(Originally published by Knowable Magazine) Walk down the cold-remedy aisle of almost any pharmacy and you’ll see a shelf full of zinc supplements. Clearly‚ people must be worried that they’re not getting enough zinc—a nutrient often touted for its ability to quash the common cold and other respiratory illnesses. But do many of us really […] The post How Zinc Helps You Fight Off Infections‚ Including Colds appeared first on Good News Network.

Marvel. Disney. Buds. Can you just pick a date? What is the point of this thing where you announce a release date for a series‚ then—a few weeks before its release—change it by one day? Is it anything other than a gimmick to get us to cover the show again? If you’re gonna continue with this tiresome gimmick‚ could you at least provide a decent new teaser‚ and not just one that recuts the footage from the previous teaser and adds a voiceover telling us about the new release date? Echo now premieres January 9th‚ for reasons‚ I guess. One thing hasn’t changed: As has been the plan since Echo was originally set for a Thanksgiving release‚ all five episodes will arrive at once. This new teaser makes a big thing about how you need to set your Disney+ profile to TV-MA in order to stream the series‚ because it is super violent. That—not Echo (Alaqua Cox) herself‚ not the steps forward in terms of Native American and Deaf representation (in front of and behind the camera)‚ not the story‚ not the characters—seems to be the primary selling point here‚ which is sure a choice. Everyone involved in making this show seems genuine and talented‚ which makes it all the more frustrating that it’s presented this way. Executive producer and director Sydney Freeland was a writer and director on Reservation Dogs. The cast also includes an incredible lineup of actors: Zahn McClarnon (Dark Winds‚ Westworld)‚ Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves)‚ Tantoo Cardinal (Killers of the Flower Moon)‚ and K. Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs‚ American Gods). And‚ of course‚ Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk. You can watch Echo on Disney+ and Hulu on January 9th. Unless they move it again.

If you’re intent on getting into the prequel game‚ handing your story off to Paul King seems like a sure thing. The man has charmed audiences everywhere with his Paddington films‚ and is poised to litter the world with stories that are sweet‚ meaningful‚ and thankfully incredibly silly. There’s just one problem. At no point should you apply that sensibility to the character of Willy Wonka. As a film‚ Wonka is trying to have it several ways: It wants to be a classic musical. It want to be a prequel. It wants to be a Paul King film. It wants to be a heartwarming tale of those in need for once triumphing over avarice. It probably wants to start a franchise‚ too. It manages none of these successfully because the movie’s focus and worldbuilding are all over the place‚ and that’s only the beginning of its problems. Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) has traveled the world for seven years after the death of his mother‚ and has finally come to the city where the Galeries Gourmet—the epicenter of the world’s greatest chocolate companies—sell sweets to the masses. Willy means to do the same but Msrs. Slugworth (Paterson Joseph)‚ Fickelgruber (Matthew Baynton)‚ and Prodnose (Matt Lucas) run a Chocolate Cartel that involves both the police and the clergy to run any hopefuls out of town. Willy winds up staying the night at Mrs. Scrubitt’s (Olivia Colman)‚ but he misses the fine print of his stay‚ and winds up an indentured laundry servant along with the orphan Noodle (Calah Lane)‚ Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter)‚ Piper Benz (Natasha Rothwell)‚ Larry Chucklesworth (Rich Fulcher)‚ and Lottie Bell (Rakhee Thakrar). But Willy isn’t easily daunted and quickly comes up with a plan to sneak out and sell his chocolate in the hopes of buying everyone’s freedom. The indentured servitude plot line is meant to avoid an icky little fact about the Wonka name: The character is‚ when all is said and done‚ a very good businessman. But making a movie where one guy wins at chocolate-selling over all the other guys who are good at chocolate-selling does not a beloved protagonist make. In any case‚ Wonka is aiming to be about something deeper than succeeding at business without really trying—it wants to be about family. Noodle doesn’t have one and Willy is hoping that if he succeeds in sharing chocolate with the world‚ he’ll see his dearly departed mother again (because she promised she’d be with him when he achieved that goal‚ you see). The other thing that Willy Wonka is—being a truly unique inventor—is completely scrapped in this tale‚ by the way. This version of Wonka wanted to be a magician before he decided to become a chocolatier‚ and so his ability to make fantastic chocolate is no longer the purview of his actual imagination. (You know‚ that famous song from the 1971 Gene Wilder film? The core of the ethos‚ you might say?) Rather‚ Wonka’s delights are merely conveyed by discovery and magic. Not magician-magic mind you‚ though he does do a few sleight-of-hand tricks in the film‚ but actual magic of some sort that is never adequately explained. For example‚ Wonka seems to have an endless supply of the ingredients he needs to make his chocolates… except for one point when he doesn’t‚ necessitating a trip to the zoo for giraffe milk. The rest of the time‚ he can pull whatever he wants out of thin air‚ in any amount or volume. It pulls the stakes right out of the story because there’s no work involved in anything Wonka creates—he only has to snap his fingers and make things so. The effect turns the character into an entirely different beloved children’s hero. That is to say‚ Wonka’s entire shtick throughout the film is stolen wholesale from Mary Poppins: He has a bottomless hat full of things; his antics cause people to fly and his presence makes the world markedly better and more magical; he’s trying to help a little girl find her place in the world. It’s a shame that King and his cowriter Simon Farnaby either didn’t notice what they were cribbing‚ or didn’t make more of an effort on that front‚ because one thing that the movie should have stolen from Poppins was the vantage point—if this was the story they meant to tell‚ it should have been focused entirely on Noodle from the start. There are moments where the film comes together for a spell‚ and that is entirely the work of Neil Hannon’s musical numbers. The songs are largely cute‚ snappy‚ and well-arranged‚ some of them even harkening back to movie musicals of old. Numbers “Scrub Scrub” and the villainous “Sweet Tooth” give the film a few brief interludes of pure fun. The one place where the film seems to become the movie it meant to be is during a duet between Wonka and Noodle at the zoo‚ where she sings about not wanting to believe things might get better‚ while he nonsense rhymes her name in song to cheer her up. It’s aggravating that the film doesn’t focus on Calah Lane nearly enough when she is the person who elevates the whole exercise into something far more poignant‚ and sometimes even manages to drag her costar along with her. Which brings us to the most awkward problem Wonka has: These days‚ movies often need a big name attached to get made at all‚ and no one is bigger at the moment than Timothée Chalamet. And painful as it is to say‚ he doesn’t have the chops required for the character. He could have tried something entirely different‚ put his own unique stamp on the role‚ but there’s simply not enough oddness in the man to make for a decent meal. Every moment where Wonka gets kooky you can see him acting‚ and it’s enough to throw you out of the action entirely. The only moments when he seems comfortable in the character is when he’s acting opposite Lane‚ making the choice not to center her character even more of an insult. But even then—he’s not Willy Wonka. Sheer bad taste brings the film even lower at several points. There is a fat joke that runs the entire length of the film‚ where Keegan-Michael Key’s chief of police grows in size as his chocolate habit is exploited by the Chocolate Cartel for comedic effect. The movie comes by the plot line honestly‚ of course; author Roald Dahl was known for rampant fatphobia in his books‚ among other awful things. But the fact that Wonka felt the need to center such a gag is just as painful as listening to children and their parents cackling about it in the theater. And‚ of course‚ this throws light on another unfortunate choice in the storytelling; Chocolate-eating is largely framed as an addiction throughout the film. The purveyors are a “cartel‚” they’ve ensnared the chief of police and the clergy by bribing them with chocolate‚ and there’s a vault of chocolate beneath the city that the cartel keep sequestered as a means of paying off anyone who tries to prevent their dealings. The movie doesn’t seem to realize that this choice actively makes chocolate into a bad thing. (Which could have been interesting if they were engaging with that! They’re not.) When Willy gives Noodle her first taste of chocolate‚ she tells him that she wishes he hadn’t because now she’ll be sad for all the days she doesn’t have it. The narrative does have a great big button to wrap up this issue: chocolate isn’t about the confection itself‚ but about our bonds with others. Which feels entirely trite as an answer to the rampant abuse and dependence we’ve seen throughout the film‚ but sure. And this is before really getting into the prequel angle‚ which the film is adamant about pressing despite the fact that it doesn’t make one lick of sense. We seem to have entered into an era where folks can “prequelize” a story with a few key ties just for the purpose of playing on nostalgia‚ and nothing else. There’s no part of this film that suggests it could lead into Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; the setting is wrong‚ the destruction of Wonka’s competition makes idea theft a non-issue‚ the Oompa-Loompa element has been reimagined as a species of Uber-Brit for no discernible reason. But there are sound cues aplenty and the flagrant use of “Pure Imagination”; there’s Wonka’s inability to read the fine print as a reason behind his own tricky contract; there’s a deadly chocolate water system; there’s also an absolutely enraging origin for the Golden Tickets which manages to suggest that the entire reason that Wonka will later send out those tickets is to find more people to share with. Because that’s definitely the story we all remember. Families seem to be enjoying Wonka‚ and more’s the pity. I suppose this is what the future of family films will look like for the time being. But it seems to me that we should all be more wary of a future where we’ve promised children that nothing will ever be worse than some ugly fine print‚ fixed by a man with a magic top hat. The world is infinitely more strange than all that… as Willy Wonka well knows.

While you may already know how to make a car in LEGO Fortnite‚ do you know how to steer one? You can build some pretty interested creations in this survival mode‚ such as workable vehicles. But vehicles require steering wheels to properly get around‚ so how can this work in LEGO Fortnite? We’ll answer this question below. LEGO Fortnite: How to steer a vehicle Unfortunately‚ for the time being‚ there is no way to easily steer your car and other vehicles in this survival mode. Despite this‚ players online have been figuring out creative ways to steer their cars. Although this is a complex creation‚ the YouTuber Perfect Score managed to create a car that could turn left and right. Screenshot: Perfect Score via YouTube Without any steering wheel‚ you essentially need a way to place two Activation Switches and Thrusters on the sides of your vehicle. This way‚ you can make it turn to the left or right. It’s not perfect‚ but for now it work...

Vampire Survivors is famous for leaving players to figure things out by themselves. One such mystery is the Alert phases interrupting players on the new Polus Replica map. If you’re struggling‚ let me answer: What do the Red Alerts do in Vampire Survivors: Emergency Meeting DLC? Related: 10 games like Vampire Survivors if you want to have pure‚ chaotic fun What are the Red Alerts tasks in the Emergency Meeting DLC? Red Alerts periodically sound on the Polus Replica map. These alerts are accompanied by a banner that reels across the bottom of the screen and‚ most importantly‚ a red arrow. The red arrow has a timer on it and marks a location. If you reach the area before the time limit expires‚ you earn a Gold Rare treasure chest for your efforts. Gold Rare chests are incredibly powerful in Vampire Survivors‚ giving five rewards instead of just one. This tremendous boost in power will be impactful no matter what you’re doing. With this in...

Time to think about strategy over raw power. Here is everything you need to know about Tactical Equipment in CoD Mobile. CoD Mobile: What is Tactical Equipment One of the many tools that the game allows you to use is an assortment of Tactical Equipment – or just Tacticals in short – that will be able to balance the game or even turn the tides in your favor. The question is‚ what is Tactical Equipment? Contrary to Lethal Equipment which will focus its functionality on dealing as much damage as possible with the intention of causing death‚ Tactical Equipment relies on distraction‚ stunning‚ and other means to incapacitate the target so that they can be disposed of easily. For example‚ a Flashbang Grenade will blind a target‚ making it much easier to evade any incoming fire and shoot straight at it. That is different from a Frag Grenade that‚ once it explodes‚ will shoot small fragments of really sharp material that will penetrate the tar...

HoYoVerse has announced two new characters in Genshin Impact: Xianyun and Gaming. Both of these characters come from Liyue and are coming to Genshin Impact soon. When does Xianyun Banner release in Genshin Impact? #GenshinImpact "A new resident in the city‚ you say? Oh‚ it's Cloud— I mean‚ #Xianyun. Don't be fooled by her usual manner… She's someone you can truly rely on when the going gets tough. If you ever find yourself in trouble‚ just tell her — I'm sure she'd be willing to help."… pic.twitter.com/ZBLl5Zpr5v— Genshin Impact (@GenshinImpact) December 18‚ 2023 The Banner for Xianyun is projected to be live during 4.4 which would make the release date January 31‚ 2024. There hasn’t been an official announcement as to when we’ll get Xianyun‚ but based on how characters were teased in the past‚ we’ll get Xianyun either on January 31‚ 2024‚ or February 21‚ 2024. Related: 10 best o...

So far‚ almost all the critical focus on how university leaders have manifestly failed to address rampant antisemitism on their campuses has been aimed at selective‚ private universities. It was the presidents of Harvard University‚ the University of Pennsylvania‚ and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology‚ for example‚ who testified Dec. 5 to Congress on the issue and now face the brunt of the backlash. But many state universities are just as culpable. The ideology undergirding the obsession with diversity‚ equity‚ and inclusion‚ known as DEI‚ is also fueling Jew hatred at their institutions. It is also out of control at public universities‚ where there are more obvious policy levers to rein in antisemitism. Unlike schools in the Ivy League or colleges such as MIT‚ which are private‚ state schools are public institutions predominantly supported by tax dollars‚ which makes them entirely accountable to voters and‚ thus‚ to governors‚ state legislatures‚ and boards of trustees. Harvard‚ Yale‚ and other private institutions still get plenty of taxpayer support (in the billions)‚ but the subsidy is more indirect‚ and they are not answerable to voters for their policies. One public university that warrants critical attention is George Mason University. Its main campus in Fairfax‚ Virginia‚ may be a few hundred miles south of the Ivy cluster‚ but it nonetheless has severe problems with antisemitism on campus and a president as attached to DEI ideology as Harvard’s Claudine Gay or Penn’s Liz Magill. And although Gay has come under heavy criticism after a horrendous hearing performance and evidence of plagiarism‚ and Magill was outright fired‚ George Mason President Gregory Washington retains his job and has escaped scrutiny. Washington became president in July 2020 amid the nationwide Black Lives Matter riots and has a record no better than Gay or Magill. Among the first actions Washington took as president were to create an “anti-racism taskforce‚” to add to curriculum statements on how racism would be opposed in each subject‚ and to order the building of a memorial to the slaves that the university’s namesake owned two centuries earlier. Research published by the two of us this year showed that George Mason University under Washington has accumulated the most bloated DEI bureaucracy in the Old Dominion. Washington groused publicly about our numbers after the paper was published. Washington promised to demonstrate how we were wrong. But all that a review he called has done is change definitions around. For example‚ the chief of staff of a DEI officer now is not identified as working on DEI. Presto—linguistic gymnastics made the DEI bloat disappear. In other words‚ Washington has doubled down on the woke DEI efforts that people now understand induced students across the country to be so ethically challenged that they supported Hamas over their Jewish victims following the terrorist group’s mass killing and rapes Oct. 7 in Israel. Small wonder that Mason’s campus was one of the earliest and largest scenes of pro-terrorist demonstrations by such radical groups as Students for Justice in Palestine. Masked pro-Hamas student protesters were allowed into a Nov. 30 meeting of the Board of Visitors‚ at which they accused the board members of complicity in the “genocidal murder” of Palestinians and that ended with the genocidal “from the river to the sea” slogan. Washington sat there impassively. When a group of law school professors signed a letter of protest demanding an explanation‚ Washington just ignored them . The anti-Israel protesters have also been marching around Mason’s campus chanting genocidal slogans while wearing keffiyehs to cover their faces‚ despite a Virginia statute prohibiting the use of face coverings in public to conceal one’s identity. Washington has refused to strictly enforce that prohibition despite the fact that the law was originally adopted to crack down on the KKK and despite Virginia’s attorney general’s sending the university president a letter specifically instructing him to enforce the law. Washington’s failure to have George Mason police arrest those violating this law demonstrates that he has more concern for those harassing Jews on campus than he does for the Jews being abused. Like Gay‚ Washington’s failure as a university president is not confined to his DEI obsession and callous indifference to the well-being of Jews on campus. Washington has been derelict on other things that matter. Last week‚ the American Bar Association put Mason’s prestigious Scalia Law School on probation for lacking “sufficient current and anticipated financial resources” to carry out its education mission. That probation occurred because Washington proposed across-the-board budget cuts. While he rescinded the cuts for the Scalia Law School‚ publicly declaring that its funds could be in jeopardy led the ABA to believe that the school’s financial situation was precarious. Given that the law school is one of the few pockets at Mason‚ or in academia in general‚ that is welcoming to conservatives‚ it is possible that Washington didn’t mind getting it into hot water with the ABA. Decisive university leaders concentrate budget cuts on areas of the university that are both educationally unsound and significant money losers‚ such as DEI bureaucracies and gender and ethnic studies departments. But Washington is not that kind of leader and would never place his beloved DEI in jeopardy. The next round of congressional hearings on higher ed’s Jew-hatred problem should bring in the bad-acting leaders of public universities to answer questions. We expect that if they bring in George Mason’s Washington‚ he is unlikely to fare better than Magill or Gay. This commentary originally was published by the Washington Examiner Have an opinion about this article? To sound off‚ please email letters@DailySignal.com‚ and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. The post Not Just Ivy League: Public Universities Like GMU Also Must Answer for Moral Rot appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Accounts claiming to represent Chinese drug manufacturers are using provocative images of women to advertise narcotics and fentanyl precursors on U.S. social media‚ according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of hundreds of English and Chinese-language social media posts. The Daily Caller News Foundation identified several dozen LinkedIn accounts claiming to be saleswomen representing China-based manufacturers primarily located near Beijing or Wuhan. The accounts often featured images of women and teenage girls in advertisements for a wide variety of controlled substances including 4-piperidone‚ which is used to manufacture fentanyl. Many of the posts included suggestive language like “hot sale” to advertise the chemicals‚ as well as contact information on encrypted messaging apps and Chinese phone numbers. The companies these accounts claimed to represent included six of the Chinese chemical manufacturers indicted by the Department of Justice in June and October for crimes related to trafficking fentanyl precursors and other substances. It’s not clear if the LinkedIn accounts identified by the Daily Caller News Foundation have any official relationship with the Chinese drug manufacturers they claim to represent. Neither the accounts nor the Chinese manufacturers responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. After the Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to LinkedIn for comment‚ the social media platform immediately removed the accounts that had been flagged. “Whenever we see posts‚ ads or accounts that don’t meet our policies‚ we remove them‚ as we did in this case‚” a LinkedIn spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation by email. ‘Foreign Attack’ Approximately 50 times more potent than heroin‚ fentanyl is a synthetic opioid‚ which is a drug class that was involved in almost 70% of the approximately 110‚000 U.S. overdose deaths in 2022‚ according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. China is the “primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail” as well as the “main source for all fentanyl-related substances” trafficked into the U.S.‚ according to the DEA. “Chinese drug traffickers are successfully taking advantage of deliberate American policy weakness on both fronts [physical and virtual] with regard to fentanyl precursors and the products they become in the U.S.‚” Steve Yates‚ America First Policy Institute senior fellow and China Policy Initiative chair‚ told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It is the single most significant foreign attack on the American family in history‚ with my family standing among the hundreds of thousands of other families who have suffered unspeakable injury and loss as a direct result.” “I lost my daughter in October after she ingested a fentanyl-laced street version of Xanax‚” Yates told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Many of the LinkedIn advertisements featured numeric identifiers for the chemicals on offer‚ known as Chemical Abstracts Service registration numbers. For instance‚ the National Institutes of Health identifies “23076-35-9” as the CAS number for xylazine hydrochloride‚ whose active ingredient‚ xylazine‚ is illicitly used to cut fentanyl‚ according to the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. Xylazine also happened to be among the most frequently advertised products by the LinkedIn accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. In one such instance‚ a LinkedIn account for a saleswoman claiming to represent Hebei Ningnan Trade Co.‚ Ltd. advertised 1019.5 grams of xylazine hydrochloride in an April 2023 post featuring an image of a bag of white powder on a scale. “New date with strong effect‚” the caption read. In April 2023‚ a LinkedIn account purportedly representing Henan Ningnan Trade Co. Ltd. advertised xylazine hydrochloride‚ a veterinary tranquilizer that is used to cut fentanyl. pic.twitter.com/6mQu1UhDL3— Philip Lenczycki ?? (@LenczyckiPhilip) December 14‚ 2023 In April 2023‚ the Biden administration designated fentanyl combined with xylazine as an emerging threat to the U.S. “because xylazine combined with fentanyl is being sold illicitly and is associated with significant and rapidly worsening negative health consequences‚ including fatal overdoses and severe morbidity.” “Xylazine and fentanyl drug mixtures place users at a higher risk of suffering a fatal drug poisoning‚” according to a 2022 DEA report. “Because xylazine is not an opioid‚ naloxone (Narcan) does not reverse its effects.” “People who inject drug mixtures containing xylazine also can develop severe wounds‚ including necrosis—the rotting of human tissue—that may lead to amputation‚” the DEA report stated. The LinkedIn accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation also advertised a range of controlled substances‚ including those from the Schedule I category—such as the synthetic opioid protonitazene and the synthetic cathinone eutylone. Schedule I substances have a “high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment‚” according to the DEA. In March 2023‚ a LinkedIn account for a saleswoman claiming to represent Henan Ruijiu Biotechnology Co.‚ Ltd. advertised “eutylone” in a post featuring substances of several colors. In March 2023‚ a LinkedIn account purportedly representing Henan Ruijiu Biotechnology Co. Ltd. advertised the synthetic cathinone‚ eutylone‚ which is a Schedule I substance. pic.twitter.com/bSCgccfKl5— Philip Lenczycki ?? (@LenczyckiPhilip) December 14‚ 2023 In 2020‚ eutylone was involved in at least 343 overdose deaths in the U.S.‚ many of which co-involved “illicitly manufactured fentanyls‚” cocaine‚ or methamphetamines‚ according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition to Schedule I substances‚ the LinkedIn accounts that the Daily Caller News Foundation reviewed also advertised various chemicals used to manufacture controlled substances‚ like PMK. In April 2023‚ a LinkedIn account for a saleswoman claiming to represent Wuhan Xiju Biotechnology Co.‚ Ltd. posted a video advertisement for a brown liquid that the clip identified as “PMK oil‚” which is “important to the manufacture of the Schedule I controlled substance 3‚4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and other ‘ecstasy’-type substances‚” according to the Federal Register. An image of a teenage girl sticking out her tongue and the company logo of Wuhan Xiju Biotechnology were superimposed over the video advertisement‚ which was set to electronic dance music. In April 2023‚ a LinkedIn account purportedly representing Wuhan Xiju Biotechnology Co. Ltd. advertised the List I chemical‚ PMK‚ which is used to manufacture the Schedule I controlled substance MDMA and other drugs‚ according to the Federal Register. pic.twitter.com/pfjH8mbckP— Philip Lenczycki ?? (@LenczyckiPhilip) December 14‚ 2023 The Daily Caller News Foundation also identified accounts purportedly representing several of the Chinese chemical manufacturers on various other U.S. social media platforms. For example‚ Facebook accounts purportedly representing Wuhan Mulei New Material Technology Co.‚ Ltd. and Wuhan Kairunte New Material Co.‚ Ltd. advertised xylazine and other substances. Likewise‚ a YouTube account purportedly representing Hubei Amarvel Biotech Co.‚ Ltd. advertised controlled substances like PMK. One ad stated that the company offered “customized packages” for its products‚ including dog food bags‚ tubs of nuts‚ and other “creative designs.” A YouTube account purportedly representing Hubei Amarvel Biotechnology Co. Ltd. advertised the List I chemical PMK &; other substances in a clip touting the company's "customized packages" for its shipments that included "creative designs" like dog food bags. pic.twitter.com/Mup58IMDLV— Philip Lenczycki ?? (@LenczyckiPhilip) December 14‚ 2023 A Meta spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation by email that the social media platform had reviewed the accounts that the Daily Caller News Foundation had flagged and “removed them for violating our policies.” A YouTube spokesperson also told the Daily Caller News Foundation by email that they’d “terminated” the accounts the Daily Caller News Foundation had flagged‚ citing various platform policy violations‚ including “marketing the sale of regulated pharmaceuticals without a prescription.” “Channels that repeatedly violate our policies are subject to termination‚ which is what happened in this case‚” the YouTube spokesperson said. ‘A Weapon of Mass Destruction’ In November 2023‚ President Joe Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco‚ during which the White House announced “the resumption of bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics‚ with a focus on reducing the flow of precursor chemicals fueling illicit fentanyl and synthetic drug trafficking.” “The [People’s Republic of China] is now taking law enforcement action against illicit precursor suppliers‚ has issued a notice to industry warning Chinese companies against illicit trade in precursor chemicals and pill presses equipment and has committed to restart key law enforcement cooperation‚” the White House stated at the time. Fentanyl and its precursors that originate in China follow a number of routes to enter the U.S.‚ according to a 2020 DEA report. The substances are sometimes shipped from China-based manufacturers through mail services to Canada or Mexico‚ whereupon they’re processed and frequently mixed with heroin‚ before entering the U.S. drug market‚ the 2020 DEA report states. Other times‚ Chinese fentanyl and its precursors are simply sent by mail directly to the U.S. Mexican drug cartels also take advantage of lax U.S. border security by using migrant volunteers “to smuggle drugs to reduce their debt from the tax required to move through their territory‚” according to a 2023 America First Policy Institute research report. Many clandestine laboratories in the U.S. are closely tied to Mexican drug cartels‚ Ammon Blair‚ Texas Public Policy Foundation senior fellow and former Border Patrol agent‚ told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There are some organizations in the U.S. that are capable of synthesizing fentanyl and opioids independently of the Mexican cartels‚ but they may be limited by regional market conditions and law enforcement efforts‚” Blair said. “However‚ the exact number and size of such organizations are not clear.” In 2022‚ law enforcement “reportedly found chemicals or other items‚ indicating the presence of either clandestine drug laboratories or dumpsites” at over 130 locations in the U.S.‚ according to a national clandestine laboratory registry maintained by the DEA. Yates told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the U.S. government must secure our “physical and cyber borders‚” disrupt the illicit chemical supply chains‚ and launch “comprehensive political and economic warfare against all responsible governments and entities.” “We have done no less against the threat of terrorism‚” Yates said. “This is a weapon of mass destruction detonated on American families.” DOJ and DEA did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation Have an opinion about this article? To sound off‚ please email letters@DailySignal.com‚ and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. The post Chinese Drug Dealers Use Risqué Ads to Sell Narcotics‚ Fentanyl Ingredients on US Social Media appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Mullein: The World’s Most Useful Weed