(FREE) PAINE IN THE MORNING: 11 things you need to know this Thursday – April 21, 2022

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Extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange approved by UK judge – A British judge on Wednesday formally approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face spying charges. The case will now go to Britain’s interior minister for a decision, though the WikiLeaks founder still has legal avenues of appeal.

The order, which brings and end to the years’-long extradition battle closer, comes after the U.K. Supreme Court last month refused Assange permission to appeal against a lower court’s ruling that he could be extradited. – READ MORE

Supreme Court Declines To Hear Teachers’ Suit Against NYC Vaccine Mandate – On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review a lawsuit brought by four New York City public school workers who were required to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The challenge was against New York City Department of Education and the city’s vaccine mandate for public school employees, which lower courts already permitted to take effect as legal challenges went on. Justice Sonia Sotomayor had also reportedly declined an emergency request that the mandate be paused. – READ MORE

Kavanaugh, Barrett reject appeal of Airman who refuses COVID shot – President Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court’s left flank in rejecting an emergency appeal from an Air Force Reserve officer who was punished for his refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Dunn was appealing to the high court after the Air Force rejected his request for a religious exemption and removed him from command. – READ MORE

Grand jury indicts two men who allegedly posed as federal agents, gave Secret Service agents gifts – Two men accused of posing as Homeland Security personnel and heaping lavish gifts on Secret Service agents were indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on charges of false impersonation of an officer of the United States and unlawful possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device, according to a court filing.

Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36, were arrested on April 6 but U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey released the men last Wednesday under conditions that include supervision and GPS monitoring. – READ MORE

Flow of Fentanyl into American Communities Quadruples Under Biden – Four times as much fentanyl is flowing across the United States-Mexico border under President Joe Biden compared to two years prior when former President Trump was in office.

During the launch of Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ken Calvert’s (R-CA) congressional caucus dedicated to the fentanyl crisis, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Mark Dunbar of the Murrieta Station in southern California noted that the level of fentanyl seizures has skyrocketed in the last year. – READ MORE

Prophet of Doom – Health Minister Slammed by Experts for ‘Unhelpful’ Killer COVID Variant Prediction – Germany’s health minister has been lambasted for fearmongering by experts after warning that a killer COVID variant could emerge this autumn.

Germany’s now-infamous Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach, has warned the country’s population that a new, extremely deadly variant of COVID could emerge in Autumn, which would, in turn, require a return of harsh lockdown measures. – READ MORE

Global Rice Production Set To Plunge 10%, Threatening Half Of Humanity – Farmers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam — the largest rice-producing countries could experience reduced output due to soaring fertilizer prices.

The International Rice Research Institute warns that harvests could plunge as much as 10% in the next season, equating to about 36 million tons of rice, or enough food to feed a half billion people, according to Bloomberg. – READ MORE

After Cornering Rentals, Blackstone Is Now Doubling Down On Student Dorms – For much of the past decade, private equity giant Blackstone, which at last check had $881 billion in AUM, was the single largest institutional landlord in the US, and according to some, the “largest owner of real estate in the world.” Then a few years ago, Blackstone lost that designation when it comes to residential housing (to this day it remains the largest commercial landlord by a wide margin); however the recent explosion in home prices and rents prompted the Wall Street titan to double down efforts to recover the title of undisputed landlord champion, and last summer the firm announced its latest transaction (funded by ultra cheap debt courtesy of the Fed) when it purchased Home Partners of America, which owns more than 17,000 houses throughout the US, for $6 billion.

Yes, despite a growing bipartisan political backlash against institutional landlords translating in popular blowback at a time when rents are soaring at the fastest pace on record, Blackstone continues to exhibit all the PR grace of a bull in a China shop, as it extends its marketshare grab in US real estate, with the firm extending its pivot to dorms, as it slowly but surely hopes to become the marginal price setter in all US real estate. – READ MORE

Get Ready For The Next Supply Chain Shockwave – Concern is growing that the spread of COVID cases and city lockdowns in China will have massive downstream effects for global supply chains that could dwarf previous disruptions since the start of the pandemic.

Last May, the huge Yantian container terminal at the Port of Shenzhen throttled down to 30% of normal productivity for a month to stamp out a handful of positive cases there. Hundreds of thousands of shipments that couldn’t enter the port accumulated in factories and warehouses, and many vessels skipped the port to avoid waiting seven days or more at anchor. It took weeks after the port reopened to clear the cargo backlog. The effects cascaded to the U.S. and Europe, resulting in port traffic jams, transit times triple the norm and missed retail deliveries for the holidays. – READ MORE

‘You’ve Finally Crossed The Line’: Hunter Biden’s Brutal Letter To His Father – “The Laptop From Hell” is the gift that keeps on giving.

The computer Hunter Biden reportedly abandoned in a Delaware repair shop has yielded yet another bombshell: A bitter letter he drafted – but apparently did not send – to his father, President Joe Biden. The angry missive, written on Jan. 14, 2017, just as the elder Biden was about to leave the vice presidency and after then-President Obama had bestowed there Presidential Medal of Freedom on him. – READ MORE

Ukraine war fuels a weapons gold rush — and defense contractors are already cashing in – The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought immense suffering to the people of that land, while sparking calls for increased military spending in both the United States and Europe. Though that war may prove to be a tragedy for the world, one group is already benefiting from it: U.S. arms contractors.

Even before hostilities broke out, the CEOs of major weapons firms were talking about how tensions in Europe could pad their profits. In a January 2022 call with his company’s investors, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes typically bragged that the prospect of conflict in Eastern Europe and other global hot spots would be good for business, adding that “we are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales… [T]he tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.” – READ MORE