Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

10-year-olds worked nights at McDonald’s – without pay

Published 7 May 2023
– By Editorial Staff
Substandard working conditions are common at McDonald's in the US.
2 minute read

An investigation by US authorities shows how the fast food chain McDonald’s often allowed children and young people to work more than what is legally allowed. In one of the restaurants, two 10-year-olds sometimes worked late into the night without pay and one 10-year-old was in charge of the deep fryer.

Child labor has become more common in the US in recent years. Earlier this year, the Department of Labor announced a 69% increase in child labor since 2018 and found 835 companies in 2022 that had illegally employed more than 3,800 children, Axios reported. Against this backdrop, the department decided to continue its investigations into child labor and the degree of compliance by companies in the US.

The investigation revealed that over 300 minors were working illegally at three separate McDonald’s franchise operators. Two of the children were only ten years old, far too young for employment under US law.

The franchise operators are collectively responsible for more than 62 McDonald’s restaurants in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio. The children often worked more hours per day or week than the law allows. The two ten-year-olds worked without pay, sometimes until two in the morning. They cooked, cleaned and sometimes ran the cash register. One of the two 10-year-olds was also in charge of the deep fryer, which is illegal for children under 16.

Too often, employers fail to follow the child labor laws that protect young workers. Under no circumstances should there ever be a 10-year-old child working in a fast-food kitchen around hot grills, ovens and deep fryers, said Karen Garnett-Civils, director of the Kentucky District’s Wage and Hour Division.

The three franchise operators will now collectively pay $212,000 in fines.

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Trump urges Zelensky to attack Moscow

The war in Ukraine

Published today 6:55
– By Editorial Staff
2 minute read

Donald Trump has secretly urged Ukraine to carry out attacks against the Russian major cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg – as a strategy to force Russia to the negotiating table, according to the Financial Times.

The conversation reportedly took place on July 4 between American and Ukrainian representatives, where Trump posed direct questions to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky:

– Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow? . . . Can you hit St Petersburg too?

According to the newspaper’s sources, the plan is to make Russia “feel pain” in order to pressure a settlement. Trump has previously expressed frustration over the war’s duration and said:

– I’m disappointed in President Putin because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago.

At the same time, it is reported that Zelensky has received a list of long-range weapons that Trump wants to deliver through intermediaries – to circumvent Congress’s ban on direct military aid.

Escalation in the war

The revelations come at a sensitive time. The Kremlin has repeatedly warned that Russia could strike against the West if its weapons are used against Russian territory.

President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russia has the right to “use our weapons against military facilities in countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities”.

In November 2024, Russia tightened its nuclear doctrine, which now allows nuclear response if Russia is attacked with conventional weapons by “non-nuclear states supported by nuclear powers”.

So far, Ukraine has primarily used domestically produced long-range drones in its attacks inside Russia. Neither the White House nor the Ukrainian government has commented on the revelation.

Over 100 killed in Gaza over the weekend

The situation in Gaza

Published 14 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Ruins after bombings in Gaza, archive image.
1 minute read

On Saturday alone, at least 70 people were killed in Gaza and 208 were injured, reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

At least 40 more people were killed in new attacks on Sunday, including six children who were killed at a drinking water distribution point, according to a spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense authority to AFP. Representatives from Al-Awda Hospital confirm that they received ten bodies following an Israeli attack on a water collection point in nearby Nuseirat. Hospital staff estimate that the actual death toll is 129 and that 33 of those killed were queuing for humanitarian aid.

The Israeli military, which has recently intensified its operations in Gaza, has according to Defense Minister Israel Katz received orders to establish a concentration camp that they refer to as a “humanitarian city” in the southern part of Gaza, where they aim to eventually house Gaza’s entire population.

According to health authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza, the death toll now exceeds 58,000 people.

North Korea declares “full support” for Russia

The war in Ukraine

Published 14 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during their meeting in Wonsan, North Korea.
1 minute read

North Korea is providing its “unconditional support” to Russia in the war against Ukraine. This was declared during a meeting between Kim Jong-Un and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Wonsan on Saturday, according to North Korean state media.

Kim Jong-Un informed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the country stands ready to provide strong assistance in the conflict against Ukraine during a meeting that took place on Saturday in the coastal town of Wonsan on North Korea’s east coast, a location that the country has recently attempted to market as a tourist destination.

According to the North Korean news agency KCNA, Kim Jong-Un told Lavrov that North Koreans have “expressed full sympathy and support for all the measures taken by the Russian government to remove the root cause of the Ukrainian conflict”.

The North Korean leader is also said to have expressed his “firm conviction that the Russian army and people” will triumph and “achieve the sacred cause of defending the country’s dignity and fundamental interests”, KCNA reports.

Before the meeting with Kim Jong-Un, Lavrov met with his North Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Choe Son-Hui, earlier in the day.

Deepened military cooperation

Lavrov’s visit to North Korea marks increasingly extensive military and political ties between the two countries, which have accelerated in connection with the war in Ukraine.

Pyongyang has previously sent thousands of soldiers to the Russian border region of Kursk to participate in fighting against Ukrainian forces that occupied parts of the area.

War hawk: Trump will send “record amounts of weapons” to Ukraine

The war in Ukraine

Published 14 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
War hawk Lindsey Graham with Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo to the right in a meeting in Helsinki, Finland in August last year.
2 minute read

The US will send more weapons than ever to Ukraine. These are the tones being heard around the Trump administration as NATO chief Mark Rutte now visits Washington.

A large part of Trump’s voter base is generally considered to be voters who voted for him in hopes that he would reduce US involvement in foreign wars, partly because he promised during the campaign that he would end the war in 24 hours. However, these promises seem to be becoming increasingly distant for the American president.

On Monday, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is scheduled to meet Trump in Washington, and Rutte can be pleased that more weapons than ever are now heading to the war in Ukraine. This according to information from, among others, the neoconservative war hawk Lindsey Graham, Republican senator and close ally of the Trump administration.

In the coming days, you’ll see weapons flowing at a record level to help Ukraine defend themselves, says Graham on CBS’s program “Face the Nation”.

European countries foot the bill

A central part of the escalation is that NATO countries, including Sweden, have pledged to increase their weapons purchases, which in practice are largely procured from the American military-industrial complex.

Graham believes that the US escalation of weapons deliveries to the war in Ukraine is part of a “massive effort” to force Russian President Vladimir Putin into peace negotiations. It should be added that Russia has in many different contexts over a long time emphasized that they have been open to negotiations as well as being open about their peace conditions, which primarily revolve around guarantees of Ukraine’s neutrality.

Trump has signaled that he will make a “major statement” about Russia during the day.

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