Photo: Alamy The General Services Administration (GSA) has exposed billions of dollars in possible fraud linked to federal contractors, according to an exclusive report. “Anyone who lies their way into… The post GSA exposes billions of dollars in possible fraud linked to fed contracting: report first appeared on Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN).

If you carry a balance on a credit card, you already know the math is rigged against you. The average card rate is now above 21%. Meanwhile, the bank holding your savings is probably paying you less than 1%. They profit from the gap. You pay for it — every single month, right off the top of a fixed income. Here’s what most people over 55 were never told, because it’s not in the bank’s interest to tell you: You’re allowed to move your balance to a different card — one that charges 0% interest on it for an introductory period, often 15 to 21 months.  It’s called a balance transfer, and it’s not a loophole or a gimmick. It’s a standard feature that major card issuers offer to attract new customers with good credit. The banks compete for you. Most people simply never make them do it. What “0% intro APR” actually means, in plain English  You apply for a card that offers a 0% introductory rate on balance transfers. Once approved, you move your existing balance onto the new card (usually for a one-time fee of 3–5% of the amount moved). For the length of the intro period — the best offers currently run into 2027 and beyond — every dollar you pay goes to the balance itself. Not to interest. Here’s what that’s worth in real dollars  The average cardholder over 55 who carries a balance owes roughly $6,800. At 21% interest, that’s about $1,400 a year going to the bank in interest alone — before you’ve paid down a cent of what you actually owe. Pause that interest for 21 months and put the same monthly payment toward the balance instead, and the typical result is thousands of dollars kept — and a balance that actually shrinks instead of treading water. Your numbers will differ. The bigger your balance and the higher your rate, the more the pause is worth. Who this is for — and who it isn’t  These offers are designed for people with good to excellent credit. If you’ve kept your accounts in good standing over the years — and most people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s have the strongest credit scores of any age group — you’re exactly who the issuers are competing for. It is not a fit if your credit has taken serious recent damage, or if you’d use the freed-up card to run up new debt. How to see the current offers  Card offers change frequently — intro periods, transfer fees, and end dates vary by issuer. The comparison page below is updated with the current leading 0% balance-transfer offers. On the next page you’ll see the actual card names, the length of each 0% period, the transfer fees, and a secure application for each. Comparing takes about two minutes. Click Here to See Today’s Top 0% Balance Transfer Cards → (Note: Thank you for supporting businesses like the one presenting a sponsored message in this article and ordering through the included links, which benefits WLTReport. We appreciate your support and I truly hope this can help make your life better!  MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!) This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post Banks Are Charging Retirees 21% Interest – This Card Feature Pauses It to 0% For Up to 21 Months appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

A 22-year-old college baseball player was shot and killed by police officers after he attempted to enter the wrong house during a night of drinking, his family says. The victim, Glenn Pysher, had been at a bar with friends on Saturday night in Pennsylvania celebrating a friend’s birthday. The group decided to move the celebration to a friend’s house since it was getting late. Erin Pysher, the victim’s mother, said he decided to walk to his friend’s house. “He ended up at the wrong house after having a few drinks. He didn’t know that, so he was knocking on the door saying, ‘Hey, let me in.’ Thinking it was his friend’s house, but it wasn’t,” his mother said, according to WPVI. College baseball player shot dead by cops while trying to enter the wrong house after night of drinking https://t.co/fcu0TNIdtu — Daily Mail US (@Daily_MailUS) August 25, 2026 WPVI shared further: It all unfolded at a home in Upper Pottsgrove a bit past midnight. The couple inside was startled and called 911. “12:32, he was on the phone with his friends. By 12:35, I believe he’s already shot. So, within a few minutes, the cop pulled up and shot him. He was unarmed. He had a cell phone and a book bag,” recalled Pysher. Surveillance cameras set up in the backyard of the property recorded the deadly encounter, and that recording is reportedly being used as part of the investigation. Action News was not given access to those recordings. In the meantime, the Pyshers say their son was a wonderful young man who loved baseball almost as much as he loved his family. In fact, he was getting ready to play ball at Saint Elizabeth University in New Jersey, to where he had recently transferred. According to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, the couple that lived inside the home reported a possible break-in to police. Police officers found Pysher at the rear of the property when they arrived. Some community members want answers to how the situation unfolded. “What happened? Could it have been de-escalated?” a family friend asked, according to Daily Mail. “We don’t know, but we want to figure that out,” they added. Daily Mail has more: ‘To see someone that has so much potential, because he was so excited about going back to school, lose their life, it hurts,’ Kia told Fox 29. ‘He was an amazing soul, young man, never got in any trouble, well-respected.’ Everyone in the community will now remember him for ‘his love for baseball and the joy he found in catching balls, something that brought so much pride to his father, mother, three sisters and the entire Pysher family,’ Anthony Napoli said in a statement. ‘Bubba meant so much to so many and his loss has deeply shaken all who loved him.’ Off the field, Pysher’s grieving mother said he was a ‘lovable goofball.’ ‘He will walk in the backdoor and say his favorite thing, “Hey mom, your favorite kid is home,”‘ she said. ‘He was just happy-go-lucky, didn’t have a care in the world, and I’m going to miss that.’ The Montgomery County Detective Bureau is now investigating the officer-involved shooting. Watch additional coverage below: The post Investigation Underway After 22-Year-Old College Baseball Player Reportedly Shot And Killed By Police When Attempting To Enter Wrong Home During Night Of Drinking appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Is it a hot take to say that Arctangent is the best metal fest in the country, given the UK is also home to Download and Bloodstock? Yes. Is it something that I will gladly argue with each and every one of you about until you’re too tired to continue? Also, yes.I’ve been a regular at the Bristol four-dayer since the pandemic, and over the course of those five years, I’ve never been to a festival that fosters the same sense of community and curiosity. For those who don’t know, it started as a post-rock event before gradually expanding its borders, now open to anything that pushes back against heavy music’s mainstream. Headliners have ranged from Converge to Devin Townsend, Heilung to Mogwai.But, unlike at most fests, the top of the bill doesn’t paint the full picture. Arctangent has a reputation for booking quality bands from start to finish, and that’s where it and the audience become truly special. Everyone is there for the music, not just an excuse to get pissed, and there’s a strong chance you’ll walk away on Sunday having discovered a band you’ll be obsessed with for months. Examples I could name include West Country math rockers Fes and Brazilian proggers Papangu.Arctangent is for genuine obsessives, and everything great about it returned in 2026. There were more underground revelations, such as Venezuelan post-rockers Zeta and crushing doomsters Believe In Nothing. Some bands, including Svalbard, trusted the fest to put on their last-ever performances, while others, like Agent Fresco and Arcane Roots, made it part of their long-anticipated reunions. Headliners Chelsea Wolfe, Primus and Cult Of Luna feat. Julie Christmas exemplified the truly broad range of non-commercial heavy music.After my four days at Fernhill Farm this August (ATG’s final time on the site before relocating next year), I can easily say that it remains my highlight of the festival calendar. For a clearer breakdown, here are my favourite sets of the weekend: SvalbardLife sucks and then you die. Svalbard know it – having spent the last 15 years lyrically wrestling with depression, sexism and other harsh realities – yet added to the pain of it all anyway by breaking up way before their time. On Wednesday, the four-piece bowed out on home turf, tearing through a setlist that broke down the metal (Eternal Spirits), shoegaze (Open Wound) and hardcore (The Damage Done) components of their sound. Singer/guitarist Serena Cherry was all smiles, especially as Employed To Serve frontwoman Justine Jones crowd-surfed about half a dozen times. This last showing was nothing short of triumphant, but, damn, it still hurts so bad. PsychonautOnce content stacking enough acid-laced riffs to give you a contact high, Psychonaut retreated from excess (slightly) and emphasised emotion on last year’s World Maker album. It paid tremendous dividends, with single Endless Currents becoming one of their biggest songs. That ascent was reflected on Thursday, when they played before a main-stage crowd worthy of a headliner. Dual vocalists Stefan De Graef (also guitars) and Thomas Mischiels (bass) exchanged heartrending lines in between torrents of technical yet melodic prowess. Arctangent ate that shit up, especially the tapping marathon All I Saw As A Huge Monkey. A sign of incredible things to come. MølEvery time Møl perform, they’re a bit better than last time. The Danes had only been away from the UK for six months when they played the third stage on Thursday, but they’d evolved exponentially. Founding guitarist Nicolai Busse Bladt was back and the band put swirling hemispheres of spotlights on top of each amp, accentuating their vibrant take on black metal. Even though frontman Kim Song Sternkopf roared like he wanted to give himself a hernia, Garland and Crush showcased his ever-advancing clean vocals. The quintet entered a genre of one on this year’s Dreamcrush album, owing as much to The Smashing Pumpkins as Mayhem, and this set reiterated them as a singular force. Chelsea WolfeIt was a big weekend for California’s dark rock singer/songwriter. Headlining Arctangent on Thursday then releasing her 10th album, The Dark, the following day is one hell of a back-to-back. She played three new songs in succession to mark the occasion, which, like every other track she performed onstage, were endowed with an ear-rattling oomph beyond anything she’s ever touched on record. A guest spot from Alcest’s screamer-in-chief Neige during Vex only added to the intensity of it all, and by the end, I almost wanted to sit down. No time for that, though: the silent disco played The Dark in its entirety 30 minutes after she left to make the night a proper Chelsea-thon. Arcane RootsAs well as tragic breakups (Svalbard, Heck), Arctangent was also the site of hopeful returns. Agent Fresco showed up as part of their first tour since 2019 and, on Friday, Arcane Roots continued their comeback with a main-stage stunner. Fiercely underrated during their original stint, the Londoners uncorked an even mix of math-metal theatrics, 10-ton melodies and earnest, emotional bits. New single A Wave, Across The Sea held its own against the oldies, and the expanded lineup with a keyboardist and a drummer/guitarist gave everything a newfound boost. Welcome back, boys – now make another album, for the love of God.PerturbatorWhat’s this EDM doing at my prog festival?! Even though Perturbator was far from a ‘traditional’ Arctangent booking, he was perfectly placed as Friday’s sub-headliner, warming everyone up for the wackiness of Primus. The Frenchman famously declared his former genre of synthwave dead in 2021, and since then he’s refined his own brew of metal, dance and widescreen Blade Runner shit. Each song segued into the next as smoothly as a PowerPoint swipe, but if I were to single out a highlight, Apocalypse Now (featuring Ulver man Kristoffer Rygg’s silken vocals) would be it. Heavy, fun and just a bit weird, he may not have fit the ATG aesthetic, but he matched the spirit. Perturbator on Arctangent’s main stage. (Image credit: Abbi Draper-Scott)EivørEivør didn’t draw the biggest crowd to the main stage, but she left with the teariest one. The Faroese singer/songwriter filled an hour using her distinct bridge between the past and present, casting rock textures and Massive Attack-like trip-hop against vocals plucked straight from Nordic tradition. The songs and arrangements were all excellent, particularly a heavy So Close To Being Free, but the pièce de résistance was that voice. Her graceful wails bounced off of the walls and rumbled the heartstrings of everybody within earshot. After finale Falling Free, as I turned and walked back through the crowd, there were more than a few glistening faces in the darkness. Cult Of Luna x Julie ChristmasOne of the top three live shows I’ve seen in my life. Cult Of Luna reunited with avant-garde dynamo Julie Christmas for the first performance of their 2016 collaboration, Mariner, in eight years. Both acts brought their greatest strengths, as Luna’s bruising metal and hellish roars framed Christmas’ piercing, idiosyncratic singing. The best bit, though, was the infinite smoke and dizzying light show, combining to make the stage’s edges disappear and turn the band members into silhouettes. Closer Cygnus evoked the same feeling of transcendence as the stargate scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was jaw-droppingly immersive, to the point that I might have cried a bit. Maybe.Arctangent returns at a new site in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire from August 18 to 21.

What unites a mysterious god said to be older than Odin, the motto of Blackadder’s General Melchett and a cross-country skiing blastbeat? The surprising answer is Heimdal, Enslaved’s 16th album, released in 2023. Just before its arrival, Grutle Kjellson and Ivar Bjørnson took Prog inside the masterpiece.In Norse mythology, when the great and terrible Ragnarök arrives to lay waste to the Nine Realms, the gods will know the hour has come when Heimdall blows the Gjallarhorn to rally the warriors to the final battle. Heimdal, the 16th album from Enslaved, opens with the sound of that fabled horn – and the god who guards the Bifröst bridge casts a long shadow over the band’s career. The track Heimdallr appeared on 1994 debut Vikingligr Veldi. “That was one of the first songs we wrote; it was even included on a demo tape we recorded in 1992,” says vocalist and bassist Grutle Kjellson. “Heimdall is one of the most important figures in Norse mythology and yet he is surrounded by mysticism. All the other gods and deities have clear origins. Heimdall hasn’t. He’s always been debated amongst scholars – where does he come from? Does he come from a pre-Norse mythology cult? Does he have an equivalent in other mythologies? Has he been around for longer than Norse mythology? And the answer is: probably.”Ancient rock carvings indicate Heimdall may have been worshipped since the Bronze Age, when the cults around Odin and Thor arose. His mystery is further complicated by the fact that precious few texts have survived the passing of the centuries. “There’s The Heimdall Spell that only exists as a small fragment – it’s like two sentences and the rest is gone,” says Kjellson.“That makes the whole thing even more interesting, even more obscure. He’s a very important figure and very fascinating. He’s been lurking in the background of our concept ever since the beginning, so we thought it was time to honour him with an album.”To create the sound of the Gjallarhorn, the band brought in Eilif Gundersen from Wardruna, who used a replica of a 3,000-year-old bronze horn found in a bog in Denmark. “He’s a good friend of ours. He really appreciated being asked and he loved the concept,” says Kjellson. “You can find rock carvings from the Bronze Age of horn blowers that might have been a forerunner of Heimdall. So we decided to connect the story of his horn with the replica bog horn. We also tried to simulate paddling a Bronze Age boat – that was a cool experience. It was done at a lake just nearby my house. I have some boats, so it was just a question of bringing the hornblower and his instrument.”The album’s lyrics were written by Kjellson and guitarist Ivar Bjørnson (the pair co-founded Enslaved 32 years ago). The lack of records on Heimdall afforded them the freedom to explore their own interpretations. “It’s a more liberal way,” says Bjørnson. “You reach a node and that gives you an association in one direction, and you just go with it – you don’t have to stay on topic, so to speak. It takes on a life of its own.”He says he can’t imagine making an album without a unifying concept, continuing the tradition of 2017’s E and 2020’s Utgard. “When we first talk about what universe to explore and the concept, it’s all floating around like inflammable gases, and it needs a spark to ignite, to go off in a direction. Then it’s all chaos from there on – everything happening at the same time, and we’re trying to manoeuvre and organise it somehow.”Composing the music is even more instinctive, “because it’s really hard to put into words and that has a tendency to become limiting,” says Bjørnson. “On the title track for Heimdal, when the god appears on the scene, the music needs to be heavy so it’s understood. Music is the current that flows through; the lyrics are made as we go along and that influences the music and back and forth.“It’s hard to separate – and really, I don’t think I would separate them. It’s like a bike ride down a very steep slope; you just have to keep going because the moment you start thinking, it’s going to get ugly.”Tou have youngsters in the first rows, then middle-aged, grumpy black metal people, then the old prog hippies in the back. It’s diverseGrutle KjellsonBjørnson says his relationship with the band’s catalogue and chronology is not really linear. Many things in life can give me something to measure against, to tell you, ‘This is 30 years ago,’ but with the band it’s not like that. Some things that are distant, from the beginning, feel like they just happened. In some places time is folded, in other places it’s crumbled up, and in other places it’s a straight line.”He continues: “I guess ‘Enslaved’ is a pretty good description of our sound. It’s an abstraction – it doesn’t really deal with everyday frustrations or teenage heartbreak. It’s more of a summary of life lived over 30 years, like the human experience, I hope, in a broader sense. We are partly human at least… Half bionic!”Enslaved inhabit a singular place in the musical pantheon, after outgrowing the Norwegian black metal scene they emerged from in Bergen, western Norway. “To the diehard metal fans, we’re definitely too experimental, too proggy, whatever you want to call it,” says Kjellson. “And we might be too heavy for the equivalents on the proggier side. But it’s been crucial not to have those things in mind. We just want to make our own contemporary, favourite music, and that obviously changes. Your musical horizon hopefully expands.” (Image credit: Press)They’ve found that their breadth of vision pulls in a wide range of listeners, as Kjellson notes: “There’s a wonderful audience in the United States because you have the youngsters in the first five rows, then you have the middle-aged, grumpy black metal people in the middle, and then you have the old prog rock hippies in the back. It’s diverse – I love it!”Heimdal spans the acoustic folk moments of Forest Dweller and the slamming heaviness of Caravans To The Outer Worlds, while Congelia taps into their metal roots. Bjørnson wrote that song around an idea from drummer Iver Sandøy. “Iver suggested there should be a song that’s based on the black metal cross-country skiing blastbeat and accompanying riff. I don’t know if that was done because he knew it would make life hard for me!We’re experimental and some might call us progressive, but we listened to a fair share of classic rock and popGrutle Kjellson“I wanted to mix it up with the things I really love: 70s, early 80s heavy metal guitar riffs and that 70s sequencer, synthesiser thing. How to mix that in with the proto black metal? It’s the other way around from a lot of stuff when you just add some black metal on top of something, like a catchy rock riff with some screeching or a blastbeat, or ‘classical meets heavy’ – yawn. This was turning it around: having a total black metal thing and trying to mix other things in with it.”The difficulty of forcing such disparate ingredients together required a degree of stubbornness from Bjørnson, who refers to the immortal words of General Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth: “If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.”He says: “It turned out to be true! With the drumming and Grutle’s vocals – the very definition of black metal vocals for me – I knew that Jens [Bogren] would get it glued together in the mix. It was a bit nerve-racking until we got the mix set with Jens. Then I could take down my General Melchett avatar in my room and stop sacrificing animals to him every night!”From the melodic metal of Kingdom to the frantic barrage unleashed in The Eternal Sea, there’s one principle that guides the writing process. “Although we’re experimental and someone might call us progressive,” says Kjellson, “we listened to a fair share of classic rock and pop in our childhoods. So we know we need to write songs. It’s not 72 different parts; we have to make songs. That’s a good thing to keep in mind.”After four decades and 16 albums, the music has evolved and the fanbase might be more diverse, but the essential visceral thrill of making music together in front of an audience remains undimmed. “The energy is still there – the anticipation before we go onstage,” says Kjellson. “Of course, everything else has changed. It’s a lot different to go on tour in 2022 compared to van-touring in Mexico in 1995. In those days even the plane ride was fantastic because I had free drinks. Wow!“It still feels almost exactly the same as it did on the first shows in 1991, and I think that’s amazing. That’s the main driving force. If those feelings disappear, it’s time to call it a day, but that’s still present, and that’s fantastic.”“It’s such a big part of who we are,” adds Bjørnson. “Enslaved have become juggernauts of their own and, as Grutle says, the core is still there – being a performing musician. We’ve done somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 gigs since the start. I still have that one second where I think, ‘I should just take off and not do the gig.’ I still haven’t done it. But it would be awesome to do it one night. The guys turn around: ‘Where the fuck did Ivar go?’ I text them, ‘Couldn’t do it. Too nervous.’“But I love feeling, ‘This is the last thing I want to do in the world – I’m really nervous now.’ And you just do it, and it’s great.”

President Donald Trump declared that the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz are completely free of mines.