Although several of the items pointed out by the SWC have been removed from Amazon, many similar items remain available for purchase.

Simon Wiesenthal Center

• Amazon is once again under fire for allowing offensive items to be sold on its site, human rights group claims.
• The SWC says it isn’t the first — or second — time it has called out the retail giant for Nazi propaganda.
• Amazon has since removed the items, but more related products remain, Gizmodo reports.

An international Jewish human rights organization is once again calling out retail giant Amazon for alleged Nazi-related content.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center blasted Amazon for “monetizing Nazi and Neo-Nazi paraphernalia” on its website in a Thursday blog post. According to the post, SWC reached out to the e-commerce giant via email on Wednesday requesting the company “immediately put in place systems that will end the monetization of hateful products.”

The human rights organization alleges Amazon allowed items associated with neo-Nazis, including a swastika necklace and face masks, to be sold and marketed by various businesses. They included screenshots of several of the items in a letter to Amazon.

Although several of the items have since been removed, there are still similar items listed for sale on Amazon, tech news site Gizmodo reported.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center

“Amazon is the nation’s go-to-online store for every imaginable product,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the SWC, said in a statement.

He continued: “In an era when 63% of all religious-based hate crimes in America target America’s Jews—2.4% of the US population, at a time when Blacks are again the number one target of race-based hate crimes, Amazon should not be using its business model to market hateful symbols and neo-Nazi paraphernalia.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center

Cooper went on to note a letter sent by the SWC to Amazon in 2022 for featuring 30 films the organization deemed Nazi propaganda on its streaming platform Amazon Prime.

It wasn’t the first time the tech giant had been slammed for reportedly carrying antisemitic items. In 2019, Amazon removed Christmas ornaments featuring Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, according to a report from Insider.

In 2020, the company came under fire for profiting from the sale of “vicious antisemitic Nazi propaganda” by the Auschwitz Memorial Museum in a tweet, Insider’s Charlie Wood reported.

“It’s simply not acceptable for the biggest economic giant on the block to play games of Wack-a-mole rather than fix things,” Cooper said, according to Gizmodo.

Amazon didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, but a representative directed the New York Post to the company’s policy on “potentially offensive products.”

“Our technology continuously scans all products listed for sale looking for text and images that we have determined violate our policies, and immediately removes them,” the policy reads.

“The realm of potentially offensive products is nuanced and diverse, and we review thousands of products every day against our policies to ensure compliance.” 

In a fresh blow to Portugal’s government, tens of thousands of Portuguese teachers and school staff poured into the streets of the capital Lisbon to demand higher wages and better working conditions in one of the biggest protests of recent years.

During the peaceful demonstration, organised by the Union of All Education Professionals (STOP), protesters held banners and shouted slogans as they urged Education Minister Joao Costa to step down.

Teachers on the lowest pay scale make around 1,100 euros ($1,191.08) per month and even teachers in the top band typically earn less than 2,000 euros monthly. Protesters say current wages are too low, particularly given the cost of living crisis.

“Teachers deserve a fair salary because we’ve worked all our lives… we’ve never been corrupt and we’ve never stolen like the bad example that is unfortunately coming from politicians,” 62-year-old history teacher Maria Duarte said as waited for the march to kick off.

The Socialists, led by Prime Minister Antonio Costa, won an outright parliamentary majority in an election a year ago but the government has had a bumpy ride since then, with 13 ministers and secretaries of state leaving their roles, some over allegations of past misconduct or questionable practices.

“It would be good for the leaders who are watching this demonstration to think very carefully about what they are going to do next because we want this to have consequences; we want serious measures to be taken,” said maths teacher Aitor Matos.

The 47-year-old said teachers were “constantly losing income” and were often placed in schools far from home.

Protesters, some wearing black to mourn the state of the education sector, said the government has done little to improve their situation.

“We have to be respected,” said special needs teacher Lucinda Lopes, 52. “They must give us what is rightfully ours and they can’t take away the little we have.”

Teachers across the country have been on strike since early December, leaving many students unable to attend lessons. The education minister said on Friday he might force some teachers back to work by decreeing minimum services.

($1 = 0.9235 euros)

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A single winning ticket for a Mega Millions lottery jackpot of

at least $1.35 billion, the second largest jackpot in U.S. history, was sold in Maine, lottery organizers said on Saturday.

“Congratulations to the Maine State Lottery, which has just won its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot,” Ohio Lottery director Pat McDonald, lead director for the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement. “It’s the fourth billion-dollar jackpot in Mega Millions history.”

The winning ticket, which cost $2 and matched all six numbers, was bought at Hometown Gas & Grill convenience store in Lebanon, Maine. The ticket holder, yet to be identified, has the choice of a lump-sum payment of $723.5 million or an annual payout over 30 years.

Most winners go for the lump sum, which comes with a hefty tax bill, according to the Mega Millions website.

The winning numbers for the jackpot were 30, 43, 45, 46 and 61, plus the power ball 14.

“This is a small rural town in southern Maine,” Fred Cotreau, the owner of Hometown Gas & Grill told Reuters. “We do not know yet who the winner is, but we are anxiously awaiting to see if it’s one of our friends.”

The jackpot had been rolling since it was last won on October 14, when a $502 million prize was shared by winning tickets in California and Florida. It is the second largest in the 20-year history of the game, topped only by the $1.537 billion won in South Carolina in October 2018.

In addition to the jackpot-winning ticket, fourteen tickets matched all five numbers to win the game’s second-tier prize of $1 million. Four were sold in New York, two in California, and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports lottery beneficiaries, such as education or public employee pensions, and retailer commissions.

Cotreau stands to receive a substantial bonus for the ticket.

“I don’t know yet, but I’m gonna call my lottery agent first thing Monday morning to find out.”

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak indicated on Saturday that Britain would send Ukraine some of its main battle tanks along with additional artillery support, drawing swift reproach from the Russian Embassy in London.

During a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Sunak “outlined the UK’s ambition to intensify our support to Ukraine, including through the provision of Challenger 2 tanks and additional artillery systems”, a spokesperson for the prime minister said.

“The leaders reflected on the current state of Russia’s war in Ukraine, with successive Ukrainian victories pushing Russian troops back and compounding their military and morale issues,” the spokesperson added.

Media reports have suggested Britain was in discussions with Ukraine to deliver the Challengers to help the country fight Moscow’s forces.

Sunak’s office said earlier this week that Britain would coordinate its support with allies after Germany, France and the United States all indicated last week they would provide armoured vehicles to Ukraine.

According to Sky News, about a dozen tanks would be supplied, the first time such Western weaponry had been pledged.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the defence minister would update parliament on Monday.

“The details of the tanks, the main battle tanks, the artillery and other military support will be made clear by the defence secretary to the House of Commons in the very near future,” Cleverly told broadcasters.

The Russian Embassy in London said the decision to send the tanks would drag out the confrontation, lead to more victims including civilians, and was evidence of “the increasingly obvious involvement of London in the conflict”.

“As for the Challenger 2 tanks, they are unlikely to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine turn the tide on the battlefield, but they will become a legitimate large target for the Russian artillery,” the embassy said, according to comments cited by the TASS news agency.

The Challenger 2 is a battle tank designed to attack other tanks, and has been in service with the British Army since 1994. It has been deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Iraq, according to the army.

“The prime minister and President Zelenskiy welcomed other international commitments in this vein, including Poland’s offer to provide a company of Leopard tanks,” Sunak’s spokesperson said.

Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s staff, thanked Britain for its new defence package.

“This is an important contribution to the defense of freedom and democracy in Europe. We are grateful to Rishi Sunak and the (British) people for their help,” he said on Twitter.

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U.S. President Joe Biden’s counsel said on Saturday that five additional pages with classified markings were discovered at the president’s Wilmington, Delaware, home on Thursday, and they were immediately handed over to Justice Department officials.

Biden’s special counsel, Richard Sauber, said he traveled to Biden’s Wilmington home on Thursday to facilitate the handover to the Justice Department of a document with classified markings that was found there earlier.

“While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages. The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them,” Sauber said in a statement.

Biden’s legal team acknowledged this week it had found classified documents relating to his time as vice president in the Obama administration at his Delaware home, including some in his garage.

Aides previously found another batch of classified documents at his residence, and at a Washington think tank he was associated with. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel on Thursday to probe the matter.

“How many more classified documents will they find at Joe Biden’s house?” the Republican House Judiciary Committee said in a tweet early on Saturday.

Sauber said Biden’s lawyer have acted “immediately and voluntarily” to handover all the documents found to the proper authorities.

“We have now publicly released specific details about the documents identified, how they were identified, and where they were found. The appointment of the special counsel in this matter this week means we will now refer specific questions to the special counsel’s office moving forward. As I said Thursday, the White House will cooperate with the newly appointed special counsel,” he said.

Biden is spending the weekend at his Wilmington home with his wife, Jill Biden, who underwent surgery on Wednesday to remove skin lesions from her face and chest.

Biden was asked by a reporter on Thursday about the wisdom of storing important material next to his Corvette. The self-declared ‘car guy’ president said both were in a locked garage.

“It’s not like they’re sitting out in the street,” he said. “People know I take classified documents and classified material seriously.”

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives launched an investigation on Friday into the Justice Department’s handling of improperly stored classified documents possessed by Biden, and questioned whether his son, Hunter, had access to any.

Republicans have sought to compare the investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents to the ongoing probe into how former President Donald Trump handled classified documents after his presidency.

The White House, however, says the two cases are different because Biden’s team has cooperated with authorities in their probe and had turned over those documents. Trump had resisted doing so until an August FBI search at his Florida home.

Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer, said in a statement that Biden had directed his personal attorneys to be “forthcoming and fully cooperative with the National Archives and Records Administration and the Justice Department regarding the documents.

“In addition, the president’s personal attorneys have attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity. These considerations require avoiding the public release of detail relevant to the investigation while it is ongoing,” he said.

Did you know that Dementia Joe Biden has Whipped Inflation Now?

That’s right, what Gerald Ford only dreamed of doing, Biden has done. Just ask him. Inflation is so over.

At the White House last week, Brandon announced happy days are here again. The occasion was a new monthly inflation report that was, at best, marginally less catastrophic than earlier ones.

Egg prices only went up 11% last month! Thank you, Brandon.

“It all adds up to a real break for consumers,” Biden told his amen chorus in state-run media, “and breathing room for families and more proof that my economic plan is working.”

His economic plan is working! So the Democrats wanted all this to happen? Their plan was — is — to destroy the middle class.

Biden’s incoherent victory lap didn’t get nearly the attention it might have, if the headlines hadn’t been full of revelations about his “treason,” as Democrats described the discovery of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago last summer.

By the way, they’re only “classified documents” if they’re in a Republican’s safe in Palm Beach. If they’re in a garage in a house owned by a junkie on the payrolls of Ukraine, Russia and Red China, they are merely “papers with classified markings,” as per the New York Times.

Brandon was particularly thrilled about the price of gasoline. It was $2.11 per gallon on average in 2020, before the Democrats’ “plan” kicked in. Biden got the price up as high as $4.99 a gallon last summer, but now it’s around $3.30 a gallon (and rising again).

“Now gas is down more than a dollar-seventy from its peak!” he bragged. “That all adds up to a typical family with two vehicles saving $180 a month, every single month.”

But, Brandon, don’t you understand that gas prices are still up over 50% since you were installed as president? And now you’re telling us it’s all part of the plan. Talk about fuzzy math.

This is like a guy shooting you in the gut with a .45. And then as you’re lying on the ground, writhing in pain, he switches to a .22 and expects you to thank him before he finishes you off with a head shot from a smaller caliber.

Here are some numbers from the Consumer Price Index on the prices increases on some food staples, from December 2021 to December 2022:

Eggs: up 59.9%. Lettuce: 24.9%. Margarine: 43.8%. Butter: 31.4%. Flour: 23.4%. Fresh whole chicken: 13.3%. Hot dogs: 18.2%. Rice: 13.8%. Baby food: 10.7%. Etc.

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What say ye, Brandon?

“Two years in, it’s clear, clearer than ever, that my economic plan is actually working.”

I ask my radio listeners sometimes, how’s that Biden economic plan working out for you?

The price of eggs seems particularly grating right now. Of course that’s not Brandon’s fault either. It’s avian flu, which was no doubt caused by Putin or Trump or maybe even Ron DeSantis.

From area code 207: “I just paid $6.82 for 18 eggs. Let’s go Brandon!”

From 948 in Florida: “For 30 eggs at Publix, $18.99.”

From 781: “Bring back the caged hens & their tormented eggs… cheaper… I can’t afford free-range eggs anymore, give me the tormented ones.”

Rambo 413: “Scott’s 36-roll warehouse-sized package of TP, used to be $20.99. Same size package now costs $27.99. What an ass Brandon is.”

From 617: “My Waltham Market Basket donuts just went up 25% — $.80 to $1 each.”

From 508: “Sushi at Whole Paycheck yesterday. Same price but six pieces instead of the usual eight.”

From 978: “Luv broccoli. Shot up from $1.49 to $2.49 in one week at Market Basket in Salem NH. Used to be $1.29 or less many moons ago. Let’s go Brandon!”

From 917: “Folger’s coffee was $8.99 for 51 oz. Now $13.99 for 43 oz.”

From 508: “Kodiak cakes under Trump: $1 each. Under Biden: $2.20.”

Tim from NH: “I just left the Taco Bell drive-thru. A #4 plus a burrito cost me over 17 bucks! Let’s go Brandon!”

From 603: “Less than a year ago, I was buying eggs at Manchester NH Aldi’s for less than a dollar a dozen. Yesterday they were $4.79. Has he tried to blame Putin for it yet? WTF! THANK YOU BRANDON.”

From 781: “Oh come on MAN! I finally paid under $3 a gallon at BJ’s Norwood and now it’s going back up!”

From 401: “I just had my annual meeting with my financial guy. I have lost over $300,000 in my retirement investments. Thank you Brandon!!!!!”

From 781: “I just received my Dec. gas and electric bills, UP $35-$45 and every light in my house is LED. Thought they were supposed to save money.”

From 978: “Car wash was $3, now $5 a wash. Know it’s only $2 but it’s a 66.7% increase.”

From 917: “Here in NYC Jerry Nadler-land milk was $1.29 a quart all during COVID and inflation at Trader Joe’s until 2 weeks ago. Now $1.49 and at other chains $1.99 or even higher.”

Someone from the 863 area code in central Florida texted me a quote from the Declaration of Independence, which seemed appropriate for the occasion:

“Prudence indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

In other words, nobody wants to get rid of something that’s worked, or at least sort of worked, until that day that the entire society is upended for “light and transient causes” — say, millions of criminal illegal aliens allowed into the country to go on welfare and commit crimes with impunity.

Or shutting down entire industries on a superstitious whim. Or printing unimaginable sums of increasingly worthless currency with nothing behind it.

And then, the senile vegetable who’s the front man for the entire enterprise smiles and tells you to repeat, “It’s clear, clearer than ever, that my economic plan is working.”

It sure is. Let’s go Brandon!

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday of shameful subservience to the United States and suggested he should ritually disembowel himself.

It was the latest in a long line of shocking and provocative statements from Medvedev, who was once seen as a Western-leaning reformer but has reinvented himself as an arch-hawk since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

Speaking at a news conference in Washington on Saturday, a day after a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday, Kishida made no mention of Medvedev’s comment and was not asked about it.

Japanese officials travelling with Kishida did not immediately respond to requests for comment and in Japan, no one was immediately available for comment on the remarks at either the prime minister’s official residence or the foreign ministry outside normal working hours.

Medvedev is a prominent ally of President Vladimir Putin who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and of a body overseeing the defence industry.

He was responding to a meeting on Friday between Kishida and Biden, after which the two leaders issued a joint statement saying: “We state unequivocally that any use of a nuclear weapon by Russia in Ukraine would be an act of hostility against humanity and unjustifiable in any way.”

On Saturday, Kishida said the G7 summit of major industrialized nations in Hiroshima in May should demonstrate a strong will to uphold international order and rule of law after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Medvedev said the nuclear statement showed “paranoia” towards Russia and “betrayed the memory of hundreds of thousands of Japanese who were burned in the nuclear fire of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” – a reference to the atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan to force its surrender at the end of World War Two.

Rather than demanding U.S. repentance for this, Kishida had shown he was “just a service attendant for the Americans”.

He said such shame could only be washed away by committing seppuku – a form of suicide by disembowelment, also known as hara-kiri – at a meeting of the Japanese cabinet after Kishida’s return.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Medvedev has warned repeatedly that Western meddling in the crisis could lead to nuclear war, and has referred to Ukrainians as “cockroaches” in language Kyiv says is openly genocidal.

Putin has said that the risk of a nuclear war is rising but insisted Russia has not “gone mad” and that it sees its own nuclear arsenal as a purely defensive deterrent.

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Russia unleashed a major missile attack on Ukraine on Saturday, smashing a nine-storey apartment block in the city of Dnipro, killing at least five people and striking vital energy facilities across the country, officials said.

* Russia said on Friday its forces had taken control of Soledar in eastern Ukraine, in what would be a rare success for Moscow after months of battlefield reverses, but Kyiv said its troops were still fighting in the town.

* President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces continued to fight in Soledar, a small salt-mining town, and other cities in the Donetsk region.

* Reuters could not verify the accounts.

* Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, boasted of his forces’ prowess on Saturday amid a simmering rivalry with the defence ministry over who should get credit for leading Russia’s assault on Soledar.

* Prime Minister Rishi Sunak outlined Britain’s ambition to send some of its main battle tanks to Ukraine along with additional artillery support during a phone call on Saturday with Zelenskiy, Sunak’s office said.

* France hopes to deliver “AMX 10-RC” light combat tanks to Ukraine in two months, armed forces minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Friday.

* Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, after meeting U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington on Friday, stressed the importance of standing up to Russia’s invasion, saying that if a unilateral change to the status quo went unchallenged, the same would happen elsewhere, including in Asia – an apparent reference to China’s vow to reunite with self-ruled Taiwan, by force if necessary.

* Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Kishida on Saturday of shameful subservience to the United States and suggested he should ritually disembowel himself.

* Kishida said on Saturday that the G7 summit in Hiroshima in May should demonstrate a strong will to uphold international order and rule of law after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At a news conference in Washington he made no mention of the remarks by Medvedev.

* Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said that the coming days would be “difficult” on the energy front after a massive missile attack by Russia on Saturday hit critical infrastructure in several regions.

* Russia is becoming too dependent on oil revenues to support its budget as it ramps up military spending, economists said, warning that the government may have to raise taxes if crude prices fail to meet expectations this year.

* At least four Chinese-owned supertankers are shipping Russian Urals crude to China, according to trading sources and tracking data, as Moscow seeks vessels for exports after a G7 oil price cap restricted the use of Western cargo services and insurance.

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