Somaliland Opens Diplomatic Office In Taiwan Despite Strong Objections From Beijing Via The Cradle The breakaway African territory of Somaliland opened a new representative office in Taiwan on Friday, saying it had the right to establish diplomatic relations despite objections from Somalia. "We have the right to choose who we have relationships with. It's our prerogative, and so it hasn't been successful as far as pressure tactics," stated Mahmoud Adam Jama ​Galaal, Somaliland's...

North Korea Rips Fresh Western Criticism Of Expanding Moscow Relationship North Korea fired back on Saturday and lashed out at the Washington-Seoul alliance, tearing into a fresh South Korea-EU joint statement that condemned Pyongyang's deepening military alliance with Russia. North Korea has increasingly over the past acknowledge a significant number of troops sacrificed in support of Russia and in the context of the brutal and grinding Ukraine war. The Western-aligned state...

Discs, Orbs, 'Heavenly' Phenomena, & More Revealed In 3rd Batch Of Declassified UFO Files Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times, Americans living in the northeastern United States witnessed “brilliant and beautiful” glowing red and white orbs in their backyard, which they caught on video, the Pentagon’s third release of declassified UFO files on June 12 showed. The new documents contained encounters from around the world, such as reports of a “disc-like” object in Zimbab...

What's In A Name? Alaska GOP Succeeds In Stopping Democrats From Stealing The Senate Election Alaska's election officials may have just saved a U.S. Senate seat from one of the more brazen ballot schemes in recent memory. The state's Division of Elections issued a preliminary ruling this week that Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg is ineligible to appear on the 2026 Senate ballot, dealing a significant blow to Democrats - in what Republicans have characterized as a coordinated Demo...

Watch: Humanoid Warbot Live-Fires Mortars At Vegas Test Range It is not just one-way attack drones (read JPMorgan report) operating on AI-enabled kill chains that human soldiers have to worry about on the modern battlefield. We have been laying out this story and were among the first to point out that humanoid robots are not only entering factory floors and warehouses, but are also moving toward the battlefield. San Francisco-based robotics company Foundation Future Industries ...

"Swift And Lethal": U.S. Southern Command Eliminates Tren De Aragua Kingpin In Venezuela Secretary of War Pete Hegseth revealed late Friday that U.S. forces, working in coordination with Venezuelan security services, conducted a kinetic strike on a Tren de Aragua compound inside Venezuela, killing the foreign terrorist organization's leader, Niño Guerrero. The decapitation strike is part of the Trump administration's Western Hemisphere defense posturing of purging the Americas o...

India Caps Fuel Sales To Avoid Shortages Submitted by Irina Slav of OilPrice.com India has imposed limits on gasoline and diesel sales at retail fuel stations to avoid supply crunches, with commercial consumers banned from buying any fuel from retail stations, Bloomberg reported, noting there will be daily limits on diesel sales. The diesel cap was set at 200 litres per vehicle or customer, with resale of the fuel forbidden, Reuters noted in a report on the news. Commercial u...

Anthropic Blocks Foreign Access To Fable 5, Mythos 5 After U.S. National Security Order About four days after Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, a next-generation "Mythos-class" AI model, the frontier AI lab led by Dario Amodei revealed late Friday that it was disabling foreign customers' access to these cutting-edge models, citing an export-control directive from the federal government. "The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control direc...

Hungary Backs Away From Crypto Criminalization In Regulatory U-Turn Authored by Micah Zimmerman via BitcoinMagazine.com, Hungary is dismantling the restrictive digital asset framework introduced under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a policy overhaul that will decriminalize crypto trading and eliminate the prison sentences that had driven major platforms from the country, government spokesperson Anita Kobol said Thursday, according to Bloomberg.  The rollback marks a full...

A Villainous Blueprint For Managed Poverty Authored by Veronique de Rugy via The Eoch Times, Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand was often accused of inventing cartoonish villains. Rogues like Ellsworth Toohey in “The Fountainhead” would scheme to seize the global economy’s commanding heights in pursuit of a distorted sense of justice. But the people who hold such ideas don’t just appear in cartoons or in Rand’s novels. Enter Thomas Piketty and company. In early June, Piketty - ...

"Flying Beer Cooler": Pentagon's Next Kamikaze Drone Ushers In Era Of Cheap Mass-Produced Airpower Our focus on the rise of the "war unicorn" theme over the last four months, shaped by technological innovation seen in the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East, has allowed us, in countless notes, to inform readers very early that 2030s warfare has already arrived. In fact, hyperinnovation in Ukraine, now the world's AI weapons laboratory, is what pulled forward these...

Public Schools Are In A Downward Spiral Authored by Larry Sand via Heartland.org, After decades of steady growth, attendance in U.S. K-12 public schools has shifted drastically. Over the past five years, registration has fallen by 2.3 percent, or 1.18 million students, and schools show no signs of rebounding. Lower birth rates are the primary driver of the downturn. The number of births has decreased steadily in recent years, with 690,000 fewer children born in 2024 than in 2007...

"They All Believe That Taiwan's Part Of China", Former Reagan Advisor On Chinese Nationalism Iran is dominating headlines, but Washington’s favorite bipartisan monster abroad is never too far from the sights of the hawks. Just days ago, and while the U.S. is fighting a war, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell scolded Marco Rubio for pausing a weapons shipment to Taiwan. Last night, ZeroHedge hosted opposing think tankers to answer the question that DC likes to keep ambiguous: Shoul...

India Set To Miss Budget Deficit Target As Oil Shock Strains Public Finances Submitted by Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com India may be on track to miss its target for budget deficit for the first time since 2021 as the oil supply shock pressures government coffers. The government of the world’s third-largest crude oil importer is preparing to exceed its own deficit target from early this year as the Middle East crisis is testing the resilience of public finances amid soaring ...

The Most Important AI Experiment You've Never Heard Of Authored by Kay Rubacek via The Epoch Times, In May 2026, a group of scientists set out to answer an important question that had never been properly tested: What does artificial intelligence (AI) actually do when it is put in charge? Until now, AI systems have always been evaluated on specific and defined tasks. Nobody had placed multiple AI systems together in a shared social environment and watched what unfolded over we...

Federal Government Pauses Funding To Los Angeles Homeless Agency Citing Fraud Allegations Authored by City News Service via The Epoch Times, The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on June 11 suspended federal funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), cutting off millions of dollars to the L.A. region, over allegations of fraud and widespread mismanagement. HUD Secretary Scott Turner testifies before the Senate Appropriations Subcommit...

Gabbard Rescinds Intelligence Committee Reports On Mysterious Syndrome Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has retracted intelligence community reports on mysterious health problems known as Havana Syndrome, according to a memorandum released on June 11. Gabbard found that the intelligence community assessments of the anomalous health incidents, released in 2023 and 2025, failed to meet the community’s anal...

UBS Finds Global Trade Structure "Surprisingly Stable" As AI Emerges As Growth Engine Despite ongoing Gulf-related energy shocks, mounting concerns over a potential energy cliff (read here), and UBS last month reactivating its supply chain stress-watch coverage, another UBS analyst noted Wednesday that the overall structure of global trade remains "surprisingly stable." Analyst Arend Kapteyn pointed out that the structure of global trade remains far more structurally stable than...

Kuwait Joins "Dark-Mode" Tanker Traffic Through Hormuz By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com Kuwait appears to have joined a growing bunch of Middle Eastern oil and gas producers that have moved to ship energy cargoes in dark mode through the Strait of Hormuz. The liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier Gas Umm Al Rowaisat, which is owned by the national Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, has passed through the Strait in recent days, then transferred the cargo onto another ship which i...

Gas Prices Fall For 3rd Straight Week Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline declined for three consecutive weeks, dropping from $4.56 per gallon on May 21 to $4.12 per gallon on Thursday. Lower gasoline prices are “delivering some relief to drivers during the busy summer travel season,” the American Automobile Association (AAA) said in a June 11 statement. “Gas prices typically peak around this time of ...

Which States Are Leading America's Economy? America’s biggest economies aren’t always its strongest. While California, Texas, and New York dominate in economic size, long-term competitiveness depends on a broader mix of factors, from business creation and labor market strength to innovation and investment. This 2026 analysis by WalletHub evaluates all 50 states and Washington, D.C. across 28 indicators of economic activity, economic health, and innovation potential. This rank...

Why The Millionaire Next Door Drives A Used Car - And What That Teaches About Real Wealth Authored by Peter Daisyme via Due, The wealthiest person I know personally drives a 2018 Toyota Camry. He owns three rental properties, has over $2 million in investment accounts, and could buy any car on any lot without blinking. He chooses not to, and his explanation is both simple and profound: "A car is a tool that takes you from one place to another. Everything beyond that is a paymen...

Hillary Clinton Fears "Revolution" Preventing The US From Becoming A "Rainbow Nation" The word "Democracy" is thrown around frequently within progressive circles as a call to arms; a rallying cry based on a fraudulent narrative of patriotic duty.  Throughout the entirety of Joe Biden's first and last term, the political left painted conservatives as a threat to democracy.  Anyone who opposed pandemic mandates, compelled vaccination, open borders, mass immigration, gender ideolog...

Bitcoin & The Clash Of Two Inexorable Realities Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com, Two inexorable realities have come into sharpened focus over the last month or so. Both are themes we have been exploring and monitoring – one, since practically the very beginning of this service, the other, over the last year or so. The first is the unsustainable nature of the global monetary system: we are not unique in calling that out – it’s practically a trope and has been for...

Trump Mulls Farmer Aid As Fertilizer And Fuel Costs Bite Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times, President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is considering support for U.S. farmers struggling with high fertilizer prices, as rising energy costs and market volatility continue to squeeze producers across the farm belt. A farm field near West Bend, Iowa, on May 6, 2026. Scott Olson/Getty Images "I am looking at doing a form of help," Trump told reporters at the White Hous...

69 Arrested In 'Operation Hands Down' Targeting Central California Gangs Authored by Cynthia Cai via The Epoch Times, Authorities announced dozens of arrests, drug and firearm seizures, and thousands of dollars in cash confiscated in a large-scale operation targeting gangs in California's Central Valley. Suspects arrested in Operation Hands Down. Fresno County Sheriff’s Office The multi-agency effort, dubbed Operation Hands Down, served 43 search warrants at various locations...

Northeast Heat Wave Arrives As World Cup Matches Get Underway As the World Cup starts, a prolonged spell of summer heat is expected to grip New York and much of the Northeast through the end of the week and into the weekend. Daytime temperatures are forecast to reach the 90s across several major cities, while high humidity will make conditions feel even hotter, according to Bloomberg. Forecasters expect the most intense heat on Thursday and Friday, when heat alerts will be in...

Britain Goes Full 'Airstrip One' Authored by Stephen Green via PJMedia.com, In George Orwell's 1984, Great Britain was just a province of Oceania named "Airstrip One" as a none-too-subtle nod to the U.K.'s role as host to the heavy bombers of U.S. Eighth Air Force during World War II. Four decades past the real 1984, and there's still no Oceania. But Britain looks more and more like Airstrip One as Parliament considers a bill opening up everyone's smartphone to government sup...

Romania Asks Ukraine To Add Self-Destruct Function To Stray Drones, After One Exploded At Its Port Errant Ukrainian drones which wonder across borders and into neighboring Baltic and Eastern European countries are becoming enough of a problem to where some NATO allies pushing for a self-destruct function.  Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta has proposed that Ukraine program its maritime drones to self-destruct if they veer into the country's territorial waters, coming just on...

These Are The Hardest Languages For English Speakers To Learn For English speakers, learning Spanish or Italian can take less than a year. Reaching the same level of proficiency in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, or Arabic may require nearly four times as much study. This wide gap reflects how closely a language resembles English in its vocabulary, grammar, sounds, and writing system. This visualization, created by Julie R. Peasley via Visual Capitalist, ranks languages by difficult...

Russian Governors Rush To Deny Fuel Crisis As Rationing Spreads Submitted by Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com Russia's authorities and regional governors are racing to assure residents there are no fuel shortages amid an intensified Ukrainian drone campaign at Russian refineries and fuel supply roads. Ukraine has stepped up attacks this month on key fuel supply routes in its territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea and Mariupol. Several Russian regions have been experi...

Russia Is Single-Handedly Standing Against The West: Putin "It was they who carried out the coup d'etat in Ukraine, which forced us to take the people of Crimea under protection. When they started the war, they started bombing Donetsk using warplanes" - Putin in a fresh address to Russian service members came out swinging, giving a familiar lesson in recent history. And quite provocatively, he emphasized that Russia is now practically fighting against the entirety of the collect...

The SPLC's Real Scam Authored by David Harsanyi via The Epoch Times, It turns out that the most generous funder of white supremacist groups in the United States was likely the Southern Poverty Law Center. At least that’s what the Department of Justice’s superseding indictment against the SPLC alleges. The organization secretly paid informants to engage in the active promotion and funding of racist groups while denouncing and “fighting” the very same groups in public. The SPL...

Qatar Tried Secret Deal-Making With Iran To Protect World's Largest Gas Complex By the middle of March during Trump's Operation Epic Fury, Iran was flexing its retaliatory might, and the Gulf region was shocked to see the largest natural-gas production facility in the world, Qatar's North Field, badly damaged - with a key section forced offline and severely damaged. The Washington Post has just provided some new information which has come to light, writing that "There was an add...

Gabbard Drops Receipts Detailing US-Funded Biolabs In Ukraine Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Friday declassified a set of internal intelligence slides documenting a long-running US program that has funded a worldwide network of biolabs that handle dangerous pathogens - including dozens in Ukraine.  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington on July 23, ...

India Accuses West Of Double Standards Over US Russia Oil Sanctions Submitted By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com The on-and-off U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and the flipping U.S. position regarding India’s oil purchases from Russia highlight the double standards of the Western nations, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday. India turned en masse to Russian oil in 2022, when the U.S. and the EU imposed sanctions on Moscow due to the invasion of Ukraine. Four ...

Democrats Divided On Platner As GOP Reportedly Has Opposition Research That Will Destroy Him Graham Platner may have easily won Maine's Democratic Senate primary Tuesday, but his own party is already trying to figure out how to get rid of him. Democrats openly admit they cannot afford to lose this race if they want to retake the Senate, and Platner is already complicating their plans. Yet, the chaos involving Platner may have only just begun. Maine's Democratic establishment is...

The K-Shaped Economy: Why The Middle Class Moved Up Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, The K-shaped economy has become shorthand for a tidy story. The rich pull away while everyone else falls behind. It fits the mood, and it makes for a sharp headline. The problem is that it’s mostly wrong. When you pull the actual Census data, the dominant move of the last half-century isn’t down. It’s up. Yes, the middle class is shrinking. But it’s shrinking because mi...

Blackrock's Private Credit Fund Gates Investors Again After Redemption Requests Surge The market may be in full-blown face-ripping bubble mode, and software stocks are now gripped in by a category 5 gamma squeeze hurricane, but not even that is helping the ongoing debacle that is private credit. One week after Cliffwater's Private Credit fund gated investors for a second straight quarter, and days after Blackstone also gated investors in its private credit fund for the first tim...

"Reckless Propaganda": Globe And Mail Op-Ed Tells Readers "How To Properly Hate" Elon Musk Ahead Of SpaceX IPO Whether it is Elizabeth Warren, left-leaning unions, or Democrat-aligned NGOs funded by dark money, the common pattern here has been an information campaign aimed at Elon Musk to derail the SpaceX IPO. Their motives are very simple: if the game is about power and money, then Musk potentially becoming the world's first trillionaire on Friday morning represents a direct t...

China's New AI Agent Risks Trapping Western Tech In Rights Abuses: Analysts Authored by Jarvis Lim via The Epoch Times, China's new state-backed artificial intelligence (AI) platform threatens to stifle domestic tech innovation through forced ideological compliance, and in the West, it could also be used to cover up the regime's human rights abuses, analysts warn. A screen advertising Xinhua News Agency in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on March 2, 2020...

"Tell Him He's A Piece Of Shit": Employee Hijacks Meta Meeting In AI Revolt Earlier this week, a routine livestreamed Meta meeting descended into open revolt. During a presentation open to thousands of employees, one participant suddenly interrupted the speakers with a profanity-laced outburst, according to WIRED. The employee declared they felt like "the company's bitch" and demanded that the people leading the call write to a specific Meta AI executive and "tell him that he's...

AI's Core Flaw: "Mass Regurgitation Of Misinformation" Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, These immense hidden costs will not show up in GDP until they collapse the entire house of speculative gambling cards propping up the global economy. I approach all AI topics with several things in mind. One is the nature of problems, which implicitly define what qualifies as solutions, and the resulting incentive to define the "problem" such that the "solution" happens to ...

Canadian Mother Sues OpenAI, Alleging Chatbot Encouraged Daughter's Suicide Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times, A Canadian mother is suing OpenAI after its popular ChatGPT chatbot allegedly encouraged her daughter to continue engaging with the app after she revealed suicidal thoughts. A screen showing the ChatGPT app. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch Times Instead of terminating these discussions or flagging her account for safety concerns, ChatGPT allegedly escalated th...

Former NIH Head Secretly Helped With Paper Dismissing Theory COVID-19 Came From Lab Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times, Then-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins, around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, acknowledged that he secretly assisted with a paper stating the virus that causes COVID-19 "is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," according to a newly released missive. Dr. Francis Collins speaks in Washin...

Court Denies SBF's Last-Ditch Effort To Toss Conviction, Leaving Trump As His Only Hope FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried will remain in PMITA prison for the foreseeable future, after a federal appeals court rejected a hail-mary attempt to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence on the grounds that he didn't receive a fair trial.  A three-judge panel on Friday unanimously refused to toss his 2023 guilty verdict, which SBF's attorneys argued was tainted by imp...

Endgame Finally? Iran Peace Deal Signing Expected Within 24-Hours, Technical Talks To Follow, Pakistan's Sharif Says After Friday witnessed a rare moment of agreement between Tehran and Washington saying that indeed a peace deal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is indeed 'very close' - there's been more color issued by Pakistan. The country's Prime Minister Shehbaz ​Sharif said that the United States and ​Iran have ​agreed to the final text of the agreement, but that curiously ...

Sweden Plans To Lower Criminal Age To 14 Amid Rise In Violent Crime By Children Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times, The Swedish government has announced plans to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 14 after dropping plans to lock up violent offenders as young as 13 in special prison units. Ambulance and police stand at the scene where Swedish rapper Einar was fatally shot in Hammarby Sjostad district, in Stockholm, Sweden, on Oct. 22, 2021. Christine Olsson/...

'The Suicide Of Europe': Historic EU Migration Pact Goes Into Force Today As Fracture-Lines Grow Via Remix News, Six years ago, in 2020, French political leader Marine Le Pen described the Migrant Pact, which was then in the planning stages, as the “suicide of Europe.” She said it would bring 60 to 70 million new migrants to Europe, as Remix News reported at the time. Europe is about to find out just how prophetic its critics have been. On June 12, the highly contested EU Mig...

Half Of Israelis Agree Deterrence 'Weakened' Following Wars In Iran, Lebanon: Poll Via The Cradle Israelis are raising doubts about their government and military's ability to provide security after more than three months of renewed war against Iran and Lebanon.  According to a Maariv poll released on Friday, 50 percent of Israelis believe their country's deterrence has declined following the recent escalation with Iran and Lebanon, compared to 28 percent who say it has strengthe...

America's Hiring Map Has Flipped Since 2020 America’s hiring recovery has split into sharply different regional stories since 2020. Some states, including Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas, continue seeing elevated hiring demand years after the pandemic. Others, particularly across parts of the West Coast and Mountain West, have experienced steep declines in job openings. The map below, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows how job openings changed in every state ...

Welfare-Warfare State Reform Is Not Freedom Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation, The libertarian movement can be divided into two basic groups: libertarians who call for reforming welfare-warfare state programs and libertarians who call for dismantling welfare-warfare state programs. I fall within the latter group. Why? Because I want to be free. Reform doesn’t get me freedom. At best it gets me a better serfdom. That’s nice, but it’s not want I ...

How Bad Is Foreign Influence In America's Nonprofit Universe? In February, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing titled "Foreign Influence in American Nonprofits: Unmasking Threats from Beijing and Beyond." While Democrats deflected and tried to make the hearing about MAGA and free speech, the underlying topic remains important. 🧵Senate Hearing Raises Alarms Over FOREIGN INFLUENCE Looting American Pockets 📢 During a Senate subcommittee testimony chaired by @Hawle...

A Conservative Audit Of The Left's Ruling Assumptions Authored by Stu Cvrk via American Greatness, There is a particular kind of intellectual dishonesty that does not know it is dishonest. It wraps itself in the language of compassion, hides its power hunger behind slogans of liberation, and mistakes its own cultural preferences for universal moral law. American progressivism, in its current form as embodied by the Democrat Party, has become a nearly perfect specimen of this con...

The Mullahs & The Lefty-Left Authored by James Howard Kunstler, "Until you are willing to harm the left more than they are willing to harm you, they will win. It’s really that simple." - Aimee Terese on X You’ll just have to stand by on whether this war with Iran is over or not, since the Shia true believers’ practice of Taqiyya is a permission structure for lying to infidels (us) when necessary — like, to advance global chaos that will bring the return of the Hidden Imam (Mahd...

DOE Declares Southeast Grid Emergency As Sweltering Heat Boosts AC Demand As the U.S. men's national soccer team kicks off its first match against Paraguay in Southern California on Friday night, large swaths of the country are trapped in what feels like a wet sauna, with dangerous heat and humidity forcing households to crank up their air conditioning and straining power grids from the Southeast to the Northeast. On Thursday, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order t...

Ministry Of Truth: UK Government To Block 'False Information' During 'Crisis Events' Authored by Steve Watson via modernity, Vague new rules will allow UK regulators to pressure platforms over "legal but harmful" content whenever government ministers declare a crisis, while the same government ploughs ahead with mandatory phone scanning, digital ID lockdowns, and jail threats for tech bosses who refuse to spy on every device. The latest move from Northern Ireland Secretary Hi...

Banks Curb FOMO-Chasing Levered Bets On Korean Tech Firms SK Hynix has been THE poster-child for 'Vol Up, Spot Up' FOMO-chasing over the past few months of exuberant semi-shortage panic-buying... And volumes in levered Semi trades has been astronomical... With SK Hynix standing out among the most-levered bets... Driven by massive speculative momentum (margin loans at record highs)... ...which faced huge forced liquidations amid the recent volatility... So it reall...

US Pulling Large Chunk Of Jets, Refueling Tankers From NATO Defense, Realigning Further East In a move that surprises absolutely no one paying attention, the United States is planning to significantly slash the number of fighter jets and warships it feeds into the NATO machine in Europe, the New York Times reported Thursday. The reported cutbacks hit right as panicked European nations scramble to patch up their own defense capacities. Though long expected given President Trump's...

National Mall Vandalized With '8647' Markings Ahead Of Independence Celebrations Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times, U.S. Park Police and federal officials opened an investigation Thursday after a sizable marking resembling “8647” was etched into the lawn of the National Mall. The incident occurred amid preparations for major events celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary of independence. A Reuters photographer witnessed the marking from atop the Washington Monum...