The first bus of migrants sent from Texas by Governor Greg Abbott arrived in New York City on Friday morning.

The group was dropped off at Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan after making the almost 2,000-mile trip from the border that lasted days.

A group of charity workers and volunteers greeted the roughly 50 migrants, who were mostly men, before they ventured into the city for hotels or shelters.

A Georgia couple has been charged with using their two adopted children to record child pornography, police said.

Walton County Sheriff's Office raided a home in Loganville July 27 on reports that a man there was downloading child porn.

After interviewing the suspect, who was not identified, police said they learned there was another suspect in the county who was "producing homemade child sexual abuse material with at least one child who lived in the home," the sheriff's office said Thursday.

For years, Ukraine was recognized as one of the most, if not "the" most, corrupt nation in Europe. It held on to that reputation all the way up to the day Russia invaded, at which point media worldwide suddenly started rewriting history.

Whitewashing Ukraine's Corruption and Authoritarianism

As noted by Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, in a sober and clear-eyed article, published in April 2022:¹

"Statements from U.S. and other Western officials, as well as pervasive accounts in the news media, have created a stunningly misleading image of Ukraine. There has been a concerted effort to portray the country not only as a victim of brutal Russian aggression, but as a plucky and noble bulwark of freedom and democracy ...

The promoters of that narrative contend that the ongoing war is not just a quarrel between Russia and Ukraine over Kiev's ambitions to join NATO and Moscow's territorial claims in Crimea and the Donbas. No, they insist — the war is part of a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism ...

The notion that Ukraine was such an appealing democratic model in Eastern Europe that the country's mere existence terrified Putin may be a comforting myth to U.S. politicians and pundits, but it is a myth. Ukraine is far from being a democratic-capitalist model ...

The reality is murkier and troubling: Ukraine has long been one of the more corrupt countries in the international system ... Ukraine's track record of protecting democracy and civil liberties is not much better than its performance on corruption. In Freedom House's 2022 report,² Ukraine is listed in the 'partly free' category, with a score of 61 out of a possible 100 ...

Even before the war erupted, there were ugly examples of authoritarianism in Ukraine's political governance ... The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion was an integral part of President Petro Poroshenko's military and security apparatus, and it has retained that role during Zelensky's presidency ...

[O]ne can condemn Putin's actions and even cheer on Ukraine's military resistance without fostering a false image of Ukraine's political system. The country is not a symbol of freedom and liberal democracy, and the war is not an existential struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At best, Ukraine is a corrupt, quasi-democratic entity with troubling repressive policies.

Given that sobering reality, calls for Americans to 'stand with Ukraine' are misplaced. Preserving Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity most certainly are not worth the United States risking war with a nuclear-armed Russia."

A small group protesting a Drag Queen Story Hour event for children at the Jubilee Library in Brighton, England on Thursday was confronted by a large group of far-left activists.

The Post Millennial editor-at-large and journalist Andy Ngo shared a clip from the protest clash, with the Drag Queen Story Hour supporters chanting, "Nazi scum off our streets!" Ngo added that The City Council came out in support of the event, citing "diversity" as a reason.

Billionaire Elon Musk would go through with the deal to buy Twitter if the social media platform demonstrates how it checks the authenticity of user accounts, Musk wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

Responding to a comment by another user, Musk said the deal to buy Twitter "should proceed on original terms" if the platform shares with him their method for sampling accounts to determine they are genuine.

"If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they're confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms.

A new, error-riddled paper in the journal Pediatrics claiming that "social contagion" is not a factor in the dramatic rise in trans-identifying youth has been debunked by experts.

When the study emerged, left-wing media lauded its dubious conclusion as absolute truth, with the NBC News headline, "'Social contagion' isn't causing more youths to be transgender, study finds."

Jack Turban, a proponent of "gender affirming care" who perpetuates the affirm-or-suicide myth, is the study's lead author. Turban, a trans activist and psychiatry fellow at UCSF, has a history of designing poor experiments and using bad methodology to draw erroneous conclusions from data.

The state health body offered tips on how to avoid contracting monkeypox.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued guidelines for 'safer sex' amid the spread of the monkeypox virus, urging romantic partners to take steps to reduce exposure to the rare illness.

Published on Friday and entitled 'Safer Sex, Social Gatherings, and Monkeypox', the CDC document advises partners to watch out for "any new or unexplained rash or lesion" on various body parts, one distinct symptom of the monkeypox virus.

National forecaster Deutscher Wetterdienst predicted a heatwave would persist through mid-August. Weather models show max temperatures will jump to mid-July levels of nearly 95 degrees Fahrenheit by Aug. 14, then slide to the low/mid 70s shortly after.

A confluence of factors is pushing German electricity prices to new records. First are the rising costs of imported nuclear power from France and Switzerland. Utilities in both countries report nuclear generation output has been reduced in recent weeks for various reasons, some of which are related to the heat (read: here). Domestically, Germany's Uniper SE, the country's largest utility, warned lower river Rhine levels made it more challenging to receive coal shipments via barges to fuel coal-fired power plants.

A number of firearm companies have seen their shipments with UPS become damaged or go missing while on route to customers, while others have allegedly had their corporate accounts canceled by the parcel service, according to a report by Bearing Arms, a pro-Second Amendment news site.

Patrick Collins, CEO of The Gun Food, an ammunition supply company, told the news outlet that many packages his business had shipped via UPS had mysteriously vanished in transit. Specifically, Collins alleged that out of 18,000 rounds of ammunition that he's shipped, only around a third — roughly 6,000 — were actually delivered.

Collins said he was allegedly told by UPS that he was likely not packaging the shipments properly and that the company also noted an uptick in his recent claims regarding packages that are not being successfully delivered.

"They're not even making it. And I don't know what they are doing in the facilities if they are purposefully damaging them. However, they are not making it to the customer."

New York City's Democrat Mayor Eric Adams is reportedly requesting photos of city job applicants, as he wants to ensure that new members of the workforce are diverse — a move that seems to show the value of race and ethnicity over qualifications.

According to a report from Politico, most of the individuals — past and current city officials — the outlet spoke to are unsettled by the mayor's request, although it seems the mayor's office is presenting the request as a way Adams can simply "begin to recognize folks [sic] faces."

"Flagging that the Mayor would love all agencies upper leadership in this type of style," an April 19 email from an Adams staffer reads. "Clarifying also that the avatars in the attached should be actual photos as the Mayor likes to begin to recognize folks [sic] faces."

However, many remain skeptical and view the request as a way for Adams to prioritize racial and ethnic diversity. One former employee suggested everyone knew what the request was really about at its core.

"It was the first thing everybody said: 'We're going to start counting complexions now,'" the individual said.