Day: May 10, 2024

Southern California man found guilty of soliciting investors for bogus COVID-19 cure  KTLA Los Angeles

US to hold auctions to sell airline warrants received during COVID bailouts  WTVB

A new Covid variant has taken over, and experts predict a small summer wave  Yahoo! Voices

US to hold auctions to sell airline warrants received during COVID bailouts  WKZO

Megan Thee Stallion’s latest music video for “Boa” released on Friday, leaving anime and video games fans rejoicing at the various references made by the head Hot Nerd herself.

The video kicks off with three friends sitting down to play a Jumanji-esque 2D-style video game, before learning that their death in the game will simulate their ill-fated fortune in real life. Their demise, of course, is delivered by Megan, donning costumes inspired by One Piece and Tekken characters while throwing punches and kicks at players as if she’s part of the classic beat’em up games made popular in the ‘90s.

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The concept for the video should come as no surprise. The Grammy-winning rapper is well-known for being an anime enthusiast, even presenting an award at the 2024 Crunchyroll Anime Awards this March. Megan, also known as Tina Snow, has also previously cosplayed as My Hero Academia’s Mirko and Bruno Bucciarati from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Fans have also noticed that the song title, “Boa” matches her running theme of snakes, with her two other singles being “Cobra” and “Hiss.” Serpents often symbolize a sly and cunning nature, but in the context of this new era, may also represent renewal because of the way the creature sheds its skin. The name is also reminiscent of “Pirate Empress” Boa Hancock, a character from anime series One Piece, who Megan cosplays as on the single’s cover art and in the video.

Here’s a running list of the references.  

One Piece and Mortal Kombat

Meg’s hairstyle and serpent scepter as her weapon of choice are all in reference to One Piece’s Boa Hancock. The anime character is typically seen with Salome, a large, white, skull-bearing snake, by her side. Her outfit, however, may also take inspiration from Mortal Kombat’s Mileena based on the boots and attire.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

The music video has striking similarities to the graphic novel series turned-movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which follows protagonist Scott Pilgrim who has to battle his girlfriend’s seven evil exes. Pilgrim’s fighting scenes in the film are pungent, dramatic, and filled with over-the-top animation and lights just as Megan’s are. 

Gwen Stefani

The song also includes a sample from Gwen Stefani’s 2004 “What You Waiting For?” The ‘tik-tok’ Stefani sings in her original hit song can be heard in the background of Megan’s new tune. 

Christie from Tekken

Meg also seemingly referenced Christie Monteiro from the Tekken video game series, wearing a similarly metallic gold top and leather pants with chaps, though her bottoms are a snake print. The print could be set to match her serpent theme, or in reference to Bryan Fury, also from Tekken, fans speculate.

Dance Dance Revolution

Meg also builds on the nostalgia factor with a significant portion of her video set in a scene with Dance Dance Revolution tiles, in reference to the classic arcade dancing game. The arrows are placed on top of funky light-neon colored squares. 

Space Channel 5

Many online users have clued in on the fact that Meg’s outfits and background also take inspiration from Space Channel 5, with Meg’s pink wig and pigtails mostly-bearing similarity to Ulala, who battles aliens with dance moves.

Squidward Face Meme

Some users also pointed to the iconic scene where Meg quite literally smushed a player to death by sitting on his face as being similar to a popular SpongeBob SquarePants scene featuring Squidward.

On Friday, Alvin Bragg and his team alleged in court that Donald Trump is paying $750,000 to Allen Weisselberg in order to keep him from testifying in this criminal trial. This set off a new narrative about how Trump is still committing crimes and corrupt acts. And this is true. Trump is a criminal to the end. But there’s a much larger story here.

Trump’s decision to pay off Weisselberg has backfired on him in spectacular fashion. Prosecutors are now looking to present the jury with evidence that Trump paid off Weisselberg. The trial judge is talking about bringing Weisselberg in so he can ask him about the whole thing under oath. The judge is also talking about the possibility of having Weisselberg testify in the trial. And in the midst of all the back and forth on Friday, the prosecution acknowledged that they weren’t even planning to have Weisselberg testify to begin with. So Trump paid off Weisselberg for nothing.

Let’s recap: Trump paid off a witness who, as it turns out, wasn’t going to be a witness anyway. Now the prosecution is going to be able to use this payoff to help convince the jury of Trump’s guilt. And now the witness might end up testifying after all, as a direct result of Trump having paid him not to testify.

You can’t get any more cartoonishly inept than this. Donald Trump made a very corrupt but more importantly very stupid panic move with regard to Allen Weisselberg, and now it’s blowing up in Trump’s face in real time. Trump’s inept attempt at criminality is having a negative impact on him in his criminal trial, and could help cement his conviction.

Trump’s last ditch attempts at saving himself are making things worse for him, not better. Whether that’s because so little is left of his cognitive abilities, or simply because he’s so far down the road to defeat that nothing can help him, that’s another matter. But the bottom line is everything Trump says and does at this point only makes his problems worse.

The post We need to talk about how ineptly Donald Trump screwed up this Allen Weisselberg thing appeared first on Palmer Report.

washington — China has quietly resumed cooperation with the United States on the repatriation of Chinese migrants illegally stranded in the U.S., The Associated Press reported Thursday.

The U.S.-China repatriation cooperation resumes amid the influx of Chinese migrants across the southern border of the United States.

China halted the cooperation in August 2022 as part of retaliation over the visit to Taiwan by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Beijing considers the self-ruled island a breakaway province that must one day reunite with the mainland — by force if necessary — and opposes any official contact between Taipei and foreign governments, especially Washington, which supplies weapons for Taiwan to defend itself.

Since the cooperation was halted, the U.S. has seen a spike in the number of Chinese migrants entering illegally from Mexico.

U.S. border officials in 2023 arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals at the southern border, nearly 10 times more than in 2022.

China’s Foreign Ministry this week told the AP Beijing was “willing to maintain dialogue and cooperation in the area of immigration enforcement with the U.S.” and would accept Chinese nationals who were deported.

The resumption came after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in April told NBC News the U.S. and China were holding high-level talks on the issue.

Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, said negotiations may increase the number of deportations of Chinese migrants in the short term. But he said the real effect on migrants’ decision-making process depends more on U.S. resources and capacity to conduct more removals.

“Prior negotiations with Venezuela, for example, did not lead to large increases in removals from the United States partially because it takes time to change structures and implement these measures,” he told VOA.

The New York Times reported that 100,000 Chinese nationals are living in the U.S. despite final orders for deportation.

The number of Chinese migrants illegally entering the U.S. on its southern border has shown a downward trend this year, after a record spike in December.

U.S. Customs and Borders Protection (CBP) said that while there were nearly 6,000 arrests of Chinese nationals in December, there were 3,700 in January, 3,500 in February, and just over 2,000 in March.

Soto attributed the drop to stronger visa and border enforcement, but also to China’s censoring online information about the route.

“Because technology has become so entrenched in how migrants learn and select travel routes today, unlike in prior years when these were more heavily based on personal knowledge and networks,” he told VOA, “it is likely that censoring content in mainstream channels can make it more difficult to travel along existing routes.”

Social media platform Douyin, the Chinese version of the short video sharing platform TikTok, has since last year been quietly cracking down on content about “Zouxian,” which means “walk the line” in Mandarin.

The term refers to Chinese migrants illegally crossing borders, including into the U.S. from Mexico and South America. It became a popular topic on the Chinese internet a few years ago and was used to search for information and tips on the route.

Reuters reported last year that many Chinese migrants found at the U.S. southern border said they found out how to travel there on Douyin.

Yang Yinhua, 31, told VOA he had no idea what the word “Zouxian” meant until last summer when he was introduced to the phrase while reading news about how dangerous the journey could be. He tried to look it up on China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, but couldn’t find much useful information. In August, someone he met on the internet invited him to join a group chat on Douyin.

Group members shared information and tips about how to Zouxian to other countries, including the U.S. Yang said the chat quickly reached the maximum number of participants, which was 500. It was one of the six Zouxian group chats created by a user called Yunfei. Yang said all six chats were filled within weeks.

“Nobody was living a decent life during the last five or six years,” he told VOA. “The ruling party wasn’t making the people feel happy like it used to.”

When Yang’s mother died alone during the pandemic, he blamed China’s draconian COVID-19 policy and decided it was time to leave his home country.

By October, he had a plan to travel to the U.S. by way of Turkey, Ecuador and the Mexico-U.S. border.

But Yang noticed Douyin started blocking Zouxian content. Yang and others in the group chat had to invent new words to continue discussing the route because the platform kept censoring certain key words.

By the end of October, Yunfei had deleted all videos he posted about getting to the U.S., Yang said. Then Douyin suspended Yunfei’s account and shut down all six of his chat groups.

As soon as he left China, Yang stopped using Douyin and moved to the messaging application Telegram, where he joined a group chat also set up by Yunfei.

But by the time Yang entered the chat, Yunfei had already left. In April, Yang said, the chat was taken over by what he called “little pink patriots,” a derogatory nickname for those expressing pro-Beijing views.

On TikTok, the international version of Douyin owned by the same parent company ByteDance, users noticed in January that content about Zouxian and the U.S.-Mexico border were being blocked.

“No results found,” the app says when you search for the term “Zouxian.” It adds that the phrase “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.”

According to TikTok’s community guidelines, content considered harmful cannot be displayed. That includes hate speech, sexual violence, harassment, human exploitation and more.

“We do not allow human exploitation, including trafficking and smuggling,” the guidelines read.

VOA tested Douyin in May and found that, aside from a few news clips about Chinese migrants traveling to the southern border of the U.S., “Zouxian” does not return any details about the route. Search results for locations including “Ecuador,” “Guatemala” and “Panama” likewise show no results for Zouxian.

For many Chinese migrants, Douyin was one of the few sources of online information on the route. China’s internet firewall blocks social media sites Facebook, YouTube and X in China.

VOA reached out to ByteDance for comment but received no response by the time of publication.

Wang Yaqiu, director of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at human rights organization Freedom House in Washington, said the phenomenon of Zouxian reflects many Chinese people’s dissatisfaction with Beijing, which she thinks can partly explain Douyin’s crackdown.

“I think the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is embarrassed that so many Chinese people want to flee the country even through such risky means. It exposes CCP propaganda about the Chinese economy and how good people’s life are to be a sham,” she wrote to VOA.

In March, the bodies of eight Chinese migrants were found washed up on a beach in southern Mexico after the boat they were on capsized.

Despite China’s censorship of the route, Yang evaded border patrols to cross into the U.S. in early December with his sister. He lives in California, works at a warehouse and has no desire to return to China.

Aline Barros contributed to this report.

WATCH: White House holds press briefing amid Manafort indictment  AOL