Number 5. Breitbart. Brazilian drug gangs see massive profits from Ozempic.
Who would have predicted this? The new darling of the international drug trade is prescription Ozempic, the drug of choice for weight loss.
Conceived as a pharmaceutical to treat type 2 diabetes, Ozempic works in large part by inhibiting hunger. Basically, it tells your body that you are not hungry, and also manages your production of insulin. The generic name for a drug of this type is a semaglutide, which is the principal ingredient in Ozempic.
Other brand names in the same category are Wegovy, Mounjaro and Trulicity.
Once Elon Musk tweeted that he had lost 40 pounds with Ozempic, and Jimmy Kimmel started cracking jokes about it’s widespread use in Hollywood, the market for the use of the drug as a simple weight-loss treatment exploded. Administered as an injection, what became known as the “skinny jab” has now created global shortages for diabetes patients.
Brazilian drug lords have caught on quickly, and sudden thefts of Ozempic and other semaglutides from local corner drug stores have erupted.
Local pharmacies in Sao Paulo are posting armed guards. There have been shootouts where civilians are caught in the crossfire. A 72-year-old pharmacist requires that anyone wishing to purchase Ozempic legitimately make an appointment ahead of time, and he makes no secret that he keeps a machete behind the counter.
One pharmacy lost 80 boxes of Ozempic to theft. Police arrested 5 gang members and found a warehouse full of stolen prescription drugs.
Another drugstore lost 20 boxes of Ozempic, and, while the thieves were there, a quantity of Venvanse, an amphetamine used to treat ADHD. That’s understandable; amphetamines — speed — commands a premium price on the school ground behind the gym.
Ozempic, on the other hand, doesn’t make you high. It just makes you skinny. Sales of legitimate Ozempic are dominating the drug news in Brazil. Counterfeits are plentiful, cheap and sometimes deadly.
If that’s not a sign of the times, I don’t know what is.
Maybe if they wore more clothes at the beach in Brazil, the weight loss thing wouldn’t be quite so critical.
Number 4. Electrive dot com. US federal buildings take down EV chargers.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has been instructed by the Trump administration to begin shutting off electric vehicle charging stations at federal office buildings.
Contracts are now being cancelled, and once the juice stops flowing, GSA will begin to dismantle the infrastructure.
As of March 2024, there were about 8,000 EV charging stations in service. These served federal vehicle fleets, and were also available for employee-owned private electric vehicles.
Since the Biden administration took office in 2021, the U.S. government has placed orders for some 58,000 electric vehicles. Along with that, they ordered the installation of 25,000 charging stations, and funded the GSA with $25 million of oversee the program.
Now in the Trump administration, the program is being disbanded and the feds are returning to internal combustion. The article does not indicate what will happen to the used electric vehicles or the charging port components. If you want an electric vehicle, you might find a used government model cheap, and the charging station to go with it. If, that is, your electric service at your house can accept the additional load, and if you can find an electrician to install and certify it for you.
Come to think of it, there may be lots of federal employees and contractors looking for work this year, so maybe that’s not so far-fetched.
Trump has claimed that only 6% of federal employees actually show up to work at an office anyway, and it that is true, the loss of the charging stations may not present much of a problem. Other reports predictably dispute the claim, one source asserting that fully 54% of the federal work force makes an office appearance.
I’m not sure that makes me feel any better. Half of them don’t ever show up? And that is somehow a good argument??
Number 3. AP News. Trump signs order to study how to expand IVF
Here is one that might give pro-life Trumpers (and I count myself one) a reality check.
One of the executive orders he signed this week promotes access to in vitro fertilization, a medical procedure that permits some women the ability to bear children. IVF is for most people prohibitively expensive, potentially costing upwards of $15,000 per cycle, and usually with multiple cycles required.
Trump’s initiative seems to aim at improving birth rates and reducing the financial barriers faced by many. It also gives some couples a chance at natural child-bearing that they otherwise could not experience.
Those are worthwhile, and the executive order will probably help, but there are moral and ethical issues beyond the money and the medical science.
The principal issue for Christians involves what happens to the leftover fertilized eggs once one has been successfully used in a pregnancy. Given the right conditions, these unused eggs are viable, and nearly all pro-life Christians believe they are in fact human lives — pre-born, and not yet viable on their own, but lives nonetheless.
I will sound like one of those interminable talk radio guests now when I say, “I wrote about this my book, Alligator Wrestling in the Cancer Ward, where I described the decision my wife and I came to back in the 1980s.” But I did, and we did, and we decided against IVF for the reason noted above.
(And, did I mention that my book is available wherever books are sold? You can get the audio version at Audible dot com.)
While it is claimed that 1 in 7 couples struggle with pregnancy and could be helped with better access to IVF, there is also the LGBTQ issue. Trump has made a great deal of his opposition to the glorification of these alternate lifestyles — especially the “T” component. Access to IVF only makes the semblance of a normal, heterogenous family structure more available to same-sex couples.
Politics is fraught with contradictions.
Did I mention yet that my book is available at your local or online bookstore?
Number 2. Breitbart. We’re going to Fort Knox, to see if the gold is still there.
With gold up almost 50% in the last year, it’s no wonder.
Fort Knox in Kentucky allegedly contains 147.3 million ounces in gold bars. That’s over 4,600 tons of gold. If you’re going to steal it, you will need a very large truck.
Nominally, that gold is valued at $42 per ounce, which makes it worth something like $6.2 billion. On the open market, however, gold trades over $2,900 at this writing. That would make Fort Knox worth very close to half a trillion dollars.
Once the federal government moves to re-finance the $7 trillion in privately held public debt, which it must do between now and 2030, the shiny stuff at Fort Knox might suddenly be worth a whole lot more.
The gold at the Fort was inventoried in 1974 and was subjected to audits every year from then until 1986. I gather, however, that those annual reviews only inspected physical seals to ensure they had not been tampered. This is perhaps not exactly the same thing as counting all the gold bars. They weigh 27 lbs each, which might make 340,000 of them.
That would take some manpower. Perhaps they could enlist inmates from a Kentucky maximum security prison to help count. Or maybe not.
Given the disruption of everything else in the current news cycle, I’m not sure I want to know the results of an audit of the gold at Fort Knox. It might be better just to leave it alone, seals in place.
Number 1. UPI. Drug-addicted rats destroying evidence in Houston police lockers.
This story is a month old, so, sorry if you’ve seen it, but I couldn’t resist it.
It seems that the Harris County (Texas) District Attorney’s Office is responsible to maintain in storage some 1.2 million pieces of trial evidence. This can present a logistical challenge, and inevitably some items fall between the cracks in any system.
I am personally aware of one small municipality (not in Texas) where the new Chief of Police decided to clean out the evidence locker. He found several decades worth of items that no longer impacted any case at all.
He also found an unused revolver, casually lying unsecured in a desk drawer.
“Oh yeah, I guess that’s where we put that one.”
In Houston, the problem is somewhat more colorful. There are 400,000 lbs of marijuana, stored in bags, in a locked, dark room.
The rats are having a field day.
There is apparently a local ordinance requiring that drugs be discarded once they are 10 years old. The drug trade in Houston appears to be active enough to still make a decade’s worth of drugs a very large pile.
A spokesperson for the Houston Forensic Science Center is philosophic about the rat problem. “You can’t store large quantities of drugs,” he says, “without expecting some of these things to happen.” He adds: “They’re edible. They’re tasty…” and the rats are drug addicted. “They’re tough to deal with.”
The problem is not limited to Houston. A police superintendent told the New Orleans City Council, “The rats eating our marijuana, they’re all high.”
At least they are not eating our supply of Ozempic.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, February 28, 2025. Study up on that Ozempic thing. If everyone in Hollywood is using it, what could possibly be the problem? And if you get a script for enough of it, you could sell the excess to your pudgy neighbor before their next trip to Rio.
Meanwhile, I can hardly wait to see all the new headlines that will show up this week before you read this, so you can say, Hey Curt, all that stuff is 3 days old! Let’s pick up the pace, here!
But I cannot resist ending this week’s episode this way:
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves — and rats — break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:19 (some text enhanced)
Did I mention that I wrote a book, and that you can order a signed copy from Alligator Publishing dot com? You can probably also get one of those really cool coffee mugs there, too.
Have a good weekend!
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