Shots ring out during police standoff in Stamford, Conn. neighborhood

 More than three dozen gunshots rang out in an upscale Connecticut neighborhood during a tense, hours-long standoff with police Tuesday afternoon, according to video and reports. 

An unidentified individual remained barricaded inside a Stamford home on Oaklawn Avenue as police attempted to communicate via loudspeaker — eventually demolishing the front of the house as gunfire continued, News12 Connecticut reported.

Wild video shared on X captured the chaos, with roughly 14 shots fired in rapid succession around noon as an officer in the background shouted, “Back up, shots fired!”

Nearly three dozen gunshots erupted in an upscale Connecticut neighborhood amid a tense standoff with police Tuesday afternoon.News 12 Connecticut

Moments later, another barrage of about 20 shots followed.

“Get in your car … Get out of here!” the officer can be heard yelling in the footage.

Later in the day, after police cleared the area, six more shots were fired, according to a harrowing video shared by News12. 

Authorities deployed a BearCat, an armored police vehicle, to tear down the front portion of the house just after 3:30 p.m. as the barricaded individual continued firing, police told the outlet. 

Officers are also using drones and additional armored vehicles from neighboring jurisdictions as they probe the mayhem. 

It remains unclear who fired the shots and what sparked the frenzied stand-off.

Police have not provided additional information on the incident. 

Startled neighbors were ordered to shelter in place as gunfire and chaos shook the usually quiet community. 

Cindy Richardson, who has lived in the area for over 20 years, said she was terrified. 

“It’s not every day you hear something like that,” she told the outlet. 

“Even though we’re not directly next to it, it’s still really loud. I just hope that everybody is OK. I’ve never seen that much [police] activity before. This street is normally pretty quiet and I’m pretty blown away by all the SWAT cars coming out, it’s pretty wild.”

The property where the individual is barricaded — 263 Oaklawn Ave. — is the subject of foreclosure after being recently repossessed by Wells Fargo, according to court records.

Although officers first reported there was no threat to the public, the situation later escalated to a “public-safety matter,” the Stamford Police Department wrote on Facebook. 

Residents and motorists are urged to avoid Oakland Avenue and Dartley Street as cops continue to investigate.

https://nypost.com/2025/12/02/us-news/wild-video-captures-chaos-as-shots-ring-out-during-police-standoff-in-wealthy-connecticut-neighborhood/

Putin-Witkoff meeting said to have ended after 5 hrs

 Russian President Vladimir Putin's negotiations with United States Special Envoy Steve Witkoff have concluded after almost five hours, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, who has also participated in the talks, will speak with journalists later, the paper said. The main topic of the high-profile negotiations held at the Kremlin was Washington's proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine, with territorial concessions to Moscow also potentially on the table.

Witkoff last visited Russia in August this year, on which occasion he also met with the Russian president to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. The US envoy is expected to hold talks with Ukrainian and European officials after his trip to Russia.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Putin-Witkoff-meeting-said-to-have-ended-after-5-hrs/65284433

Medline to Weigh Marketing $5 Billion IPO as Soon as Monday

 

Medline Inc. is set to begin formal marketing for its initial public offering as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, in what’s expected to be the biggest US listing this year.

The medical supply company backed by Blackstone Inc., Carlyle Group Inc. and Hellman & Friedman expects to line up about $2 billion worth of commitments from cornerstone investors before officially taking orders, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Medline had previously been targeting an IPO of about $5 billion in total, people familiar with the matter said earlier.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-02/medline-said-to-weigh-marketing-5-billion-ipo-as-soon-as-monday

San Francisco sues food companies over ultra-processed products

The city of San Francisco on Tuesday sued ten leading food makers over their ultra-processed products, accusing the industry's giants of knowingly selling foods that have been linked to a rise in serious diseases.


City officials claim the companies' tactics resemble those of the tobacco industry. Local governments, they argue, have to shoulder the public health care costs.

Firms including Kraft Heinz, Mondelez and Coca-Cola have intentionally marketed addictive, unhealthy products in violation of California laws on public nuisance and unfair competition, according to the complaint.

Kraft, Mondelez and the other companies named as defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment


Their products range from cookies and sweets to cereal and granola bars.

"These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused," said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in a statement.

Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy at the Consumer Brands Association, an industry trade group, said an "agreed upon scientific definition" of ultra-processed foods does not exist.

"Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities," Ms Gallo said in a statement.

Food and beverage manufacturers, she added, are introducing new products with more protein and fibre, less sugar and sodium and without synthetic colour additives.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court and one of the first of its kind, argues that the growing availability of ultra-processed foods has coincided with a "dramatic increase" in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers and other chronic illnesses.

"This case is about food products with hidden health harms," the complaint states.

The city is requesting monetary penalties and a statewide order forcing the food giants to change their "deceptive" marketing tactics.


Concern about ultra-processed foods has emerged as an area of consensus among some left-leaning officials and the Trump administration, even as they remain divided over Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's other positions, including his scepticism of vaccines.

In April, Kennedy announced that the US would, for example, ban eight commonly used artificial food dyes.

The US health secretary and his Make America Healthy Again movement have also called for companies to remove ingredients such as corn syrup, seed oils and artificial dyes from their products, linking them to health problems.

Some food companies have announced changes to their products since Trump's return to the White House. Coca-Cola this summer agreed to use real cane sugar in its drinks sold in the US.

San Francisco's lawsuit is the first filed by a government entity over food companies' intentional marketing of ultra-processed foods.

But this year, a judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a separate complaint brought by an individual who claimed ultra-processed foods contributed to his diabetes and liver disease diagnoses.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93wgeqpv0eo

'Democrat Mayor Asks For Federal Help After Mass Shooting At Child's Birthday Party'

 In a surprising act of political awareness, Democrat Mayor of Stockton, CA, Christina Fugazi, announced her intention this week to ask the federal government for manpower to stop rising crime after a horrific mass shooting at a child's birthday party resulted in the deaths of 4 people and 11 wounded. 

Though the investigation is ongoing, officials believe the attack was gang-related.  Suspects remain at large.

"We've got approximately 5,000 gang members and 100 gangs in the city of Stockton," Fugazi said.  Stockton's violent crime rate is currently 212% higher than the national average.

Heather Brent, a spokesperson for the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, told reporters in a briefing that the shooting occurred around 6 p.m. Pacific Time at a banquet hall along the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue. On Sunday, Brent confirmed three children were among the four people killed. The victims were 8, 9, 14 and 21 years old.

"These animals walked in and shot children at a children's birthday party," San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow said in a news conference Sunday. "None of us should stand for that."

"And let us call this what it is," Mayor Fugazi said in a Facebook post Sunday. "Gang violence exists in cities across the country, but this act was a pure act of terrorism. A complete, cowardly Terrorist Act!"

The Mayor admitted in press interviews that her city needed help, and that she was likely to ask for federal aid in the coming months.

The call for aid is a significant deviation for a blue city official.  For the past year democrat mayors have acted with increasing hostility against the Trump Administration, proudly proclaiming their "resistance" to national law and order efforts including the deportation of illegal migrants. 

The message being sent is impossible to misinterpret:  Democrats would rather protect criminals than work with Trump to make cities safer.  For if they accepted help, this would be an admission that progressive social policies don't work.  Mayor Fugazi seems desperate to make clear how bad the situation is, perhaps in fear of blowback from her own party.    

"It's babies we're talking about, children," Fugazi said. "We're talking about a cake being cut as bullets are ringing out. The candles have been blown out, you're cutting the cake, and then bullets are flying out, piercing, going through flesh and killing four people."

She stopped short of calling for the deployment of the National Guard, but the Guard is not a fix-all solution, it's essentially a barrier to protect other agencies from civil unrest and organized mobs.  That said, Fugazi notes that she knows how significant her call for any aid from the Trump Administration is.

"We need more, we need more [federal manpower]," Fugazi said. "We want to be their pilot site for the United States of America. Come to Stockton, we're here ready with our arms open for you to come into our city and let us lead them, the nation on how to do it right."

"I am calling on the full power of the federal government not only to stop crime but also to give our community the tools to prevent crime before it starts..."

Is this the beginning of a sea change in how blue cities handle crime?  Are they going to work with Trump for once instead of making life easier for criminals just to spite conservatives?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democrat-mayor-asks-federal-help-after-mass-shooting-childs-birthday-party

Crazy teachers, crazy principals, crazy country

 

By Mike McDaniel

During my teaching years, I was disheartened, but not surprised, to hear the occasional fellow teacher of another discipline proudly state they never read a complete book in college and hadn’t read a book since. I was even treated to that kind of willful ignorance by a few English teachers. It will surprise no one, I suspect, to learn my English Department had to deal with two assistant coaches “teaching” English.

If your eyebrows are rising, you’re on the right track. A coach/English teacher is as rare as a live dinosaur. A college professor of mine played the old joke on a class I was taking when he announced he knew the first name of the high school history teacher of everyone in the class: “coach.”

On the days they bothered to hold class, they commonly showed videos that had nothing to do with the curriculum, seldom asked kids to read or write, and handed back graded papers once or twice a semester if they handed them back at all. How bad was it? Their students were complaining about them! The kids wanted to learn something, but because they were coaches, they weren’t expected to really teach. It’s a rare graduate of the public schools who hasn’t experienced something similar.

Skip across the country to Echo Shaw Elementary School outside of Portland, Oregon, where Principal Laura Manning recently addressed the Forest Grove City Council:

Graphic: X Post

"As a child, I was fascinated by World War II and read all of the stories about the holocaust, and we are entering similar territory," Principal Laura Mannon of Echo Shaw Elementary told the Forest Grove School Board, in hopes of passing herself off as an expert. “I felt like I was watching a George Floyd video — George Floyd is my friend."

"What ICE is doing," she passionately told the board, "is like the gestapo of Nazi, Germany." And then she had the temerity to say, "That is not an overstatement." 

School principals are supposed to be community, educational leaders. They’re supposed to reflect the values of their communities and uphold rigorous academic standards. Sadly, she probably is—reflecting community values:

For the principal in nearby Forest Grove therefore, it's easy to take a stand against "Hitler" and the "gestapo" when you're surrounded by dopes. There's a reason why Oregon is now 47th out of 50 states in test scores — stupid is as stupid does. 

I’ve found those that principal best principal least. They hire the best possible teachers, see that they have everything they need to do their jobs, enforce swift and sure discipline and get out of the way. 

Keep in mind no one becomes a principal without a Masters’ degree. Ms. Mannon appears to have learned little during her years of schooling.  She surely learned nothing about WWII and certainly not about the Holocaust. Federal agents enforcing immigration laws duly passed by Congress have nothing whatever to do with the Nazi “final solution.”

Principals and teachers have traditionally been expected to demonstrate not only substantial knowledge, but flawless character. Those expectations are quaint these days, and particularly in blue cities and states where every anti-social, anti-American idea and perversion is featured on classroom bulletin boards, to say nothing of male teachers sporting bovine fake breasts and other mutant affectations.

Declaring “George Floyd is my friend” demonstrates a deplorable, but all too common, disconnection from reality. Floyd was a convicted felon and drug addict who so badly damaged his body it was that damage, not the Minneapolis Police Department’s official restraint technique, that killed him when he was arrested for trying to pass counterfeit money. Floyd once held a gun to the belly of a pregnant woman during a robbery. This is the kind of man Mannon considers a friend?  The kind of person she wants her students to emulate?

Mannon is clearly an example of what’s wrong with American K-12 education apparatus, and it’s unsurprising people like her are principals in Oregon. The state’s lack of educational accomplishment speaks volumes. She’s certainly not the only example, there or elsewhere

If Mannon is an example of what is now, by default or purpose, acceptable educational leadership, one thing seems certain: we’re not going to make it. 

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/crazy_teachers_crazy_principals_crazy_country.html

How the Chinese poison pet food

 

By John Klar

In 2006-2007, Americans’ pet cats and dogs began dying mysteriously from kidney failure. The mystery was not long-lived: authorities quickly discerned the cause to be pet foods laced with a chemical called melamine, or some combination of chemicals that likely included melamine and cyanuric acid. This was a tragic way for animals to die. The FDA reported more than 10,000 complaints about sickened pets. Thousands of cats and dogs were killed by the tainted pet foods.

Melamine is an industrial chemical not generally accepted as a food ingredient, so how did it end up in U.S. pet foods? The problem traces to China, where surplus melamine (and cyanuric acid) became widely used as adulterants in feedstock and baby formula to mislead quality testing that measures protein content by assessing nitrogen levels. In the case of human baby formula, infants in China began dying of kidney failure, leading eventually to court trials and the public executions of two culprits found to have deliberately adulterated Chinese baby formula.

Americans import more and more ultra-processed foods from China every year, but its track record on product safety is hardly comforting. The contamination of U.S. pets likely stemmed from wheat gluten and rice protein used to manufacture popular brand-name pet foods, including Purina’s Alpo brand and products under the healthy-sounding brand name “Natural Balance.” Contaminated corn gluten was blamed for a similar scourge of pet mortalities in South Africa.

The globalized food system is susceptible to potential abuses for profit, such as the tainting of pet foods with industrial chemicals. The more telling and alarming part of the pet food story, though, is what the mainstream media didn’t much discuss: subsequent contamination of human foods.

I dug into this food trail years ago because, as a farmer and business advisor, I immediately suspected something else would go awry. I investigated the pathway to pigs, and sure enough, that’s where some of the rejected dog and cat food ended up -- corporations love to convert costly liabilities to salable assets! At least 6,000 pigs in six U.S. states were potentially fed melamine-tainted recalled pet foods. A poultry farm was also supplied with tainted pet food.

It appears that some of the tainted pigs entered the human food chain before the risk was discovered. One bizarre statement that pretty well sums up the U.S. human food supply ran like this:

“The California Department of Health Services is recommending that pigs in question not be consumed, but California State Public Health Officer Dr. Mark Horton considers the health risks minimal if the pork has already been eaten.”

Translation: “You shouldn’t eat this pork, but if you already did, no worries.” Much like the government hides evidence of adverse childhood reactions to vaccines because they might cause parents to become “vaccine hesitant,” fears that U.S. pork might be tainted with kidney-destroying feed additives could upset the price of pork bellies on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

This is the common refrain (and moral hazard) in U.S. food systems -- cover up the risks so people keep buying and eating things they wouldn’t otherwise. This is what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has repeatedly warned Americans about, complaining of “captured regulatory agencies” that serve their corporate masters rather than the American people who pay their salaries.

Recall in the movie Jaws that the town of Amity Island’s mayor downplays the risk of shark attacks because the news would destroy summer tourist traffic and undermine local businesses. That reflects what the modern American food supply looks like -- don’t tell people the risks of what they are munching on from their local fast-food drive-thru: it could hurt business!

If toxic pet food that kills dogs and cats is diverted to feed pigs and their meat is then fed to humans, what else is making its way through the increasingly industrialized international food system to Americans’ dinner plates?

Author, pastor, and attorney John Klar raises grass-fed beef and sheep in Vermont. His Substack, Small Farm Republic, is based on his 2023 book Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival. John is a staff writer at Liberty Nation News.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/how_the_chinese_poison_pet_food.html