Worth Knowing, Probably Not Quite Threadworthy 1/18

[SVPete]

Man Charged With Threatening To Bomb JD Vance At Theme Park

https://dailycaller.com/2026/01/17/marco-antonio-aguayo-charged-threatening-bomb-jd-vance-disneyland/

A California man was arrested Friday for allegedly posting plans on social media to kill Vice President JD Vance with bombs at Disneyland Resort in July 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday.

Marco Antonio Aguayo, 22, said on Instagram that “pipe bombs have been placed in preparation for J.D. Vance’s arrival” on the day Vance stayed at the theme park in Anaheim, according to the DOJ’s statement. Authorities visited Aguayo at his home later that day, leading him to surrender his phone; the FBI, Secret Service, and local police have investigated the case since.

[SVPete]

Trump says he plans to sue JPMorgan Chase for allegedly 'debanking' him

https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/trump-says-he-plans-sue-jpmorgan-chase-allegedly-debanking-him

President Donald Trump on Saturday announced he plans to sue JPMorgan Chase for allegedly “debanking” him after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

“I’ll be suing JPMorgan Chase over the next two weeks for incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest, a protest that turned out to be correct for those doing the protesting,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “The Election was RIGGED!”

JPMorgan did not immediately respond to Trump's post.

The company's CEO, Jamie Dimon, has publicly acknowledged that the organization has debanked certain individuals.

[SVPete]

State Department to permanently end aid to Somalia after government destroys US-donated food

https://thepostmillennial.com/state-department-permanently-ends-aid-to-somalia-after-government-destroys-us-donated-food

The State Department is permanently ending foreign assistance to Somalia after the country’s government destroyed a warehouse containing 76 metric tons of US-donated food.

Earlier this month, authorities at Mogadishu port demolished a World Food Programme emergency response warehouse at the direction of Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and the Federal Government of Somalia. The demolition was carried out without prior coordination with donor countries, including the United States.

A diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Somalia dated January 6 said the action “likely resulted in the destruction of these emergency food supplies,” and noted that the decision had been approved by the country’s president. Because of the demolition, an additional 1,650 metric tons of food commodities that were scheduled to arrive earlier this month were instead stored at an alternative warehouse.

The United Nations World Food Programme said it would notify Somalia that the demolition constituted a breach of UN diplomatic protocols.

No explanation of why this idiocy was done. I'll bet the tables of the rulers of Somalia won't be lacking for food.

[SVPete]

Denmark’s Dirty Little Secret About Population Control in Greenland

https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2026/01/18/denmarks-dirty-little-secret-about-population-control-in-greenland-n4948433

But with regard to Greenland and the women who have lived there, Denmark has had a dirty little secret centered on population control: a relatively recent birth control practice that was forced on thousands of women, for which the country only apologized in September 2025.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a group of independent researchers released a report that followed a two-year investigation. That investigation found that Denmark — from 1966 through 1992 — forced sterilization on more than 4,500 women and girls in Greenland, some as young as 12 years old. Many, if not most, were never told.

In the name of population control, doctors implanted an intra-uterine device (IUD) in the unsuspecting patients.

Revelations of this birth control program only came to light in 2022 through a podcast called Spiralkampagnen. While the revelations first emerged three years ago, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, only issued an apology to Greenland in the Fall of 2025.

[SVPete]

A New Study Suggests That the Hysteria Over 'Microplastics' May Be Overblown

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2026/01/18/a-new-study-suggests-that-the-hysteria-over-microplastics-may-be-overblown-n4948438

One of the side issues raised by all this plastic waste is human ingestion of "microplastics." These are "synthetic solid particles or polymeric matrices, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm [micron] to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water," according to the European science journal Springer Nature.
...
Are they a huge problem? They certainly are ubiquitous. As of 2026, the scientific consensus suggests that the average adult ingests between 74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles every year from food and water alone. If you include the particles we inhale from the air, that number can rise to over 211,000 particles annually.

What does that mean for our health? Ingesting that many microplastic particles could be linked to cancer, heart attacks, reproductive problems, and a host of other harms.

Or perhaps not.

The field of study is relatively new and has become "the next big thing" in science. That's not necessarily bad. It's a subject that, if not ignored, was certainly understudied for decades. It has also become the cause du jour of the environmental movement, with all the political baggage that entails.

Studies claiming to have revealed micro and nanoplastics in the brain, testes, placentas, arteries and elsewhere were reported by media across the world, including the Guardian. There is no doubt that plastic pollution of the natural world is ubiquitous, and present in the food and drink we consume and the air we breathe. But the health damage potentially caused by microplastics and the chemicals they contain is unclear, and an explosion of research has taken off in this area in recent years.

However, micro- and nanoplastic particles are tiny and at the limit of today’s analytical techniques, especially in human tissue. There is no suggestion of malpractice, but researchers told the Guardian of their concern that the race to publish results, in some cases by groups with limited analytical expertise, has led to rushed results and routine scientific checks sometimes being overlooked.

The Guardian has identified seven studies that have been challenged by researchers publishing criticism in the respective journals, while a recent analysis listed 18 studies that it said had not considered that some human tissue can produce measurements easily confused with the signal given by common plastics.

[SVPete]

Sacramento teachers seek to remove union control

https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_79cb3918-ca4e-4f81-9dec-4d91331e38d3.html

(The Center Square) – Educators for St. Hope Public Schools in Sacramento are requesting a vote to end the Sacramento City Teachers Association’s authority over their school. 

Earlier this month, St. Hope educator Beth Simonton filed a petition, backed by a majority of her coworkers, asking the National Labor Relations Board to hold a vote to decertify the union as the educators’ bargaining representative.

SCTA is an affiliate of both the California Teachers Association and the National Education Association.

The National Right to Work Foundation is providing legal representation for Simonton.

St. Hope Public Schools is a group of charter schools, so they are default targets for union hatred, and their teachers' interests will be minimally represented by the union.