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Personal imports of meat and dairy products into EU banned since Brexit transition ended

Dutch TV news has aired footage of customs officers confiscating ham sandwiches from drivers arriving by ferry from the UK under post-Brexit rules banning personal imports of meat and dairy products into the EU.

Officials wearing high-visibility jackets are shown explaining to startled car and lorry drivers at the Hook of Holland ferry terminal that since Brexit, “you are no longer allowed to bring certain foods to Europe, like meat, fruit, vegetables, fish, that kind of stuff.”

To a bemused driver with several sandwiches wrapped in tin foil who asked if he could maybe surrender the meat and keep just the bread, one customs officer replied: “No, everything will be confiscated. Welcome to the Brexit, sir, I’m sorry.”

The ban came into force on New Year’s Day as the Brexit transition period came to an end, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) saying travellers should “use, consume, or dispose of” prohibited items at or before the border.

“From 1 January 2021 you will not be able to bring POAO (products of an animal origin) such as those containing meat or dairy (eg a ham and cheese sandwich) into the EU,” the Defra guidance for commercial drivers states.


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/11/dutch-officials-seize-ham-sandwiches-from-british-drivers

"The actions of the USCP officers were heroic given the situation they faced, and I continue to have tremendous respect in the professionalism and dedication of the women and men of the United States Capitol Police."

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-01-07/capitol-police-chief-defends-response-to-pro-trump-mob-as-heroic

My view: There is nothing "heroic" about allowing allowing a terrorist attack at the US Capitol Building.

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-michigan-flint-water/ex-michigan-governor-charged-in-lead-poisoning-of-flint-water-idUSKBN29J04R

(Reuters) - Michigan’s attorney general charged former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder on Wednesday with two counts of willful neglect of duty over the lead-poisoning of drinking water in Flint city - the first person to face criminal charges over the crisis.

The case became emblematic of racial inequality in the Unites States as it afflicted Flint, a city of about 100,000 people, more than half of whom are African American.

Snyder faces two misdemeanor charges that carry a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, an online court record showed.

The findings of the criminal investigation into Flint’s water supply will be announced at a news conference on Thursday, the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said.

Snyder’s attorney Brian Lennon previously called the prospect of charges “outrageous” and “mertiless,” saying Nessel’s office had refused to share information about any potential charges.

“It is outrageous to think any criminal charges would be filed against Governor Snyder,” Lennon said in a statement Tuesday. “Any charges would be meritless. Coming from an administration that claims to be above partisan politics, it is deeply disappointing to see pure political motivation driving charging decisions.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-defender-ohio-rep-jim-jordan-get-presidential-medal-freedom-n1253737
(Posted Jan. 11, 2021)

President Donald Trump announced Monday that he was awarding the presidential medal of freedom to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a pugnacious Republican ally in Congress who continues to back the president even after the deadly rampage last week by a pro-Trump mob through the Capitol.

Jordan received the nation’s highest civilian award from a lame-duck and increasingly isolated president who has just nine days left in office and who faces the humiliation of a possible second impeachment before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The awarding of the medal to Jordan was also harshly criticized by some former Ohio State University wrestlers who have accused him of doing nothing to protect them from a team doctor who sexually abused them when Jordan was an assistant coach from 1986 to 1994.

“If turning your back on hundreds of athletes who were sexually abused on your watch and enabling a sitting President to incite a domestic terrorist insurrection are qualities of a candidate to receive the highest civilian award in the land, then Jim Jordan should get two medals of freedom,” whistleblowing former OSU wrestler Mike DiSabato told NBC News.

Jordan, a former champion college wrestler, has steadfastly denied any knowledge of what the team doctor, Richard Strauss, was doing to the wrestlers, including hearing any "locker room talk."

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Good to see 2021 isn't any less strange.
>The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has shared a recall from Weis Markets, recalling more than 11,000 containers of ice cream. The frozen treats may be contaminated with "extraneous material, specifically metal filling equipment parts," which is not a traditional ice cream topping.

>The company has recalled 10,869 containers of Weis Quality Cookies and Cream Ice Cream in 48-ounce containers, as well as 502 bulk units of Klein's Vanilla Dairy Ice Cream in three-gallon containers. The ice cream may be contaminated with foreign matter which is, obviously, a choking hazard.
https://www.thrillist.com/amphtml/news/nation/ice-cream-recall-2021-weis-markets

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Transactions will be prohibited in 45 days

President Trump has signed a new executive order prohibiting transactions with the companies behind eight Chinese apps, including Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent’s QQ and WeChat Pay. Transactions will be prohibited in 45 days. Reuters was the first to report the news.

The full list of apps includes: Alipay, CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate, WeChat Pay, and WPS Office.

“The pace and pervasiveness of the spread in the United States of certain connected mobile and desktop applications and other software developed or controlled by persons in the People’s Republic of China... continue to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” the order reads.

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross confirmed that the Commerce Department will “begin implementing the E.O.’s directives, including identifying prohibited transactions.” Reuters reports that the Commerce Department will do so before Trump leaves office on January 20th, citing an unnamed official.

The new orders follow two earlier ones from August that already tried to ban transactions with ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, and WeChat. However, a judge blocked the WeChat ban in September and again in October, while a judge granted a preliminary injunction stopping the TikTok ban in December.

If the US is successful in banning these apps, it could be a pretty big deal, particularly for Chinese American families who use these apps to communicate online.

Update January 5th, 7:29PM ET: Added quote from the order.

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Two of Donald Trump’s favored banks are pulling away from the billionaire president in the wake of last week’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Deutsche Bank AG has decided to refrain from further business with Trump and his company, said a person with knowledge of the matter, asking not to be identified because the deliberations were confidential. Trump owes the Frankfurt-based lender more than $300 million.

And Signature Bank, the New York lender that’s long catered to his family, said it’s cutting ties while it presses for his resignation. Signature is closing two personal accounts in which Trump held about $5.3 million, a spokesperson for the firm said on Monday.

“We believe the appropriate action would be the resignation of the president of the United States, which is in the best interests of our nation and the American people,” the bank said in a separate statement on Monday.


The lenders are following social media outlets and other companies in suspending ties with the president after he encouraged attendees at a rally last week to march on the Capitol, where they stormed the building and interrupted the certification of the electoral college vote. At least five people died in the mayhem and its immediate aftermath.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-12/trump-s-long-favored-banks-pull-back-amid-fallout-from-d-c-riot

Dark web market known as “Dark Market” has been dismantled and the manager has been arrested. https://deepwebmarketsreview.com/2021/01/12/dark-market-seized-admin-arrested/

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https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/manatee-with-trump-etched-onto-back-found-in-florida/2360741/

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is searching for information on the person or persons responsible for the harassment of a manatee discovered Sunday in the headwaters of the Homosassa River. The animal had the word “Trump” scraped into its back.

Craig Cavanna, senior federal wildlife officer and current investigating officer, said of the situation, “I cannot comment on a current, ongoing investigation.”

He added harassment of a manatee, protected by the Endangered Species Act, is a Class A, federal criminal offense punishable by a $50,000 fine and/or up to one-year in federal prison.

The seasonal influx of the West Indian manatee is well known along the Nature Coast. The slow-moving, warm-blooded mammals seek sanctuary in the spring-fed waters along Citrus County’s coastline making them accessible to swimmers and boaters. Laws protect the animals from harassment by swimmers and those operating vessels.

“It’s been My experience that this is very out of character for this community," Cavanna said. "Wildlife conservation is a core value in Citrus County. That’s why it’s called the Nature Coast.”

As the investigation continues Cavanna said, “We are following leads.”

The USFWS is encouraging anyone with knowledge of the incident to call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at 888-404-FWCC (3922). Information will be forwarded to the USFWS.

A harrowing photo shows a Trump supporter carrying a Confederate flag inside the US Capitol, flanked by portraits of Civil War-era figures

https://www.businessinsider.com/photo-trump-supporter-riot-confederate-flag-us-capitol-2021-1

A photographer named Saul Loeb captured an image of a man carrying a large Confederate battle flag during the pro-Trump riot inside the US Capitol on Wednesday.
Though the Confederate battle flag originated during the US Civil War, it never entered the Capitol during that time.
Behind the man in the photo, two portraits reflect the fractured nation of the country during the 1860s.
To the man's right is a portrait of Charles Sumner, an abolitionist. To his left is a portrait of John C. Calhoun, a defender of slavery.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/current-rate-it-ll-be-10-years-americans-adequately-vaccinated-n1252486

The Trump administration's Covid-19 vaccine distribution program needs a major shot in the arm because at the current rate, it would take almost 10 years to inoculate enough Americans to get the pandemic under control, a jarring new NBC News analysis showed Tuesday.

The goal of Operation Warp Speed, a private-public partnership led by Vice President Mike Pence to produce and deliver safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines to the public, is to ensure that 80 percent of the country's 330.7 million people get the shots by late June.

To meet that goal, a little more than 3 million people would have to get the shots each day, the math shows.

But so far, only about 2 million people — most of them front-line health care workers and some nursing home residents — have gotten their first shots of the 11.5 million doses that were delivered in the last two weeks, a review by NBC News of data from federal and state agencies showed.

"I don't think we're going to be able to distribute the 20 million doses that were promised" this year, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Donald Trump and a Pfizer board member, said Tuesday on CNBC.

"Georgia, for example just started vaccinating nursing homes yesterday, and the vaccine has been on the market, right now — been authorized for almost three weeks," Gottlieb said. "So we're late getting into some of these facilities."

But once people start getting the first shot, he said, "you will start to see an impact on the most vulnerable population, I think, soon."

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Twitter removed a post by the Chinese Embassy in the US over the weekend citing a violation of its rules. The embassy’s tweet had asserted that Muslim minority Uighur women were “emancipated” by Beijing’s efforts to “eradicate extremism” in its northwestern Xinjiang province.

The post shared an article by state media China Daily last Thursday denying reports of forced sterilisation of Uighur women by Chinese authorities. Instead, the article claimed the decrease in the Uighur population in Xinjiang was a result of the “eradication of religious extremism” which gave women more “autonomy.”
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/01/11/twitter-removes-post-by-chinese-us-embassy-casting-alleged-genocide-as-female-empowerment/

You go twitter!
You go!

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Golly, what a coincidence? A week before Biden is to take office and right after Big Tech censored Parler, their user database gets hacked and exposed…

But yeah, a handful of clowns taking selfies at the Capitol were "trying to overthrow the government!"

https://www.rt.com/usa/512152-parler-hacker-data-leak/
11 Jan, 2021

Hacker reveals massive Parler data leak: ALL users’ messages, location info and even driver’s licenses may have been exposed

Recently shutdown social media app Parler is at the center of a yet another controversy, after allegations surfaced that the totality of its users' personal data was leaked in the wake of the network going offline.

Parler, a social network popular with conservative audiences, was removed from the internet on Monday, after Amazon kicked the site off its hosting service, citing"a steady increase in this violent content" in the wake of Wednesday's riot at the US Capitol. The decision to pull support came after Apple and Google blocked the social network from their online marketplaces over the weekend.

Shortly before Amazon's move, a self-described hacker from Austria, going by 'Donk Enby' on Twitter, claimed to have gained access to all of the "unprocessed, raw" video files uploaded to Parler "with all associated metadata." The hacker even included a link to the file library in order to prove that the data leak was real.


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The magats have finally turned and started feasting on the bloated corpse.

After years of fidelity, Donald Trump's most ardent online fans have finally turned on him.

All it took was for the president to acknowledge the reality of his loss a little over a day after they, the MAGA faithful, stormed the Capitol in a violent attempt to stop the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win.

“People were willing to die for this man and he just threw them all under the bus. That’s the only thing that’s shameful about the events of the past 36 hours,” Nick Fuentes, the host of the America First podcast and the unofficial leader of the white nationalist Groyper Army, angrily tweeted, shortly after Trump released a video Thursday night in which he conceded that Biden would be the next president and called for political reconciliation.

Cassandra Fairbanks, a prominent MAGA activist, tweeted: “[He] tells angry people to march to the capitol [and then] proceeds to throw his supporters under the bus.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/maga-internet-turns-on-trump-456490

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/florida-manatee-trump.html

Someone Etched ‘Trump’ on a Florida Manatee
Wildlife authorities are investigating and said that the harassment of the manatee is illegal under state and federal laws.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission began investigating after the manatee was discovered on Sunday with scarring in the form of the president’s name, the center said. The discovery was reported by the Citrus County Chronicle.
Patrick Rose, the executive director of the nonprofit Save the Manatee Club, said he had seen the photos of the manatee earlier on Monday and was disturbed.
“This is a type of a molestation of an imperiled species,” he said on Monday from Gainesville, Fla. He added that the manatee appeared to be an adolescent.
His alarm was shared by other conservationists.
“This abhorrent action goes beyond the bounds of what is considered cruel and inhumane,” said Elizabeth Fleming, senior Florida representative at Defenders of Wildlife. “I’m disgusted that someone would harm a defenseless creature to send what I can only assume is a political message. We will do everything in our power to help find, arrest and successfully prosecute this coward.”