Colombia’s democratic socialist president claimed Tuesday afternoon that he escaped an assassination attempt on Monday night, after years of warning about assassination plots against him.

AFP News reports that Colombian President Gustavo Petro narrowly escaped an assassination attempt after his helicopter reportedly could not land at a location on the South American country’s Caribbean coast because gunmen were allegedly ready to open fire upon landing.

“We headed out to open sea for four hours, and I arrived somewhere we weren’t supposed to go, escaping from being killed,” Petro stated in a cabinet meeting on live television.

He warned that the incident is part of a longer-running assassination plot by drug traffickers that he says has targeted him since he took office in August 2022.

Petro suggested in 2024 that the commander of the Estado Mayor Central rebel group had planned to assassinate him with snipers.

For some context, EMC is a dissident group of the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government.

Petro’s latest assassination plot claim comes ahead of presidential elections, with Petro barred by the constitution from seeking a second term. 

According to Bloomberg, Colombia’s two top presidential candidates – conservative lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist senator Iván Cepeda – are neck and neck in the latest poll data ahead of the election on May 31.

De la Espriella has about 32.1% support, compared to Cepeda’s 31.4%, in the AtlasIntel poll for Semana newspaper. Former Antioquia governor Sergio Fajardo trails with about 7.6%.

Meanwhile, South American politics has shifted sharply in President Trump’s second term, with right-wing movements gaining traction across the continent, from Argentina to Chile, after years of failed socialist and communist governments.

The Maduro regime’s fall last month may shape the Colombian elections this spring towards a right-wing.

Authored by Rachel Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said he will pay the legal fees of anyone who speaks out about alleged perpetrators whose names have been redacted from the Jeffrey Epstein files and is sued as a result.

Elon Musk attends a dinner hosted by President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, on Nov. 18, 2025. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

The Tesla CEO made the offer in response to a public service announcement played on Super Bowl Sunday that featured women alleging abuse by Epstein and his associates.

The 40-second video clip notes that 3 million files related to the late sex offender have not yet been released. The women are depicted holding photographs of their younger selves, with black boxes to symbolize redactions over their mouths. The accusers then reiterate their commitment to standing together to demand the full truth about Epstein’s criminal network. They then urge Attorney General Pam Bondi, “It’s time for the truth.”

Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh questioned on Musk’s platform, X, why the women had not publicly named their alleged abusers, and suggested they could do so safely through congressional advocates.

Walsh wrote on Sunday, “For those claiming that they can’t name names because they’ll be sued: they could simply give the names to any of their many (and mostly very recent) advocates in congress, who could read the names out loud from the floor, insulating themselves and these women from any litigation. But they refuse to do that. Why?”

Redactions

Musk posted in response to Walsh: “I will pay for the defense of anyone who speaks the truth about this and is sued for doing so.”

The offer could potentially give financial protection to victims who fear legal retaliation for naming individuals linked to Epstein, who died in custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on multiple charges of trafficking minors. His death was ruled a suicide.

Musk’s own name is one of many mentioned in the latest release of more than 3 million Epstein-related files into the public domain on January 31, although he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Documents show Musk and Epstein exchanged messages between 2012 and 2014, discussing possible visits to Epstein’s private island, Little St James. One email from November 2012 includes Musk asking, “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”

Musk has denied ever visiting the island, stating in a post on X that he “refused” Epstein’s repeated invitations and declined to fly on the financier’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.” He added that when he called for the release of the files, he was aware that his correspondence with Epstein could be misinterpreted and used to smear his reputation.

“I don’t care about that, but what I do care about is that we at least attempt to prosecute those who committed serious crimes with Epstein, especially regarding heinous exploitation of underage girls,” he wrote on X following the release of the files on Jan. 31.

Marina Lacerda, an accuser in the Jeffrey Epstein case, speaks during a press conference and rally in support of the victims of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 3, 2025. Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

The documents released include flight lists, financial ledgers, and email correspondence, with the Justice Department saying many were redacted to protect victims.

The latest tranche of files referenced several high profile names from the world of tech and big business, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, as well as high-profile politicians, including former United States President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Lawmakers Allowed

Musk made his offer prior to the Department of Justice announcing on Monday it will allow members of Congress to review unredacted files, according to a letter sent to lawmakers.

The letter said that lawmakers, but not members of the public, will be able to review unredacted versions of files that the government has released to comply with a law passed by Congress last year.

There are several terms and conditions imposed on lawmakers, who will need to give 24 hours’ notice before being granted access to the files. They will only be able to review the files on computers at the Department of Justice. Only lawmakers, not their staff, may view the files, and while note-taking is allowed, they will not be permitted to make copies.

Among the many high-profile names in the latest files is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, whose revealed association with Epstein had already caused him to be stripped of his royal title by his brother, British monarch King Charles III.

Buckingham Palace Statement

Police in the UK are assessing claims that the former duke shared confidential reports from his role as the UK’s trade envoy with Epstein.

Buckingham Palace said on Monday it was ready to support any police investigation into Charles’s brother after emails suggested Mountbatten-Windsor might have shared confidential British trade documents with Epstein in his capacity as trade envoy in late 2010.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “The King has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct.

“While the specific claims in question are for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to address, if we are approached by Thames Valley Police we stand ready to support them as you would expect.

“As was previously stated, Their Majesties’ thoughts and sympathies have been, and remain with, the victims of any and all forms of abuse.”

Mountbatten-Windsor has previously denied any wrongdoing over his Epstein links, which are known to have continued after Epstein was convicted for soliciting a minor in 2008.

Thames Valley Police said last week said it was assessing allegations that a 26-year-old woman was sent to the UK by Epstein for a sexual encounter with the former duke in 2010.

The then-Prince of Wales (L) and with the then-Duke of York on Christmas Day in 2017. Joe Giddens/PA

Charles stripped his younger brother of his titles following the posthumous release of a book by Virginia Giuffre, who alleged she was trafficked by Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, when she was a teenager.

In 2022, the duke settled a lawsuit with Giuffre, who accused him of having sex with her when she was 17, after they were introduced by Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor said he has no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre, who was the most high-profile campaigner for Epstein’s victims before her sudden death in Western Australia in April 2025, and was involved in multiple lawsuits against those she accused of exploiting her.

Authorities said Giuffre’s death was not suspicious, although some members of her family have expressed doubts that she took her own life, and a full inquest has yet to take place.

Lauren Hersh, national director of World Without Exploitation, which produced the public information film released on Feb. 8, said in an emailed statement: “Moving forward, the Department of Justice must take every effort to prioritize the privacy and safety of the survivors, who have bravely come forward with their stories over the past decades. We will not stop until survivors get the transparency and accountability they deserve.”

PA Media and Reuters contributed to this report.

For the past 5 years we have often hammered the table on the biggest, most glaring fudge factor in the monthly jobs report, namely the
“birth-death adjustment” – which became a statistical fiasco in the aftermath of the covid PPP-loan scam as thousands of fake “new companies” were created to take advantage of the government’s free money handout generosity – and which has since corrupted the underlying statistics in the jobs report beyond recognition again…

Almost half of all “job gains” in the past year are from an excel spreadsheet which assumes 1.84 million new jobs were created from new business creation (i.e. Birth/Death adjustment)https://t.co/C8xQNvZKYF pic.twitter.com/SyJBtBkQBd

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 5, 2023

… and again…

Lowering inflation also likely to require softer labor markets.

Translation: stop it with the ridiculous seasonal birth-death adjustments.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 25, 2023

… and again… 

holy shit: birth/death model added 412K excel spreadsheet “jobs”, the second highest on record.

US economy sliding into recession and BLS assuming the 2nd fastest pace of new business creation in history! pic.twitter.com/KbTgO0qnqJ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 3, 2023

… and again…

Half of all job growth in the past year is from Birth/Death adjustments pic.twitter.com/UahfONUYZw

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 5, 2024

… and again…

57% of all YTD jobs are statistical fakes, thanks only to the Birth/Death adjustment pic.twitter.com/utYosI0k7S

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 2, 2024

… and again…

After the upcoming fix to the laughable “Birth/Death model”, we’ll learn that the actual number of jobs is about 10 million lower

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 13, 2025

… and so on.

We even correctly predicted – one day ahead of time – that massive, 818,000 negative jobs revision August 21, 2024 which served as the basis for the Fed’s jumbo rate cut and start of the easing cycle despite sticky 3% inflation…

Why 1 million jobs will be quietly removed from the payrolls? Because as noted below, 57% of all YTD jobs are statistical fakes from Birth/Death adjustment which assume the same new business vibrancy as just after covid (which was mostly to facilitate PPP fraud) https://t.co/YHvKRyYFds

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 20, 2024

… which prompted both the former BLS commissioner…

The big, downward preliminary revisions to non-farm employment (-818,000) announced this morning by BLS probably stem from overestimating the number of firms in the economy. Slowing as well as recovering economies often post challenges for BLS’s “birth/death” model, which BLS…

— William Beach (@BeachWW453) August 21, 2024

… and Fed Chair Powell himself, to admit that the the monthly jobs report has been perverted beyond recognition because of the BLS calculates the birth/death adjustment.

The big, downward preliminary revisions to non-farm employment (-818,000) announced this morning by BLS probably stem from overestimating the number of firms in the economy. Slowing as well as recovering economies often post challenges for BLS’s “birth/death” model, which BLS…

— William Beach (@BeachWW453) August 21, 2024

For those confused why the Birth-Death adjustment, once a solid statistical adjustment, became the laughing stock of the jobs report, we gave the answer in Sept 2024, when we said that “fraudulent small business creation over the past 4 years (to illegally benefit from PPP loans) is why the US labor market is such a mess (near record downward job revisions) with the Birth/Death indicator the most inaccurate it has ever been.“

The good news is that after years of complaints, the BLS has finally decided to fix the underlying problem… but there will be lots of collateral damage. 

Tomorrow, the BLS will release the delayed January jobs report (it was supposed to come last Friday but we had a one-day government shutdown so clearly overpaid government workers couldn’t possibly figure out how to make it work). And while the report itself will be disappointing (consensus expected another mediocre print of 65K, our full preview will come out shortly), this month’s report will be accompanied by the annual benchmark revision to the establishment survey and – much more importantly – a methodological update to the birth-death model.

Now, as a reminder, the BLS’s preliminary estimate of the benchmark payrolls revision indicated that cumulative payroll growth between April 2024 and March 2025 would be revised 911k lower, though as in previously occasions, the final downward revision will likely be smaller, and the result will be that tomorrow we will learn that in the period April 2024 – March 2025 the US actually created 750-900k fewer jobs.

But wait, there’s more: the BLS will also update the net birth-death forecasts in the post-benchmark period (April 2025-December 2025) to incorporate information from the QCEW and the monthly payrolls survey, where a downward revision also appears likely and will likely subtract another 500-700k jobs, which never existed in the first place.

In total we expect that as much as 1 million jobs will be revised from the December 2025 nonfarm payrolls. Poof. Because, as we said in November 2023, these “jobs” were only 1s and 0s in some BLS excel spreadsheet. 

The changes will also significantly shift the contour of hiring momentum. According to BBG Economics:

The revised seasonally adjusted series will likely show the labor market fell below stall speed in summer 2024, when three-month moving-average job growth was at 55k – well below the 180k pace many analysts estimated was needed to keep unemployment steady.
Net hiring resumed cooling after President Donald Trump’s announcement of “Liberation Day” tariffs in early April, a period when the Fed held rates steady.
Post-revisions and after accounting for seasonal adjustments, payroll growth was negative in at least five months of 2025.
Outside of the one-off payroll drop from government employees’ deferred resignations in October, the worst monthly contraction was in August.

Some more striking consequences of the renormalization of the jobs report:

On a nonseasonally adjusted basis, Bloomberg’s chief economist Anna Wong expects to see a decline of 3.025 million jobs – and seasonal patterns also point to a decrease of that size. However, the seasonal-adjustment factor is particularly uncertain, as the BLS will re-estimate it to account for benchmark revisions and for updates to its birth-death model. That uncertainty could move the payrolls estimate by 40k in either direction.
Alternative indicators have pointed to further deterioration in payrolls: as we noted last week, Revelio Labs – which had become the go to alternative while the govt data was suspended during the shutdown – reported that in January payrolls plunged by 13,270, driven by goods producing jobs which dropped by 5.1K but mostly a plunge in govt jobs, which declined by 16.4K.

Due to disruptions from the government shutdown, the BLS has delayed the introduction of its annual population-control adjustment – typically released with the January employment report – until the February report a month from now. BLS said it will revise January’s household survey to incorporate the population controls after the release. So expect even more negative adjustments next month!
When the population-control adjustment is eventually released, Wong expects it will reduce the population level by at least 700k – based on the 2025 vintage of US Census estimates. It will also result in 2026 population growth being less than half of the 1.9% indicated in 2025.
The BLS will re-benchmark the March 2025 employment level to Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) data, which should lead to a downward revision of 666k. It will apply updated birth-death forecasts and re-estimated seasonal factors for April-December 2025, likely producing an additional downward revision of 270k.

January’s jobs print, and large downward benchmark revisions expected to past payrolls, will make the labor market appear rather dire. And while that may be an exaggeration – the labor market bottomed in mid-2025 and has been improving very gradually since then, with real-time indicators suggesting true net birth and death of firms is finally improving – any recovery will remain fragile and will require further Fed support. 

Massive negative revisions aside, what is most important is that starting with this month’s report, the birth-death model will incorporate current sample information each month, something we have been demanding since 2021. The good news is that this methodological change will almost certainly reduce the magnitude of annual revisions; the bad news is that it will contribute to far greater month-to-month volatility in payrolls readings, which means overall market volatility as well as the job report will be an multiple-sigma outlier relative to expectations. 

Taking a step back, the variety of adjustments in tomorrow’s jobs report, will show that the labor market started cooling sharply in mid-2024, and dipped again in mid-2025. These changes may make January payrolls appear very weak, with many expecting the BLS to show zero job growth.

And, like in August 2024 when a massive negative revision to the jobs report forced the Fed to cut aggressively by 50bps two months before the presidential election, that rather dire labor market picture will pressure the Fed to lower interest rates. The January CPI, due two days later on Friday the 13, will also be more subdued than the consensus expects, opening the door for a cut sooner rather than later.

In all, we expect the Fed to cut rates by 100 basis points this year.

Authored by James Hickman via SchiffSovereign.com,

PepsiCo spent $2.8 million last year lobbying to keep junk food eligible for food stamps.

But last week – after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got 18 states to ban SNAP purchases of products like soda, candy, and processed snacks – PepsiCo announced price cuts of up to 15% on Doritos, Lay’s, Tostitos, and other Frito-Lay products.

The company’s official explanation was “affordability.” CEO Ramon Laguarta cited low-income consumers are switching to store brands.

But the timing tells the real story.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program— food stamps— is a $100 billion per year program serving roughly 42 million Americans. And according to the USDA’s own data, about 20 cents of every SNAP dollar goes to sweetened beverages, candy, salty snacks, and sugar.

In fact soft drinks alone are the single largest category of SNAP purchases.

And, until last week, products from Pepsi’s Frito-Lay division were in 7.2% of all shopping trips paid for with SNAP (i.e. taxpayer-funded) benefits.

So when the government stopped subsidizing demand for their products, PepsiCo had to do something they hadn’t needed to do in years: compete.

This is what the free market does— it forces companies to be more efficient, cut prices, and pass savings on to their customers.

But here’s the thing— this is one company, one product line, one government program.

Zoom out and you can see just how much of price inflation in our daily lives is due directly to government spending— before we even get into monetary policy like printing money.

When a guaranteed buyer shows up with a bottomless wallet, prices go up.

Just look at college tuition. In 1965, Congress passed the Higher Education Act and began backing student loans with federal dollars.

Since then, tuition has risen roughly three times faster than inflation. A year at a private university that cost $2,800 in 1963 now costs over $85,000.

The New York Federal Reserve studied this directly and found that for every dollar increase in subsidized student loans, tuition rose by up to 60 cents.

The mechanism is simple: when the government guarantees the tuition money, universities raise prices… simply because they can.

Healthcare is even worse.

Before Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, the government’s share of healthcare spending was about 31%. Today it’s roughly 64%. Medicaid spending alone has grown from $13 billion in 1975 to over $900 billion today.

And— shocker— healthcare prices have risen dramatically over the same period. The US now spends nearly $5 trillion per year on healthcare, far more per capita than any other developed country, with outcomes that are often worse.

The pattern is the same everywhere you look: the government shows up with money. Prices rise to absorb it. The subsidy becomes permanent. The industry restructures itself around the guaranteed revenue. And then anyone who suggests pulling back the money is accused of “cutting” a vital service.

Now consider the scale of this in America today.

Federal spending has risen from about 18% of GDP in the 1990s to nearly 24% today. That means almost a quarter of the entire American economy is government money.

Of this, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has publicly estimated that 10% of the federal budget— roughly $600 billion per year— is lost to outright fraud of the Somali daycare type in Minnesota.

Then there’s the legal graft. California alone received roughly $100 billion in federal grants over the past few years for DEI initiatives that produced nothing except more government jobs and campaign contributions.

So how much of America’s economic output is actually real?

How much is just government money making a round trip— borrow more debt, hand it out through some boondoggle program where it is spent at a PepsiCo subsidiary, counted as “economic activity,” making people obese… then more money spent on healthcare to keep them alive and paying enough taxes for the government to be able to pay interest on the debt…

It’s absurd when you think about it. We don’t have a precise answer. But the Pepsi story gives us a clue. The moment the government stopped subsidizing one small corner of the economy, prices dropped by 15% within a week.

RFK didn’t regulate PepsiCo. He didn’t cap prices. He didn’t launch an antitrust investigation. He simply stopped the government from funneling taxpayer dollars into unhealthy food… and the market corrected overnight.

Now imagine what would happen if the government stopped subsidizing entire industries— the defense contractors billing $10,000 for a toilet seat, the universities charging $85,000 for a degree in gender studies, the healthcare system where nobody can tell you what anything costs.

We might finally find out how much of this economy is real.

And that, frankly, is what makes it so hard to fix. Because so many peoples’ livelihoods now depend on the government gravy train.

But this trajectory has an expiration date. The federal government borrows $2 trillion a year to keep it all going. Interest on that debt already exceeds $1 trillion annually— more than the entire military budget— and it’s growing faster than any other line item.

If rates stay elevated because inflation won’t come down, the cost of servicing the debt crowds out everything else.

If the government responds by printing money to cover the gap, inflation gets worse.

And it makes sense to have a Plan B that doesn’t depend on Washington finding fiscal discipline before the math catches up with them.