ according to his mother’s office.

Melania Trump’s office made a statement to DailyMail.com on behalf of her son.

‘While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments,’ the Office of Melania Trump said.

No futher details were given.

On Wednesday, Barron, 18, was elected as an at-large delegate to help formally nominate his father Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee.

It’s now unclear if he will even attend the convention, which takes place in Milwaukee from Monday, July 15 to Thursday, July 18.

Other family members – Don Jr. and his fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle, Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump and her husband Michael Boulos – are also delegates at large for the state of Florida.

Ivanka Trump, who served as a senior adviser in her father’s White House, was the only Trump child not on the delegate list.

Unlike his half-siblings, Barron Trump was rarely seen during his father’s White House years, mainly at the request of his mother Melania who is known to be protective of her son.

She rarely let Barron attend official White House events when she was first lady. Additionally, she would have Barron travel in a separate car – instead of the Beast – when he rode in the presidential motorcade. The dedicated mom made sure he was buckled up in his SUV.

She also had Barron board Air Force One on the back stairs of the plane so there would not be photographs of him climbing the front stairs with his parents.

The former first lady has used her own presence to signal her support or displeasure with her husband. She did attend his announcement at Mar-a-Lago that he would make another presidential bid but she was not there on the night of Super Tuesday, when Trump effectively locked up the Republican presidential nomination.

Barron wasn’t present at any of the above political events.

Previously, Barron has been the target of social media trolls.

Former NBC News executive Mike Sington said Barron was ‘fair game’ turning 18, the birthday that marks adulthood. He later deleted the tweet after facing harsh backlash and criticism online.

The youngest Trump was defended by many of his former first kids, including Chelsea Clinton.

‘I think he’s a private citizen,’ she told ABC’s The View. ‘I feel so strongly that if you are a private citizen, you have an unimpeachable right to privacy, and I think the media should leave him alone.’

And, last year, a Chicago woman was arrested for making death threats against Barron.

Friday’s announcement comes after Donald Trump revealed Barron likes politics and enjoys giving his father advice.

‘He’s really been a great student. And he does like politics. It’s sort of funny,’ the former president told ‘Kayal and Company’ on Philadelphia’s Talk Radio 1210 WPHT.

‘He’ll tell me sometimes, ‘Dad, this is what you have to do,” he added.

Trump also revealed the 18-year-old, who is graduating from high school next week, is weighing what college he might attend. But, he noted, the campus protests have been a factor in that decision.

‘He’s a senior now in high school, and he’ll be going to college. And you know, a lot of, a lot of these choices of colleges are changing because you see what’s going on in the last month,’ Trump said.

A rare and powerful solar storm may occur in outer space today which could wreak havoc on earth, officials have warned – the first in nearly 20 years if it happens.

At least five streams of plasma, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), are heading toward Earth, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to issue a severe geomagnetic storm watch for Friday into the weekend.

This is the first such alert aired since 2005 when Earth was hit with the highest dose of radiation in a half-century.

This time around, the ‘unusual event’ could disrupt electronic devices like GPS and parts of power grids, NOAA said – while citing how it may also drape a huge portion of the country, as far south as Alabama, in colorful natural lights.

The CMEs exploded from a massive sunspot, an area on the sun that is cooler than the surface, on May 8 – paving the way for Thursday’s alert.

In it, officials explained how the expulsions of matter and magnetic field from the celestial body’s atmosphere could cause problems for millions of earthlings as soon as noon ET Friday.

‘NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) – a division of the National Weather Service – is monitoring the sun following a series of solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that began on May 8,’ the emergency alert read.

‘Space weather forecasters have issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch for the evening of Friday.

‘Additional solar eruptions could cause geomagnetic storm conditions to persist through the weekend,’ it went on, before describing the abnormal activity that tipped space specialists off.

‘A large sunspot cluster has produced several moderate to strong solar flares since Wednesday at 5:00 am ET,’ it read.

‘At least five flares were associated with CMEs that appear to be Earth-directed. SWPC forecasters will monitor NOAA and NASA’s space assets for the onset of a geomagnetic storm.’

CMEs are explosions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun’s corona, which cause geomagnetic storms when they are directed at Earth.

A solar or geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance of Earth’s magnetosphere – the area around Earth controlled by the planet’s magnetic field.

And the Friday storm has been rated ‘G4’ (on a scale of one to five), making it a ‘severe’ storm.’

‘Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth’s surface,’ the statement went on, stating how the storm could ‘potentially [disrupt] communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations.’

It also could ‘wipe out the internet’ for some, scientists further warned – as NOAA upped the Geomagnetic Storm Watch from Moderate to Severe for Friday through Sunday late Thursday.

‘SWPC has notified the operators of these systems so they can take protective action,’ officials wrote upon administering the action.

‘Geomagnetic storms can also trigger spectacular displays of aurora on Earth,’ they added of some of the potential storm’s more scenic side effects.

‘A severe geomagnetic storm includes the potential for aurora to be seen as far south as Alabama and Northern California.’

The last time the Space Weather Prediction Center issued such a Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch was in January 20, 2005, beginning just before 2 a.m. ET.

A storm of energetic protons impacted Earth just 15 minutes later, causing a radio burst with a high frequency, indicating the presence of a large number of energetic electrons in very strong magnetic fields.

In the blink of an eye, the outburst shocked Earth with the highest dose of radiation measured in five decades, tripping radiation monitors all over the planet within moments.

‘This flare produced the largest solar radiation signal on the ground in nearly 50 years,’ Richard Mewaldt of the California Institute of Technology said at the time, as other services like the internet were largely spared.

‘But we were really surprised when we saw how fast the particles reached their peak intensity and arrived at Earth,’ the scientist added.

In that case, the raging proton storm peaked in 15 minutes – though normally, the most intense part of a proton event typically takes two hours or longer to build up, officials said Thursday.

The event, if it occurs, will start as early as noon ET, officials warned – after a G5 storm in 2004 caused power outages in Sweden while damaging power transformers in South Africa.

This time around, the US will likely be affected, officials said.

The family of the Missouri teen who suffered severe brain injuries after being attacked has said that a part of her skull has been removed to help with recovery.

Kaylee Gain, 16, from St. Louis, was left in a life-threatening condition by Maurnice DeClue, 15, who allegedly smashed her head into concrete during a violent altercation.

Kaylee suffered a skull fracture and frontal lobe damage during the violent March 8 brawl that was caught on camera near her high school but has since been released from the intensive care unit.

Clint and Jaime Gain, the victim’s parents have shared an update about her health and said she is now at home, after her long hospitalization and two weeks at in-patient rehabilitation facility but still has ‘a long road ahead.’

On her GoFundMe page, the family’s attorney revealed that a part of the teen’s skull had to be removed to ‘relieve the pressure on her brain’ and she now needs to ‘wear a custom helmet.’

‘While hospitalized, Kaylee underwent a craniectomy, which is a neurosurgical procedure that involved removing a portion of Kaylee’s skull in order to relieve the pressure on her brain.

‘The portion of Kaylee’s skull that was removed still has not been put back in place. Ever since Kaylee underwent this procedure it has been necessary for her to wear a custom helmet in order to protect her brain in the event of a fall.

‘Kaylee is scheduled to undergo an additional surgery to reattach this portion of her skull which will require yet another hospitalization,’ attorney Bryan M. Kaemmerer wrote.

Her family also said that the young teen has been experiencing short-term memory loss and will be undergoing extensive neuropsychological testing to determine the long-term impact of her injuries on her cognitive function.

She has also been suffering from ‘trauma, fear and pain’ due to the incident.

The updates comes the same week as a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge’s decision whether Kaylee’s alleged attacker will be tried in court as an adult.

DeClue is facing assault charges. While the hearing is scheduled for today, it is not necessary that the judge provides a decision at the time.

Gain, due to her condition, will not attend the hearing tomorrow, but her mother, father, stepmother and attorney will be present.

‘The family is confident in the legal system, and trusts that the Judge will make an appropriate decision based on all of the facts and evidence in the case.

‘The family will respect the ruling, regardless of the outcome,’ the lawyer said.

Kaylee’s parents have previously slammed their daughter’s accused attacker, who is in custody and demand she be tried as an adult.

The last update shared by Clinton Gain on March 22 shared that Kaylee was finally able to breathe on her own and she was in stable condition at the hospital.

‘We are happy to share that Kaylee is breathing on her own, remains stable and the best news so far is that we have been moved out of the ICU. We are truly blessed by the outpouring of support and your prayers.’

The GoFundMe has raised $419,903 and has garnered over 9,000 donations.

In the weeks following the attack, Kaylee remained in a coma before finally regaining consciousness and leaving hospital at the end of March.

Her parents previously took aim at social media posts they believed were made by DeClue, which referenced WWE and made light of the situation.

However, Bryan Kaemmerer, who represents Kaylee’s family, was forced to retract the claims made in his prior statement, admitting: ‘It appears that the social media posts that were made from an account bearing the name of the accused do not appear to be legitimate in light of additional details that have surfaced about the timing of the accused’s arrest, the accused’s lack of access to her phone after she was taken into custody, and metadata showing precisely when these posts were first published.’

At that time, he added Kaylee is recovering but ‘tends to reiterate the same short sentences over and over’, and that she doesn’t know why she is in the hospital.

DeClue’s parents reportedly told local media that she ‘wants to apologize’ to Kaylee.

They have been visiting DeClue while she remains in juvenile custody and claim police have complied messages on social media which allegedly include threats towards the teen.

His statement said that Kaylee’s family were ‘encouraged’ after DeClue’s parents said she wished to apologize for her actions.

‘While these statements do not change the family’s position that it is appropriate for the accused to be tried as an adult, it is encouraging that the accused appears to be remorseful for what transpired during these unfortunate events,’ he added.

‘The family is thankful that the accused apparently did not post these entirely distasteful messages.

‘This does not, however, change the fact that the family firmly believes that there is more than sufficient evidence for the accused to be tried as an adult.’

Some California Democrats are turning on their Golden State leader after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s homelessness council failed to track whether billions of dollars spent on curbing the homelessness crisis were successful in the last five years.

“You come to a budget committee, and there’s no numbers,” Democratic Assemblymember Phil Ting said to Newsom’s housing and homelessness officials during Monday’s budget committee hearing. “How many people have we helped? How many people are off the street?”

“Because that’s what people want to know,” he added.

A California Interagency Council on Homelessness (CICH) executive responded that they’re dealing with “data quality issues,” so metrics are not yet available for how more than $20 billion was spent since the council’s inception.

“We’re working expeditiously,” executive officer Meghan Marshall said.

“What does that mean though? We spent billions of dollars, and you can’t tell us at all how many people we’ve helped,” Tang said.

Megan Kirkeby, deputy director for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, told lawmakers in the committee that the state didn’t previously require them to track its progress on spending or the viability of its programs, adding it’s not “something to be proud of.”

CICH, the blue state’s hub for coordinating the state’s homeless programs, shifted blame to local cities last month in an emailed response to Fox News Digital’s inquiry about the failure to track the money. A senior spokesperson said municipalities “are primarily responsible for implementing these programs and collecting data on outcomes that the state can use to evaluate program effectiveness.”

As the state faces a significant budget deficit that must be worked out by a July deadline, both Republicans and Democrats in the legislature fear the audit’s findings could interfere with multiple city requests for more funding to address the homeless crisis. California is ground zero for the most homeless people in the nation, with more than 181,000 people living on the streets.

In a bombshell report last month, the state auditor found that nine state agencies have collectively spent $24 billion in state funding over the past five years in administering at least 30 programs dedicated to tackling the homelessness crisis, and the auditor said Newsom’s homelessness council “is responsible for coordinating, developing, and evaluating the efforts of these nine agencies.”

The state’s independent audit noted CICH is required by law to report its finances related to all state‑funded homelessness programs but that it stopped doing so in 2021.

Over the past five years, CICH didn’t consistently track whether the money actually improved the situation, the audit concluded. It also failed to collect and evaluate outcome data for these programs due to the lack of a consistent method.

In a letter to the governor, the state auditor wrote that “the state must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs.”

Despite billions spent on homelessness and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to the state auditor’s report. Since 2013, homelessness has jumped more than 53%.

Newsom consequently called for cities to take more rigorous steps to enforce the state’s progressive housing laws, saying he is “not interested in failure any longer.” In a press conference, Newsom announced the state would expand a Department of Housing and Community Development agency to enforce compliance with laws that require cities to meet a threshold of new homes, leading to legal action against rebellious cities like Huntington Beach that have refused to increase building.

“This will allow us to center accountability in both housing and homelessness programs going forward. And we are continuing to work with local jurisdictions to improve the type and quality of the state coming into our statewide Homeless Data Integration System,” a CICH spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

Nearly half of all cancer cases are linked to obesity, new research has found.

The study of more than four million adults, who were tracked for decades, found excess weight could be fuelling more than 30 types of the disease.

Experts said the findings, which will be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, were “groundbreaking”, showing a timebomb ahead.

Health charities urged ministers to act on the “wake-up call,” with obesity already estimated to cost the country almost £100 billion a year, including £19 billion in NHS costs.

Victoria Atkins, the Health Secretary, said the Government was taking “strong action” to tackle obesity, with a drive to harness apps and technology to overhaul lifestyles expected this summer.

“I want us all to be able to lead longer, healthier lives,” she said.

The study led by Lund University in Malmo, Sweden, involved 4.1 million participants who were monitored for about 40 years, with close monitoring of their weight and lifestyle.

Over the period, 332,500 cancers were identified. In 40 per cent of cases, there appeared to be a link between excess weight and the development of cancer.

There are an average of 390,000 cancer diagnoses in the UK annually, meaning that around 150,000 of them could be linked to obesity.

In total, researchers identified 32 types of cancer with an obesity link.

Previously, international research had identified 13 types of cancer which were linked to being overweight or obese, including bowel, breast, womb and kidney. The new study found that a five-point increase in Body Mass Index (BMI) appeared to increase the risks of such cancers by 24 per cent for men and 12 per cent for women.

The same increase – enough to take someone from the threshold for healthy weight to the cusp of obesity – was linked to 19 other cancers, with the risk raised by 17 per cent for men and 13 per cent for women. These cancers include malignant melanoma, gastric tumours, cancers of the small intestine and pituitary glands, as well as types of head and neck cancer, vulval and penis cancer.

In total, researchers examined 122 types and subtypes of cancer in a study which tracked patients over 100 million years of follow-up.

“The findings of this study have important public health implications. Established obesity-related cancers accounted for 25 per cent of all cancer cases in this study, and the proportion increased to 40 per cent when potential obesity-related cancers were added. Therefore, a substantial proportion of cancers could potentially be prevented by keeping a normal weight,” researchers said.

Obesity rates have almost doubled in the UK since the 1990s, with 26 per cent of adults in England now classed as obese, while 38 per cent are overweight.

Obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of four major cancers, with smoking now the cause of one in five cases of cancer.

Forecasts from Cancer Research UK say that around 8,000 cancer cases in England could be avoided by 2040 if 10 per cent of those who are overweight and obese shift down one BMI category by 2030.

Prof Jason Halford, president of the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) said: “This is a really strong, large-scale analysis. As always, more research is needed but it reveals what many studying the links between cancer and obesity have suspected; that obesity is likely to be a risk factor for many more types of cancer than we had evidence for before.”

Prof Halford, head of the School of Psychology at the University of Leeds, accused policymakers of a “clear failure” to take strong public measures to prevent obesity, while limiting treatment options.

“If this does not cause concern for health policy makers it is difficult to see what will,” he said.

The Health Secretary is expected to set out Government plans to help people overhaul unhealthy lifestyles in the summer, with a focus on the use of apps and new technology to monitor step counts and take more control of health.

The NHS is also piloting schemes to expand the use of weight loss jabs such as Wegovy, which is the same medicine as the drug Ozempic, which is used to treat Type 2 diabetes.

Ms Atkins said: “I want us all to be able to lead longer, healthier lives. That starts with preventing illness through healthy lifestyle choices, like eating well, exercising regularly and not smoking.

“We are already introducing world-leading legislation to protect future generations from the harmful effects of smoking to reduce illnesses like cancer, and we’re taking strong action to tackle obesity too.

“By investing in tech like the NHS Couch to 5k app, we are helping families all over the country get fit and active, and I am excited about the new treatments and technologies that can help people achieve – and maintain – a healthy weight.”

Katharine Jenner, director of the Obesity Health Alliance – a coalition of 50 health charities and organisations, said: “The results are clear – if we can prevent obesity, we can prevent many types of diet-related cancers.

“This should be a wakeup call to the UK Government and governments around the world, to urgently implement public health policies which will make a meaningful difference, such as restrictions on junk food marketing, and levies on unhealthy food. We need to make the healthy choice the easy choice for everyone.”

Lead researcher Dr Ming Sun, from Lund University, said: “Our findings suggest that the impact of obesity on cancer might be greater than previously known, in that it is a risk factor for more cancers, especially of rarer kind. Some of these have rarely or never before been investigated in relation to obesity.”

He said further investigation to replicate the findings, and investigate the underlying biological mechanisms was warranted.

But Dr Sun said public health measures to overhaul lifestyles were “essential to address the obesity epidemic and its already known detrimental effect on health outcomes”.

Dr Jennifer L Baker, co-chairman of EASO’s childhood obesity working group, said the increased obesity risk might be explained by biological mechanisms such as chronic inflammation and changes to metabolism and hormone levels, while extra weight could render screening programmes less effective.

Dr Baker said: “In this groundbreaking study, using an extremely large population of Swedish adults, researchers show that obesity is associated with 19 new cancer forms, some of which are surprising, in addition to the 13 that have already been identified.”

“These new results show we are likely facing a significant increase in cancer cases,” she said.

Malcolm Clark, Cancer Research UK’s senior prevention policy manager, said: “There are lots of things people can do to lower their risk of cancer, and keeping a healthy weight is one way to reduce it. Other steps include not smoking, being safe in the sun, eating a healthy balanced diet and cutting down on alcohol.”

Ministers have repeatedly promised to introduce a TV and online ban on advertising junk food but restrictions have been pushed back and are currently planned for October 2025.

A Group of angry black-clad anarchists clashed with police as it stormed the Tesla gigafactory in Brandenburg.

Dramatic footage shows far-left demonstrators defying cops and breaking through police lines before reaching the fence of the Tesla plant.

In another clip, eco-thugs are seen storming over the railway tracks and clashing with police as they make their way to the site.

The radicals are seen running towards the EV plant with some being dragged on the ground by German cops.

One of the protesters and three police officers were injured in the skirmish, Bild reports.

A police spokesperson described the situation as “dynamic” as it is estimated about 1200 protesters are on the plant’s premises.

The radical group apparently divided into two groups in a bid to confuse police, the outlet reports.

A number of protesters have already been arrested.

Earlier this week Tesla announced it would halt production in the Gruenheide plant for four days due to protests, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported.

Security level 1 has been in effect in the forest and lake community of Grünheide near Berlin since Thursday.

Demonstrators from all over Germany and Europe gathered at the Grünheider Festwiese to protest against the carmaker.

Environmental activists have stormed the grounds of Tesla’s Gigafactory on the outskirts of Berlin, Germany. Police equipped with riot gear violently attempted to disperse the protesters as they staged the largest protest Elon Musk’s top factory has ever seen.

For several… pic.twitter.com/GdERtjiHvE

— red. (@redstreamnet) May 10, 2024

Grünheide’s local council is meant to approve the development plan for the expansion of the plant on May 16.

Tesla is looking to expand the facility after the factory opened in March 2022.

Manu Hoyer from the Grünheide citizens’ initiative told Bild: “We will influence the community representatives to ensure that this does not happen.”

Police fear the far-left militant group “Vulkan Group” which has declared war on Tesla could be behind the attacks.

The twisted group posted online that it was “looking forward to an exciting week of action” and that there were “many opportunities to attack companies like Tesla.”

The extremist group previously claimed responsibility for the arson attack in the Brandenburg gigafactory in March vowing that “no Tesla is safe.”

They described the hit as a gift marking International Women’s Day on March 8.

In a 2,700 – word letter posted online the group accused the firm of contaminating the drinking water and blamed Musk for “militarising the road” with cars as a “weapon.”

“Together we will bring Tesla to its knees. Switch off for Tesla,” their statement reads.

The Vulkangruppe, or “Volcano group” has been on Berlin’s radar since it was founded in 2011.

German authorities listed it as a left-wing extremist organisation, operating in the capital and Brandenburg, according to a 2019 report.

Their usual method is to target railway lines or cable ducts, data lines and radio masts.

Their first hit against the construction site at Gruenheide was in 2021 and damaged several power cables.

At the time, the far-left group accused Tesla of being neither green, ecological nor social.

Novak Djokovic’s first 2024 Italian Open match turned ugly.

As Djokovic exited the court, after beating Corentin Moutet 6-3, 6-1on Friday at Forto Italico in Rome, and began signing autographs for fans, a bottle came flying down from the stands and smacked Djokovic in the head.

Djokovic quickly grabbed his head and fell to the ground in pain, staying there for several moments before being helped into the tunnel and into the locker room.

Djokovic collapses after getting drilled with bottle in Rome.pic.twitter.com/9RtU4mtFlq

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 10, 2024

A child was leaning over the railing while trying to get Djokovic’s attention for an autograph, according to the tournament, and the aluminum-type bottle fell out of the child’s backpack and hit Djokovic on the head.

“Novak Djokovic on leaving the Central court at the end of his match was accidentally hit on the head by a water bottle while signing autographs to spectators,” the Italian Open said in a statement.

“He underwent appropriate medication and has already left the Foro Italico to return to his hotel; his condition is not a cause for concern.”

Subsequent video from a different angle supported that claim.

The tournament released a video showing that Novak Djokovic was hit on the head by accident.

The bottle slipped from a fan’s backpack.

Just a very unfortunate, unlucky situation. ❤️‍🩹

(via @InteBNLdItalia)
pic.twitter.com/5LIzzWZpMS

— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) May 10, 2024

An audible gasp could be heard from the crowd after the bottle nailed Djokovic.

Sky Sports reported that he was being attended to by medical staff in the locker room after the incident.

Djokovic had otherwise cruised through his opener in Rome.

“I haven’t practiced with a lefty in a while, so it took me a little bit of time to adjust to the different rotation on the balls,” Djokovic said on the court following the match, before the incident. “The first four games were quite bad for me. … But then I played well.”

UPDATE:

Thank you for the messages of concern. This was an accident and I am fine resting at the hotel with an ice pack. See you all on Sunday. #IBI24

— Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) May 10, 2024

Articles to impeach President Joe Biden over his decision to withhold aid to Israel for political reasons are in preparation, freshman Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) announced Thursday.

Biden’s decision to withhold bombs from Israel is concerning due to its political implications. Biden’s base wants him to defund Israel, while many moderate Democrats support Israel’s ability to defend itself against terrorists. Biden appears stuck between competing coalitions during an election year. He currently trails in the polls to Trump and has a historically low approval rating to win reelection as an incumbent.

Democrats accused former President Donald Trump in 2019 of withholding military aid from Ukraine for alleged political reasons.

“These are the same accusations made against President Trump, which resulted in his impeachment by Democrats. The same must happen for Joe Biden, which is why we’re drawing up articles of impeachment now,” Mills told Fox News.

Impeachment proceedings already have some support. “The House has no choice but to impeach Biden based on the Trump-Ukraine precedent of withholding foreign aid to help with reelection,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted on X. “Only with Biden, it’s true.”

Trump also believes Biden withheld aid for political reasons. “He did it as a political decision,” Trump said.

“You have to do the right decision, not the political decision,” Trump said Thursday before he entered a Manhattan courtroom for his criminal trial.

Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak reported on the contrast between Trump and Biden’s decision to withhold aid for reported political reasons:

In 2019, Democrats impeached then-President Donald Trump for allegedly withholding security funds from Ukraine for political reasons, though the funds were eventually delivered and there was never proof of a “quid-pro-quo.” In this case, the Biden administration is withholding much-needed munitions in the middle of a “hot” war against a terrorist army and other terrorist groups on several fronts, as well as against attacks from their Iranian sponsors.

Biden recently signed billions of dollars in new military aid to Israel, after first proposing a supplemental aid package several months ago, but did not push the legislation for months and tied it to other priorities, like funds for Ukraine.

Israel entered Rafah on Monday after Hamas attacked a humanitarian aid crossing and refused to agree to terms for a hostage release deal. The last four Hamas battalions are said to be in Rafah along with the remaining Israeli hostages.

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the criminal contempt of Congress conviction of former Trump White House senior aide Steve Bannon for refusing to testify and provide documents to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The appeals court rejected Bannon’s argument that he was not guilty because his attorney had advised him not to comply with a subpoena from the House committee.

The ruling by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit makes it more likely that Bannon will soon have to begin serving a sentence of four months in jail for his conviction of two counts of contempt.

Bannon could ask the full judicial line-up of the D.C. Circuit to hear his appeal again, which might postpone his jail term. He also could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take an appeal of Friday’s ruling.

But such requests typically face very long odds of success.

Bannon was convicted of flouting the House committee subpoena after a five-day trial in U.S. District Court in Washington. He has remained free pending the outcome of his appeal.

In March, Peter Navarro, another former adviser to ex-President Donald Trump, began serving a four-month federal jail sentence after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of his conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 House committee.

In its ruling Friday on Bannon’s case, the D.C. appeal court panel noted that in September 2021 “the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol issued a subpoena to appellant Stephen Bannon to testify and provide documents.”

“Bannon did not comply — he knew what the subpoena required but did not appear or provide a single document,” the ruling said.

The law that Bannon was convicted of violating makes it a crime to “willfully” fail to respond to a congressional subpoena.

“Bannon insists that ‘willfully’ should be interpreted to require bad faith and argues that his noncompliance does not qualify because his lawyer advised him not to respond to the subpoena,” the appeals panel wrote in its ruling.

“This court, however, has squarely held that ‘willfully’ in [that law] means only that the defendant deliberately and intentionally refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, and that this exact ‘advice of counsel’ defense is no defense at all.”

The panel added, “As both this court and the Supreme Court have repeatedly explained, a contrary rule would contravene the text of the contempt statute and hamstring Congress’s investigatory authority.”

“Because we have no basis to depart from that binding precedent, and because none of Bannon’s other challenges to his convictions have merit, we affirm,” the panel wrote.

The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct is investigating an alleged interaction between a New York real estate lawyer and the judge who issued a $454 million judgement against former President Donald Trump, according to NBC New York.

Real estate lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey said he had a conversation with Judge Arthur Engoron a few weeks before the judge’s decision was due, NBC New York reported. Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York sued Trump in September 2022, alleging he overstated the value of real estate holdings in order to obtain loans.

“I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago,” Bailey said in the Feb. 16 interview, according to NBC New York. “I saw him in the corner [at the courthouse] and I told my client, ‘I need to go.’ And I walked over and we started talking … I wanted him to know what I think and why…I really want him to get it right.”

#WATCH | Judge Arthur Engoron is ‘under investigation’ for reportedly accepting unsolicited legal advice from a well-known attorney before fining Donald Trump $454 million, pic.twitter.com/nWfJIh4QWN

— VOZ (@Voz_US) May 9, 2024

“No ex parte conversation concerning this matter occurred between Justice Engoron and Mr. Bailey or any other person. The decision Justice Engoron issued February 16 was his alone, was deeply considered, and was wholly uninfluenced by this individual,” a spokesman for Engoron told NBC New York.

The New York State Rules of Judicial Conduct states that judges cannot “initiate, permit, or consider ex parte communications, or consider other communications made to the judge outside the presence of the parties or their lawyers concerning a pending or impending proceeding,” with some exceptions.

An “ex parte communication” is one in which a judge or member of the jury communicates with an outside party without all involved parties present, NBC New York reported.

“The Commission on Judicial Conduct is constrained by a strict confidentiality statute and has no comment on this matter,” Commission Administrator Robert H. Tembeckjian told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A New York appeals court judge in March reduced the bond Trump needed to pay to appeal the ruling. Engoron previously ruled on Sept. 26 that Trump was liable for fraud, ordering that several business licenses Trump held were to be rescinded, but an appeals court stayed the ruling on Oct. 6.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to fight Hamas with his fingernails as he dismissed US President Joe Biden’s warning that he would not provide arms for a major military operation in Rafah.

“If we need to stand alone, we will stand alone,” Netanyahu said in a message he issued on Thursday night. “I have said that if necessary – we will fight with our fingernails.”

“But we have much more than fingernails and with that same strength of spirit, with G-d’s help, together we will win,” he said.

Arms have never before been withheld

He spoke Biden told CNN Wednesday “I’ve made it clear that if they [Israel] go into Rafah… I’m not supplying the weapons that have historically been used to deal with Rafah,”

That statement followed one made earlier that day by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that a shipment of precision munitions designated for Gaza had been paused.

Should Biden make good on his pledge, it would mark the first tie-in presidency and indeed in over 40 years of American-Israel relations, that arms were withheld from Israel.

It was a move that displayed the growing enmity between Washington and Jerusalem over the Gaza war. Israel has insisted that a major military operation in Rafah was necessary to defeat Hamas and the Biden administration has been adamant that there were other ways to neutralize the threat.

Pundits warned that Biden’s statement sent a dangerous signal to Israel’s enemies, even as the Jewish state waged an existential war, that the United States did not have did not have Israel’s back.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted on X a simple message that went straight to that point, stating “Hamas loves Biden.”

Israel has viewed the Rafah operation as an important pressure lever to sway Hamas to finale a hostage deal, negotiations for which have taken place on and off in Cairo all week.

On Thursday, in the aftermath of Biden’s statement opposing a Rafah operation, KAN news reported that talks had fallen apart and that Israel’s delegation had returned home.

CIA Director William Burns left the region after shuttling between Cairo, Dohan, and Jerusalem this week in an attempt to make a deal. US National Security Advisor John Kirby told reporters that his departure was prescheduled and that talks were still ongoing in Cairo.

In Washington Republicans rallied behind Israel, issuing blistering attacks against Biden, heightening the extent to which the Gaza war is now a partisan issue in the Presidential race.

Trump condemns Biden

Former President Donald Trump, who is the presumptive Republican nominee, “Crooked Joe” is taking the side of Hamas just like he sided with the “radical mobs” taking over college campuses.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that Biden has long had a bitter history with Israel, as he recalled that as a Senator he had threatened to cut off military aid to Israel over its actions in Lebanon.

We have no choice but to enter Rafah

Cruz recalled how former Prime Minister Menachem Begin famously responded, “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history.”

“Even though Joe Biden wants to abandon Israel and even though the Democrats in the Senate and House apparently support him in wanting to abandon Israel, America does not and we should not let him we should stand together and say America stand united with Israel and Hamas should be utterly destroyed,” Cruz stated.

In Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz, vowed to press forward with the Rafah operation.

“We have no choice,” Gallant stated. “We have no other country. We will do whatever is necessary, and I repeat – whatever is necessary, to defend the citizens of Israel, to remove the evil threats against us, and to stand up to those who attempt to destroy us.”

“We will work to crush the Hamas terrorist organization,” he stressed.

Gantz underscored the strong bonds between the US and Israel, but said, that the Jewish state “has a moral and security obligation to continue to defend itself to ensure the return of the hostages and remove the threat Hamas poses to Southern Israel.”

“The US,” he stressed, “has the moral and strategic obligation to supply Israel with the necessary tools to complete its mission.”

President Isaac Herzog came to Biden’s defense, calling Biden a “great friend of the State of Israel, and who proved as such from the first day of the war.”

Kirby defended Biden’s record on Israel, in talking to reporters in Washington, stating, “The arguments that somehow we’re walking away from Israel fly in the face of the facts,” Kirby said as he touted Biden’s record in support of Israel, particularly since October 7.

This included, Kirby explained, visiting Israel and sending massive amounts of military aid as well as defending it from the first-ever Iranian drone and missile attack, together with a coalition of armies from France, Great Britain, Jordan, and Israel.

Biden has long stressed to Israel that he believes a military operation in Rafah would create a humanitarian disaster given that over 1.3 million Palestinians are in that area. Many of them fled there in the early stages of the war to avoid bombings in the north.

“We propose alternative methods of defeating Hamas that do not involve a major ground operation in Rafah,” Kirby said, adding that talks with Israel on those options were ongoing.

He clarified that the US has not yet withheld the shipments of certain kinds of weapons but that it would do so if Israel proceeded with the operation.

Israel has understood that this is Biden’s position for some time, he said. Kirby stressed that the US would continue to provide Israel with other weapons that it needs to defend itself “against all of its enemies, including Hamas.”

The Biden administration wants to provide Israel with all the assistance it needs to defeat Hamas, Kirby said.

“Smashing into Rafha in his view, will not advance that objective,” Kirby stated.

The US will help ensure that the Egyptian border is not used to smuggle weapons into Gaza and would help Israel target the Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, Kirby said.

The Biden administration would also work with Israel to create an alternative governance structure in Gaza, that does not include Hamas.

“Whatever post-conflict Gaza looks like, it can’t look like what it does now with Hamas in control,” Kirby said.

He also noted that a Rafah operation would strengthen Hamas’s hand at the negotiating table for a hostage deal and would weaken Israel’s,’ he said.

The high civilian casualty count resulting from an IDF military operation in Rafah would also feed Hamas’s anti-Israel narrative.

“It could cast Israel in the worst possible way” and would give Hamas “more ammunition for its twisted narrative,” Kirby said.