Canada appoints new fentanyl czar

 Canada on Tuesday named a former deputy commissioner with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the country’s fentanyl czar, hoping to show the U.S. it is working to prevent production and distribution of the synthetic opioid.

During his more than 20 years in the RCMP, Kevin Brosseau served as a deputy commissioner and the senior Mountie in the province of Manitoba. More recently, he was deputy national security and intelligence adviser to the prime minister.

“Fentanyl is a lethal drug that must be eradicated from our communities,” Prime Minster Justin Trudeau said in a statement Tuesday. “The appointment of Kevin Brosseau as Fentanyl Czar will accelerate Canada’s efforts to detect, disrupt, and dismantle the fentanyl trade, in partnership with the United States.”

President Donald Trump recently threatened to impose steep tariffs on all goods from Canada, citing the southbound flow of migrants and drugs, including fentanyl.

Trump agreed to a monthlong pause on the tariffs while the U.S. assesses whether Canada’s recent actions satisfy his demands.

The amount of fentanyl made in Canada and smuggled into the U.S. is much smaller than that from Mexico. U.S. customs agents seized 43 pounds (19.5 kilograms) of fentanyl at the Canadian border during the last fiscal year, compared with 21,100 pounds (9,570 kilograms) at the Mexican border.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/canada-appoints-former-mountie-as-fentanyl-czar-to-combat-production-of-the-dangerous-opioid/ar-AA1yRc0F

Foxconn says its aim is cooperation with Nissan, not acquisition

 The chairman of Taiwan's Foxconn said on Wednesday that the company's aim is cooperation with Nissan, not acquisition, as the Japanese automaker's future hangs in the balance after stepping back from merger talks with Honda.

Struggling Nissan is again at a crossroads after sources said last week that negotiations with bigger rival Honda to create the world's No. 4 automaker had been complicated by growing differences.

The deal would have been the latest change in a car industry facing a huge threat from China's BYD and other electric vehicle entrants.

Nissan is open to working with new partners such as Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker and Apple's main iPhone maker, sources said last week.

Speaking to reporters at Foxconn's corporate headquarters in New Taipei, outside the capital Taipei, its Chairman Young Liu said his company was not looking to acquire Nissan, but it would consider taking a stake if that was needed for cooperation.

"Purchasing its shares is not our aim; our aim is cooperation," he added, in Foxconn's first public comments about its talks with Nissan.

Foxconn is also talking about cooperation with France's Renault given that company's stake in Nissan, Liu said. Renault owns 36% of Nissan, including 18.7% in a French trust.

Nissan declined to comment on Liu's remarks. Renault did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nissan shares were down around 7%, while Foxconn shares traded about 1% lower. Nissan and Honda are both due to release their quarterly financial results on Thursday.

While Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, is best known for its role as an Apple supplier, it also has ambitions in the electric vehicle sector as it seeks to diversify its business.

Liu said Foxconn would not get into being an auto "brand" and would only provide commissioned design and manufacturing services.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/foxconns-aim-cooperation-nissan-not-023643884.html

Top ICE officials reassigned amid pressure to increase arrests, sources say

 Two top U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have been reassigned amid pressure to dramatically increase arrests of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, three sources familiar with the matter said.

In a move announced to staff on Tuesday, ICE said Russell Hott and Peter Berg, the two most senior officials in the agency's enforcement division, would be reassigned. The Washington Post first reported the news.

President Donald Trump took office in January promising record deportations, saying they were necessary after high levels of immigration under his predecessor Joe Biden. Trump issued executive orders making it easier for ICE officers to arrest non-criminals and assigned other federal agents to assist ICE.

While arrests surged in late January to 800-1,200 per day, enforcement tapered off in February as detention centers filled up and the additional enforcement teams returned home, two of the sources and another person familiar with the matter said.

Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello remains under pressure to increase arrests and deportations while releasing fewer people from custody in the next week, one of the sources said.

Trump's border czar Tom Homan said on Tuesday he was not happy with the number of arrests.

"Three times higher is good, but I'm not satisfied," he told reporters at the White House.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin did not confirm the reassignments but said in a statement that "a culture of accountability" was needed within ICE.

“We have a President, DHS Secretary, and American people who rightfully demand results, and our ICE leadership will ensure the agency delivers," she said.

Hott and Berg could not immediately be reached.

Hott will transfer to ICE's local office in Washington, D.C., and Berg will go to Minnesota, one of the sources said.

There were roughly 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally or with a temporary status at the start of 2022, according to a U.S. government estimate, a figure that some analysts say has now risen to as many as 14 million people.

https://www.aol.com/top-ice-officials-reassigned-amid-025143073.html

Disruption of single amino acid in cellular protein makes breast cancer cells behave like stem cells

 Vimentin is a type III intermediate filament (IF) protein normally expressed in cells that develop into connective tissue, blood vessels, and lymphatic tissue (mesenchymal cells). Despite being widely studied, its role in tumor growth and progression remains unexplored.

A team of researchers at Queen Mary University of London have discovered how a small change in the vimentin protein can make breast cancer more aggressive. The work is published in the journal eLife.

By modifying a specific amino acid cysteine to serine residue at position 328 in vimentin, they discovered that this mutation disrupted the protein's interaction with the cell's structural network. Remarkably, the mutated vimentin induced aggressive cancer-like behavior in breast cancer cells, including faster cell growth, migration, and invasion accompanied by reduced cell adhesion.

RNA-sequencing further revealed that the presence of mutant vimentin was associated with upregulation of a non-coding RNA called XIST, suggesting a potential link between this mutation and gene expression changes that drive cancer progression.

Researchers also found that mutant vimentin made breast cancer cells grow without depending on the hormone estrogen when injected into immuno-compromised mice. The tumors in these mice showed high expression of cancer stem cell markers CD56 and CD20, suggesting a role for mutant vimentin in driving cancer stem cell-like behavior that is often associated with tumor progression, therapeutic resistance and recurrence.

Senior author Ahmad Waseem, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Oral Biology at the Institute of Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, said, "Our study has discovered a molecular interaction that, when disrupted, causes breast cancer cells to behave like cancer stem cells.

"Additionally, we identified a potential biomarker that could help detect these stem-like cells in breast cancer tissues. This discovery represents an important step towards understanding how breast cancer develops and spreads, with potential implications for early diagnosis, prognosis, and targeted treatment strategies."

The lead author, Dr. Saima Usman (HEC Fellow), did her Ph.D. with Professor Waseem on this project.

Co-author Andrew Yeudall, Professor of Oral Biology in the Dental College of Georgia at Augusta University, said, "The study will open new avenues for our understanding of cancer stem cell behavior.

"For several years, Professor Waseem and I have been interested in studying the cancer-related roles of vimentin, which is induced in almost all later-stage tumors that have spread to other sites in the body and can be difficult to treat. We used MCF-7, a model breast epithelial cell line, partly because it is devoid of vimentin, which therefore makes it easier to define functions related to specific vimentin mutations.

"Our observation that the cells became more aggressive, and that stem cell markers were induced, may unlock the door to new therapeutic approaches for breast and other cancers."

More information: Saima Usman et al, A single cysteine residue in vimentin regulates long non-coding RNA XIST to suppress epithelial-mesenchymal transition and stemness in breast cancer, eLife (2025). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.104191

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-disruption-amino-acid-cellular-protein.html

Temu Prices to Rise in US Amid Shift in Supply Chain Strategy

 Online shopping giant Temu is giving up substantial control of its Chinese supply chain in the face of President Donald Trump’s new tariffs, a move that threatens to drive up prices on the budget shopping app.

The platform is accelerating a shift away from its original model where sellers leave everything — price-setting, shipping and marketing included — to Temu. Instead, the company now wants factories to ship their own wares in bulk to American warehouses, adopting what it calls a “half-custody” framework where it only manages the online marketplace, people familiar with the matter said.

While shifting over to “half-custody” has not been made mandatory yet, Temu has signaled to merchants that it will prioritize sellers who sign onto the new framework, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private conversations. The company plans to ultimately move its entire US operation to the new model, another person said.

The shift threatens to inflate prices on the PDD Holdings Inc.-owned marketplace as merchants lose the economies of scale in shipping and handling that Temu provides while having to compensate for higher delivery costs that Trump’s punitive measures will add. With this move, Temu is also distancing itself from the model pioneered by Amazon.com Inc., whose control of its logistics and delivery network underpins a 38% market share of online spending in the US.

China’s e-commerce firms including PDD could incur more costs in the first half, resulting in lower profits and steeper losses overseas, even after Trump delayed removal of the duty-free exemption for small parcels, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Catherine Lim and Trini Tan said in a note earlier this week. PDD “will likely incur upfront costs to facilitate changes to Temu’s business model” to counter the threat from less favorable policy changes on their operations.

While Temu’s “half-custody” model was introduced early last year, efforts to push vendors into that framework have accelerated after Trump came to power, the people said. The change may also result in fewer Chinese suppliers selling on the platform, as smaller merchants unable to command favorable shipping rates or devote resources to managing logistics shift out of the US marketplace.

Representatives for Temu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Temu and rival Shein, both China-founded business that exploded off American consumers’ demand for cheap goods, are bracing for the end of duty-free exemption on small parcels. While implementation has been delayed indefinitely, the inevitable loss of the “de minimis” rule for goods coming from China will affect the bulk of what these companies sell in US.

Shein is also moving to mitigate the impact of the new US measures. To preserve its ability to deliver duty-free small parcels, Shein is asking some Chinese suppliers to set up new production capacity in Vietnam with incentives like up to 30% higher procurement pricing, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

As companies accelerate deliveries of China-exported products to overseas clients to avoid tariff increases and adjust to geopolitical changes, they are finding it “very hard to book” cargo ships now, Zhao Haijun, co-CEO of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., said during an earnings call this week.

“When’s the inflection point? I think we need to wait till the mid year when policies are all announced,” said Zhao, commenting on the demand trajectory in semiconductors industry.

Last year, companies such as Shein and Temu shipped $46 billion worth of small parcels to the US to take advantage of the rule that allows items with a declared value under $800 to enter the US tariff-free, according to Nomura Holdings Inc.’s estimates.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/temu-overhauls-supply-chain-tariffs-110629951.html

White House nominates new chiefs for bank, market regulators

 The White House plans to nominate Jonathan McKernan, a former member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as full-time director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The White House also intends to nominate Jonathan Gould as the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Brian Quintenz as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The nominations were first reported by Punchbowl News. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, McKernan would take over an agency currently going through a major upheaval after the Trump administration effectively froze the watchdog.

McKernan recently stepped down from the FDIC's board, where he had served since January 2023. He previously worked as counsel to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee under Republican Senator Pat Toomey, and before that was senior counsel at the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a Treasury Department adviser.

Gould most recently was a partner at law firm Jones Day in Washington, and before that worked for crypto firm Bitfury as its chief legal officer. In 2018, Gould was chief counsel for the Senate Banking Committee under then-Chairman Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican.

If confirmed to the OCC, Gould would lead the regulator charged with monitoring large national banks.

The CFTC, which oversees commodity derivatives markets, has traditionally been a junior player in financial policy, but is expected to play a more prominent role as the Trump administration starts to overhaul cryptocurrency regulations.

Quintenz, who is currently head of policy for a16z crypto, the crypto arm of venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, had been advising the Trump transition team on crypto policy, Reuters previously reported.

https://www.aol.com/white-house-nominates-chiefs-bank-033955086.html

Busted Fentanyl Super Lab In Canada Makes "Breaking Bad Look Minor League": Former Trump Official

 Canada's last-minute decision to cooperate with President Trump on border security and efforts to curb fentanyl trafficking was a key factor behind the president's 25% tariff threat. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged to strengthen border security, a former US official who led an anti-fentanyl task force under President Trump's first term has argued that laws in Canada hinder a proper crackdown on the flow of drugs in the US.

"Well, several months ago, you had the biggest lab in the history of the world taken over by (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) in Vancouver... It made Breaking Bad look like minor league," former State Department official David Asher told Canada's state-funded CBC News' chief political correspondent, Rosemary Barton, in an interview last weekend. 

Asher claimed that the fentanyl super lab was "definitely" connected to Chinese organized crime and also pointed to possible connections with Iran and even rogue biker gangs. 

"Definitely there was ties to Chinese organized crime, possibly Iran as well," he said, adding, "The facts haven't been released by your government...I think they know they're sitting on a big scandal here."

Asher continued, "The fact this thing emerged and it's tied to these biker gangs, who've been hired to go down to the United States, in some cases, and assassinate people like my former boss Secretary (of State) Mike Pompeo, President Trump, and others. You know, this is another whole level of scandal."

"But the key thing to focus on is that someone was making over 100 million doses of deadly fentanyl - right under your noses - so how many other labs do you think you have in your country?" the former State Department official questioned. 

He explained that Canada has "very little border enforcement ... most of the drugs are going from Mexico to Canada and then being brought south into the northwest United States on ships. You have almost no port enforcement with police. So we have no idea - except for our sources - what is actually going on. And we hear some bad things." 

Asher stated that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian Security Intelligence Service are top-notch organizations, "but your problem is your laws: It's the Stinchcombe law. Basically, every time we try to go up on a phone number in Canada, almost all the money laundering networks are tied to China, which is about 90% of all the money laundering in the US. So when we're targeting those numbers - the police have to inform that individual that the US is targeting their number. That's crazy - how can we run an undercover police operation in the country?" 

Latest headlines on the US-Canada border situation:

• Trudeau Bends The Knee: Canada Will Send 10,000 Troops To Border, Name Fentanyl Czar To Delay Trump Tariffs

• Trump Effect: Canada Bends The Knee, Puts $1.3 Billion Into Border Security After Tariff Threat

• US & Canada Unveil Possible Blueprint For Post-Tariff Partnership To 'Disrupt & Dismantle' CCP-Fueled Fentanyl Crisis

Let's rewind to April 2024, when we covered the House Select Committee on China that revealed the Chinese Communist Party used tax rebates to subsidize the manufacturing and exporting of fentanyl chemicals to North America. 

The report stated, "Through subsidies, grants, and other incentives, the PRC harms Americans while enriching PRC companies." 

Recall this report in August: Chinese Narcos In Toronto Run "Command & Control" Fentanyl Laundering Network Used In TD Bank Case: US Investigator. 

China hawk Kyle Bass.

Meanwhile, on the southern border...

A coordinated North American strategy is emerging and essential to stop the drug death crisis in America, killing 100,000 folks (many working-age or military-age men and women) per year. This is hybrid warfare by Beijing - and folks have to start asking why the Biden-Harris regime fueled the crisis with open-border policies. It doesn't seem like 'America First' - more like 'China First'. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/busted-fentanyl-super-lab-canada-makes-breaking-bad-look-minor-league-former-trump-official