Saturday, June 20, 2026
Iran said to close Hormuz over Lebanon strikes
Iran is closing the Strait of Hormuz due to "the Zionist regime's relentless and continuous violation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon," for which Tehran holds Washington responsible, Iranian Mehr News revealed on Saturday, citing a decision by the Iranian Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.
Iran accused the US of "blatant breach of promise and breach of contract in not implementing the first paragraph of the end-of-war agreement [memorandum of understanding (MoA)]." Furthermore, Tehran protested the presence of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in southern Lebanon, urging its immediate withdrawal from the area.
"The Strait of Hormuz will be closed to vessel traffic ... if the aggression continues, further steps will be planned and taken to force the enemy to fulfill its obligations," the headquarters was quoted as saying.
https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Iran-said-to-close-Hormuz-over-Lebanon-strikes/66542873
If you believe the hype: World Cup seen to spur $45B global econ boom, like ‘Taylor Swift effect’ on steroids
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is shaping up to be one of the biggest economic events in modern sports history — and the financial impact could make Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras Tour look small in comparison.
Bank of America analysts recently forecast that the month-long tournament will boost global gross domestic product by a whopping $45 billion — with roughly $19 billion of that going to US GDP, Barron’s reported.
The tournament, which is being staged across the United States, Canada and Mexico, is expected to drive an estimated billions in additional US consumer spending, analysts wrote earlier this month.
“In economic terms, all of this activity adds up,” Federated Hermes Head of Multi-Asset Solutions Damian McIntyre wrote in a research note.
“In this sense, it’s like the ‘Taylor Swift effect’ all over again,” McIntyre said.
The singer was widely credited for sparking mini-economic booms in the host cities of her 2023-24 world tour, a phenomenon that earned the tongue-in-cheek name of “Swiftonomics.”
The World Cup’s economic footprint could dwarf even the staggering numbers generated by Swift’s record-breaking shows.
Nomura estimated in 2024 that the first leg of Swift’s Eras Tour boosted consumer spending by about $5 billion.
Bank of America’s estimate for World Cup-related spending is more than six times larger.
Unlike a concert tour that visits a city for one or two nights, the World Cup unfolds over several weeks and draws millions of fans, sponsors, broadcasters, athletes and support staff.
The tournament is expected to generate spending across hotels, restaurants, bars, airlines, ride-sharing services, retail shops and entertainment venues throughout North America.
In New York and New Jersey alone, the host committee forecast $3.3 billion in impact for the region, with 26,000 jobs supported on both sides of the Hudson River.
The World Cup is also a massive media and gambling event.
Barron’s reported that it could become the largest betting event in history, and that at a time when the sports gambling industry faces growing regulatory uncertainty.
As of Friday, bettors had already wagered about $2.7 billion on prediction markets tied to the tournament winner.
The largest share of that action has flowed toward traditional soccer powers. France, Spain, England and Argentina are considered the favorites to lift the trophy, according to betting markets.
The US, despite enjoying home-field advantages for much of the tournament, was given just a 2% chance of winning it all.
The “Taylor Swift effect” became a recognized economic phenomenon during the singer’s Eras Tour, which packed stadiums around the globe and generated massive spillover spending far beyond ticket sales.
Research found that Swift’s concerts triggered large spikes in hotel occupancy, restaurant traffic, transportation demand and temporary hiring in host cities.
Across the US leg of the tour, hotel analytics firm STR estimated that Swift concerts generated $208 million in incremental hotel room revenue above seasonal norms.
Hotel occupancy during concert weekends jumped nearly 10 percentage points above normal levels, while average daily room rates climbed 23%.
In Pittsburgh, tourism officials estimated that Swift’s two-night stop generated $46 million in direct spending excluding ticket sales and produced roughly $3 million in state and local tax revenue.
Cincinnati projected $92 million in total consumer spending tied to her concerts there.
Economists caution that not every dollar spent on tickets translates directly into local economic growth because much of the revenue ultimately flows to artists, promoters, ticketing companies and suppliers outside the host city.
Still, the hospitality and tourism effects have proven difficult to ignore.
If the forecasts prove accurate, the World Cup could become the most economically significant sporting event ever staged in North America.
Hochul’s $11 billion bid-rigging scandal is how Medicaid works in New York
With the feds joining the parade calling out fraud in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s rancid home-care-aide “reform,” maybe the fundamental corruption of New York’s Medicaid programs will start to unravel.
The Justice Department’s Civil Division last week filed suit over the 2024 scheme to consolidate payrolls for nearly 240,000 home care aides covered by the $11 billion Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program.
That makes a half-dozen lawsuits so far: It’s a parade!
Under CDPAP, Medicaid covers aides to help out elderly or disabled folks around the house, paying roughly $20 an hour.
New York lawmakers loosened the rules in 2015 so friends or relatives could get paid to do the work — whereupon costs rose by the billions as enrollment doubled.
The number of “middlemen” (businesses and nonprofits) that handle CDPAP payrolls shot up from seven to 700 — as scams skyrocketed, too.
Easy enough: The middleman pays for hours not worked, and splits the windfall.
At this point, monster health-worker union 1199 SEIU (eager to enroll new members) got Hochul to push a reform that would supposedly rein in costs.
No, not tightening the rules that started the cost explosion, but hiring a single company to handle all the payroll work.
That “fix” looks like a giant fraud.
The feds finger Health Commissioner James McDonald and Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri as rigging the bidding to award the payroll contract to Public Partnership LLC — and the move definitely reeks.
Multiple investigations have already proved that PPL was consulting with top state officials long before the official bidding opened; the company’s name even appeared in an early draft of the “reform” law.
Evidence in another lawsuit suggests 1199 was in on the rigging, too.
Awkwardly, PPL had already failed catastrophically and publicly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey before Team Hochul hired it — and did it again in New York, failing miserably at moving workers onto the centralized system.
But the transition was a huge winner for 1199, letting its New York membership grow nearly 50% as it began pushing boost CDPAP wages.
Surprise: Hochul’s reform hasn’t produced the $500 million a year in savings she promised, and will likely boost outlays as 1199 works its lobbying magic.
All of this is basically par for the course for Medicaid in New York, whose political machines rely on the interests that feed off the program.
That’s why overall spending spikes year after year; it’ll burn $124 billion this year — vastly more per capita than any other state and nearly triple the $46 billion outlays in 2013.
Even as 3 million of the state’s 6.4 million enrollees may not actually qualify for benefits.
Meanwhile, anti-fraud enforcement has sunk under Attorney General Letitia James, with investigations dropping 45% since she took office and fraud recoveries falling 80%.
Hochul, James and New York’s entire Democratic establishment erupt in fury whenever Washington looks to rein in its own hemorrhaging Medicaid outlays.
They always claim to be protecting the poor, but what they’re really guarding is the corruption that feeds their own careers in politics.
Tax-funded CUNY criminal justice college welcomes alleged pervs, pimps to teach future cops, lawyers
When anti-Israel and anti-America professor Corinna Mullin returns to the classroom this fall, she will join a rogues gallery of controversial and even criminal professors employed over the years by taxpayer-funded City University of New York.
An unhinged Hunter College arts professor held a machete to a Post reporter’s neck and made wild threats that she was going to “chop” him up when he knocked on the door of her Bronx apartment a day after she went viral for cursing out anti-abortion students on campus.
Shellyne Rodriguez was charged with menacing and harassment in the caught on video incident, and fired by CUNY.
Four professors at John Jay College of Criminal Justice — which, ironically, trains cops — allegedly ran a lawless den of depravity dubbed “the swamp” where they sold and used drugs and preyed on students, according to 2018 sexual harassment complaints.
Accused in the scandal were adjunct professor Leonardo Dominguez, former anthropology department chair Anthony Marcus, sociology professor and former department chair Barry Spunt, and anthropology professor and former chair of several departments, Ric Curtis.
Alleged victims Naomi Haber and Claudia Cojocaru filed complaints with John Jay’s Title IX office in May 2018, detailing horrific allegations that included rape and drugs.
Curtis — who was known for his drug research, particularly heroin — allegedly sold drugs out of his John Jay office, according to both complaints.
The professors denied the allegations and filed counterclaims for defamation, and were placed on leave in September 2018. Spunt and Marcus retired amid John Jay’s investigation and Dominguez never returned to the school. The DA’s office also launched a probe, but no criminal charges were brought.
In 2021, John Jay paid Haber and Cojocaru $164,499.74 each. All allegations against Curtis were dropped except retaliation.
In 2024 John Jay allowed Curtis to come back and teach.
In a separate scandal, associate professor and chair of the Africana Studies department, Carlton Jama Adams, was accused of exposing a grad student, Judith Sandrine Dikambi, to “a barrage of unrelenting and daily xenophobic, sexist and vulgar remarks about her African heritage,” according to a 2019 lawsuit.
But Adams walked away without punishment — as he continues to teach at the school.
A judge dismissed the case in 2024, ordering the state of New York to pay Dikambi and his lawyers $225,000 on behalf of CUNY and Adams.
Allyson Friedman, a biology professor at Hunter College, inadvertently interrupted a black student’s concerns about the potential shutdown of her Upper West Side school to say “they’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school” during a hot mic moment.
She apologized after sparking widespread fury, and continues to be employed by CUNY.
The former head of the college’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice Stephen Handelman was accused of turning an intern more than 50 years younger than him into a “sexual play toy.”
The anonymous alleged victim filed a lawsuit against him in 2022. The case was dismissed in August 2023.
Handelman was placed on a leave and hasn’t returned to the school since.
Erin Thompson, self-described as America’s only professor of art crime in her John Jay bio, once told rioters how to topple statues “faster.”
When protestors tore down the 10-foot Christopher Columbus statue at the Minnesota State Capitol by in June 2020, Thompson tweeted out: “I’m a professor who studies the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage and I just have to say…use a chain instead of a rope and it’ll go faster.”
In 2017, economics professor Michael Isaacson was axed after posting online that it was a “privilege to teach future dead cops.”
In a bizarre outburst, CUNY’s former vendor integrity director and adjunct professor at John Jay Vincent Green allegedly yanked a female student’s hair in 2018 and was subsequently ousted.