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Friday, June 13, 2025

'Unexpected household item mysteriously appearing in US mailboxes -- why you should leave it there'

 Opened your mailbox lately to find a random household object in with your daily selection of bills and junk?

Don’t be creeped out by the mysterious placement, and definitely don’t remove it — your mailman will thank you.

Here’s why it’s there: As temps rise, out come the yellowjackets and wasps. And apparently, they’ve got a thing for dark, cozy mailboxes. 

Unless, of course, there’s something in there they don’t like: scented dryer sheets.

It’s not junk mail — it’s anti-sting strategy, the postal worker on Reddit clarified. So sit back, sniff the lavender, and thank your local postie.will milne – stock.adobe.com

Which is why mail carriers across the country are turning to the unlikely weapon. 

“We’re almost to the month of May which means… the return of those dastardly devils,” wrote one postal worker in a Reddit post that’s buzzing across the internet and resurfacing the timetested method just in time for the summer seaason.

“We’ve found that they hate scented dryer sheets,” the aforementioned letter carrier revealed. “If we encounter a box that is a problem for nests, we’ll often put one in there and it does the trick.”

So before you freak out and think your house has been marked for a home invasion — yes, someone in the thread did float that theory — consider this your official PSA: Leave the sheet alone.

Who knew the secret to safe snail mail wasn’t a stamp — but a static-cling sheet from aisle 7? Many Redditors appreciated the tip.ddukang – stock.adobe.com

“I can’t tell you how many times… I’ve opened up a box to see a little nest with 3-5 Yellowjackets just chillin,” the same carrier wrote. “Last year alone I was stung 10 times on 10 separate occasions.”

And these aren’t gentle greetings from nature. “We all know how temperamental these little douchebags are,” the mailperson added. “Merely existing in their presence is enough to piss them off.”

The trick isn’t just a fringe tactic — Redditors have chimed in to say it works at restaurants too. “We learned long ago to put a few dryer sheets under the tablecloths on the patio,” one Californian wrote. “Yellowjackets often get into the guests’ plates, especially if they smell salmon.”

If you find a mystery sheet in your mailbox this summer, don’t toss it — your mail carrier just might be saving your hide, one Bounce at a time.Pixel-Shot – stock.adobe.com

The scent is the secret sauce — not the brand. And while it’s a handy deterrent, it’s not a fix for full-blown infestations. 

“This should only be used as a preventative measure,” the mail carrier clarified. “It would be best to get rid of the large nest and then put a dryer sheet in to keep them from coming back.”

Think twice before declaring your mailbox a lavender-free zone — because technically, it’s not even yours.

 “If you’re in the USA your mailbox isn’t personal property,” one commenter reminded. “The inside of the box is federal.”

The original poster summed it up best: “I’ve had to put dryer sheets in a few different boxes on my route and the customers have been removing them. So I just wanted to make a PSA.”

And before you think that mailing letters is a thing of a bygone era, you might be surprised to learn that Gen Zers and millennials are sending off snail mail, according to a survey conducted by Stamps.com last fall.

As previously reported by The Post, Nick Spitzman, Stamps.com general manager, said in the study, “Our research shows that mail is still incredibly relevant today.”

Nearly 65% of folks still send letters and packages each month, and almost half of Zoomers drop something in the mail once or twice a month.

About 37% of Americans say the personal touch is what seals the deal when it comes to snail mail — nothing beats the thrill of a handwritten note. 

For 41% of Gen Xers, it’s all about the act of sending itself, while 32% of Gen Zers just want to know their package won’t ghost them.

https://nypost.com/2025/06/13/lifestyle/why-mail-carriers-are-placing-this-unexpected-item-in-mailboxes/

US FDA extends review of KalVista’s swelling disorder drug

 KalVista Pharmaceuticals’ said on Friday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had extended the review of its drug for a type of hereditary swelling disorder due to heavy workload and limited resources.

The FDA indicated that it now expects to deliver a decision within four weeks, KalVista said.

The original target action date for the decision on the medication, named sebetralstat, was set for June 17 by the regulator.

The extension is the latest instance of the FDA missing a deadline following mass layoffs as part of a major overhaul of federal health agencies under U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

KalVista said the FDA had not requested additional data or studies and had not raised any concerns regarding the safety, efficacy or approvability of the drug.

"We remain confident in the potential for near-term approval of sebetralstat," the company told Reuters in an email.

It also said it had addressed all prior information requests in a timely manner and believed the only remaining item under FDA review was the finalization of the packaging insert.

If approved, sebetralstat will become the first on-demand oral treatment for hereditary angioedema, offering a convenient alternative to injectable treatments.

The life-threatening condition causes sudden, dangerous swelling in the body, including the skin, digestive tract and upper respiratory system, due to deficiency in a protein known as C1 inhibitor.


https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/us-fda-extends-review-of-kalvistas-swelling-disorder-drug-due-to-heavy-workload-4095767

Protected Status Terminated For 1 Million Migrants In US

 Around 1 million migrants in the U.S. on temporary protections are seeing their status terminated by the Trump administration.

In April, around 350,000 Venezuelans lost their Temporary Protected Status in the country and were told to self-deport.

As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reportsyesterday, the Department of Homeland Security notified almost 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela in the U.S. on the so-called CHNV program that their status had ended.

Infographic: Protected Status Terminated for 1 Million Migrants in U.S. | Statista

While the Supreme Court allowed the government to proceed as if the Temporary Protected Status of the Venezuelans in question and the CHNV program had ended, the programs are officially considered on hold as lower courts continue to litigate legal challenges to their discontinuation.

Earlier in the year, the U.S. government had already announced that is was cutting short or not extending some other Temporary Protected Status programs. This affects Haitians, Afghanis, Nepalese and Cameroonians. A total of around 220,000 people, mostly from Haiti, are set to lose their legal status in the U.S. this way in July and August.

Even more Temporary Protected Status programs are also suspected to not be extended. Protections for almost 250,000 additional Venezuelans would have to be extended before September, while more than 50,000 Hondurans are currently seeing their status expire in early July. Other programs include those for El Salvadorians (whose extension wasn't stopped by the Trump administration), Syrians, Ukrainians and Nicaraguans.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/protected-status-terminated-1-million-migrants-us

Dark-Money Network Funneled Millions Into 'No Kings' Nationwide Color Revolution Operation

 by Peter Schweizer & Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute

New Schweizer team investigation reveals how 'No Kings' and its partners bagged $114.8 million from the Arabella dark money network and how these professional protest organizations use tax dollars as a force multiplier.

The expected worldwide mobilization of protests this weekend, from Mississippi to Malawi, will hardly be a spontaneous eruption. On the contrary, the tumult is a carefully plotted production (complete with a protest song book) financed by the progressive dark money network that has perfected the mounting of made-to-order protests.

This "grassroots" day of defiance targets Donald Trump and his "billionaire allies," according to organizers. The dark money network funding it is known as Arabella Advisors, whose benefactors are the left's own billionaire heroes, the CONTROLIGARCHS, including George Soros, Bill Gates, Hansjorg Wyss, Mark Zuckerberg, and Reid Hoffman.

Arabella provided nearly $5 million to two leftwing nonprofits involved with the "anti-I.C.E." riots in Los Angeles this past week, according to the most recent financial disclosures available. One of those groups, Community Change Action, supports the L.A. protests and has provided protest tips in Spanish. Its "brainchild," the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, has trained children how to aggressively protest.

Another group, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, was accused by Senator Josh Hawley of fomenting "unlawful" unrest this week and has supplemented its Arabella cash with more than $50 million in state and federal grants since 2021. Indeed, taxpayers are unwittingly partnering with Arabella- and Soros-funded groups to back social unrest.

And the protests this weekend? Arabella has dumped more than $100 million into the coffers of the official "No Kings" protest partners.

 Map: Nationwide Mobilization Effort 

This weekend's day of demonstrations is dubbed "No Kings," a purpose-built protest brand created by an entity called The Indivisible Project (or "Indivisible"). That entity and its eponymous offshoots – "Indivisible Civics," "Indivisible Action," "Indivisible East Bay," et al – sprung up as an activist mobilization machine in response to Trump's 2016 victory.

Led by activists Ezra Levin and his spouse, Leah Greenberg, Indivisible has helped organize numerous anti-Trump protests. Among the partners and affiliates of No Kings are familiar names such as the ACLU and Sierra Club, and more controversial groups such as 350, which promoted and participated in the 2023 "Stop Cop City" direct actions in Atlanta which ultimately descended into firebombing chaos and saw more than 60 rioters arrested and charged with various crimes, including RICO.

Two of Arabella's top benefactors – the godfather of dark money, George Soros, and shadowy Swiss-billionaire Hansjorg Wyss – are anchor investors in Indivisible's operations. Soros's Open Society Network provided important financial support, ultimately upwards of $8 million, while Wyss's political action fund funneled $2.5 million to the Indivisible professional protest machine. LinkedIn founder and Big Tech oligarch Reid Hoffman funded Indivisible's Truth Brigade (a project to combat supposed right-wing disinformation), and the left-wing funding behemoth, Tides Nexus, has given more than $3 million.

Arabella's Sixteen Thirty Fund, which The Atlantic called the "indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money," has cut multiple checks to Indivisible for "civil rights, social action, and advocacy." In its most recently available financial disclosure (2023), Indivisible reported $14.06 million in contributions. And while Indivisible is the credited organizer of the No Kings protests, its "partners" are the real big money players behind the demonstrations.

The Government Accountability Institute obtained the most recent Arabella financial disclosures (2019 through 2023), crunched the numbers and found that, in addition to direct funding to Indivisible, the Arabella network has showered the No Kings protest partners and affiliates with at least $114.8 million.

More alarming than the staggering sums that leftwing billionaires are spending on "direct action" protest machines is the fact that taxpayers will almost certainly be funding, at least indirectly, a portion of these protests. As mentioned above, the anti-I.C.E. demonstrations in L.A. were fomented by a group that got state and federal tax dollars.

It's a force-multiplying approach that progressives have mastered, as we learned from the "Gold Bars Off the Titanic" episode, when EPA chief Lee Zeldin revealed that the Biden administration tried to disburse tens of billions of climate cash into the coffers of purpose-built progressive NGOs (Arabella's Windward Fund, for example, was a partner recipient of $2 billion from the EPA for the Rewiring America initiative that Stacey Abrams advised).

Three of the largest Arabella-run funds funneling billionaire cash to professional protest groups are the New Venture Fund, the Hopewell Fund, and the Windward Fund.

Here's the corporate structure... 

The No Kings call to action exhorts disgruntled Americans to "join millions across the country on June 14 to march against authoritarian politics and billionaire takeover."  Whether or not the protests turn violent, as in Los Angeles, remains to be seen. But whatever happens on the Day of Defiance, its organizers and media allies are certain to call it "mostly peaceful."

 

*   *   *

Seamus Bruner is the author of Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life and Peter Schweizer's Head of Research at the Government Accountability Institute. Follow him @SeamusBruner.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dark-money-network-funneled-millions-no-kings-nationwide-color-revolution-operation

RFK Jr. Plans to Pull Medical Schools' Funding if They Don't Teach Nutrition

 HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in April that he plans to tell medical schools to teach nutrition or risk losing federal funding, ABC News reported

opens in a new tab or window last week.

"Under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, HHS is committed to ensuring that nutrition is treated as core clinical knowledge -- not a wellness extra -- in building a healthcare system equipped to prevent and manage chronic disease," an HHS spokesperson told MedPage Today in an email.

Medical organizations have said that doctors do indeed receive nutrition training in medical school. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), a key oversight agency in medical education, said in an emailed statement to MedPage Today that the vast majority of medical schools already teach nutrition in some form, including topics such as obesity, food access, and food security.

But nutrition experts say there's room for improvement, as courses can be more extensive and more focused on prevention.

Nutrition Experts Supportive

Brenda Rea, MD, DrPH, RD, of Loma Linda University in California and a founding member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM), said current medical school education on nutrition often involves biochemistry and nutritional deficiencies.

"It's not necessarily about chronic disease management nutrition, or the ability to actually reverse and put disease into remission with nutrition," Rea told MedPage Today.

There is currently no nationwide curriculum for nutrition education in medical schools. Nor are medical school students required to demonstrate competencies in advising patients about healthy food, according to David Eisenberg, MD, an adjunct associate professor at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"I share Secretary Kennedy's desire to increase the degree to which doctors and medical trainees are introduced to nutrition," Eisenberg told MedPage Today. He and colleagues last year published a consensus statement in JAMA Network Openopens in a new tab or window recommending 36 mandatory nutrition competencies in medical education.

It's crucial that medical students, residents, and doctors have hands-on training in what a healthy diet looks -- and tastes like, Eisenberg said.

"Trying to educate physicians or patients to make better food choices in the absence of some experiential learning in a kitchen with real food is like talking to people about the benefits of swimming in the absence of a swimming pool: it can't be done," he said.

Eisenberg co-founded Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Livesopens in a new tab or window, an annual conference that instructs healthcare professionals in nutrition science and healthy eating, and established the Teaching Kitchen Collaborativeopens in a new tab or window, which includes dozens of hospitals and medical schools equipped with "teaching kitchens."

One such kitchen operates at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, which requires its students to take 106 hours of lifestyle medicine across their 4 years. The program is a front-runner in the extensiveness of its training, says its director of lifestyle medicine programs, Jennifer Trilk, PhD.

"The model that works best is a classroom, clinic, community model," Trilk told MedPage Today.

Regarding Kennedy's mandate for nutrition education, Trilk said Greenville leans more toward the carrot than the stick.

"The medical schools that want to do this, how can we help them integrate lifestyle medicine into medical education?" she said, adding that it remains to be seen whether Kennedy's proposed mandate will be effective.

Potential Challenges

Kim Williams, MD, chair of medicine at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, believes that nutrition education for doctors is necessary, as is their ability to pass that knowledge along to patients.

However, he thinks that some of Kennedy's other nutrition recommendations -- such as eliminating seed oils -- are not supported by data and should therefore be dropped.

"We need to be very evidence-based," Williams said to MedPage Today, a point that Trilk also emphasized. "Look at the randomized trials. Look at the accumulation of evidence from large observational studies, all of them pointing to the same thing, whether you're talking about heart disease, heart failure, kidney failure, stroke, all of it is reduced dramatically by going on a whole food, plant-based diet."

Rea added that there are real barriers to achieving Kennedy's mandate. "There's curricular overload, there's limited faculty expertise, there's a lot of misconceptions about accreditation and assessment," she said.

There's also the question of whether simply tacking on a few extra nutrition classes to a medical student's training is sufficient, said Colleen Sloan, RD, PA. The whole of the problem shouldn't fall on doctors, she said, noting that there's already a whole healthcare profession -- dietitians -- dedicated to nutrition that should be better integrated into patient care.

Sloan lamented that insurance will cover seeing a dietitian only when "the patient is diagnosed with diabetes or end-stage renal disease. And I find that such a shame and a disservice to our patients that we're waiting until they're sick enough that we want them to see a dietitian to help."

It would be more beneficial, Sloan said, for a doctor to "pass the baton to the dietitian" much earlier to make dietary recommendations and help patients achieve their goals.

Disclosures

Eisenberg reported receiving personal fees from Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, Northwell Health, CancerScan, Infinitus, and Nissin, and honoraria from Barilla outside the submitted work.

Williams, Rea, Trilk, and Sloan had no disclosures to report.


https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicaleducation/116050

'AMA Opposes Estate Recovery to Recoup Medicaid $$ From Dead Beneficiaries'

 by Cheryl Clark

The American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegatesopens in a new tab or window voted Wednesday to oppose federal or state efforts to try to recover long-term care costs from Medicaid beneficiaries' estates.

"The government taking a house from a grieving family, for pennies in return, is not healthcare. That is state-sanctioned exploitation," said Dayna Isaacs, MD, MPH, speaking for the Resident and Fellow Section. "A grave should not come with a bill."

Sarah Mae Smith, MD, PhD, who was also speaking for the Resident and Fellow Section, said states that do recover costs from estates recoup small fractions of the amounts owed.

"The highest-income patients to whom estate recoveryopens in a new tab or window would putatively apply are also best able to evade recovery efforts by leveraging legal mechanisms, leaving poorer families and families of color to bear the brunt of these misguided policies," she said.

"Medicaid and estate recovery in the same phrase is an oxymoron," said Niva Lubin-Johnson, MD, speaking for the Illinois State Medical Society.

Gregory Pinto, MD, speaking for the New York delegation, expressed an opposing view. "Our AMA should not be trying to prohibit federal estate efforts to recoup these funds. In fact, several states are able to do so successfully."

The recommendation to oppose estate recovery came in the form of an amendment to an 8-page report from the AMA's Council on Medical Service that detailed the pros and cons of estate recovery. As proposed, the report had recommended that the AMA support making Medicaid estate recovery optional, instead of mandatory, for states.

"At this time right now, Medicaid needs every dollar that it can get to help care for patients" due to looming and widespread federal cuts to Medicaid, said Patrice Burgess, MD, a member of the council that compiled the report. "It is important to allow states that option," so more patients can get covered care.

However, so many delegates were against that, an amendment was introduced to oppose estate recovery efforts outright.

The report noted that just five states -- Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin -- recouped nearly half of all Medicaid Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS) collections in the U.S., and that overall, "recovered dollars represent a small slice of what Medicaid spends on LTSS." Plus, the administrative costs of going after such assets "can be substantial," the report noted.

Medicare Opt-Out Advice?

The AMA had trouble gathering consensus about whether it should develop educational guidance for physicians to opt out of Medicareopens in a new tab or window, since payment to physicians treating seniors and the disabled has fallen far short of keeping pace with inflation, even as administrative burdens have risen.

The idea was that the AMA should develop on its website a prominently featured page with a step-by-step guide on how to opt out; an overview of legal, financial, and ethical considerations; information on alternative payment models and strategies to ensure continuity of care; and an FAQ section to address concerns or special scenarios doctors might face.

The resolution, introduced by seven state delegations, noted that participating in the Medicare program imposes "increasing administrative burdens and financial strain due to payment rates that fail to keep pace with inflation and rising practice costs." Many physicians, the proponents said, "are unaware of the process and implications of opting out of Medicare" or their ability to explore alternative payment models.

But would actively helping doctors drop out be a good service for its members? Or would it perhaps subject the AMA to criticism that it was, in effect, acting to reduce the supply of doctors available to treat the nation's seniors and disabled?

Delegates tried to soften the language by deleting one paragraph that might appear to be overly promotional for doctors to opt out. Before deletion, the paragraph would have allowed the AMA to "promote awareness of this resource among its members and provide additional support for physicians exploring alternative practice models."

Gregory Fuller, MD, speaking for the Texas Medical Association, said he understands "the optics don't look good" and pointed to negative press reports about the effort.

But he insisted that it's important "to have all options available so when people go to the website and look, they can see that option to opt out, but they can also see how to not participate or maybe they need to know how to get into Medicare. We want the optics to look good."

Ultimately, the resolution was referred to the Board of Trustees to make a decision.

GLP-1 Side Effects Registry

Another item prompting vigorous discussion was a proposal for the AMA to support a registry of patients' side effectsopens in a new tab or window from GIP and GLP-1 drugsopens in a new tab or window and their impacts on pregnancyopens in a new tab or window.

The resolution notes that besides their use in people with diabetes, there are limited studies on the potential side effects, such as muscle loss and bone density loss, especially in adults ages 65 and older.

It was approved with overwhelming support from the delegates.

"These are now given to a completely different population of people, [than they were originally intended] and a lot of people are taking these recreationally ... that we would describe as otherwise healthy individuals," said Alan Klitzke, MD, a delegate of the American College of Nuclear Medicine, who spoke for himself. "Some of them have obesity and some of them don't. And they're prescribed to a whole population of people that don't understand what the side effects may be."

"We've seen the commercials: that you learn how to dance or sing or play the guitar if you take one of these medications," Klitzke said.

Nita Shumaker, MD, an alternate delegate for the Organized Medical Staff Section that proposed the resolution, said she could find nothing on the FDA's website about "the newest side effectopens in a new tab or window I've seen, which is non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy."

As an obesity medicine specialist, she added, "when I prescribe these medications for my patients, I want to know every potential side effectopens in a new tab or window and everything that is known in the literature, which is not easily accessible at this time."

Jonathan Leffert, MD, of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology, speaking on behalf of the Endocrine Section Council, argued strongly against the registry, noting that the side effects "are well known."

"These drugs have revolutionized the care of patients with type 2 diabetes because of their effect on both blood sugar and weight loss," he said. "Several hundred papers have been written about these medications and their side effects, including in pregnancies, with many ongoing."

Pinto, of the New York delegation, supported the move. "These medications indeed are not new, but the marketing is new. A bigger advertisement requires a bigger warning label, and that's what this registry does."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/ama/116057