Marine veteran Daniel Penny was acquitted by a Manhattan jury Monday in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely — a lightning-rod case that cast a light on the mayhem plaguing Big Apple subways.

Jurors cleared Penny, a 26-year-old Long Islander, of criminally negligent homicide after the caught-on-camera fatal encounter on an uptown F train last year sparked fierce debate about mental illness, public safety and vigilantism.

A suited-up Penny, who remained stone-faced for much of the four-week trial, broke out a huge smile as his not guilty verdict was read out — prompting both applause and anger inside the courtroom as the high-profile case came to an end.

From religious Jews scurrying out of New York City sewers on New Year's Day to UFO flaps over US military bases, Trump nearly being taken out by a real-life Manchurian Candidate (and then again by a recruiter of mercenaries for the CIA's wars), and now Syria being overrun by the latest iteration of Al Qaeda, none can dispute that 2024 has been a wild year.

While global events have been horrific to watch at times, they've also been riveting and at times even inspirational. We were as pessimistic as anyone about Trump's chances of surviving all the lawfare being thrown at him and the expected election rigging, much less an assassin's bullet on the eve of the Republican Convention. And yet, a miracle happened. Donald Trump is going to be US president again.

What he and his 'Team Trump Avengers' can possibly achieve against the all-powerful Washington 'blob' remains to be seen, but in the meantime we have enjoyed the howling, the liberal tears and the about-turns that Trump's victory has provoked. We must also take stock of the utter mess the deranged Biden regime has left behind: a war in eastern Europe that has cost Russia and Ukraine millions in lives and livelihoods; a genocide in Gaza and a Middle East that has never looked so volatile; the de-industrialization of Germany and thus potential economic collapse in Europe; and the global promotion of so-called 'trans ideology' to children, amounting to child abuse and, often, what is effectively child sacrifice.

The inclusion of the likes of Robert Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk within Trump's 'unity government' bodes well for the re-introduction of proper science, proper intelligence and free speech in the USA (and thus the wider Western world), and offers the tantalizing possibility that good governance - that is, 'the rule of normal man' - has returned, but we strongly encourage people to temper any expectations they may have by remembering that the powerful political, bureaucratic and corporate forces 'the Avengers' are up against are deeply entrenched in all layers of society and have, as Senator Chuck Schumer warned Trump many years ago, "six ways from Sunday to get back at you." It may well be that their next 'move', or series of moves, will result in them 'overturning the chessboard' of society rather than see it reflect the will of the people.

The potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence have long been codified into our popular culture, well before the technology became a reality. Usually these fictional accounts portray AI as a murderous entity that comes to the "logical conclusion" that human beings are a parasitic species that needs to be eradicated. Keep in mind that most of these stories are written by progressives out of Hollywood and are mostly a reflection of their own philosophies.

Some of these predictive fantasies take a deeper look into our dark relationship with technology. In 1965, Jean Luc Godard released a film called 'Alphaville' which portrayed a society completely micromanaged by a cold and soulless robotic intelligence. Humanity gives itself over to a binary-brained overlord because they are tricked into believing a ruler devoid of emotion would be free from bias or corruption.

In 1968, Stanley Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey, featuring an AI computer on a starship which becomes self aware after coming in proximity to an alien artifact. The AI, seeing the ship's human cargo as a threat to its existence, determines that it must murder the crew. The conflict between the crew and the computer is only a foil for much bigger questions. It is an exploration of what constitutes intelligent life, where it comes from and what consciousness means in the grand scheme of the universe.

The suspect nabbed in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is an anti-capitalist Ivy League grad who liked online quotes from "Unabomber'' Ted Kaczynski — and seethed in a manifesto, "These parasites simply had it coming," law enforcement sources told The Post on Monday.

Tech whiz Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md., apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated his sick relative, sources said.

The suspect also may have held a grudge because of his own interactions with the industry, sources said — noting an X-ray photo on his X account showing four pins in a spine.

Mangione — who hails from a wealthy, well-known Maryland family, with a cousin in the state legislature — also had five books involving chronic back pain on his reading list on his Goodreads account.

The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) division, the armed enforcement wing of the IRS tasked with combating financial crimes, has expanded its workforce by nearly 11 percent, bringing staffing levels to their highest in nearly a decade and boosting the division's conviction rate to 90 percent, according to the IRS-CI's latest annual report.

As Tom Ozimek reports, via The Epoch Times, the fiscal year 2024 report, released on Dec. 5, outlines a year of intensified enforcement for the IRS-CI, which serves as the tax agency's law enforcement branch that focuses on tax violations that cross into criminal territory.

The report shows that the division achieved several firsts over the past year, including the first sentencing for syndicated conservation easement schemes, the first cryptocurrency tax fraud indictment, and a record-setting financial settlement with Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, for anti-money laundering violations.

A two-year-old girl died from a cardiac arrest after an overrun ambulance service sent firemen instead of trained medics to save her.

Little Yuna Feeley, from Massachusetts, was suffering from a respiratory illness when she suddenly went limp and stopped breathing on the morning of January 26.

Her mother, Andrea Feeley, frantically called 911 but the local ambulance service sent a fire crew instead.

All that glisters green is not gold...

The electric car market is reeling in Europe...Germany's electric car ambitions have taken another body blow as Swedish Northvolt declares bankruptcy in USA.

The massively taxpayer-subsidized gigafactory now under construction in Heide is in jeopardy and becoming a huge embarrassment for Germany's Socialist-Green government.
Northvolt, a Swedish battery manufacturer, is facing immense financial difficulties and has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. This filing has raised concerns about the future of Northvolt's battery plant now under construction near Heide, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

Construction of the Northvolt Drei battery factory near Heide began in March 2024 and it was planned to begin production in 2026.

"[He] is considering a plan to link a university's likelihood of receiving research grants to some ranking or measure of academic freedom on campus"

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Trump NIH Pick Who Wants to Take On 'Cancel Culture' Colleges

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health wants to take on campus culture at elite universities, wielding the power of tens of billions of dollars in scientific grants.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist, is considering a plan to link a university's likelihood of receiving research grants to some ranking or measure of academic freedom on campus, people familiar with his thinking said.

Bhattacharya, a critic of the Covid-19 response, wants to counter what he sees as a culture of conformity in science that ostracized him over his views on masking and school closures.

The UK is not prepared for Ukraine-level casualty rates, Alistair Carns has said. In case of an actual conflict, the UK would run out of soldiers in six months to a year, the British Ministry of Defence official in charge of personnel.

Carns is the under-secretary of State for veterans and people in the country's defense ministry. He raised concerns about the size of the British Army during an event at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank on Wednesday. He said:

"In a war of scale - not a limited intervention, but one similar to Ukraine — our army, for example, on the current casualty rates would be expended — as part of a broader multinational coalition — in six months to a year."

He based this calculation on questionable Ukrainian claims that Russia was taking 1,500 casualties every day, which Moscow has described as closer to Kiev's actual losses.

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to publicly disclose more information underpinning its authorization of COVID-19 vaccines, after failing to persuade the court to end the public records lawsuit.

In a ruling, on Friday, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth, Texas, ordered the agency to produce its "emergency use authorization" file to a group of scientists who wanted to see licensing information that the FDA relied on to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is long passed and so has any legitimate reason for concealing from the American people the information relied upon by the government in approving the Pfizer vaccine," wrote Pittman, appointed in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.