Swiss Lawmakers Seek Probe Into Whether Gifts To Trump, Including Gold Bar, Broke The Law

"The end does not justify all means," two Green Party members of parliament said in a letter to the public prosecutor.

Online influencers and train lovers are being used to promote the $15-billion Metro Tunnel ahead of its opening on Sunday.

Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges The Register

Review judge pulled from Palestine Action hearing at last hour, in patent stitch-up Jonathan Cook

War with Venezuela Won’t Solve America’s Economic Woes American Conservative

 

A Looming Mexican Coup? Kit Klarenberg

Jeffrey Epstein Aided Alan Dershowitz’s Attack on Mearsheimer and Walt’s “Israel Lobby” Drop Site

Xi-Trump call; PRC-Japan; Getting harder to evade PRC taxes; Sketchy LGFV bond deals Sinocism 

 

Why China Can’t Sort Out Its Property Market Mess Bloomberg

 

The German government wants to decouple from China. But German companies can’t afford to leave. Kevin Walmsley

 

Nvidia’s H200 chips could be ‘sugar-coated bullets’ for China Asia Times 

 

Use Of Open Source Information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Use Of Open Source Information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. November 20, 2025. Prefatory Note – “This is an unclassified version of a comprehensive report by the staff of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (“PCLOB”) on the use of open source information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). 

All PCLOB oversight reports undergo a robust accuracy and classification review process with the appropriate Executive Branch agencies to determine whether information contained in a PCLOB report is operationally accurate and whether the information can be made available to the public. 

At PCLOB’s request, the FBI agreed to decontrol significant portions of internal policies governing its use of open source information, as well as information related to the tools the FBI uses to collect and analyze open source information. PCLOB understands this to be the first time such information has been publicly and officially disclosed. 

Nevertheless, the FBI determined it could not decontrol certain information, including about its use of several tools—Clearview AI, ZeroFox, and Babel Street—such that the information about those tools could be releasable to the public. PCLOB thoroughly investigated the FBI’s use of these tools and included that information in its non-public version, which was provided to the White House, to Executive Branch agencies including the FBI, and to Congress.

 In accordance with its statutory directive to “make its reports, including its reports to Congress, available to the public to the greatest extent that is consistent with the protection of classified information and applicable law,” PCLOB provides here a public, unclassified version of its report.”

NSW appeals for extra funds to fight tobacco black market

A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform.

~ RUSSELL B. LONG (quote Courtesy of Mick Eagan)

The spectre of the rampant illegal cigarette trade, associated criminal violence and shrinking tobacco tax revenue is one of the most disconcerting examples of the unintended consequences of well-intended government policy… 

Late Michael Egan the NSW Treasurer would be calling a spade a shovel and demanding extra funds to fight black market with a passion only Mick, Mike, was able to project … From 1981 to 1984 as chair of the NSW Public Accounts Committee, Egan authored landmark reports on, and audit reviews of, government programs as well as wide ranging inquiries on tax topic. Back in 1998 I worked for the NSW Public Accounts Committee and this telling story came out two years before the GST was implemented… Politics behind Premiers' GST tack change: Egan

NSW appeals for extra funds to fight tobacco black market

By Nicola Smith Canberra bureau chief 

Nov 30, 2025 

 NSW Health Minister Ryan Park has issued a fresh appeal for extra financial resources from Canberra to fight the scourge of the thriving tobacco black market as smokers seek to escape soaring excise duties.

“With the federal tobacco excise at such a rate, we know that people are turning to illegal tobacconists that are flourishing in our suburbs and communities,” Park told The Australian Financial Review.

“The burden of this black market is currently being shouldered by the states; we would welcome additional investment and resources from the Commonwealth.”

The state Labor government under Premier Chris Minns has introduced some of the toughest penalties for illegal tobacco in the country – including penalties over $1 million and jail terms of up to seven years for the sale or possession of commercial quantities.

Supplies of illicit tobacco have been disrupted through the closure of 31 stores since early November.

Park’s call came as a new analysis by Sinclair Davidson, a professor of institutional economics at Melbourne’s RMIT University, recommends a deferral in excise increases until a “short, independent review” can prove that recent rises have reduced total nicotine use.

In a paper released last week by the Centre for Independent Studies, Davidson argued that the “combined evidence implies that the tax has reached the point of diminishing returns as a health measure”.

As tobacco excise revenue consistently shrinks faster than federal Treasury forecasts, Davidson set out the case that the National Tobacco Strategy target to slash the proportion of daily smokers to 5 per cent or less by 2030 had instead fuelled a billion-dollar black market.

“The excise escalator has become less a tool of public health than an incentive for substitution and illicit supply,” he wrote.

“Australia’s tobacco control policy has lost its way. Excise has kept rising, while legal sales have shrunk, and a large illicit market has emerged.

“Excise revenue once treated as a reliable cash stream has collapsed and now falls well short of budget forecasts. Violent crime tied to illicit tobacco is now constantly in the headlines.”

In Davidson’s view, this is the “predictable consequence of fragmented governance” where the Commonwealth sets the tax rate and reaps the financial benefits while the states shoulder the health and policing burden and local communities bear the brunt of arson, insurance shocks and lost trade.

“The issue is not that tobacco control lacks purpose, but that its institutional design provides no feedback when the policy begins to fail,” he said.

‘Reshape policy’

“Policy must now be reshaped to bring tax levels, enforcement capacity, and stated objectives back into line.”

Davidson’s thesis will offer additional firepower to NSW’s push for the federal government to find what the state believes should be a more equitable solution.

Ahead of the state budget in June, Minns urged Canberra to consider lowering the tobacco excise, labelling it “crazy” to turn a blind eye to a growing black market problem that could divert police resources from domestic violence and organised crime.

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has defended excise as “an important public health measure to encourage people to give up smoking”.

Accepting state demands to further squeeze excise revenues would add to pressure on Chalmers against a forecast of a decade of deficits and gross debt to exceed $1 trillion next year.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher on Sunday gave a nod to the difficulties in balancing the books as she defended a recent move to ask cabinet ministers and public service bosses to find savings in their budgets of up to 5 per cent.

Ministers and departments were frequently making financial requests, she told Sky News.

“At some point, you have to say we can’t just keep giving you more money for these things. You need to look at what you’re doing now and reprioritise within your existing budgets.”

Successive Labor and Coalition governments have collectively increased the tobacco excise by 282 per cent since 2013, pushing the cost of a 25-pack of cigarettes to about $50 – $34 of which goes to the government.

However, tobacco tax receipts are down to a nine-year low, with the federal government collecting just $9.7 billion last year as illegal cigarette sales boom – representing a 40 per cent fall from the record $16.3 billion haul in 2019-20.

It expects the figure to fall further to $7.1 billion as Australians turn to the black market or switch to vaping.

Evidence ‘contested’

Davidson wrote that based on forecasts from the budget papers, excise per stick can be expected to increase from slightly less than $1.50 per stick to over $1.70 per stick over the budget forecast period to 2028-29.

But while he points to evidence that escalating tobacco excise since 2010 initially produced an immediate fall in smoking prevalence and a decline in legal sales volumes, he says the question today of tax rises reducing the incidence of smoking is “contested”. 

Chalmers’ office was contacted for comment.

The government takes the view that reducing the price of cigarettes will not address the long-term issue of an illegal trade, pointing to a $350 million federal boost to enforcement action over the past two budgets.

Australian Border Force has seized more than 2.5 billion cigarettes in the last financial year – a 320 per cent increase on the number seized four years ago – and more than 11 million vapes have been confiscated since January 2024.

Compliance and enforcement activities led to the seizure of 586 million cigarettes and over 3 million vapes in the first quarter of 2025-26.

As illicit tobacco sales rise into the billions, economist Arthur Laffer puts blame on high tobacco taxation rate

 

Why is knowledge getting so expensive?

Jeffrey Edmunds, TEDxPSU [YouTube] – “With the shift from books to ebooks, libraries have lost ownership of their collections. Knowledge is being privatized and monetized by multinational corporations.

 To correct this trend, we need to think of knowledge, especially the knowledge collectively funded and created at universities like Penn State, not as a private commodity, but as a public good. Jeff Edmunds is Digital Access Coordinator at the Penn State University Libraries, where he has worked for more than 35 years. He helps manage access to the Libraries’ millions of digital resources, especially eBooks, and is a fierce champion of open access to information. His texts have appeared in Nabokov Studies, 

The Slavic and East European Journal, McSweeney’s, and Formules (Paris, France), among others. Jeff has decades of experience managing electronic resources in the context of a large academic research library which he now applies in lectures regarding e-books and their privatization. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community”

Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effec

Pagnini, F., Grosso, F., Cavalera, C. et al.Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect [Full text available free]. npj Mental Health Res 4, 57 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44184-025-00171-5

Prosocial behavior, the act of helping others, is essential to social life, yet spontaneous environmental triggers for such behavior remain underexplored. This study tested whether an unexpected event, such as the presence of a person dressed as Batman, could increase prosocial behavior by disrupting routine and enhancing attention to the present moment. We conducted a quasi-experimental field study on the Milan metro, observing 138 rides. 

In the control condition, a female experimenter, appearing pregnant, boarded the train with an observer. In the experimental condition, an additional experimenter dressed as Batman entered from another door. Passengers were significantly more likely to offer their seat when Batman was present (67.21% vs. 37.66%, OR = 3.393, p < 0.001). 

Notably, 44% of those who offered their seat in the experimental condition reported not seeing Batman. These findings suggest that unexpected events can promote prosociality, even without conscious awareness, with implications for encouraging kindness in public settings. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov n° NCT06481748; registered on July 1, 2024.

Observer in Time and Life - Cryptic Record Keeper

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

~ Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing

Scientists find hidden switch that lets tumors shapeshift and evade treatment ScienceDaily

Tragic News: Vale Tom Stoppard, playwright of dazzling wit and playful erudition, dies aged 88

The world has lost Tom Stoppard. How lucky we were to have him. 

 “Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.”

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”

~ Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

It was one of the plays -Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - that Tom wrote that broke ice with my better half …

To be alive during Tom’s lifetime has been one of the soulful bohemian blessings 

Glenn Close, Ethan Hawke and Others Mourn Tom Stoppard

“Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.” ~ Tom Stoppard

Tomáš Sträussler, 1937–2025) was a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter

Born: 3 July 1937, Zlín, Czechia

Died: 29 November 2025 (age 88 years), Dorset, United Kingdom

Books: Tom Stoppard: Plays, Shakespeare in Love (High School Edition), Arcadia, Albert's bridge · See more

Spouse: Sabrina Guinness (m. 2014), Miriam Stoppard (m. 1972–1992) · See more

Children: Ed Stoppard, Will Stoppard, Oliver Stoppard, Barnaby Stoppard

"Stoppardian" became a term used to describe works that employ wit and comedy while addressing complex philosophical ideas. 

His most prominent works include:

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead(1966): His breakout play that places two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet at the center of the action, exploring themes of chance and mortality.
• Jumpers (1972): A murder mystery that satirizes academic philosophy and moral values.
• Travesties (1974): An exploration of art and revolution, using a "Wildean" structure to imagine interactions between Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce, and Tristan Tzara in WWI Zürich.
• The Real Thing (1982): A meta-theatrical play about love, art, and adultery, which won a Tony Award for Best Play.
• Arcadia (1993): Juxtaposes 19th-century Romanticism with 20th-century science and chaos theory, widely considered one of his finest works.
• Leopoldstadt (2020): His final, deeply personal play chronicling a Viennese Jewish family across half a century, dealing with the Holocaust and his own rediscovered Jewish heritage. 

Screenwriting Career

Stoppard was also a highly successful screenwriter, known for his work on numerous acclaimed films.   

• He co-wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-winning film Shakespeare in Love(1998).
• He also contributed to scripts for films like Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade(1989), often as an uncredited script doctor. 

Tom Stoppard, playwright of dazzling wit and playful erudition, dies aged 88 

A theatrical sensation since the 1960s, whose dramas included Arcadia, The Real Thing and Leopoldstadt, Stoppard also had huge success as a screenwriter

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  Tom Stoppard: a life in pictures

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  A brilliant dramatist who always raised the temperature of the room

Tom Stoppard, the "apostle of detachment," is getting in touch with his emotions: sadness, mortality, melancholy,  vulnerability  … 

Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more... I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing

Sir Tom Stoppard obituary: playful and prolific playwright

A popular and exotic figure, Stoppard was known for his dandyish appearance as well as his wit and eloquence

With his Jim Morrison mane and Mick Jagger pout, Tom Stoppard looked more like a brooding rock star than one of Britain’s most critically acclaimed and commercially popular playwrights. Although he came to prominence at a time of excitement in the theatre when John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter were producing some of their best work, and the generation of David Hare and David Edgar was emerging, his writing and his concerns were utterly distinctive and personal. 

And just as every cultured person more or less knows what is meant by Pinteresque, so the adjective Stoppardian entered the language as a shorthand for wit, linguistic cleverness and dazzling eloquence.

Incorporating multiple timelines and visual humour, his work was generally optimistic and good-natured at a time when others were investigating squalor, degradation, silence and anomie. “I want to demonstrate that I can make serious points by flinging a custard pie around the stage for a couple of hours,” he explained.

He rarely aimed for realism, least of all the gritty kind. His theatre is a place of carnival, where the extraordinary happens and ideas are taken to absurd logical extremes, and he had a wonderful ability to combine disparate elements beneath a dazzling surface. In his early career he was criticised, after the immense success of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Jumpers, for failing to portray people convincingly and for the lack of social conscience. His reply was that much of his dialogue was “simply stuff which I’ve ping-ponged between me and myself”.

Tom Stoppard’s Luck American Conservative

Tom Stoppard, Award-Winning Playwright of Witty Drama, Dies at 88

Drawing comparisons to the greatest of dramatists, he entwined erudition with imagination in stage works that won accolades on both sides of the Atlantic.

Tom Stoppard, the Czech-born English playwright who entwined erudition with imagination, verbal pyrotechnics with arch cleverness, and philosophical probing with heartache and lust in stage works that won accolades and awards on both sides of Atlantic, earning critical comparisons to Shakespeare and Shaw, has died at his home in Dorset, England. He was 88. 

The death was announced on social media by United Agents, which represented him. No other details were provided.

Few writers for the stage — or the page, for that matter — have exhibited the rhetorical dazzle of Mr. Stoppard, or been as dauntless in plumbing the depths of intellect for conflict and drama. Beginning in 1966 with his witty twist on “Hamlet” — “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” — he soon earned a reputation as the most cerebral of contemporary English-language playwrights, venturing into vast fields of scholarly inquiry — theology, political theory, the relationship of mind and body, the nature of creativity, the purpose of art — and spreading his work across the centuries and continents.

Academy Award-Winning Playwright Tom Stoppard Has Died Stoppard won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s “Shakespeare In Love.”Academy Award-Winning Playwright Tom Stoppard Has Died Stoppard won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s “Shakespeare In Love.”

Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows