Paradise News

Tag: General News

  • Watch: Macron Announces French/NATO Agenda To Wage War With Russia, Spark WWIII


    People across the world need to protest this dangerous escalation!

    Alex Jones delivers an urgent message as globalist French President Emmanuel Macron pushes the world to the brink of WWIII.

    “Macron and NATO have announced they’ve loaded hydrogen bombs on fighter jets and stationed them on the border with Russia in NATO countries for full nuclear war,” Jones explained.

    He continued, explaining the West is the target of the globalists as the citizens are rebelling against the NWO agenda.

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  • PHOTOS: Olubadan Laid To Rest In Ibadan

    The remains of the late Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Lekan Balogun, has been buried at the Ali Iwo’s compound in Ibadan, Oyo State.

    Oba Balogun, who ascended the throne on March 11, 2022, died at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, a few hours after he was admitted for treatment.

    He was buried according to Islamic rite.

    A video circulating on Social media shows a town crier wearing a white attire conveying the message of the Babaloja (Head of Markets) of Oyo State, Yekeen Abass, that markets in Ibadan must be closed during the ceremony.

    According to the town crier who spoke in Yoruba said that “A message from the Babaloja, in honour of our king, has directed the closure of market from 2 pm.”

    Late Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Lekan Balogun laid to rest
    Late Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Lekan Balogun laid to rest
    Late Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Lekan Balogun laid to rest

    PHOTOS: Olubadan Laid To Rest In Ibadan is first published on The Whistler Newspaper

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  • Fact Check: Four years after shelter-in-place, COVID-19 misinformation persists

    From spring break parties to Mardi Gras, many people remember the last major “normal” thing they did before the novel coronavirus pandemic dawned, forcing governments worldwide to issue stay-at-home advisories and shutdowns.

    Even before the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the U.S., fears and uncertainties helped spur misinformation’s rapid spread. In March 2020, schools closed, employers sent staff to work from home and grocery stores called for social distancing to keep people safe. But little halted the flow of misleading claims that sent fact-checkers and public health officials into overdrive.

    Some people falsely asserted COVID-19’s symptoms were associated with 5G wireless technology. Faux cures and untested treatments populated social media and political discourse. Amid uncertainty about the virus’s origins, some even proclaimed COVID-19 didn’t exist at all. PolitiFact named downplay and denial about the virus its 2020 Lie of the Year. 

    Four years later, people’s lives are largely free of the extreme public health measures that restricted them early in the pandemic. But COVID-19 misinformation persists, although it’s now centered mostly on vaccines and vaccine-related conspiracy theories.

    PolitiFact has published more than 2,000 fact-checks related to COVID-19 vaccines alone.

    “From a misinformation researcher perspective, [there has been] shifting levels of trust,” said Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Early on in the pandemic, there was a lot of: ‘this isn’t real,’ fake cures, and then later on, we see more vaccine-focused mis- and disinformation and a more partisan type of disinformation and misinformation.”

    Here are some of the most persistent COVID-19 misinformation narratives we see today:

    A loss of trust in the vaccines

    COVID-19 vaccines were quickly developed, with U.S. patients receiving the first shots in December 2020, 11 months after the first domestic case was detected.

    Experts credit the speedy development with helping to save millions of lives and preventing hospitalizations. Researchers at the University of Southern California and Brown University calculated that vaccines saved 2.4 million lives in 141 countries from January 2021 to August 2021 alone. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows there were 574 U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19 the week of March 2, down from nearly 26,000 at the pandemic’s height in January 2021, as vaccines were just rolling out.

    But on social media and in some public officials’ remarks, misinformation about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and safety is common. U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. built his 2024 campaign on a movement that seeks to legitimize conspiracy theories about the vaccines. We made that our 2023 Lie of the Year.

    PolitiFact has seen claims that spike proteins from vaccines are replacing sperm in vaccinated males. (That’s False.) We’ve researched the assertion that vaccines can change your DNA. (That’s misleading and ignores evidence). Social media posts poked fun at Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce for encouraging people to get vaccinated, asserting that the vaccine actually shuts off recipients’ hearts. (No, it doesn’t.)  And some people pointed to an American Red Cross blood donation questionnaire as evidence that shots are unsafe. (We rated that False.)

    Experts say this misinformation has real-world effects.

    A Nov. 2023 survey by KFF found that only 57% of Americans “say they are very or somewhat confident” in COVID-19 vaccines. And those who distrust them are more likely to identify as politically conservative: Thirty-six percent of Republicans compared with 84% of Democrats say they are very or somewhat confident in the vaccine.

    Immunization rates for routine vaccines for other conditions have also taken a hit. Measles had been eradicated for more than 20 years in the U.S. but there have been recent outbreaks in states including Florida, Maryland and Ohio. Florida’s surgeon general has expressed skepticism about vaccines and rejected guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about how to contain potentially deadly disease spread.

    The vaccination rate among kindergarteners has declined from 95% in the 2019-20 school year to 93% in 2022-23, according to the CDC. Public health officials have set a 95% vaccination rate target to prevent and reduce the risk of disease outbreaks. The CDC also found exemptions had risen to 3%, the highest rate ever recorded in the U.S.

    Unsubstantiated claims that vaccines cause deaths other illness

    PolitiFact has seen repeated and unsubstantiated claims that COVID-19 vaccines have caused mass numbers of deaths.

    A recent widely shared post claimed 17 million people had died because of the vaccine, despite contrary evidence from multiple studies and institutions such as the World Health Organization and CDC that the vaccines are safe and help to prevent severe illness and death. 

    Another online post claimed the booster vaccine had eight strains of HIV and would kill 23% of the population. Vaccine manufacturers publish the ingredient lists; they do not include HIV. People living with HIV were among the people given priority access during early vaccine rollout to protect them from severe illness.

    We have also seen COVID-19 vaccines blamed for causing Alzheimer’s and cancer. Experts have found no evidence the vaccines cause either conditions.

    “​​You had this remarkable scientific or medical accomplishment contrasted with this remarkable rejection of that technology by a significant portion of the American public,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

    About 70% of Americans have completed a primary series of COVID-19 vaccination, more than three years after they became available, according to CDC figures. About 17% have gotten the most recent bivalent booster.

    False claims often pull from and misuse data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The database, run by the CDC and Food and Drug Administration, allows anybody to report reactions after any vaccine. The reports themselves are unverified, but the database is designed to help researchers find patterns for further investigation.

    A November 2023 survey published by Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found 63% of Americans think “it is safer to get the COVID-19 vaccine than the COVID-19 disease” — that was down from 75% in April 2021.

    Celebrity deaths falsely attributed to vaccines

    Betty White, Bob Saget, Matthew Perry, and DMX are just a few of the many celebrities whose deaths were falsely linked to the vaccine. The anti-vaccine film “Died Suddenly”  tried to give credence to false claims that the vaccine causes people to die shortly after receiving it.

    Dr. Céline Gounder, editor at large for public health at KFF Health News and an infectious disease specialist, said these claims proliferate because of two things —  cognitive bias and more insidious motivated reasoning. 

    “It’s like saying ‘I had an ice cream cone and then I died the next day, the ice cream must have killed me,” she said. And those with pre-existing beliefs about the vaccine seek to attach sudden deaths to the vaccine.

    Gounder experienced this  personally when her husband, the celebrated sports journalist Grant Wahl, died while covering the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Wahl died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm but anti-vax accounts falsely linked his death to the COVID-19 vaccine, forcing Gounder to publicly set the record straight.

    “It is very clear that this is about harming other people,” said Gounder, who was a guest at United Facts of America in 2023. “And in this case, trying to harm me and my family at a point where we were grieving my husband’s loss. What was important in that moment was to really stand up for my husband, his legacy, and to do what I know he would have wanted me to do, which is to speak the truth and to do so very publicly.”

    False claims the pandemic was planned or government-orchestrated

    We continue to see false claims that the pandemic was planned by government leaders and those in power.

    At any given moment, Microsoft Corp. co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, World Economic Forum Chair Klaus Schwab and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci are blamed for orchestrating pandemic-related threats.

    In February, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., falsely claimed Fauci, “brought” the virus to his state a  year before the pandemic.  There is no evidence of that. Gates, according to the narratives, is using dangerous vaccines to push a depopulation agenda. That’s False. And Schwab has not said he has an “agenda” to establish a totalitarian global regime using the coronavirus to depopulate the earth and reorganize society. That’s part of a conspiracy theory that’s come to be called “The Great Reset” that has been debunked many times.

    The United Nations’ World Health Organization is frequently painted as a global force for evil, too, with detractors saying it is using vaccination to control or harm people. But the WHO has not declared that a new pandemic is happening, as some have claimed. Its current pandemic preparedness treaty is in no way positioned to remove human rights protections or restrict freedoms, as one post said. And the organization has not announced plans to deploy troops to corral people and forcibly vaccinate them. The WHO is, however, working on a new treaty to help countries improve coordination in response to future pandemics.

     



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  • Transcript of Joe Biden’s Interview with Hur Reveals How the Date of Beau Biden’s Death Came Up

    The transcript of President Joe Biden’s interview with investigators looking into his handling of classified documents shows that special counsel Robert Hur did not ask him about Beau Biden’s death, as the president falsely claimed in February.

    “How in the hell dare he raise that,” Biden angrily said in response to Hur writing in his report on the investigation that Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

    “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business,” Biden said in a Feb. 8 White House press conference.

    According to the transcript of the Oct. 8, 2023, interview, Biden — not Hur’s team — brought up the date of his son’s death in 2015 from brain cancer when he was answering Hur’s question about where he stored papers related to his post-vice presidency work projects.

    The transcript also shows that Biden remembered the month and day that Beau died, but he appeared to need help remembering the year.

    Talk of Beau Biden’s Death

    On March 12, Hur testified before Congress, and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee published transcripts of the interviews investigators did with Biden last year, on Oct. 8 and Oct. 9. Lawmakers brought Hur before Congress to explain his decision not to recommend charges against Biden, and why he included details about the president’s memory in his report to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    Hur told the committee that investigators did not “identify evidence that rose to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Biden “willfully” retained classified documents. As we’ve written, Hur’s report said there was a lack of evidence that Biden stored classified documents at his Virginia rental house, that he knew there were boxes with classified records in his Delaware home’s garage, or that Biden was aware that his vice presidential notebooks containing some classified information were not his to keep. (See “Biden’s Claims About Special Counsel Report on Classified Documents Investigation.)

    Another part of his reasoning not to pursue charges, Hur said in his report, was that “Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

    As one example of Biden’s “poor memory,” Hur’s report said the president “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

    But when Biden took issue with that claim in his Feb. 8 remarks, he said that Hur’s team had asked about Beau’s death during the Oct. 8 interview. That’s not what happened.

    The transcript, on page 82, shows Hur asking Biden where he kept documents pertaining to projects he worked on after he was no longer vice president and living in Virginia.

    In response, Biden said, “I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?” After Hur said, “yes, sir,” Biden started talking about Beau’s death.

    “Remember, in this time frame, my son is either been deployed or is dying,” Biden said – although Beau had died in 2015.

    Biden then transitioned to talking about his decision not to run against Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Afterward, he returned to talking about Beau.

    Here’s how the exchange went, according to the transcript:

    Hur, Oct. 8, 2023: So during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot, or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?

    Biden: I don’t know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?

    Hur: Yes, sir.

    Biden: Remember, in this time frame, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was — and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president. I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t, at this point — even though I’m at Penn, I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though – what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th —

    Rachel Cotton, White House lawyer: 2015.

    Unidentified male speaker: 2015.

    Biden: Was it 2015 he had died?

    Unidentified male speaker: It was May of 2015.

    Biden: It was 2015.

    So, it was Biden who asked which month Beau died, and he correctly said May 30.

    But when two people, including a White House lawyer, added that it happened in 2015, Biden initially seemed uncertain before agreeing.

    Bottom line: Hur did not ask about Beau’s death, as the president wrongly claimed. But Biden also remembered more about when his son passed than Hur’s report may have suggested.

    Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

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  • Bullpen hit by another injury, lefty out for Opening Day

    SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — And then there were two.

    Consider 23-year-old Juan Sánchez and Amir Garrett, a seven-year veteran, the finalists for one of the last remaining spots in the Giants’ bullpen. The two non-roster pitchers are the last lefties standing in the competition to join Taylor Rogers in the Opening Day relief corps.

    One of their primary competitors, Ethan Small, won’t pitch again this spring.

    An MRI revealed that Small, 27, suffered a moderate strain in his right oblique, the team announced Friday. He will be shut down for the next two to three weeks and will be examined by Dr. Ken Akizuki, the team’s head physician, on Saturday.

    “Nothing’s a given, but it’s a big blow for him and certainly our depth,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It’s gonna be a while, unfortunately.”

    Small was the only left-handed reliever remaining in camp who was already on the 40-man roster. Acquired from the Brewers for cash considerations a week before pitchers and catchers reported, Small had gotten off to a strong start, touching 95 mph and striking out six batters over his first two appearances while allowing one run.

    In his last outing, Small was the biggest victim in Wednesday’s 19-11 slugfest loss to the Reds, surrendering a pair of home runs and six runs in total.

    “He said later on that maybe he was a little sore,” Melvin said. “We didn’t hear that before. But it certainly popped up last time out.”

    The other southpaw already on the 40-man, Erik Miller, was optioned to the minors earlier this week.

    However, Melvin said, that didn’t rule him out from making the major-league roster.

    Garrett, 31, has a 14.73 ERA in four appearances this spring, allowing a run on a walk and two hits preceding Small in his last outing.

    In the same game, Sánchez pitched a scoreless ninth inning, lowering his ERA to 1.50 in six Cactus League appearances, with eight strikeouts to no walks.

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  • Anacostia Community Museum Aims To Keep Black D.C. Art History Alive

    Image of a girl standing in front of “New Thing,” a 1960s D.C. Arts Center. (Photo courtesy of Anacostia Community Museum)

    By Omari Foote, Howard University News Service

    Anacostia Community Museum will debut its exhibit, “The Bold and Beautiful,” to celebrate Black D.C. artists and their educators this month. 

    “The more you dig into the history of Black artist educators in [D.C.], the more you realize that there really is a lineage, a tradition, across generations,” Samir Meghelli, curator at Anacostia Community Museum, said.

    Meghelli said the Anacostia Community Museum was founded as one of the first museums in the District to consistently feature Black art. 

    “We were founded in 1967 and at that time, we were one of the few institutions in the city that was really consistently exhibiting the work of local black artists and educators,” he said. 

    He said they want to continue that legacy with the “Bold and Beautiful” exhibit. 

    “The exhibition itself was inspired by the really rich but overlooked tradition of artists, black artists, educators in Washington, D.C,” said Meghelli, “You know, Washington is so often overlooked by New York or Chicago or Los Angeles, but there’s a really rich history of Artists and art educators here.”

    Meghelli explains that it was very important for this exhibit to specifically spotlight Black art educators in the city. 

    “So often, we may celebrate one or two artists, but rarely do we ask, ‘Who were their teachers? Who taught them? Trained them? Cultivated their skills and careers?”

    The exhibit will begin with a panel discussion with filmmaker Topper Carew and the founding deputy director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Kinshasha Holmin Conwill.

    The panel, entitled “The Mecca of Arts Education: Howard University’s History and Legacy in the Arts,” will discuss Howard University’s impact on D.C.’s art community. 

    Beyond the panel discussion, the exhibit will feature Howard University art professor Lois Mailou Jones. 

    Jones was a professor in the Howard art department for over 40 years, according to Moorland Spingarn Research Center. She was a painter in practice but had a background in design. 

    Howard graphic design professor Raven Featherstone, daughter of former Howard professor Starmanda Bullock, said that she grew up watching Jones and her mother teaching Black artists. 

    “They really pushed their students to be great, successful artists in their own right,” she said.

    Featherstone has been at Howard for over a decade and said she believes that D.C. did an excellent job investing in those professors as they tried to grow Howard’s art department. 

    Shemaya Bridgewater, a junior TV and Film major from Trinidad, said that taking classes in Howard University’s College of Fine Arts (COFA) was the first time she was taught to take art seriously. 

    She expressed that, growing up, art was fun to do but never something she thought of pursuing seriously.  

    “Being in COFA and being graded on creativity and graded on artistic techniques makes me feel validated in the fact that what I create is something to be taken seriously,” she said. 

    In addition to Jones, Howard graduates Elizabeth Catlett and James Porter will also be featured in the exhibit. 

    Outside of Howard”, the exhibit will feature educators at city high schools. 

    “Hopefully, people will walk away with a deeper understanding and a greater appreciation for the collective genius of the community that has called Washington home,” said Meghelli. 

    The exhibit will debut on March 23 and remain available until Mar. 2, 2025.

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  • Georgia judge scolds Willis in scathing Trump decision

    Georgia Judge Scott McAfee has provided a pathway for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) to move forward with criminally prosecuting former President Trump, but he also gave her a scolding reprimand over a romance with a top prosecutor.

    McAfee said Trump’s election interference case can proceed with Willis at the helm so long as her once-romantic partner, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, steps aside.

    But his 23-page decision went on to criticize the district attorney at multiple turns — both over the romance itself and her public comments — saying Willis created an appearance of a conflict.

    “Our highest courts consistently remind us that prosecutors are held to a unique and exacting professional standard in light of their public responsibility — and their power,” McAfee wrote. “Every newly minted prosecutor should be instilled with the notion that she seeks justice over convictions and that she may strike hard blows but never foul ones.”

    The district attorney’s office did not return a request for comment.

    All the parties involved ultimately acknowledged a romance existed, but Trump’s defense sparred with Willis and Wade over their insistence that it began only after they began working together. The judge said he couldn’t conclusively establish when the relationship started.

    Willis also claimed she split vacation expenses roughly evenly by reimbursing Wade with cash. With few avenues to verify or contradict the claim, McAfee said the defense hadn’t met their burden to disprove her testimony.

    But while the judge didn’t outright call anyone a liar, he did note “reasonable questions” that Willis and Wade weren’t truthful when they testified under penalty of perjury.

    “However, an odor of mendacity remains,” McAfee wrote. “The Court is not under an obligation to ferret out every instance of potential dishonesty from each witness or defendant ever presented in open court. Such an expectation would mean an end to the efficient disposition of criminal and civil proceedings.”

    “Yet reasonable questions about whether the District Attorney and her hand-selected lead SADA testified untruthfully about the timing of their relationship further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.”

    And even if Willis and Wade’s claims were all true, McAfee said it still created an appearance of a conflict.

    “Even if the romantic relationship began after SADA Wade’s initial contract in November 2021, the District Attorney chose to continue supervising and paying Wade while maintaining such a relationship,” McAfee wrote.

    “She further allowed the regular and loose exchange of money between them without any exact or verifiable measure of reconciliation,” he continued. “This lack of a confirmed financial split creates the possibility and appearance that the District Attorney benefited — albeit non-materially — from a contract whose award lay solely within her purview and policing.”

    McAfee’s ruling also went beyond the romance itself to take aim at public comments Willis has made about the controversy and the case against Trump’s 2020 election interference efforts in Georgia more broadly. 

    The judge criticized Willis’s “unorthodox decision” to give interviews to authors working on a book about her Trump prosecution, and he also slammed her speech at a January church service commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. 

    Before Willis’s office responded to the romance revelation in court papers, that speech marked her first public comments about the controversy. She implied race played a role in the criticism over her and Wade, who are both Black, saying that people had not criticized two other special prosecutors hired for the case, who are both white. 

    Prosecutors later claimed the comment wasn’t aimed at any defendant, but the speech nonetheless led Trump and others to officially sign on to the disqualification push.

    “The effect of this speech was to cast racial aspersions at an indicted Defendant’s decision to file this pretrial motion,” McAfee ruled.

    The judge, however, did caution that the comments did not cross the line to the point where Willis must be disqualified or Trump is being denied a fair trial.

    “But it was still legally improper. Providing this type of public comment creates dangerous waters for the District Attorney to wade further into,” the judge wrote.

    “The time may well have arrived for an order preventing the State from mentioning the case in any public forum to prevent prejudicial pretrial publicity, but that is not the motion presently before the Court,” McAfee noted.

    Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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  • Indian Illegals Caught Riding Freight Train Into US From Canada


    Female illegal injured jumping off train receives extensive medical treatment in New York

    A group of illegal aliens from India were apprehended after they entered the U.S. by riding a freight train across the northern border, according to authorities.

    The incident unfolded on Tuesday in Buffalo, New York.

    U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents working at Buffalo Station observed people jumping off a moving train on the International Railroad Bridge.

    USBP agents arrived quickly and encountered a woman who had been injured during the disembarkation and was abandoned by three men who fled on foot.

    The men were quickly tracked down and taken into custody while the woman received medical care at the scene before being taken to a local hospital by ambulance.

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    “The three men were taken to the Buffalo Station and processed. During processing, Border Patrol agents were able to identify that the woman and two men were from India and the third man was from the Dominican Republic,” USBP explained in a statement.

    All four people were determined to be in the U.S. illegally and the three men are now awaiting deportation hearings.

    The woman remained at a local medical facility for further treatment, according to the latest available updates.

    InfoWars frequently reports on the historic surge of illegal entries along the U.S. northern frontier, a relatively recent development which is often overshadowed by the ongoing invasion at the southern border.

    Hidden Camera Inside Boeing Plant Reveals Horrifying Truth About Air Travel Safety

    Dan Lyman on X | Gab



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  • High Cost Of Goods: How Market ‘Cartels’ Manipulate Prices — FCCPC

    Market-women

    The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has described the astronomical increase in the price of sachet water as unacceptable.

    Acting Executive Vice-Chairman of FCCPC, Dr Adamu Abdullahi, stated this at an event to commemorate the 2024 World Consumer Rights Day in Abuja on Friday.

    The theme of this year’s celebration is: “Fair and Responsible Al for Consumers.’’

    According to Abdullahi, the astronomical increase in the price of sachet water by various associations is unacceptable and unfair to the consumers.

    He said that there was no reason whatsoever for the increase in the price of sachet water because most of the producers already had their machines.

    “Yes, power, fuel, price of nylon had increased, but that cannot explain the cause for the astronomical rise in price.

    “What we have discovered is that most products now have associations, even the sachet water producers.

    “When you have your eggs that you brought from your farm to sell at Wuse market, the association of egg sellers will tell you that you have to sell to them at cheaper rates, while they resell to consumers at higher prices.

    “This has now resulted in emergence of `cartels’ and cartels, anywhere in the world, are not acceptable.

    “Our Act is against price fixing and it is not acceptable to us. We will find out these cartels and do something about their activities.

    “The Consumers International joined the efforts that gave us the inkling of how prices have rolled in Nigeria in the last three months and it is so surprising and unacceptable.

    “It is simply the issue of cartel and we have to break in, find out what is going on and dissolve such cartels. But, the consumers are the ones who will lodge the complaint to us before we go and find out,” he said.

    The acting executive vice-chairman said although the commission was not a price control agency, it was deeply committed to addressing the rapid rise in food prices which was affecting consumers.

    “The surge in food prices can be attributed to various factors, including market cartels, price fixing, hoarding and gouging or lack of transparency in pricing.

    “FCCPC is actively engaged in combating these challenges to ensure fair pricing and protect consumers’ interests,” he said.

    On consumers’ extortion and deceptive pricing that led to the sealing of the headquarters of a popular supermarket in Abuja recently by the commission, he said that the supermarket had complied with 90 per cent of their guidelines.

    Abdullahi assured that the commission would continue to monitor supermarkets to ensure effective consumer protection.

    High Cost Of Goods: How Market ‘Cartels’ Manipulate Prices — FCCPC is first published on The Whistler Newspaper

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  • Fact Check: A California loan program for first time homebuyers does not apply only to “illegals”

    A new bill would not make a 2023 California program that helps first-time homebuyers with down payments available only to immigrants in the country illegally, as an Instagram post claims. 

    “I think it’s kind of cool that California is working on giving first-time home buyers interest free and payment free loans for their home”, a man says in a March 5 video. He then says: “A-ha! Psyche motherf—–s, it’s only for illegals.” 

    He reads from an article shown on screen that’s from BNN News, a website known to spread misinformation and linked to hundreds of X news accounts that were suspended in 2022 for violating spam policies. The BNN News article says California Assembly Bill 1840 would give immigrants in the country illegally interest free loans.

    The Instagram poster also says that people who live in California legally don’t get this help: “They are giving it to them instead of Californians.” 

    This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    The Instagram video misrepresents the proposed legislation about eligibility requirements for California’s “Dream for All” program, which has been in place for a year. The program gives first-time homebuyers interest-free loans for 20% of down payment or closing costs.

    The proposed legislation would not give the loans exclusively to immigrants in the country illegally. Californians who meet certain income limits also are eligible for the program.

    Assembly Bill 1840, introduced in January, would codify into law that “an applicant under the program shall not be disqualified solely based on the applicant’s immigration status.” 

    Eric Johnson, a California Housing Finance Agency spokesperson, said people who have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, also called DACA, already are eligible to apply for “Dream for All” loans. DACA protects people who arrived in the U.S. illegally when they were children from deportation and allows them to apply for work permits. 

    Jacob Moss, the legislative director for Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, who introduced Assembly Bill 1840, said the legislation is necessary because federal law says a state must enact a law so that the immigrants in the country illegally can receive state public benefits. Otherwise federal regulations will not allow lenders to give them loans. Moss said the bill would apply only to immigrants in the country illegally who have Social Security numbers or Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers — which can include DACA recipients. 

    So Assembly Bill 1840 would make it official that a group of people that already is eligible to receive the loans under the program’s rules also would be eligible under state and federal law. 

    “It’s a complicated issue area, so we’re trying to bring some clarification to it,” Moss said.

    The “Dream for All” loan is repaid if or when the homeowners sell their home. Although there is no interest charged on the loan, the homebuyers program participants have to pay back 20% of any appreciation on a home’s value, according to information on California Housing Finance Agency’s website. 

    Existing loan eligibility for the loans is for first-time home buyers who do not exceed specified income limits that vary by county. The loans are given to applicants who are chosen randomly from a lottery. The new bill does not change how the loans are distributed. 

    Assembly Bill 1840 has been referred to the Committee on Housing and Community Development to be reviewed. 

    Our ruling

    An Instagram video says that only immigrants in the country illegally are eligible for an interest-free California housing loan program.

    Proposed California legislation would codify into law that certain immigrants in the country illegally are eligible for the state’s “Dream For All” loan program. 

    Immigrants with DACA status are already eligible to apply for the program. But federal law says a state must enact a law so that the immigrants in the country illegally can receive state public benefits. Otherwise federal regulations will not allow lenders to give them loans.

    The proposed legislation would not give the loans exclusively to immigrants in the country illegally. Californians who meet certain income limits also are eligible for the program.

    We rate the claim False.



    Source