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Activists claim Anant Ambani’s Vantara facility has no plan to return its endangered species to the wildIndia’s supreme court has ordered an investigation into a vast private zoo founded by the son of Asia’s richest person over allegations of illegal wildlife imports and financial misconduct.Home to a reported 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, Vantara in western Gujarat state describes itself as the “world’s biggest wild animal rescue centre”. It is run by Anant Ambani, a son of Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire head of the conglomerate Reliance Industries, and was one of the venues for his extravagant wedding celebrations last year, where celebrities were encouraged to wear “jungle fever” outfits. Continue reading...

Comments made by Donald Trump before his meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in the Oval Office both stunned and baffled a panel on MSNBC on Tuesday morningThe day after the meeting, MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire summarized for his co-host on “Morning Joe” the criticisms the president has made about the lack of freedom –– but they were not aimed at North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, but instead at his guest.The led co-host Joe Scarborough to interrupt after he had asked why Trump is so enamored of the North Korean strongman, who the host called “the world’s worst dictator.”“This shows you just how topsy-turvy the Trump foreign policy is,” Lemire began. “He spent the last couple of days, including yesterday morning before the meeting really bashing South Korea, suggesting that they were sort of that, that there was undue political and religious persecution there, suggesting that––.”“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait ,wait, wait,” host Scarborough interrupted. “In Korea?”“In South Korea,” Lemire responded.“You get fed to the dogs just for the hell of it just because they don’t like you?” Scarborough asked incredulously.“Yes. Where there are mass executions. of political foes and the like,” Lemire said of Trump's claims.You can watch below or click the link. - YouTube youtu.be

A retired American general tore into President Donald Trump and said his latest threats to send the National Guard into Democratic-run cities are merely a tactic to distract his base and the media, likening it to "catnip."Major General William Enyart joined MSNBC on Monday afternoon to discuss Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's (D) blistering speech, hitting back at Trump's plans to send troops to Chicago. "A barnburner of a speech from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who told the people of Illinois in no uncertain terms that what Donald J. Trump plans to do in his city is, 'unprecedented, illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American,' urging him publicly with the city's business, faith and elected officials, 'Do not come to Chicago,'" noted host Nicolle Wallace. She added that Pritzker made a "salient, indisputable fact" that 13 of the top 20 cities when it comes to homicide rates are led by Republicans. Additionally, eight Republican-led states have the top homicide rates.Enyart said Pritzker made a "spot-on speech." "Trump desperately needs to cling on to power. And I think the reason that he is taking these actions is distraction, distraction, distraction," he said. Enyart then hit back at Trump's claims with statistics of his own."The price of hamburger a year ago today: $5.35 a pound. Hamburger today: $6.98 a pound. That's a 33% increase. Coffee $6.32 a year ago. Today, it's $8.41 a pound, another 30-plus percent. Food prices have gone up every single month, but one, since Trump took office," he noted. Enyart called out Trump for vowing to drive food prices down."Yet another lie. He can't afford to face truth. And that's why he has to have distraction," he railed.Enyart called Trump's use of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and proposal to do the same in Chicago simply that. "He is doing it in order to provide a distraction to his base and to, frankly, to most of the news media so they'll chase that catnip," he said, calling Trump's tariffs a "failure," along with his negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Corn prices have cratered. Corn prices are 40% down from what they were under the Biden administration," he added. Soybean prices for farmers, he added, are down more than 50% since Biden's administration. "China used to buy 60% of their soybeans from the United States farmers. Today? 20%. Brazil took those. Why? Trump's tariffs. His policies are incredibly unpopular, and so he needs to put on a show. He is a mastermind at showmanship, and that's what he is doing."See the video below or at the link here. - YouTube www.youtube.com

Lee Jae Myung, the president of South Korea, met with President Donald Trump on Monday at the White House, where the two talked about, among other things, their relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.In an Oval Office conversation, Trump gushed about his desire to get the two leaders together. "Yeah, we want to have a meeting. I'd like to have a meeting," Trump told Lee. "I get along great with him when we were there. We even had a press conference. His first press conference. Kim Jong Un had a press conference. This was a little different press conference. I said, have you done a press conference before? And you know what? He did a great! It was a great press conference, actually. Actually historic. I doubt he's done one since. But I said, 'Would you like to meet the fake news? What do you want to do?' And they came in — they came in, and you've never seen anything like it. And then he said, 'Enough!' And that was the end of the press conference." Trump's Cabinet officials on the sofa around him laughed boisterously. Lee then made a comment prompting some on social media to question if it was a joke. The Irish Star reported it as a joke, though it wasn't clear. “I look forward to your meeting with Kim Jung Un,” and “construction of Trump Tower in North Korea, and playing golf at a place," Lee said through a translator.Kim has promoted the idea of a North Korea resort town on the beach. His government published photos of families playing in the ocean in July, but a closer look at the photo reveals that most of the women are wearing the same swimsuit top. "The Korean people have great expectations for you, Mr. President. Thank you once again for your time," Lee added. See the clip below or at the link here. - YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump fired off at former President Joe Biden Thursday for his handling of the Russo-Ukraine War, alleging that Biden “would not let Ukraine fight back, only defend,” despite history saying otherwise.“Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine fight back, only defend,” Trump wrote in an online post on his social media platform Truth Social. “How did that work out? Regardless, this is a war that would have never happened if I were president — zero chance. Interesting times ahead!”Trump’s allegation, however, flies in the face of years’ worth of Biden’s policy on Ukraine. While the Biden administration was initially hesitant to send Ukraine offensive weapons, those hesitations were soon caved on as Biden walked back previous positions in sending the Eastern European nation increasingly-powerful weapons like tanks, F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles.Biden’s willingness to provide Ukraine with offensive weapons was so pronounced that even some of Trump’s most loyal allies began to criticize the administration for its provocation, such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).“If they don’t quit what they’re doing, they’re going to force us into a third world war,” Tuberville said back in 2023 to Alabama Daily News, speaking on Biden approving increasingly-powerful offensive weapons to be shipped to Ukraine.Nevertheless, Trump insisted that Biden had only permitted Ukraine to act defensively against Russia, and in an unclear comparison, likened the Biden policy on Ukraine to illegal immigration in the United States.“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country,” Trump wrote. “It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia.”

PlayStation admitted that the cost of its gaming machines is going up after President Donald Trump's tariffs. In a blog post on the company's website, PlayStation expressed regret that "we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price for PlayStation 5 consoles in the U.S. starting on August 21." The PlayStation 5 was released to the public in 2020, and the PlayStation 6 isn't slated for release until some time in 2027 or 2028. The gaming console is made largely in Japan and China, both of which have a tax on goods coming in from those countries. Trump issued a global tariff on all goods coming in from other countries that ranges anywhere from 15 to 25%. However, as the BBC reported, Trump has added a 15% tax on Japanese goods and 30% on Chinese goods. Trump has extended the deadline for deciding the final tariffs on China for another 90 days, CNBC explained. "If the deadline were not extended, then U.S. duties on China would have shot back up to where they stood in April, when the tariff war between the world’s largest trading nations was at its peak," CNBC said. "At that time, Trump had cranked up blanket tariffs on Chinese imports to 145%, and China had retaliated with 125% duties on U.S. goods."

On Monday, Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared to touch. With the echo of Vladimir Putin’s whisper in his ear, in front of President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he’s preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.Sitting in front of the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of Great Britain — both nations that allow and even encourage mail-in voting — Trump said:“Mail-in ballots are corrupt mail-in ballots. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots, and we as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots. We're gonna start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt. And, you know that we’re the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it because of what’s happened.”This is not just a partisan maneuver. It’s an open assault on the Constitution, a grotesque power grab, and a direct threat to the foundation of democracy itself. And it’s happening in real time, in broad daylight, with a criminally compliant Republican Party cheering him on.Republicans hate mail-in voting for multiple reasons.First, for people who’re paid by the hour, mail-in voting increases participation because they can fill out their ballots at the kitchen table after work. Republicans don’t want people to vote, and have introduced more than 400 pieces of legislation in the past three years nationwide to make voting more difficult.Second, mail-in voting makes voters better informed and less vulnerable to sound-byte TV ads because, while perusing that ballot at the kitchen table, they can look up candidates on their laptops and get more detail and information. Republicans hate informed voters and rely heavily on often-dishonest advertisements to swing voters.Third, mail-in ballots — because they arrive in the mail weeks before the election — give voters an early chance to discover if they’ve been the victim of Republican voter-roll purges, one of their favorite tactics to pre-rig elections.Fourth, mail-in ballots end the GOP trick of understaffing and under-resourcing polling places in minority neighborhoods, leading to hours-long lines. Hispanic voters generally wait 150 percent longer than white voters, and Black voters must endure a 200 percent longer wait; mail-in ballots put an end to this favorite of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts.Trump, knowing all this, couldn’t help himself yesterday, finally blurting out his real reason for wanting to end mail-in voting in America:“We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy. If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”Once again, Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution, which explicitly delegates the administration of elections to the states and Congress, not presidential executive orders.That’s not some vague norm or debatable tradition: it’s written into the very DNA of our system of government. States set the rules, unless Congress — not the president — overrides them. States decide how their citizens vote, as the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 dictates:“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”Yet here we have a president declaring that he alone will dictate the terms of elections nationwide, in direct violation of two centuries of law and precedent. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s tyrannical.When a president asserts powers he does not have, with the full knowledge that they aren’t his to wield, he’s announcing to the country that the rule of law no longer constrains him. That’s the definition of dictatorship.And what makes this even more obscene is the source of Trump’s inspiration. According to multiple reports, Trump’s sudden rant on mail-in ballots followed a private conversation with Putin, who reportedly told Trump that mail-in voting was the reason he lost in 2020.The man occupying the Oval Office is now taking advice about how to rig American elections from the very dictator who has spent his career poisoning journalists, jailing opponents, and staging sham referendums to annex entire countries.It’s bad enough that Trump has always been Putin’s toady, but now we see the Kremlin effectively writing U.S. election law. If Jefferson, Madison, or Lincoln were alive to hear this, they would spit.Mail-in voting is not a scam. It’s not a trick. It’s how tens of millions of Americans — Republicans, Democrats, independents — exercise their right to vote.Seniors rely on it. People with disabilities rely on it. Military service members overseas rely on it. Hourly workers who can’t take a day off rely on it. Parents with young children rely on it. Rural voters, who often live miles from polling places, rely on it.And every study, every audit, every bipartisan commission has found mail-in voting to be secure, safe, and reliable. Five states do it exclusively; we’ve had it more than two decades here in Oregon with nary a single scandal or problem. To call it fraudulent is a lie. To ban it is voter suppression on a scale this country has never seen.And voting machines? Trump is openly declaring that he’ll return us to mind-numbingly slow hand-counting of ballots, a tactic straight from the authoritarian playbook designed to create chaos, delays, and endless opportunities to dispute the results in 2026 and 2028.I’ve had concerns about voting machines and Windows-based tabulators for decades, but my solution isn’t to end them. Instead, we should use machines owned by the government itself, generating paper ballots and operating transparently on open-source software with every election subject to sample audits.Instead of trying to make elections more secure, Trump’s laying the groundwork for election theft in plain sight. This isn’t subtle: it’s the loud declaration of a man preparing to overturn the will of the voters, with the blessing of a foreign adversary, and with a Republican Party too craven to object.If Trump succeeds in outlawing mail-in ballots and voting machines, millions of Americans will simply not be able to vote. Seniors in nursing homes, service members abroad, people with disabilities, single parents, rural citizens: they will all be disenfranchised overnight. And make no mistake: that’s the point.This is not about integrity. This is not about security. This is about shrinking the electorate to a size that Republicans believe will guarantee them victory forever.Republicans know they can’t win free and fair elections in much of America. They know their policies are unpopular. They know their agenda is toxic.So they cheat. They gerrymander districts into grotesque shapes that make a mockery of representative government. They purge voters from the rolls. They criminalize voter registration drives. They intimidate voters at the polls.And now, at Trump’s command and Putin’s urging, they want to ban the very methods by which millions of Americans vote. This is not politics as usual. This is the slow-motion strangulation of democracy.Every American who believes in self-government must rise up against this. Governors must prepare to defy such an executive order in court and in practice. State legislatures must assert their constitutional authority.Attorneys general must be ready to sue. And ordinary citizens must take to the streets, the phones, the ballot box, and every civic space available to declare that this will not stand. Because if it does, we’ll have surrendered the very essence of the American experiment.We’ve been here before in spirit if not in form.Ronald Reagan’s campaign cut a deal with the Iranian Ayatollahs to hang onto the hostages until after the election. Richard Nixon tried to sabotage our democracy by killing Lyndon Johnson's peace negotiations with Vietnam and followed-up with burglaries and cover-ups when he thought Democrats were onto him. He was forced to resign. George W. Bush and the GOP stopped the counting of votes in Florida and handed the presidency to themselves. That assault has scarred our politics for decades.But never — not once in 250 years — has a president openly declared that he will strip states of their constitutional right to run elections, end mail-in voting, and ban voting machines altogether. This is unprecedented, authoritarian, and it must be stopped.It’s also just one in a broad spectrum of attacks Republicans have launched against your right to vote, with the SAVE Act — which will prevent women from voting if their birth certificate and drivers’ license have different names on them and they’ve never had an official change-of-name in the courts — teed up in the US Senate. All while millions are being purged from the voting rolls as you read these words.This is the moment when the American people must decide whether they still believe in democracy. If we shrug, if we accept this as just more noise from a corrupt and broken con man, we will lose it. If we wait for someone else to act, we will lose it. If we tell ourselves the courts will save us, we may be bitterly disappointed.The survival of democracy has never been guaranteed. It has always required vigilance, courage, and action. Now it requires all three from each of us.Trump’s promised executive order is not just a legal maneuver. It’s a declaration of war against the American people. It’s the dream of every tyrant: to control who votes and who does not, to dictate the rules of elections so that the outcome is predetermined.What Putin and Trump are proposing is not democracy. It’s not freedom. It’s not America.And the Republicans who are enabling this treachery are as guilty as Trump himself. They’re betraying their oaths, their constituents, and our country. History will remember them not as conservatives or patriots, but as the gravediggers of our Republic.This is the line. This is the moment. We cannot let Trump and his cronies bulldoze democracy into the ground at Putin’s command. Every patriot, every progressive, every independent, every honest conservative who still believes in the Constitution must join together and say no.No to dictatorship. No to disenfranchisement. No to treason.If we fail now, there may not be another chance.

I don’t know why, but few are saying what’s plainly obvious about the president’s “summit” with his Russian counterpart. He’s afraid of him.Donald Trump made all kinds of noise about “severe consequences” that Vladimir Putin would face if he did not agree to a ceasefire with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the war in Ukraine.Trump created conditions, however feeble they may have seemed, in which he appeared to negotiate from a position of strength. “I’ve solved six wars in the last six months,” he said before the trip — all lies.Then, when the moment came, nothing. Trump got nothing.Not so for Putin.“The extraordinary meeting at Anchorage’s Elmendorf Air Force base has ended Putin’s pariah status and brought Washington’s stance on the war closer to Moscow’s,” the Financial Times reported.“And Putin did not need to budge an inch.”Liberals and Democrats tend to think Trump gets along with Putin due to them being birds of a feather. Putin is a strongman. Trump is a strongman. Both love power. Both hate liberal democracy. While true, that doesn’t explain the president’s dramatic heel-turn.But fear does.The White House clearly believed it was important, not only for the meeting but for the president’s image at home, for him to look strong beforehand. Professor Heather Cox Richardson has the context:“US envoy Steve Witkoff had been visiting Moscow for months to talk about a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine when he heard through a back channel that Putin might be willing to talk to Trump in person to offer a deal. On August 6, after a meeting in Moscow, Witkoff announced that Russia was ready to retreat from some of the land it occupies in Ukraine. This apparent concession came just two days before the August 8 deadline Trump had set for severe sanctions against Russia unless it agreed to a ceasefire.”But then, Putin said “Not gonna happen.” Moreover, Putin said Trump really got a raw deal with the 2020 election. He totally won. So unfair! And with that combo of flex and flattery, Putin “got what he wanted — to play for time and press his military advantage over Ukraine,” exiled Russian political scientist Ilya Matveyev told the Financial Times.Here’s how it looked to Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich: “The way that it felt in the room was not good. It did not seem like things went well. And it seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say and got his photo next to the president and then left.”She went on:“Of course, that is only the piece of the picture we have right now and certainly President Trump, who is the host and who is the president, would not want to enable something that would make him look weak.”Too late.Now the president can be “safely ignored,” Anne Applebaum wrote.“If the US is not willing to use any economic, military, or political tools to help Ukraine, if Trump will not put any diplomatic pressure on Putin or any new sanctions on Russian resources, then the US president’s fond wish to be seen as a peacemaker can be safely ignored,” she said.She even enumerated the moments of disgrace.“It was embarrassing for Americans to welcome a notorious wanted war criminal on their territory. It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior. It’s excruciating to imagine how badly Trump’s diplomatic envoy … misunderstood his last meeting with Putin in Moscow if he thought that the Alaska summit was going to be successful.”I don’t know if Putin has something on the president (kompromat). I don’t know if Trump is in Putin’s pocket. I can speculate, but I don’t know. What I do know is Trump talked a good game and choked. I know he humiliated himself and America. And I know something else.All this is rooted in cowardice. It’s safe to attack friends, because they won’t fight back, because they’re friends, but it’s not safe to attack enemies, because they will fight back, and because they are enemies.Trump’s MO has always been to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants, safe in the knowledge that no one has the will to stop him. That holds up as long as the “no one” in question is American or an American ally. Actual enemies, though? Nuh-uh.A few months ago, Trump was “very tough” with Zelensky in the Oval Office. He was less “tough” with him on Monday, but Trump knows Zelensky will never fight back, as Zelensky needs America’s support to defeat an even more malicious opponent.But Putin?He gets smiles, handshakes, the red-carpet treatment. He gets photos of himself riding in “The Beast” with the United States president and of American troops seeming to kneel in front of his plane, all of which is for the purpose of make-believing back home that Russia is once again America’s equal and that the glory days of empire are soon to return.All because Trump is scared.It’s a pattern we’ve seen so often Robert Armstrong came up with an acronym to memorialize it: TACO or “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Trump “does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain,” Armstrong said.Same thing with foreign affairs. According to one analysis, Trump has threatened “severe consequences” 22 times against adversaries, but pulled the trigger just twice. He has chickened out even in the face of America’s weakest foes. For instance, the Taliban conceded absolutely nothing in exchange for American troops leaving the country in 2021.Liberals and Democrats spend a lot of time thinking about the unseen. Is Trump compromised? Is he in Russian pay? And so on. But we don’t spend enough time on the seen, which is damning enough all by itself.Trump is the biggest chicken on the planet.Putin knows it.If only the Democrats would come around.