The New Coffee Room

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/colombia-plans-to-euthanize-dozens-of-cocaine-hippos-descendants-of-animals-brought-by-notorious-drug-trafficker-pablo-escobar-180988548/

Colombia is taking aim at its invasive hippopotamus population. This week, the government announced plans to euthanize dozens of the hulking animals, which are causing ecological and safety issues in the South American country.

“It is out of responsibility to our ecosystems that we must take these actions,” said Irene Vélez, Colombia’s environment minister, at a press conference on April 13, as reported by El País’ Lucas Reynoso.

Colombia is home to nearly 200 hippos, which are the descendants of four animals brought to the country illegally by drug trafficker Pablo Escobar in the early 1980s. Escobar housed the hippos—along with rhinoceroses, elephants and other smuggled creatures—at Hacienda Nápoles, his estate and private zoo located roughly 90 miles from Medellín.

The three females and one male began reproducing and, with no natural predators or droughts to keep the population in check, the species thrived in Colombia. After Escobar was shot and killed in 1993, authorities seized Hacienda Nápoles and transferred the animals to nearby zoos—except for the hippos.

https://macleans.ca/politics/i-dont-recognize-alberta-anymore/

Since the day I was born, 46 years ago at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary, Alberta has shaped who I am. I can sing the words to “Four Strong Winds,” our unofficial provincial anthem. I’ve visited more rodeos than I can count. My first vehicle was an old pickup, and I taught myself to parallel park using two round hay bales. I’ve spent Saturdays on my family’s acreage, cleaning horse manure out of our barn and helping neighbours with their cattle. I know the beauty of a prairie sunset, and I’ve watched the sun rise in Alberta’s Rockies.

Despite my love for the Wild Rose Province, I’m Canadian first, Albertan second. The flag that hangs in my office is the Maple Leaf. When people abroad ask where I’m from, I don’t miss a beat in saying I’m Canadian. This national identity has taught me about the power of multiculturalism, the beauty of bilingualism and the idea that peacekeeping—and a willingness to understand one another—can move the world in a better direction. Alberta is imprinted on my heart, but Canada is part of my soul.

https://apnews.com/article/iowa-superintendent-conflict-audit-fb0c9065a825b51bd429c59c81d83e6b

Iowa’s largest school district said Tuesday that it revised its conflict-of-interest policy after an audit found its former superintendent awarded district business to a consulting firm he worked for, affirming findings first reported by The Associated Press in the weeks after federal immigration officers detained him.

Ian Roberts, a native of Guyana in South America, worked for two decades as an educator and administrator in urban districts across the U.S. His Sept. 26 arrest in Des Moines, Iowa, shocked the community and drew national attention to his history of criminal charges and falsified credentials. He pleaded guilty in federal court in January, admitting to falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen on a federal form and illegally possessing firearms.

Roberts’ sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 29. The two counts together carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

I haven't listened to it, but some of you may be interested.

RFK Jr. podcast

In the first episode, Kennedy interviews reality-TV chef Robert Irvine about his makeover of military food at Fort Hood, an Army base in Texas. Irvine was the host of the popular Food Network show Dinner: Impossible when a newspaper investigation found that he had embellished parts of his résumé, including that he had created Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding cake. Irvine admitted to exaggerating his qualifications and was initially dropped by the network but was eventually brought back. (Irvine also happens to have a line of snack bars called FitCrunch; while protein-packed, they’re also made with the sort of difficult-to-pronounce ingredients many nutritionists caution against.)

Irvine did serve in the UK’s Royal Navy after enlisting at a young age, and he began his culinary career there. On the podcast, he tells Kennedy he’s been working with the US military to bring in healthier dining options with a focus on fresh and whole foods. He claims he’s helping to lower food costs by negotiating with suppliers—something the Pentagon has presumably not thought of doing—and that the dining hall food at Fort Hood is so good there are “lines out the door.”

Irvine doesn’t address what kinds of foods Fort Hood was serving before he stepped in nor does he elaborate on the meals it offers now, beyond lower-sodium chicken and sliced melon.

Don’t you hate it when your yacht is just too big?

A source tells Page Six that Jeff Bezos is quietly shopping his $500 million floating palace, Koru — because it’s just too huge to manage.

The jaw-dropping vessel also has a $75 million support ship, Abeona, though it is unclear if this is part of the deal. According to reports, it costs $30 million per year to operate the two ships together. (Not that that’s a burden for the “250 Billion Dollar Man,” but it may make buyers scarce.)

https://pagesix.com/2026/05/04/celebrity-news/jeff-bezos-is-selling-his-500-million-superyacht-koru/

Interesting (at least to me) story. LOL

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/how-daniel-kinahans-cocaine-empire-began-to-crumble

Almost exactly twenty years ago, an Italian police squad burst through the door of a dilapidated farmhouse near the town of Corleone, in Sicily, and arrested Bernardo Provenzano, the capo dei capi of the Sicilian Mafia. Provenzano was seventy-three years old. He had been on the run since the nineteen-sixties. The last known photograph of him was taken in 1959. So elusive had he proved over the preceding decades that some people thought he was already dead. In fact, Provenzano had been living a peasant’s life for many years, subsisting on cheese and chicory, while directing the operations of the Mafia using encrypted notes on pizzini, or tiny scraps of paper. Detectives located him by following the meandering path of laundry, sent to him by his wife, via multiple messengers. When he was arrested, Provenzano told the officers, “You have no idea what you’ve done.” He died in custody ten years later.

No such mystery surrounded the whereabouts of Daniel Kinahan, the forty-eight-year-old Irishman who was arrested in Dubai on April 17th. He was reportedly apprehended at one of his family’s many properties in the city, no manhunt necessary. Despite being sanctioned in 2022 by the U.S. Treasury for running “the day-to-day operations” of a vast drug empire believed by Irish investigators to be worth a billion and a half dollars, and despite a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to his arrest, Kinahan has lived openly in the United Arab Emirates for a decade. He shops at the mall. His children attend private schools. Recently, the Sunday Times of London and Bellingcat, the open-source-intelligence group, published photographs showing Kinahan attending an M.M.A. fight at the Coca-Cola Arena, in Dubai, last summer. He looked as if he was having the time of his life.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-defies-trump-and-tightens-its-grip-on-hormuz-01a4e32b?mod=Searchresults&pos=1&page=1

The U.S. and Iran are teetering on the brink of a dangerous new phase of the war, as both turn to military force to break a standoff in the Strait of Hormuz that has paralyzed shipping and imposed costs on both sides.

Fighting flared for the first time in about a month Monday, with the U.S. Navy trying to open the waterway and Iran hitting commercial ships to keep it closed.

The U.S. said it used Apache helicopters to sink Iranian speedboats harassing traffic in the strait. Iran hit a critical oil port in the United Arab Emirates and several vessels around the strategic waterway.

The return to a more openly violent chapter will test both sides. Each has reason to try to force an end to the current paralysis in the strait. But they also face substantial risks if the skirmishing escalates out of control—for Iran, greater damage to its economy and leadership, and for President Trump, deeper involvement in a war that is unpopular at home.

@jon-nyc said:

Who’s the person on the right supposed to be?

I think it is just some random AI woman.

@Mik said:

I remember talking to a guy in India one time who worked for one of the big machine companies (Caterpillar, or John Deere, or Kumatsu, can't remember which one) and he said that they had a lot of trouble selling certain equipment into India. It was cheaper for a contractor to hire 1000 people a day at $X/day than to spend $XXXXXXXXXX on a piece of equipment.

@Tom-K LOL.

I agree.

@Mik 555

https://www.newsmax.com/us/mark-sanford-south-carolina-congress/2026/04/30/id/1254766/

Mark Sanford, the Republican former South Carolina congressman and governor whose political ascendency was stalled by a 2009 affair, has ended his latest bid for public office, saying that he's quitting the race to reclaim his former coastal district to set up a nonprofit to address the national debt, his signature issue.

Sanford, 65, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was shuttering his campaign just a month after he launched it, a decision inspired by his desire to focus on combating the national debt and deficit.

"What I hope to do is to indeed build a grassroots organization — start small, but I have a fair size circle of friends and folks with whom I have some degree of influence and contacts," Sanford told the AP, also noting that, with his first grandchild on the way, he realized as he mounted this campaign that he wanted to be able to spend more time with his family.

Maybe another massive lithium find in the US.

https://fortune.com/2026/04/30/usgs-appalachia-lithium-discovery-328-years-us-imports/

The ubiquity of the element is why the United States Geological Survey (USGS) deemed it a critical mineral in November. While the U.S. remains highly reliant on imports of lithium, a new report from the USGS found an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of the lithium oxide in Appalachia, enough to replace 328 years’ worth of U.S. imports at last year’s level.

“This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation’s growing needs,” USGS director Ned Mamula said in a statement, “a major contribution to U.S. mineral security, at a time when global lithium demand is rising rapidly.”

When the Qatari royal family acquired a luxury jet for its private fleet more than a decade ago, the Boeing 747 was outfitted with the lavish furnishings and ornate adornments that would befit one of the world’s wealthiest families.

Now, as the jumbo jet is expected to become President Trump’s own this summer, officials say the plane’s lavish interior will look remarkably similar.

The jet has undergone a $400 million overhaul to prepare it for the president. Those modifications, however, haven’t centered on aesthetics, but rather top-secret communications gear that would enable the commander in chief to run the country from the skies.

Alterations to the interior have focused on removing the Arabic-language exit signs and the contemporary artwork once enjoyed by the Qatari royals. But the oversize leather seats, plush couches and even the faux library bookcases are all staying, albeit with U.S. presidential seals now affixed to the walls, officials said.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trumps-qatari-gifted-air-force-one-will-keep-its-luxurious-royal-interior-c37a6451

I guess this forum thread is as good a place as any to post this.

President Trump posted this recently in regards to the renovation of the Reflecting Pool.

Most people think of cannabis as something that makes memories fuzzy. But new research suggests it can do something more surprising: make false memories feel real.

While cannabis is often associated with forgetfulness, a new study suggests that acute cannabis intoxication can also subtly distort memory, shaping not just what we recall, but how accurately we recall it. The findings expand on decades of research on cannabis and recall, pointing to a more complex effect on the brain’s memory systems.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/health/article/how-cannabis-affects-memory-thc-false-recall

Construction has started on the reactor cited in the post above.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/02/nx-s1-5798892/wyoming-celebrates-nuclear-renaissance-as-feds-approve-license-for-a-new-reactor

In an order denying Sam Bankman-Fried’s request for a new trial, a judge accused the disgraced FTX founder of wasting precious court resources on wild conspiracies. To the judge, the motion seemed like a last-ditch attempt to give himself a MAGA makeover that the Trump administration absolutely wasn’t buying.

Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for “masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in American history,” US District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order. He was convicted on all charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering.

There is already an appeal pending in another court, the judge noted. But Bankman-Fried filed a separate motion for a new trial, claiming that there were “newly discovered” witnesses and evidence that might have helped his defense, if Joe Biden’s Department of Justice hadn’t intimidated them into refusing to testify or, in one case, lying on the stand. He also asked for a new judge, wanting Kaplan to recuse himself.

However, Kaplan pointed out that “none of the witnesses” were “newly discovered.” And more concerningly, Bankman-Fried offered no evidence that the witnesses could prove the “wildly conspiratorial” theory the FTX founder raised, claiming that their absence at the trial was a “product of government threats and retaliation,” the judge wrote.

Bankman-Fried’s theory is “entirely contradicted by the record,” Kaplan said. He emphasized that granting Bankman-Fried’s request “would be a large waste of judicial resources as it could require another judge to familiarize himself or herself with an extensive and complicated record.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/new-sam-bankman-fried-trial-would-be-huge-waste-of-courts-time-judge-says/

Speaker Mike Johnson faced down a bruising “hell week” and ultimately pulled several key GOP bills across the line. But it came at a cost.

Republicans say Johnson’s habit of making last-minute, often contradictory promises to keep his tiny majority functioning is starting to catch up with him. Frustrations over his leadership, they say, are at an all-time high.

“I think this guy has divided us with a smile,” said Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), a longtime Johnson skeptic who has grown more vocal with his criticism and now says “without question” he will vote against keeping Johnson as top GOP leader in the next Congress.

This week’s chaos came to a head late Wednesday, with multiple members of key Republican factions yelling and swearing at Johnson on the House floor and in closed-door meetings.

Johnson tried to quell a rebellion among conservative hard-liners by privately reneging on an agreement with a group of midwestern Republicans that would have tied legislation allowing year-round sales of an ethanol fuel blend to the must-pass farm bill.

When some of the ethanol provision’s backers ran back to the floor to try to figure out what happened, they were too late. Some later confronted Johnson, who is now promising a future vote on the matter.

“Bullshit,” Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) yelled at the speaker as he tried to explain what happened later in the day, according to three people who participated in the huddle and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

This week’s floor chaos was just the latest example of Johnson leading crisis by crisis, ultimately pulling off GOP priorities but leaving a trail of disgruntled members and staffers in his wake, according to more than a dozen Republicans interviewed for this story.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/01/mike-johnson-leadership-complaints-00902390