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The EV space took a hit overnight after China's BYD—Tesla's top rival—announced sweeping price cuts of up to 34% across nearly two dozen models. This intensified an already brutal global multi-year price war amid continued softening demand.

Bloomberg reported that BYD slashed prices on 22 of its electric and plug-in hybrid models by as much as 34% in an effort to revive demand.

The Seagull hatchback was reduced by 20% to 55,800 yuan ($7,780), while the Seal dual-motor hybrid sedan saw the steepest cut—down 34%, or 53,000 yuan, to 102,800 yuan.

"While some of these discounts have been in place since April, the official announcement sends a strong signal of how tough the end market is," Morgan Stanley analyst Tim Hsiao told clients. 

The discounts come as China's broader economic downturn has increased dealership stock levels. Recent data from the China Passenger Car Association showed that China had 3.5 million cars, or 57 inventory days, in April, the highest figure since December 2023. 

"We anticipate peers will follow BYD's price cut," Citi Research analysts wrote in a note. They said Chongqing Changan Automobile has already revealed a 25,000 yuan discount for its Deepal S07 model, as well as Zhejiang Leapmotor Technologies discounted its C16 full-size crossover sport utility vehicle and mid-sized SUV C11. 

Citi analysts forecast that discounts announced this past weekend could lead to a 30% to 40% week-on-week foot traffic surge at BYD dealerships. 

In markets, BYD shares closed down 6%, while Li Auto, Great Wall Motor, and Geely Automobile all closed in the red. 

"EV space continued to add weight as BYD tanked 8.6% after announcing promo discount on 22 models until end of June, worrying investors on profitability and margin," Goldman analyst Keita Umetani wrote in a note. 

Goldman analyst Shubham Ghosh told clients, "We were sellers of BYD here and also caught some selling in SOE banks."

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

The crypto industry is no stranger to controversy, yet few projects have drawn more scrutiny than Sam Altman’s World, formerly known as Worldcoin.

Promising to verify human uniqueness through iris scans and distribute its WLD token globally, World positions itself as a tool for financial inclusion. However, critics argue the project’s biometric methods are invasive, overly centralized, and at odds with the ethos of decentralization and digital privacy.

At the heart of the critique is the claim that biometric identity systems cannot be truly decentralized when they rely on proprietary hardware, closed authentication methods, and centralized control over data pipelines.

“Decentralization isn’t just a technical architecture,” Shady El Damaty, co-founder of Holonym Foundation, told Cointelegraph. 

“It’s a philosophy that prioritizes user control, privacy, and self-sovereignty. World’s biometric model is inherently at odds with this ethos.”

El Damaty argued that despite using tools like multiparty computation (MPC) and zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, World’s reliance on custom hardware — the Orb — and centralized code deployment undermines the decentralization it claims to champion.

“This is by design to achieve their goals of uniquely identifying individual humans. This concentration of power risks creating a single point of failure and control, undermining the very promise of decentralization,” he said.

When reached out for comment, a spokesperson for World pushed back against these claims. “World does not use centralized biometric infrastructure,” they said, adding that the World App is non-custodial, meaning users remain in control of their digital assets and World IDs.

The project said once the Orb generates an iris code, the “iris photo will be sent as an end-to-end encrypted data bundle to your phone and will be immediately deleted from the Orb.” The iris code, they claimed, is processed with anonymizing multiparty computation so “no personal data is stored.”

World’s disclosure regarding personal custody. Source: World

Evin McMullen, co–founder of Privado ID and Billions.Network, said that World’s biometric model is not “inherently incompatible” with decentralization but faces some challenges in implementation around data centralization, trust assumptions, and governance.

 

A pattern of tech overreach?

El Damaty also drew a parallel between OpenAI’s large-scale scraping of “unconsented user data” and World’s collection of biometric information.

He argued that both reflect a pattern of aggressive data acquisition framed as innovation, warning that such practices risk eroding privacy and normalizing surveillance under the banner of progress.

“The irony here is hard to miss,” El Damaty claimed. “OpenAI built its foundation by scraping vast amounts of unconsented user data to train its models, and now Worldcoin is taking that same aggressive data acquisition approach into the realm of biometric identity.”

In 2023, a class-action lawsuit filed in California accused OpenAI and Microsoft of scraping 300 billion words from the internet without consent, including personal data from millions of users, such as children.

In 2024, a coalition of Canadian media outlets, including The Canadian Press and CBC, sued OpenAI for allegedly using their content without authorization to train ChatGPT, claiming copyright infringement.

ChatGPT storing personal information against its claims. Source: Sandi Fatic

World, however, rejects this comparison, emphasizing that it is a separate entity from OpenAI. The company said that it neither sells nor stores personal data, citing its use of privacy-preserving technologies such as multiparty computation and zero-knowledge proofs.

The scrutiny also extends to World’s user onboarding. The project says it ensures informed consent through translated guides, an in-app Learn module, brochures, and a Help Center.

However, critics remain skeptical. “People in developing nations, who World… has mainly been targeting up until this point, are easier to bribe and often don’t understand the risks involved with ‘selling’ this personal data,” El Damaty warned.

Several global regulators have pushed back on World’s operations since its launch in July 2023, with governments like Germany, Kenya and Brazil expressing concerns over potential risks to the security of users’ biometric data.

In the most recent setback, the company faced challenges in Indonesia after local regulators temporarily suspended its registration certificates on May 5.

The risk of digital exclusion

As biometric systems like World’s gain traction, questions are emerging about its long-term implications. While the company promotes its model as inclusive, critics say the reliance on iris scans to unlock services could deepen global inequality.

“When biometric data becomes a prerequisite for accessing basic services, it effectively creates a two-tiered society,” said El Damaty. 

“Those willing (or coerced) into giving up their most sensitive information gain access… while those who refuse… are excluded.”

World maintained that its protocol does not require biometric enrollment for basic participation. “You can still use an unverified World ID for some purposes even if you do not visit an Orb,” it said, adding that the system uses ZKPs to prevent linking actions back to any specific ID or biometric data.

There are also concerns that World could become a surveillance tool — especially in authoritarian regimes — by centralizing biometric data in a way that may attract misuse by powerful actors.

World dismisses these claims, asserting that its ID protocol is “open source, permissionless,” and designed so even government applications cannot tie back a user’s activity to their biometric data.

The debate also extends to governance. While World says its protocol is moving toward greater decentralization — highlighting open-source contributions and the governance section of its white paper — critics argues that meaningful user ownership is still lacking.

“We need to build systems that allow individuals to prove their humanity without creating centralized repositories of biometric or personal data,” said El Damaty. “This means embracing zero-knowledge proofs, decentralized governance, and open standards that empower individuals, not corporations.”

The need for secure identity systems

The urgency behind developing secure identity systems isn’t without merit. As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, the lines between human and non-human actors online are blurring.

“Risks at the nexus of AI and identity are not limited to any one kind of government system or region,” Privado ID’s McMullen said. She claimed that without reliable verification for both humans and AI agents, digital ecosystems face growing threats—from misinformation and fraud to national security vulnerabilities.

“This is a national security nightmare, where unaccountable, unverifiable non-human actors may now be able to engage with global systems and networks, and legacy systems are not built for these types of verification and contextual logic,” McMullen added.

On this extended Memorial Day weekend where many Americans will be spending time with family around the grill, and perhaps at local parades and remembrance events, the showdown between NATO and Russia in Ukraine just escalated in a big way.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced Monday that Germany, France, the UK and US have lifted prior restrictions on how far the weapons they supply to Ukraine can reach. "Absolutely no limits...," he said.

Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron. via dpa

"There are absolutely no range limits anymore for weapons delivered to Ukraine, not from Britain, the French or from us — also not from the Americans," Merz said speaking at a national security forum in Berlin on Monday. "That means Ukraine can defend itself by attacking military positions also in Russia."

Russian media very quickly seized on the comments as representing a major turning point in NATO policy vis-a-vis Ukraine. Bloomberg too has emphasized this gives Ukraine the "greenlight" to strike deep inside Russia.

Of course, any close observer of the war over much of the last year knows that the proverbial gloves have already been off for a long time, on a covert level at least. Ukrainian drones have been reaching far into Russian territory for years for many many months at this point, with US satellite and intelligence assistance.

Chancellor Merz made clear in the Monday remarks:

"There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine, not from the British, not from the French, not from us, not from the Americans either. This means that Ukraine can now also defend itself by attacking military positions in Russia, for example. It couldn't do that until some time ago, and with very few exceptions, it didn't do that until some time ago."

He claimed further, "Now it can. In jargon, we call this long-range fire, i.e., equipping Ukraine with weapons that attack military targets in the rear. And that is the decisive qualitative difference in Ukraine's warfare. Russia attacks civilian targets absolutely ruthlessly, bombing cities, kindergartens, hospitals, and old people's homes." He added: "Ukraine does not do that."

"And we attach great importance to keeping it that way," Merz said. "But, a country that can only defend itself against an attacker on its own territory is not defending itself adequately. And this defense of Ukraine is now also taking place against military infrastructure on Russian territory."

But again, long-range fire utilizing Western systems has been in effect for a while at this point, and cities and residential homes and neighborhoods have indeed been hit, and Russian civilians have died - just as has been happening in Ukraine as a result of Russian attacks.

Whether Washington, London, and Paris have actually pulled the trigger on making this decision 'official' is another question. The White House certainly hasn't changed its public stance, and a moment President Trump has been piling on the pressure for each side to get to the negotiating table.

Europe's decision, if there is one, to lift the missile range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine is dangerous and is contrary to aspirations of reaching a settlement, Peskov said.

"The decisions, if indeed there are such decisions, are absolutely contrary to our… https://t.co/SpIOGoqlQ5 pic.twitter.com/L1qcicSxpl

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 26, 2025

The Kremlin responded later Monday with its own warning, with spokesman Dimitry Peskov saying that "If such decisions have indeed been made, they are entirely at odds with our aspirations for a political resolution and with the efforts currently being made toward a settlement."

He then said ominously, "Quite dangerous decisions, again – if they were indeed made."

Authored by Olivia Murray via AmericanThinker.com,

A little while back, the progressive, man-hating feminist movement produced what they surely thought was a “gotcha” condemnation for men—it was a social media trend where women would announce whether they’d rather be alone in the woods with a man or a bear…with a vast majority of women settling on the bear, highlighting “the fear of male violence.” (Never mind that many of these women were completely untouchable, as if the average man would ever desire to assault them, even given the license in a desolate forest.)

Since progressive feminists are the dimmest of society’s bulbs, I can only assume this “man or bear” dilemma was a calculated campaign to manipulate the useful idiots—similar to Lawrence Lader and Bernard Nathanson when they convinced Betty Friedan to include abortion in her ideals (which she originally rejected). The progressive feminist movement that began then was not an organic occurrence, but an orchestrated scheme, directed by…men, which is what I’d call peak irony.

But I digress.

New statistics out of Germany reveal that foreign-born women, but specifically foreign-born Muslim women, are far more violent than native German men. The Remix News staff, which reported on the story, quipped that the revelation “blows up a common myth that has been perpetuated by the left for years”—that men are so violent, a bear is preferable company. (Again, never mind the fact that men, to their own detriment, have been protecting their women for essentially all of human history.)

Here are the numbers for 2024:

Out of 100,000 people, German men were suspects in violent offenses in 272 cases. For Syrian women, that number was 336. Afghan women? Even worse, with a rate of 359. Worse yet? Iraqi women, with “an incredible rate” of 394. 

To look at the data a different way, that means Syrian women were around 24% more likely to be violent criminals than German men; Afghan women around 32%, and Iraqi women a whopping 45%.

Here’s another little tidbit: 

the number of Syrian men suspected of violent crime? 2,608, or 859% more. Afghan men came in at 2,409, or 786% more, while Iraqi men were 2,479, or 811% more. “However, the crown goes to Moroccan men, who have a rate of 3,388 suspects in the category of violent crime per 100,000.” That means they’re 1,146% more likely than native German men to be accused of a violent crime.

While biological sex certainly plays a role in a person’s tendency to resort to criminal violence, there seems to be more here...like ideology...which explains why *certain* demographics of women are more violent than certain demographics of men.

So, if given the chance between a bear or a Muslim woman (or man)? I’d choose the bear.

Authored by Lindsay Mark Lewis via RealClearMarkets.com,

Europe has declared itself open for business — unless you're actually trying to do business there. 

The European Commission's latest €500 million fine against Apple, levied under the new Digital Markets Act (DMA), is not only a staggering penalty; it’s a signal flare to global investors that Europe is no longer a place of rule-based predictability, but one where political agendas override legal clarity, engagement, or fairness.

Apple’s offense? Attempting — repeatedly — to comply with a complex, evolving law while facing a Commission that gave them the silent treatment. According to correspondence reported by Politico, Apple spent the better part of 2024 making proposals, requesting guidance, and asking for confirmation that it was on the right side of the law. The Commission’s response: Delay, obfuscation, and ultimately, a massive fine that had seemingly been predetermined months in advance.

Let’s call this what it is: regulatory ambush.

In the Commission’s own words, “it is the sole responsibility of the gatekeepers to come up with product changes.” But how can companies do that when the Commission refuses to say what would or would not be compliant? When Apple proposed rolling back some of its rules, the Commission told them to wait for developer feedback. That feedback came from critics — Spotify, Epic, Match Group — and shortly after, Apple began to suspect, correctly, that it was being set up for a fall.

And fall they did — fined half a billion euros for allegedly not complying with a law whose requirements the Commission won’t clearly define. This is not regulation; it's regulatory theater. It’s governance by trapdoor.

This isn’t just a tech story. This is a capital flight story.

Private investment in the EU has stagnated. According to Eurostat, inward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into the EU were €49.5 billion in 2021, with significant fluctuations in subsequent years. Meanwhile, venture capital funding for European startups fell sharply. Crunchbase reports that funding to European startups reached $52 billion in 2023, down 39% year over year from $86 billion invested in 2022. Additionally, Dealroom.co notes that European startups raised $63 billion in 2023, down 37% from 2022.

Multinational firms want to put their money where laws are clear, processes are fair and predictable, and regulators act like referees, not rivals. The EU Commission’s actions reveal a deep hostility toward the very companies it seeks to regulate, combined with an alarming indifference to due process.

What boardroom would look at this behavior and decide to expand in Europe? What startup would take the risk of entering a market where regulators can move the goalposts in silence and then punish you for not kicking the ball into the invisible net?

The Commission wants to portray the DMA as a rules-based dialogue. But a dialogue requires two sides to speak. When regulators go dark, only to emerge with a fine the size of a small nation's GDP, that’s not law — it’s regulatory brinkmanship.

Some in Brussels may quietly see these fines as a kind of counterweight to U.S. assertiveness — an economic tool to reassert sovereignty in a world shaped by Trump-era tariffs and America’s tech dominance. But that is a dangerous miscalculation. These fines will not protect Europe from trade aggression. They will not shield European industry from another round of Trumpian tariffs or tech restrictions. If anything, they give the U.S. and other trading partners an excuse to escalate, arguing — not without cause — that Europe is targeting foreign firms without providing a fair legal process. Rather than building resilience, this path isolates Europe further and erodes its attractiveness to allies and investors alike.

Europe is now on notice. If this is how the EU Commission intends to enforce its laws, then the real consequence won’t be more tech compliance — it’ll be less tech investment. The most damaging part of this fine isn’t the €500 million Apple will pay. It’s the long-term signal to the world: Europe isn’t a partner in innovation. It’s a minefield.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

The EU-US trade deal should have been the easiest to complete.

However, the deal is not progressing because the negotiation team refuses to lift any of the EU’s non-tariff barriers or to discuss the limitations imposed on US agricultural, livestock, and car exports.

These are the reasons why it should have been a concise and quick trade deal:

Most of the United States’ team demands coincide with the Draghi report’s concerns about excessive regulation and internal barriers. 

According to Eurochambres estimates, the cost of hyper-regulation for the EU exceeds one trillion euros per year. Draghi himself warned in an FT article, “Forget the US—Europe has successfully put tariffs on itself,” citing IMF estimates that show that internal barriers, regulation, and taxation increase prices in the services sector by 110 per cent and in manufacturing by 45 per cent.

If the EU negotiators had presented a comprehensive package of tariff reductions for agriculture, farming, and the automotive industry, a preliminary deal would have been signed immediately, benefitting everyone. However, the negotiators were only willing to negotiate possible improvements to LNG imports with the vague concept of “strengthening investment,” limiting any tariff negotiation to industrial goods where there was no significant dispute.

The United States’ requests to the European Union were significantly less demanding than the negotiations of burdens from China or India. 

Unfortunately, the EU negotiators were only willing to propose plans to lower tariffs on industrial goods and non-sensitive agri-food exports, as well as a clause to keep the US from introducing further tariffs while talks are ongoing, according to Bloomberg. The EU stated that tariffs could be reduced in phases or through a quota system, and higher levies would only come above a certain quantity of imports. Upon review, it appears that these proposals aim to uphold all non-tariff barriers and the majority of tariffs. Tariffs are much higher than those of the United States in agriculture, farming, chemicals, automotive and manufactured goods.

The demands of the United States are not outlandish. 

All of these demands simply aim to eliminate absurd regulatory and tariff burdens. Furthermore, the European Union allows the exemption of many of the tariff and non-tariff barriers to products coming from Turkey or Morocco, even China.

The European Commission threatened to impose new countermeasures that could affect €95 billion worth of US products if negotiations to resolve the trade dispute fail. However, the European Union lacks significant leverage in this situation. Its trade surplus is so large, and the barriers to U.S. goods so widespread, that it simply cannot fight back.

The European Union trade surplus, which stands at 150 billion euros and soared 244% in March 2025 compared to the same month of 2024, is not generated by free cooperation and spontaneous trade agreements between free companies. In many sectors, the EU’s production and energy costs are up to 50% and 100% higher, respectively, than those of the United States, yet the exports of the European Union massively outweigh those of the U.S. A significant proportion of the trade surplus of the European Union comes from lifting barriers to others and benefitting from open markets for European products.

The European Union must comprehend that a reasonable agreement can eliminate tariffs in minutes.

The EU negotiators must admit that they would be complying with Draghi’s recommendations and benefitting all businesses, inside and outside Europe, in the process. Therefore, they can swiftly and efficiently reach a deal.

It appears that the negotiators from the European Union are not interested in removing trade barriers, preferring to maintain them at all costs, even if it results in the economy of many member states being weakened. Negotiators seem more concerned about pleasing bureaucrats and finding a scapegoat for the EU’s stagnation in the Trump administration than advancing a deal that benefits US and EU companies.

Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times,

Tom Pawlak and Robert Trae Zipperer live 2,200 miles apart, but they share a common belief: that unlike old soldiers, no gravestone or marker of a U.S. military member should ever fade.

For Pawlak, 73, from Arizona, restoring the bronze plaques of veterans and those lost in combat to their original pristine condition has become his mission in life.

Zipperer, 56, is a Navy veteran from Florida who is equally passionate about restoring gravestones.

Pawlak’s quest began during a visit to a private cemetery in Phoenix in 2014, where some plaques were badly tarnished and hard to read.

As Pawlak scrubbed, buffed, and polished one marker, the name of U.S. Marine Pfc. Oscar Palmer Austin began to emerge.

Born on Jan. 15, 1948, Austin died in Vietnam on Feb. 23, 1969.

Pawlak then realized that Austin, a 21-year-old African American soldier from Texas, was not an ordinary recruit; he had received the Medal of Honor for bravery on the battlefield and the Purple Heart after being wounded.

The U.S. Navy later named a guided missile destroyer in his honor—the USS Oscar Austin.

Pawlak reached out to the ship’s commander to share his discovery and the restoration work he had completed. Two weeks later, he received a package from the Navy that contained a flag, as well as a blue cap with “USS Oscar Austin” emblazoned on it.

He began wearing the cap everywhere he went.

“As soon as I began wearing the cap, people would stop me on the street to talk,” he said.

He started going out more often to cemeteries, polishing and sanding the letters on the tarnished bronze plaques, Pawlak said.

Robert Trae Zipperer, founder of VeteranGraves.com, launched a volunteer effort cleaning gravestones across the nation in 2019. Courtesy Robert Zipperer

In 2014, he founded Mission Restore Bronze, a social media movement on Facebook that has drawn thousands of volunteers to the cause.

Remembering a Friend

Originally from Chicago, Pawlak never served in the military. However, he feels a deep connection with veterans and the military—he lost a friend just three weeks after the friend arrived in Vietnam in 1967.

He thinks of him every time he visits a cemetery and notices the sad condition of the bronze grave markers.

“I‘ll walk through a cemetery and see a bad marker. I’ll have everything with me and finish it,” Pawlak said.

Pawlak recalls his first volunteer: a naval commander who wanted to restore his father’s bronze plaque in Tampa Bay, Florida.

Other volunteers would ask him how to clean plaques when visiting cemeteries.

Pawlak offers free jars of his proprietary wax, along with video instructions on how to apply it correctly for lasting results.

The volunteer effort “just exploded from the start,” he said.

“I couldn’t leave the house. I took a shower and had 16 messages when I returned,” he said.

His efforts have inspired at least one Eagle Scout project in the Phoenix area.

In 2017, 13-year-old Levi Brown assembled a team to clean and restore approximately 250 bronze grave markers at Greenwood Cemetery in Phoenix.

Pawlak said he has no idea how many military personnel plaques have been cleaned and restored through his virtual movement.

Tom Pawlak of Arizona started Mission Restore Bronze Markers in 2014 as a one-man effort that has grown into thousands of volunteers nationwide. Courtesy of Tom Pawlak

Most volunteers are people he doesn’t know and has never met in person.

Since his project launched, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs for youths have carried the mantle forward, as well as court diversion programs and other groups.

“I‘ll just walk around and hand out wax jars to people,” Pawlak said. “I’ll have markers that I take care of regularly—people I’ve known.”

Often, he'll get a call from a potential volunteer and send a jar of wax on request. Each jar contains enough product to clean 12 to 16 markers.

However, if Pawlak had to estimate the number of volunteers, it would potentially be well over 75,000, based on the viewership of his YouTube videos.

“We’ve included first responders and police. I'll supply them with wax,” he said.

During another visit to Phoenix, Pawlak felt compelled to take action when he noticed that the bronze plaques commemorating the 622 Arizona soldiers killed in Vietnam needed love and care.

With a brush in hand, he and other volunteers scoured, scrubbed, and waxed the bronze plaques and statues of foot soldiers, restoring them to a remarkable shine for Memorial Day.

He’s also cleaned bronze plaques in Washington and even the statue of Gen. George S. Patton at the museum dedicated to Patton in California.

He said that getting down on his knees to clean is easy, but getting back up is hard. He could use more eager, younger volunteers.

Keeping Honor Clean

While researching his family tree in Lee County, Florida, Zipperer observed that many military gravesites were in poor condition, with some hardly legible due to mold.

A veteran's headstone is covered in black mold. Courtesy of Robert Zipperer

The once-bright headstones had turned dark gray, making the names hard to read.

Zipperer faced frustrating regulatory challenges in Fort Myers before finally obtaining the necessary approval to clean the headstones in time for Memorial Day in 2019.

Initially, city officials claimed he needed permission from the families to clean the headstones, warning that he would be trespassing and “soliciting” otherwise.

However, after Zipperer brought his case to the media, the city changed its position.

“I’m just a guy that doesn’t take no for an answer. You can’t have a veteran’s headstone covered in crud. It’s just not American,” Zipperer told The Epoch Times.

The headstone as it now appears after cleaning. Courtesy of Robert Zipperer

Rules for Restoration

Zipperer later discovered no standard operating procedures at the local, state, or federal levels concerning cleaning veterans’ grave markers.

He contacted the National Cemetery Administration in Washington, which advised him to submit a proposal in writing.

Eventually, the agency incorporated his ideas into national guidelines for the volunteer maintenance of veteran and military gravestones.

“The graves just sit out there covered in nastiness,” Zipperer said.

“I’ve had to get out hedge clippers and cut bushes to reach a veteran’s grave enveloped in vegetation.

“You‘ll cut it all back, and you’ll clean it all up, and then you'll scrub the headstone and get it clean.”

The NCA, part of the Department of Veterans Affairs, estimates that it has supplied more than 15 million headstones to national, state, and private cemeteries nationwide since 1973.

In fiscal year 2022, the agency provided 347,361 headstones and markers for military personnel buried in the nation’s cemeteries.

The VA operates 156 national cemeteries and 35 soldiers’ lots and monument sites across 42 states and Puerto Rico.

Members of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment place flags at the headstones of U.S. military personnel buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in preparation for Memorial Day in Arlington, Va., on May 22, 2025. Nearly 1,500 service members entered the cemetery at pre-dawn hours to begin the process of placing a flag in front of approximately 260,000 headstones. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

More than 4 million Americans, including military personnel from every war and conflict, are interred in VA national cemeteries. Approximately 84 percent of veterans are in private cemeteries throughout the country, according to the American Association of Retired Persons.

Zipperer believes the deteriorating condition of veteran headstones signifies a “lack of caring” and funding.

Through his website, veterangraves.com, he hopes to recruit more volunteers and financial support for his cause.

“The problem is we don’t have the [public] funding,” Zipperer said. “Nobody creates funding for veterans’ headstones. I’m doing what I can do, but I don’t have an unlimited budget.

“Every state should be contributing to this. Every American should be contributing to this cause.”

Zipperer estimates he’s spent more than $500,000 out of pocket to promote his mission on YouTube.

“There are people in Australia who love their veterans as much as Americans love their veterans,” he said.

Before and after images of a bronze veteran grave plaque. Courtesy of Tom Pawlak

“I’m just broadcasting it out there to whoever receives the message.”

Pawlak said he also had to use his own funds to support Mission Restore Bronze Markers.

“I just dedicated myself to doing it,” he said.

Celebrity Appeal

In 2021, before Memorial Day, Zipperer appeared on the ABC syndicated talk show “Live With Kelly and Ryan” to present his case.

The response was nothing like he had anticipated.

“I’m naive, I thought this was going to be it,” he said. “Tom Hanks was going to reach out to me. Clint Eastwood was going to reach out to me. Gary Sinise was going to reach out to me. Steven Spielberg was going to reach out to me.”

Patriotic celebrities, one and all, he said.

“And they would provide the help I needed to make this vision a reality. I thought all the senators and governors were going to call. My phone was going to blow up,” he said.

“Do you know how many people called?”

No one, he said, except for a nice woman in New Jersey, who saw him on television.

“We love our veterans in our county,” the woman said to him over the phone. “We’re going to take up your cause here.”

She asked if Zipperer would attend the county’s Memorial Day celebration, and he agreed.

An American flag at sunset in Springerville, Ariz., on May 25, 2025. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times

Zipperer was struck by the community turnout in Hunterdon County that day.

He finally grasped the true purpose of this mission.

“This is an American cause,” Zipperer said. “We can make this happen.”

In May 2013, John Rogers, a longtime Federal Reserve economist, was in Shanghai for an academic forum when he received an email that would eventually alter the course of his life and career.

The message was from someone claiming to be a Chinese graduate student. Rogers says he declined an offer of payment but kept in touch, later accepting an all-expenses-paid invitation to return to China. That visit, U.S. prosecutors allege, marked the beginning of a yearslong effort by Chinese intelligence to extract sensitive information from inside one of the most important economic institutions in the United States.

John Rogers

In January of this year, Rogers was arrested by the FBI on federal charges of economic espionage, the Wall Street Journal reports. He is accused of conspiring with Chinese operatives posing as students, handing over internal Federal Reserve materials in hotel rooms in China, and accepting travel accommodations arranged by his handlers. Authorities said they found $50,000 in cash at his Washington-area apartment, which his wife claimed as hers.

Rogers, who left the Fed in 2021, has denied all charges, maintaining that he never knowingly assisted a foreign government. His attorney argues that the indictment is misleading and lacks critical context. “The indictment presents an overly-simplistic, one-sided, and skewed version of events,” the lawyer said, adding that the defense team would mount a full rebuttal in court.

The case is one of the most detailed yet in exposing Beijing’s efforts to cultivate informants within U.S. institutions not traditionally seen as espionage targets, such as the Federal Reserve. American officials say China has broadened its intelligence gathering under President Xi Jinping, targeting not just defense contractors and tech companies, but also government economists and financial policymakers.

A 2022 Senate committee report alleged a coordinated campaign by China dating back at least to 2013 to gain insight into the Fed’s internal operations and decision-making. In one incident cited by the report, Chinese authorities allegedly detained a Fed employee in a hotel and threatened to jail him unless he shared economic data. The Chinese Foreign Ministry at the time dismissed the allegations as “political disinformation.”

In response to the report, Fed Chair Jerome Powell defended the central bank’s security policies, noting that staff travel and contacts with foreign nationals are subject to strict review. The Fed tightened its rules further in 2021, banning staff from accepting gifts or compensation from individuals or organizations in countries under U.S. export controls, including China.

Rogers’s academic and personal ties to China deepened over the years. He earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia and joined the Fed in 1994, later becoming a senior adviser researching currency and interest-rate issues. Though he held an impressive title, people familiar with his role said he had limited access to high-level Fed deliberations and did not attend Federal Open Market Committee meetings.

Still, his resume and position appeared to make him an attractive target. In 2017, Rogers returned to China after accepting an invitation from the same “graduate student” who first contacted him. According to an indictment unsealed earlier this year, Rogers asked that his travel and lodging be covered, which the individual agreed to. 

That same year, Rogers began an online relationship with Liu Yu, a 31-year-old makeup artist from Shanghai, whom he met through a Chinese matchmaking service called Sky Love. After months of exchanging messages, Rogers arranged to meet her in person during a stop in Shanghai. They spent two days sightseeing, exchanging gifts, and sharing a hot-pot dinner, according to Sky Love, which later publicized the relationship as one of its success stories. The couple married in Hong Kong in March 2018, and Liu gave birth to their daughter later that year in Shanghai.

During this period, Rogers exchanged information with his Chinese contacts, including internal Fed materials and research reports. In one 2018 text message to a handler, he cautioned: “There has to be a lot more done to make this legitimate in the eyes of the Fed. Remember, it has to be teaching and not consulting. I am only allowed to teach.” Rogers added, “That would cause me a lot of trouble!” if the nature of the relationship were questioned.

His attorneys argue that these messages show Rogers’s intent to operate within Fed rules, not to conspire with foreign agents. In court filings, they described the exchanges as part of a teacher-student dynamic.

By the end of 2018, Rogers had taken a sabbatical and was working as a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University. He allegedly continued to supply notes to his Chinese contacts, including materials prepared for a Fed official awaiting Senate confirmation.

In 2020, Fed officials began raising concerns about Rogers’s foreign connections. In an interview with the Office of Inspector General, Rogers downplayed any wrongdoing but admitted: “They’d come out with packets of hundred-dollar bills.” He denied sharing classified materials, but prosecutors later charged him with making false statements in that interview.

He lost access to most Fed resources soon after and was formally forced out in 2021. Months before leaving, he signed a teaching contract with Fudan offering roughly $150,000 for one semester per year. He also secured a $300,000 research grant from a Chinese government-affiliated institution.

Even after his departure from the Fed, Rogers continued receiving messages from his Chinese contacts. In 2022, one invited him and his wife to Qingdao for another paid engagement, writing, “All related expenses will be covered by us, and we can pay for the class.” It remains unclear if Rogers accepted the invitation.