Gotabaya Rajapaksa was refused passage by airport staff as he attempted to leave for Dubai, sources claim.

Airport staff refused to stamp the passport of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Monday, preventing the soon-to-be ex-president from leaving the country for Dubai, AFP reported. Driven from office by mass protests, Rajapaksa is reportedly looking for other means of escape.

Immigration officers refused to enter the VIP suite at Bandaranaike International Airport to stamp Rajapaksa's passport for exit, AFP's sources said. Declining to queue with the general public for fear of reprisals, Rajapaksa and his wife spent Monday night at a nearby military base after missing four flights to the United Arab Emirates.

A similar attempt at escape was made by Rajapaksa's younger brother, Basil, who served as his older sibling's finance minister until April. According to AFP's sources, Basil Rajapaksa was prevented from using the airport's fast-track boarding lane, and left the airport after passengers began protesting.

The criminal justice system and banks are more trusted than the media at this point.

Just when you thought trust in the media couldn't sink any lower... it has.

Pollster Gallup has found that confidence in the establishment media has sunk to an historic low with both printed and television news seeing yet another another drop over the past year, each losing an average five percent of people who had previously said they had a "great deal" of trust in the institutions.

The string of violence occurred at 7-Eleven stores in Brea, La Habra, Riverside, Upland, Santa Ana and Ontario.

An urgent search continued Tuesday for a suspect after two people were killed and three others wounded in a series of robberies at six 7-Eleven stores across Southern California. Authorities believe the same suspect is connected to all six of the incidents.

Los Angeles police are also examining whether a series of store robberies several days earlier in the San Fernando Valley may be connected as well.

The string of violence occurred over the course of five hours Monday, spanning multiple counties at stores in Brea, La Habra, Riverside, Upland, Santa Ana and Ontario. It wasn't immediately clear to investigators what prompted the violence.

In a news item posted to the World Health Organization (WHO) website on July 6, 2022, WHO announced an update to their "gender mainstreaming manual."

The WHO will build on the existing manual to focus on "updating key concepts around gender" and states that "sex is not limited to male or female."

The first edition of the 146-page manual from 2011 is now being revised "in light of new scientific evidence and conceptual progress on gender, health and development," according to the WHO website. But these revisions have left some biologists puzzled, as it is not at all clear what new scientific evidence has suddenly emerged to justify the claim that there are more than two sexes.

It is unclear what terms like "conceptual progress" mean in this context. But what is clear to most keen observers, is that the WHO is conflating the scientific concept of biological sex with an individual's undefinable and subjective "gender identity."

On paper, the US is the land of the free and home of the brave, while China is a tyrannical, authoritarian state where individuals have no rights and where the political oligarchy always gets its way. In reality, it's usually the opposite, especially when the people remember they are not snowflakes.

With much the US and Europe bitching and moaning but ultimately acquiescing to every incremental round of mandatory experimental mRNA-based covid vaccines (we are not even talking about those mentally unstable they/thems who demand the government strip them of their last freedom and who will be wearing a mask in their grave to signal not only their profound virtue but their willingness to lap up any amount of fecal matter shoveled by the government), a few million non-snowflake Chinese showed how it can be done.

As Bloomberg reports, last week, Beijing's city leadership rolled out China's first Covid-19 vaccine mandate last week. The policy made boosters mandatory for some professions, while entry to busy public venues like movie theaters and gyms was restricted to the vaccinated. Unlike Europe and the US where such mandates are now a way of life as the population is too terrified to oppose the state, in Beijing the public reacted far less snowflakily, with many residents turning to social media to declare the mandate an illegal usurpation of their rights. Beijing's response was just as quick: Less than 48 hours after announcing the policy, the city government rescinded it.

Instead, people will be able to enter all public venues if they can simply provide a negative Covid test result that's no older than 72 hours and have their temperature checked, an unidentified official said in an interview with state-backed Beijing Daily that was published late Thursday night. The city will continue to promote vaccination on a voluntary, informed and consent basis, the official said, something which just one year ago would have sounded like an alien world of utopian liberty to American citizens.

Consider the logic of the left and it's no wonder that many people are considering the unspeakable - whether America will devolve into actual violent conflict. But I dare speak about it at length in my brand-new book We'll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America, which confronts this issue of systematic political violence head-on. The most important question related to the long decline of America at the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and terminally foolish ruling caste that controls our major institutions is whether we can pull out of this tailspin without bloodshed.

I sure hope so, but the risk is real and we need to confront it.

The logic of the left accepts political violence. A few years ago, one of its acolytes tried to wipe out the congressional Republican caucus on a softball field; last month, another member of the MSNBCNN target demo tried to off Justice Kavanaugh for somewhat limiting the ability of progressives to conveniently kill babies. Even the reaction to the recent molestation of the famously beer-ophilic jurist as he nibbled on a rib-eye at Morton's in DC was indicative - this personal confrontation was celebrated by the left instead of decried.

What's the logical limit when you sign onto the idea that one can legitimately influence politics via the personal intimidation of officials placed in office by our agreed constitutional procedures? If you can get in his face, why can't you slap it? Or put a bullet in it? If there is a boundary, the left is not setting it. Keep in mind that civil conflict is not unknown in America, Our revolution was also a civil war - one sparked by tyrants seeking to enforce gun control. The Civil War that followed four score and change years later was sparked by Democrats angry over the Republican demand that they stopped treating human beings inhumanly - a theme that continues to this day.

Hong Kong will implement real-name registration for the contact-tracing LeaveHomeSafe app and China-style health codes to "identify" those infected or undergoing quarantine, the new health chief Lo Chung-mau said on Monday.

Lo also announced that, starting Friday, those undergoing home isolation due to being infected will be required to wear an electronic bracelet to ensure they will not leave their home.

Speaking at the routine Covid-19 briefing on Monday afternoon, Lo told reporters that the purpose of requiring users to register their real names on LeaveHomeSafe was to "identify confirmed cases and people required to undergo quarantine," and "not to track them."

Wind power -- a key source of electricity in Texas -- is being sidelined just when the Lone Star State needs it most, with turbines generating less than a 10th of what they're capable of.

A scorching heat wave is pushing the Texas grid to the brink. Power demand is surging as people crank up air conditioners. But meanwhile, wind speeds have fallen to extremely low levels, and that means the state's fleet of turbines is at just 8% of their potential output.

Texas may be America's oil and gas hub, but it's also long been the country's biggest wind-power state. The renewable energy source has become highly politicized: Some critics blamed frozen wind turbines for the Texas grid's failure during a deadly winter storm last year, even though disruptions at plants powered by natural gas were the bigger culprit.

Texas grid operators had accurately forecast that wind output would be low Monday, yet it points to a broader struggle facing the world as it transitions to cleaner energy sources. While countries across the globe are generating more electricity from intermittent wind and solar sources, large-scale, battery storage is still in its ascendancy. That leaves major grids more fragile and vulnerable to shock.

An American Airlines passenger said she had to get off the plane she had just boarded after a five-hour delay because the pilots had run out of flying time.

Sheila Gray had arrived at Charlotte on Saturday after returning from Rome and was trying to get home to Boston. She told Insider: "All I wanted was to get home to my bed. I had been up for 24 hours at this point and the deplaning was just the straw that broke the camel's back."

During the layover at Charlotte, her flight was delayed numerous times because "the plane was in a hanger being repaired," the gate agent told her. Once the plane was ready, just 20 minutes after boarding the pilot asked all passengers to leave the aircraft because "the crew has timed out and couldn't fly. We all deplaned and started scrambling to see if we could find other flights."

"People were angry and yelling at the gate agents. One irate gentleman in the gate area was later escorted off the plane after we reboarded. I did not hear him causing a commotion on the plane but had seen him after we were taken off the plane."

Replacement pilots were found and the original cabin were also able to fly, it transpired.

Starbucks is shuttering 16 store locations nationwide after store managers reported a surge in drug use among customers and outsiders as well as an increase in crime in certain areas.

Six Starbucks locations will be closed in the company's hometown of Seattle and six more will be shuttered in the Los Angeles metro area.

Two Starbucks restaurants will cease operating in Portland, Ore., while one store each will close in Philadelphia and Washington, DC, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Store managers have complained to company executives that employees have not felt safe amid a surge of assaults, thefts and drug use in and around each location.