1417: Get Boris!

Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2019 servers have an integrated malware-scanning engine called FIP-FS. This engine uses a signature file which stores dates in a 32-bit integer format. The largest possible number that can be stored in 32 bits is 2147483647.

Things were fine for the dates in the year 2021 because it was stamped as 211231XXXX (for 31st December). In case you are still wondering, it is in YYMMDDhhmm format.

However, with the turn of the new year, January 1st, 2022, it is converted to 2201010001. When trying to be formatted in 32 bits which, as you can see, is larger than the maximum number allowed. This would cause date/time validations on the server software to fail, thus ending up with emails not being sent and piling up on servers.

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Wife got the vid, and besides doxycycline, the dr gave us a bottle of na and pure rock scraped zinc. Even enough for me. I looked it up and it figured why the hell not. I'll let you know how it worked! Tyfyc.

ITM,

I've written you before about your takes on the current employment situation, but as a producer it is my duty to present you with an alternate view, not to change your minds, but to help make the show the best it can be.

First, I offer this article about the surge in small businesses. https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/new-data-finally-shows-why-people-are-quitting-their-jobs-its-definitely-not-because-theyre-lazy.html

To summarize: many of the people are leaving jobs they don't like to start their own business. 500,000 more than 2 years ago. There are also nearly 5 million more Etsy sellers.

Second, I don't think it's "noodly" to work at a job doing something you like. My dad is a boomer, as in a member of that generation. His advice to me when I was younger was to find a job doing something I liked and was good at. Getting paid to do something you like is nice, but getting paid well is even better.

I'm surprised that Adam didn't push back on John about this, since it appears that he has spent his career doing that. If he hadn't we wouldn't have podcasting or these shows like No Agenda and Moe Factz. Moe is an example of this phenomenon, since it sounds like he is being forced out of his day job and may need to focus on the show as his income. Moe is no noodle boy.

I, too, have seriously considered leaving my current employer to start my own business. I'm pretty good at producing videos that get results for the people I've worked for, but I haven't been compensated relative to the value I bring. The only way to get that is to go out on my own.

Just some things to think about during this shakeup in the workforce. The wage imbalance is real, and people are taking it on themselves to fix it. The lockdowns and work from home that we were subjected to gave people a glimpse of how work-life could be, and that they could be just as productive or more. Then they got stimulus checks that, if they still had jobs, might have given them the startup capital they needed.

Thank you for your courage.

Every year the U.S. Army seeks out 125,000 to 140,000 new recruits to maintain the desired end strength and capability of the force. The Army active duty recruiting mission is habitually a little more than half that number (62k – 80k depending upon the year).

The market of qualified prospective recruits is greater than the services’ needs, but when you eliminate those who are not propensed for military service, it is less than the total number needed (the total DoD 2020 recruiting goals were 240,149).

This year, because many remained in uniform during COVID and are now leaving the Service, the demands are higher resulting in higher sign-ons.

Trivia for you on false memes that have survived time because something was unpopular in the liberal press (Trump reinforced a false meme to justify his draft-dodging status)

2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers (79% having a high school education or better) and approximately 70% of the Vietnam KIAs were volunteers. 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races.

I listened to Thursday's show and while you guys were talking about the fee from the Quebec government for the unvaccinated, it made me think of the Jacobson v Massachusetts case!

In that case, Jacobson was either to get vaccinated or pay a fee, and he wanted an exemption from the vaccination based on religious/medical exemptions, and therefore would not have to pay the fee.

The court in that case said that the state government, and local health officials, were able to enact a vaccination or fee regimen.

Why?

Because vaccine was necessary, the fee wasn't unreasonable, and the scheme/process wasn't arbitrary.

So, the Supreme Court of our United States laid out a very sime test for determining whether such a vaccination-or-fee scheme was reasonable. The vaccination has to be necessary for the public health, the alternative route for dissenters has to be reasonable, and the overall scheme cannot be arbitrary. I think that's a great test when you're balancing someone's individual liberties with the safety in public health of the community.

Obviously, if you apply that test to the modern ways in which governments are oppressing people, I think we would find that they are being unreasonable, and in some cases --maybe many cases-- arbitrary in the ways they are trying to squeeze us. Not only that, but we have PLENTY of reasons to think that the vaccinations are not not necessary. If the court were to apply that test today, we wouldn't see a lot of the mess/confrontations we've been seeing.

Also, that $5 fee from Jacobson would be the equivalent of $100 today. So the Court would look at a $5,000 fee in Quebec and say "that is unreasonable." Telling the unvaxxed that they can't go to the liquor store, "that is arbitrary."

But alas, we do not live in a world in which the court recognizes its own precedent in a way that makes sense. We live in a world where the court after Jacobson read the case to mean the government could mass sterilize imbeciles and send people to go and die in wars despite being pacifists, and lock up Japanese citizens in internment camps. We live in a world that doesn't balance individual liberty with necessary safety needs in a way that respects both.

But like you, I am an optimist and I believe that eventually we will come back around to a sane and rational balance that respects people, protects people, and lets people just live their God damn lives.

Best,

Billy Talty

Some coverage has been given to the politicalisation of the Djokovic visa decision. What people might not pick up is the political rivalry between the federal Liberal Party government and the Victoria state Labor Party government on this issue.

Under visa rules, "national interest" exemptions to the Australian federal government's "no vax / no enter" policy. "National interest" exemptions can be granted by state government or federal government.

Victoria state has run tough lockdown conditions over the last year - but they granted a national interest exemption to Djokovic. From their point of view the Australian Open is a $450 million money spinner for their state - with an economy heavily damaged by extensive lockdowns. In general the more conservative leaning Liberal Party at state or federal level is more inclined to open up the economy and less inclined to lockdown. Labor will attempt to play the "we protected you" card and dismiss the Liberals as cavalier on covid controls.

By over-ruling the state's green light to Djokovic, the federal Morrison government can paint itself as "tougher on Covid" than the Victoria state government which has actually been overly tough on Covid. In fact Morrison will be able claim he is both tougher on Covid and less tough on Covid - which is a stronger campaign position.

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Most honest thing I've heard in this debate:

”Will leave with this: “It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.”"

This describes it perfectly.

Just when you thought cockwomble, pisstrumpet and shitgibbon had died, they're launching a comeback

There's a growing crisis in swearing in this country. After centuries during which everyone was happy to call each other bastards, pricks and wankers, there's a renewed enthusiasm for faux-archaic compound insults. 'Cockwomble' is the breakout star, but jump into any Brexit-adjacent Twitter thread and you'll see them. 'Wankpuffin'. 'Nobsocket'. 'Shitflute'. 'Spunktrumpet'.

And then there's...

Climatard -

Definition of, in this case, the Great Canadian "Climatard":

https://twitter.com/ClimatePoet/status/1482072113666138113

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 16:19

News of Prince Andrew being stripped of his titles allegedly came to him straight from the Queen herself, according to a new report.

On Thursday, it was announced that as he continues to face scrutiny over his alleged sexual assault of Virginia Roberts Giuffre when she was 17, his military affiliations and royal patronages are being returned to Queen Elizabeth II.

In addition, a royal source told Fox News Digital that Andrew will no longer use his HRH title '-- "His Royal Highness" '-- in any official capacity, and now a new report suggests it was his own mother who brought down the hammer.

The New York Post reports that Andrew visited Windsor Palace on Thursday morning, where Queen Elizabeth told him that all his remaining military titles and royal patronages were to be revoked.

PRINCE ANDREW STRIPPED OF MILITARY, ROYAL TITLES AMID SEXUAL ASSAULT CASE

Prince Andrew was reportedly told that he would be stripped of his titles by the Queen herself. (Getty Images)

PRINCE ANDREW SHOULD DROP HIS HRH TITLE AMID SEX ABUSE LAWSUIT, SOURCE SAYS: 'HE'S EMBROILED IN THIS MESS'

Additionally, he was reportedly told by the Queen that he'd have to face his upcoming lawsuit as a private citizen. Royal sources told the outlet that it's believed Prince Charles and Prince William '-- both future monarchs '-- discussed the issue with the Palace.

Andrew will no longer use his HRH title in any official capacity, a royal source told Fox News Digital. (Steve Parsons/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Andrew is far from the first royal to stop using an HRH title, even in recent years, as Prince Harry, his wife Meghan Markle and his mother Princess Diana all stopped using theirs, as did Andrew's ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

"The difference between the statement that the Queen made about Harry and Meghan and Andrew could not be more telling," a royal source told the Post.

PRINCE ANDREW'S EFFORTS TO DISMISS SEX ASSAULT LAWSUIT BY LONGTIME JEFFREY EPSTEIN ACCUSER REJECTED

When Harry and Markle left their posts, Elizabeth's statement said she was "saddened" by their leaving, but that they "remain much loved members of the family."

Virginia Giuffre has long alleged that Prince Andrew sexually assaulted her when she was just 17. (Getty Images)

Her statement regarding Andrew released on Thursday, on the other hand, was more in line with her traditionally stoic attitude.

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"With The Queen's approval and agreement, The Duke of York's military affiliations and Royal patronages have been returned to The Queen," the statement said. "The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties."

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"There was nothing from the Queen about her sadness or dismay, nothing emotional at all," the royal source pointed out. "It was so cutting."

On Wednesday, a judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the British prince by the American woman who said he sexually abused her when she was 17. Andrew has long denied Giuffre's allegations.

Fox News' Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 16:19

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) '' A section of the Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles has been littered with thousands of shredded boxes, packages stolen from cargo containers that stop in the area to unload.

(C) Provided by CBS Los Angeles Jan. 13, 2022 (CBSLA)

Thieves have been raiding the cargo containers, taking packages that belong to people from all over the country from retailers like Amazon, REI and others.

The refuse left behind, like home COVID test kits, are items that the robbers did not want or did not think were valuable enough to take.

Sources told CBSLA that the locks Union Pacific uses are easy to cut, and officials with the Los Angeles Police Department said they don't respond to reports of a train robbery unless Union Pacific asks them for help, which they said is rare.

While CBSLA was on the scene with cameras, one person was seen running off with a container used to hold smaller packages, and a Union Pacific officer was spotted chasing after two other people who appeared to be rifling through packages.

CBSLA also obtained video of University of Southern California Campus Police arresting a suspected thief last month. According to officers, the suspect's bag was filled with stolen goods taken from the train tracks.

A source with knowledge of the issue told CBSLA that Union Pacific cleaned up this area of tracks three months ago, and again only about 30 days ago, though the area is already littered with new discarded boxes. (C) Provided by CBS Los Angeles

Another video shows crews with Union Pacific cleaning up the area on December 11. Around that same time, someone snapped a photo of boxes spilling out of the back of a train car.

CBSLA found a package and entered the tracking number information, which came back as ''in transit,'' saying it would arrive today. When CBSLA called the person listed in the transaction and asked if they recently sent a package back to Amazon, they said:

''Yeah, I mean, I sent several stuff back.''

Yet another Amazon package had the name and number of a woman in Washington. CBSLA called her and asked if she sent something back to Amazon recently and whether she knew if the package had made it back to its destination.

''Yeah, I don't even know what would be in that box. I buy so much from Amazon and send so much stuff back that I wouldn't even know what it was,'' she responded.

In a statement to CBSLA, Union Pacific said:

''Union Pacific is very concerned about the increased cargo thefts in California, and we have taken several steps to address this criminal activity. These rail crimes pose a serious safety threat to the public, our employees and local law enforcement officers.

''We have increased the number of Union Pacific special agents on patrol, and we have utilized and explored additional technologies to help us combat this criminal activity. We also will continue to work with our local law enforcement partners and elected leaders.''

However, law enforcement who work these tracks told CBSLA that they don't see thieves shipping off any time soon.

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 16:18

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were allegedly aware of and approved a deal to collaborate on the potential manipulation of advertising sales, according to newly revealed documents.

The documents, which came to light on Friday, were filed as part of a lawsuit against Google brought by the attorneys general of multiple US states. The lawsuit was first filed in December 2020 and claimed Google misled publishers and advertisers about the price and process of advertising auctions. At that time, many documents and parts of the lawsuit were redacted, but court rulings have since made them public.

The lawsuit alleges that Google maintained control over the advertising sales market '' a market that it dominates '' by inflating the price of advertisements for brands and suppressing competition from other advertising exchanges.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the complaint alleges that ''Google pocketed the difference between what it told publishers and advertisers that an ad cost and used the pool of money to manipulate future auctions to expand its digital monopoly''. The documents further cite internal messages in which Google employees said it was like they were using ''insider information'' to grow the business.

The Journal reported the lawsuit also claims executives at both Facebook, which recently rebranded as Meta, and Google signed off on a deal to allegedly assure that Facebook would bid on, and win, a certain percentage of ads.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was ''explicit that 'this is a big deal strategically''' in a 2018 email thread about the deal that included Facebook's CEO.

When the two sides hammered out the terms of the agreement, ''the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO'' Zuckerberg, the lawsuit states.

If Pichai is found to have personally approved the deal, he may be found to be complicit in the expansion of Google's monopoly over the advertising market through manipulation. A Google spokesperson told the AP that while the deal was not a secret, it was inaccurate to say that Pichai approved it.

''We sign hundreds of agreements every year that don't require CEO approval, and this was no different,'' the spokesperson said.

In a statement, Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said the lawsuit is ''full of inaccuracies and lacks legal merit''.

Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said Friday that the company's ad bidding agreement with Google and similar agreements it has with other bidding platforms ''have helped to increase competition for ad placements''.

''These business relationships enable Meta to deliver more value to advertisers while fairly compensating publishers, resulting in better outcomes for all,'' Sgro said.

The new details come as the tech companies face mounting scrutiny over allegedly anti-competitive practices. A US judge ruled earlier this week that the government can proceed with a lawsuit that seeks to break up Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, in an effort to loosen its grip on the market. And on Friday, a group of nearly four dozens states asked to reinstate a separate antitrust lawsuit against the company.

Google, meanwhile, is facing its own monopoly-related charges brought by the US government. Google has denied the charges.

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 16:13

Armored vehicles were pictured rolling through the streets of a Swedish town as the military cited 'tensions' between Russia and Ukraine

Sweden has moved to ramp up security on the largest Baltic Sea island of Gotland with a view to ''adapting'' its security strategy to the ''tense situation'' on the Russian-Ukrainian border, located some 1,700km southeast.

Residents of the sleepy town of Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland awoke to the sound of heavy military hardware roaring through the streets on Saturday. The Swedish Army's Stridsfordon 90 infantry fighting vehicles had arrived overnight to secure the tranquil coastal town and its port.

A rapid response tactical unit of the Swedish Armed Forces has been deployed to the island, the military said in a statement on Saturday. A part of the unit was flown in on Friday evening by the US C-17 heavy transport aircraft as part of Sweden's ''international collaboration'' program while the rest arrived by ferry from mainland Sweden.

The Swedish military said the effort ''should be seen'' as part of Sweden adapting its strategy ''to the tense situation between Russia and Ukraine,'' which has been grabbing media headlines for several months. The US and its NATO allies have claimed that Russian troops are set to invade neighboring Ukraine as early as January or February. Moscow has dismissed the statements as ''fake news.''

The deployment ''does not have to mean an increased threat'' level, the Swedish Armed Forces' chief of operations, Michael Claesson, told the media. Speaking to AP, he also cited allegedly increased Russian activity in the Baltic Sea which ''deviates from the normal picture.''

While Claesson's comments seemingly downplayed an immediate ''Russian threat,'' articles published in the Swedish media on Saturday talked about the military strengthening its position as it prepares to defend ''Sweden's most vulnerable place.''

German tabloid Bild went even further, specifically linking the surprise Swedish deployment to Russia's recent decision to move three of its heavy landing ships from the Barents Sea in the Arctic Ocean to the Baltic Sea. Citing an anonymous Stockholm official, the paper said that Swedish Army has been on alert in case Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to use the ships to capture Gotland.

''Should Putin plan anything against the Baltic countries, he would first have to take Gotland. We see the Russian troop movements and we have to take this scenario seriously,'' the official claimed. According to this source, Moscow might be tempted to deploy its S-400 air defense systems to the island to cut off the Baltic States from the NATO air support. The paper has provided no evidence that a plan to invade and occupy part of Sweden has ever been considered by Russia.

Moscow has yet to respond to the latest allegations. It has repeatedly denied having any plans to invade Ukraine, where a civil war broke out in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014 in the wake of a Western-backed coup in Kiev. Two unrecognized breakaway republics bordering Russia emerged during the events, and are still in control of swaths of the historic coal mining region of Donbass. The current fragile peace in the region relies on the Minsk Agreements, with which Moscow says the Kiev government is not abiding. For the past few weeks Ukraine and the US have insisted that Russia has been amassing troops close to the Ukrainian border, claiming that not just Donbass, but also the capital city of Kiev, could see Russian tanks rolling in. No proof of the Russian government having an invasion plan has ever been published.

Both Moscow and Washington have meanwhile accused each other of preparing a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine, which would then provoke a full-blown conflict.

The situation around Ukraine has led to a week of high-level talks between Russian, American, NATO and the OSCE officials. Moscow came up with a set of proposals for improving collective security in Europe, which included guarantees that NATO would not expand further east. These specific demands have been rejected by the US and its allies.

On Saturday, former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an interview with Finnish outlet Yle that ''a Russian attack would provoke a discussion in Finland and Sweden regarding future NATO membership,'' claiming that in the event the two nations applied for membership, the bloc would ''decide on it overnight.''

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:59

RTL stopt voorlopig met het uitzenden van het talentenprogramma The Voice of Holland vanwege beschuldigingen van seksueel grensoverschrijdend gedrag en machtsmisbruik. Dat staat in een verklaring van de televisiezender, in reactie op een brief van de redactie van BNNVARA-programma BOOS waarin de aantijgingen staan.

De beschuldigingen zijn aan het adres van onder anderen de bandleider, Jeroen Rietbergen. Hij heeft het wangedrag toegegeven en stapt per direct op, laat hij in een uitgebreide verklaring via zijn advocaat weten. Daarin biedt hij ook uitgebreid zijn excuses aan. Rietbergen is de partner van presentatrice Linda de Mol, zus van John de Mol, de bedenker van The Voice. Ook andere personen binnen het programma worden beschuldigd.

Er is aangifte gedaan tegen Ali B, een van de coaches van het programma. Dat bevestigt zijn advocaat. Het management van Ali B, Spec, schrijft in een verklaring op Instagram dat er "nog veel onduidelijk" is. "Maar (C)(C)n ding is wel duidelijk: Ali heeft nooit misbruik gemaakt van zijn positie en heeft zich nooit seksueel grensoverschrijdend gedragen."

RTL Nederland noemt de aantijgingen in een persbericht "zeer ernstig en schokkend". Wat er precies is gebeurd bij de talentenjacht is onduidelijk. RTL beantwoordt op dit moment geen vragen over de aantijgingen.

Onafhankelijk onderzoekZeker is wel dat de zender de aantijgingen zo serieus neemt, dat die heeft besloten de uitzendingen van het nieuwe seizoen op te schorten. Gisteravond werd de tweede aflevering van het seizoen nog uitgezonden. Met producent ITV is afgesproken een onafhankelijk onderzoek naar de aantijgingen op te zetten.

In augustus deed Tim Hofman via Instagram een oproep aan mensen die aan talentenjachten hebben meegedaan en "daar dingen meegemaakt, gezien of gehoord hebben die niet door de beugel kunnen". De BOOS-redactie heeft toen al verhalen binnengekregen over ongepast gedrag.

Na die oproep volgden "tal van reacties van mensen die zeggen slachtoffer of getuige te zijn van machtsmisbruik en seksueel overschrijdend gedrag bij The Voice", zegt BNNVARA. De BOOS-aflevering die over de aantijgingen gaat, komt aankomende donderdag online op het YouTubekanaal van het programma.

Dit is de oproep die Hofman in augustus vorig jaar deed:

Instagram / @debroervanroos De talentenjacht The Voice Of Holland bestaat sinds 2010, en is bedacht door mediamagnaat John de Mol. Bij het talentenprogramma zingen mensen voor een jury die met de rug naar ze toe zit. Als de juryleden enthousiast zijn, kunnen ze zich omdraaien en besluiten het talent in het verdere verloop van het programma te coachen.

Het succesvolle concept is in de loop der jaren overgenomen in meer dan honderd landen, waaronder in de VS en Groot-Brittanni.

De coaches van het nieuwe en dus opgeschorte seizoen zijn onder meer Ali B, Anouk, Waylon, Glennis Grace, en Maan en Typhoon. In eerdere seizoenen, tot en met 2015, was Marco Borsato een van de coaches.

Het Openbaar Ministerie onderzoekt momenteel een aangifte tegen de zanger voor het onzedelijk betasten van de dochter van een voormalig medewerker van Borsato. De aangifte die deze week is gedaan, staat los van de zaak-Borsato, zegt het OM vandaag.

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:58

An undersea volcano has erupted in spectacular fashion near the Pacific nation of Tonga, sending large tsunami waves crashing across the shore and people rushing to higher ground

By NICK PERRY Associated Press

January 15, 2022, 5:57 PM

' 7 min read

In this satellite image taken by Himawari-8, a Japanese weather satellite, and released by the agency, shows an undersea volcano eruption at the Pacific nation of Tonga Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022. An undersea volcano erupted in spectacular fashion near the Pacific nation of Tonga on Saturday, sending large waves crashing across the shore and people rushing to higher ground. (Japan Meteorology Agency via AP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- An undersea volcano erupted in spectacular fashion Saturday near the Pacific nation of Tonga, sending large tsunami waves crashing across the shore and people rushing to higher ground. A tsunami advisory was in effect for Hawaii, Alaska and the U.S. Pacific coast.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or on the extent of the damage because all internet connectivity with Tonga was lost at about 6:40 p.m. local time, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for the network intelligence firm Kentik.

Tonga gets its internet via an undersea cable from Suva, Fiji, which presumably was damaged. The company that manages that connection, Southern Cross Cable Network, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Tonga's Islands Business news site reported that a convoy of police and military troops evacuated King Tupou VI from his palace near the shore. He was among the many residents who headed for higher ground.

In Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center reported waves that measured half a meter (1.6 feet) in Nawiliwili, Kauai and 80 centimeters (2.7 feet) in Hanalei. The National Weather Service said there were reports of boats getting pushed up in docks, but the hazard was diminishing.

''We are relieved that there is no reported damage and only minor flooding throughout the islands,'' the tsunami center said, describing the situation in Hawaii.

On Tonga, home to about 105,000 people, video posted to social media showed large waves washing ashore in coastal areas, swirling around homes, a church and other buildings. Satellite images showed a huge eruption, with a plume of ash, steam and gas rising like a mushroom above the blue Pacific waters.

New Zealand's military said it was monitoring the situation and remained on standby, ready to assist if asked.

The Tonga Meteorological Services said a tsunami warning was declared for all of the archipelago, and data from the Pacific tsunami center said waves of 80 centimeters (2.7 feet) were detected.

A Twitter user identified as Dr. Faka'iloatonga Taumoefolau posted video showing waves crashing ashore.

''Can literally hear the volcano eruption, sounds pretty violent,'' he wrote, adding in a later post: ''Raining ash and tiny pebbles, darkness blanketing the sky.''

The explosion of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano was the latest in a series of dramatic eruptions.

Earth imaging company Planet Labs PBC had been watching the island in recent days after a new volcanic vent there began erupting in late December.

Satellite images captured by Planet Labs show how drastically the volcano had shaped the area, creating a growing island off Tonga.

''The surface area of the island appears to have expanded by nearly 45% due to ashfall,'' Planet said days before the latest activity.

Following Saturday's eruption, residents in Hawaii, Alaska and along the U.S. Pacific coast were advised to move away from the coastline to higher ground and to pay attention to specific instructions from their local emergency management officials, said Dave Snider, tsunami warning coordinator for the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska.

''We don't issue an advisory for this length of coastline as we've done - I'm not sure when the last time was - but it really isn't an everyday experience,'' Snider said.

He said the waves slamming ashore in Hawaii were just under the criteria for a more serious tsunami warning.

''The important thing here is the first wave may not be the largest. We could see this play out for several hours,'' he added. ''It looks like everything will stay below the warning level, but it's difficult to predict because this is a volcanic eruption, and we're set up to measure earthquake or seismic-driven sea waves.''

The first waves to hit the continental United States measured about 30 centimeters (1 foot) in Nikolski and Adak, Alaska. A wave of about 20 centimeters (.7 feet) was observed in Monterey, California, the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center said in a tweet.

Beaches and piers were closed across Southern California as a precaution. The National Weather Service tweeted there were ''no significant concerns about inundation.'' Strong rip currents were possible, however, and officials warned people to stay out of the water.

On California's central coast, the National Weather Service reported tsunami waves up to 2.5 feet (.76 meters) and flooding in beach parking lots at Port San Luis. About 200 miles (320 km) down the coast, the waves were much smaller at Southern California's Seal Beach, according to Michael Pless, the owner of M&M Surf School.

''The waves are looking pretty flat,'' Pless said. ''We're hoping they reopen the beach in a couple hours.''

Crowds gathered at the Santa Cruz harbor in California early Saturday to watch water slowly rise and fall, straining boat ties on docks. In 2011, after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, a series of surges cost $20 million of damage in the harbor.

Residents of American Samoa were alerted of the tsunami warning by local broadcasters as well as church bells that rang territory-wide. An outdoor siren warning system was out of service. Those living along the shoreline quickly moved to higher ground.

As night fell, there were no reports of any damage and the Hawaii-based tsunami center canceled the alert.

Authorities in the nearby island nations of Fiji and Samoa also issued warnings, telling people to avoid the shoreline due to strong currents and dangerous waves. The Japan Meteorological Agency said there may be a slight swelling of the water along the coast, but it was not expected to cause any damage.

More than 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) away from Tonga in New Zealand, officials warned of possible storm surges from the eruption.

New Zealand's private forecaster, Weather, Watch tweeted that people as far away as Southland, the country's southernmost region, reported hearing sonic booms from the eruption. Others reported that many boats were damaged by a tsunami that hit a marina in Whangarei, in the Northland region.

Earlier, the Matangi Tonga news site reported that scientists observed massive explosions, thunder and lightning near the volcano after it started erupting early Friday. Satellite images showed a 5-kilometer (3- mile) -wide plume rising into the air to about 20 kilometers (12 miles).

The Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano is located about 64 kilometers (40 miles) north of the capital, Nuku'alofa. In late 2014 and early 2015, a series of eruptions in the area created a small new island and disrupted international air travel to the Pacific archipelago for several days.

There is not a significant difference between volcanoes underwater and on land, and underwater volcanoes become bigger as they erupt, at some point usually breaching the surface, said Hans Schwaiger, a research geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

With underwater volcanoes, however, the water can add to the explosivity of the eruption as it hits the lava, Schwaiger added.

Before an explosion, there is generally an increase in small local earthquakes at the volcano, but depending on how far it is from land, that may not be felt by residents along the shoreline, Schwaiger said.

In 2019, Tonga lost internet access for nearly two weeks when the same fiber-optic cable was severed . The director of the local cable company said at the time that a large ship may have cut the cable by dragging an anchor. Until limited satellite access was restored people couldn't even make international calls.

'--'--'--

Associated Press writers Jennifer McDermott in Providence, Rhode Island, Frank Bajak in Boston, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Fili Sagapolutele in Pago Pago, American Samoa, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:57

A former member of the Tongan Parliament is behind a proposal to make Bitcoin (BTC) legal tender in the tiny Pacific nation of Tonga, following in the footsteps of El Salvador. It's due for a vote in Parliament in May and the early signs are encouraging.

MataÊ>>iÊ>>ulua Ê>>i Fonuamotu, Lord Fusitu'a told Cointelegraph that plans are in motion to use state-run volcano mining facilities to create wealth in Tonga.

Tonga has 21 volcanoes. ''That means one volcano for every 5,000 people.'' He owns one volcano himself through his family's hereditary land rights.

The proposed Bitcoin mining operations would use the geothermal energy of the volcanoes to generate power.

''It takes two megawatts of electricity to service 5,000 people. So 40,000 megawatts will service the entire national grid. Each volcano produces 95,000 megawatts at all times leaving much to spare,'' says Lord Fusitu'a.

''We will give every family hash huts. But, this is only 20,000 units, as there are only 20,000 families.''

He suggests each volcano can generate $2,000 of Bitcoin each day, to be ''gifted'' to each family by the Tongan government.

For an Island of 120,000 people, economies of scale matter and the average person stands to benefit greatly.

Family Bitcoin hash huts:. Source: Lord Fusitu'aTonga needs $26 million for the cabling to build the operation, but the World Bank said Tonga didn't have the collateral for that funding.

Nevertheless, Tonga managed to raise the money through a Least Developed Countries grant. Given Lord Fusitu'a's influence in local politics '-- and the fact he claims to own a volcano himself '-- he might just pull it off.

Lord Fusitu'a also claimed to have negotiated a gratis offer of the mining tech, but he has not revealed the terms of the deal. Chinese companies such as Bitmain have much market share in this space. It is also possible that refugee mining operations from China's recent ban could be headed to Tonga. For now, that remains a mystery.

''For a nation-state, the math doesn't change. The optimal state is for a state to have its own mining.''

Related: Tonga to copy El Salvador's bill making Bitcoin legal tender, says former MP

Who is Lord Fusitu'a?Once a barrister before he was a politician, Lord Fusitu'a is a member of the Tongan nobility.

Tonga is the only country in the South Pacific with a remaining indigenous monarchy. While it is a member of the Commonwealth, this was done so by choice in 1970. Tonga has never been colonized, despite pressures from imperial nations throughout history.

Lord Fusitu'a decided to step down as MP in November 2021 after recovering from operations for serious medical conditions and living in New Zealand for three years, especially with Tonga closing its borders due to COVID-19. However, his cousin has taken his seat in the Tonga Parliament, so according to Lord Fusitu'a, his domestic legislative agenda remains intact.

Two clinical deaths due to injury have informed his ambitious agenda atthe Global Organization of Parliamentarians against Corruption, which includes anti-corruption legislation and gender empowerment and climate change policies.

When he spoke to Cointelegraph, and as is common since a series of surgeries, he is shirtless and covered in tattoos (a Tongan word corrupted by Captain Cook) that depict a millennium of his clan's tattoo history.

Lord Fusitu'a has been a ''Bitcoin only guy'' since 2013, but ''don't let the exterior fool you:'' He began coding when he was eight years old.

It was his time stuck in hospital when he couldn't speak or swallow and could only read when he reaffirmed his passions. Re-reading every printed word about Bitcoin.

Lord Fusitu'a is very visible in Bitcoin circles online where he waxes lyrical about why his country, which relies so heavily on remittance payments, should pursue Bitcoin adoption.

''It's the soundest money ever devised. It's the combination of digital scarcity and decentralized distributed ledger. The most democratic egalitarian money on the planet. It's sound money, the most pristine asset ever devised. It has a 200% appreciation year-on-year. As a store of value, it's the apex creditor asset.''

''But, if you're a remittance-dependent country like El Salvador or Tonga, it's life changing immediately. For hyperinflation ravaged countries like Nigeria or Venezuela, where you need a wheelbarrow of currency to buy a loaf of bread ['...] it could be a survival mechanism for four billion poor people,'' he said.

The planFusitu'a explained his four-part plan for changing the way Tonga operates its economy to Cointelegraph.

The plan consists of financial education for Tongans about Bitcoin remittance payments, making Bitcoin legal tender, setting up Bitcoin mining operations in Tonga and creating Tongan Bitcoin national treasuries.

A key part of the plan revolves around fiscal education for Tongans whose economy is most heavily dependent on remittances.

Lord Fusitu'a says he is tired of families in the developing world losing so much of the badly needed income from middlemen when sending remittances home.

About 40% of the Tongan national economy is built upon remittances sent back to the country from its diaspora of almost 300,000 overseas workers, according to Lord Fusitu'a. They send money back to the island population of about 120,000. As more than double the population lives in the Tongan diaspora, remittances are crucial to the national economy.

He claimed that Tonga's ''GDP in 2020 was $510 million, 40% of that is just over $200 million. So, 30% of that, or $60 million, is fees alone to Western Union.''

Lord Fusitu'a argues that feeless Bitcoin transactions would provide a 30% uptick for everyone on remittances, as the Western Union charges villagers 30% commissions, though a calculator on Western Union's site suggests a fee of nearly three Australian dollars for transferring a 100 Australian dollar transaction.

However, Lord Fusitu'a says that this does not account for the fact that:

''The $2.90 on $100 shown on the website does not show that there's a minimum fee of around 10''25% on ALL remittances, depending on where you're sending from that's not shown on the website. When your average remittance from El Salvador or Tonga is $50''$100, that's a lot of your remittance. It also doesn't show that you'll be charged the forex slippage for the purchase of Australian dollars, its conversion into Tongan pa'anga and purchase of the TOP.''

Tonga has already begun the financial literacy and ''how money works'' education programs in 2021, and teams were sent out for community outreach. What does the ''how money works'' discussion look like? Simple:

''People understand the three hours of travel and the $20 return fare bus ticket. Waiting in line at a Western Union to pay the high remittance fees. The $70 dollars that is at the counter instead of the $100 they thought they would get. And then there's the beggar's tax, as beggars sit outside. Three hours each way back to the village, makes a nine-hour day, you come home tired, hungry and having lost remittance fees and bus fares just to get $40-50 of your original $100 wire transfer.''

Related: Crypto remittances see adoption, but volatility may be a deal breaker

Importantly, there's a high rate of mobile-first internet adoption in Tonga.

''A cell phone with an internet connection can change lives immediately,'' Lord Fusitu'a says. For the unbanked, ''a cellphone and warm wallet is their first participation in any financial system ever.''

Non-Know Your Customer wallets like Moonwallet can help those that don't have IDs. ''It's not about Bitcoin Bros, this is a viable mechanism for the billions of unbanked poor people globally. $200 billion of $700 billion lost in fees in annual remittances globally hurts the average family.''

Also, in 2005, Tongan instituted a consumption tax (GST) of 15%, rather than an income tax, which further penalizes the poor. If Bitcoin is adopted then more money in the pockets of average Tongans '-- and less for Western Union '-- will also benefit government coffers through the consumption tax.

Lord Fusitu'a also provides Bitcoin fundamentals talks weekly in the Tongan language.

The legal tender billLord Fusitu'a looked to El Salvador's bill for Bitcoin as legal tender before its release and seeks to pass ''pretty much a carbon copy.''

Tonga's bill has been ready to go since July 2021 and would make Bitcoin legal tender alongside Tonga's currency, the paÊ>>anga.

Like article 7 of El Salvador's controversial Bitcoin Law, the bill would make Bitcoin mandatory to accept if proffered.

The bill will be tabled at the next session of parliament in May 2022. To pass, it will require the approval of a parliamentary majority of at least 14 of the 26 members.

Nine members of parliament are hereditary lords who ''vote in a block'' and supposedly ''always'' follow Fusitu'a's lead as the only lawyer and barrister in parliament. Three other elected members have exposure to Bitcoin. Needing only two more of fourteen votes would seem to make a successful majority vote plausible.

Lord Fusitu'a expects there to be a natural uptick in remittances from the Tongan diaspora when and if the bill is passed into law. Bitcoin remittances back to Tonga have already seen an increase in 2021, he mentions.

It is pegged to five currencies keeping it artificially low to protect its exports of mainly produce, but this makes imports expensive.

Related: El Salvador: How it started vs. how it went with the Bitcoin Law in 2021

Bitcoin National TreasuriesThe final part of Lord Fusitu'a's four-point Bitcoin plan is building Bitcoin's national treasuries as a hedge against inflation. The lord's thoughts on Bitcoin's utility have informed this decision that is controversial in traditional economic policy.

''Emerging markets traditionally hold theirs in 'melting at 5% per annum' USD, 'devaluing at 2-6% per annum' gold and 'negative yielding since 2008' U.S. bonds. We do this also. Had we moved our $700 million national treasuries into BTC in March 2020 they would have been worth $22.5 billion by February 2021.''

''With a 2020 GDP of $510 million, $22.5 billion is equivalent to 45 years of Tongan economic productivity earned in 11 months,'' he says, adding, ''When Nayib Bukele teases on Twitter that he's 'buying the dip,' what he means is he's moving his national treasuries from those three dead man's assets into BTC with each purchase.''

Bukele has been criticized for his decisions, but part of this criticism stems from the nature of his governance. Lord Fusitu'a's track record of participation in multinational groups suggests he is more amenable to working with international organizations to secure his country's economic future.

What's ahead?But, if it's so obvious, why don't other countries follow his logic? ''They see the logic but it takes the money from legacy finance,'' Lord Fusitu'a says.

Another Pacific Island, Palau, is rolling out a stable coin on Ripple's XRP. ''Are they crazy? Their approach is more palatable because partnerships with XRP with Ripple include legacy finance rails.''

The international monetary policy risks are still there for Tonga. In October 2021, the Internal Monetary Fund released a report acknowledging that crypto ecosystems could replace official currencies in ''unbanked'' emerging economies unless regulators ensure financial stability. But, perhaps that showed that the IMF was paying attention to Tonga.

On both the legal tender and the Bitcoin mining plans, Lord Fusitu'a is optimistic. The ''Bitcoin community likes seeing the underdog win.''

Like many in crypto land, Lord Fusitu'a is either a genius or a great showman. Or both.

Ray Schuetz received a Masters Degree in computer science from The University of Texas (Austin). Ray has been working as a full-time blockchain consultant for the past 3 years. In his spare time, Ray enjoys writing for EthereumCryptocurrency.com and other crypto news publications.

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Archived Version

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:50

19,916 'eye disorders' including blindness following COVID vaccine reported in EuropeMay 4, 2021

More than 10,000 reports of eye disorders after COVID shots in the U.K. alone

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here. May 1, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) '' Hundreds of cases of blindness are among the 19,916 reports of ''eye disorders'' to the World Health Organization's European drug monitoring agency following injection of experimental COVID-19 vaccines

The nearly 20,000 eye disorders reported to VigiBase, a database for the WHO maintained by the Uppsala Monitoring Centre(UMC) in Uppsalla, Sweden, include:

Eye pain (4616)Blurred vision (3839)Photophobia or light intolerance (1808)Visual impairment (1625)Eye swelling (1162)Ocular hyperaemia or red eyes (788)Eye irritation (768)Itchy eyes or eye pruritus (731)Watery eyes or increased lacrimation (653)Double vision or diplopia (559)Eye strain or asthenopia (459)Dry eye (400)Swelling around the eye or periorbital swelling (366)Swelling of eyelid (360)Flashes of light in the field of vision or photopsia (358)Blindness (303)Eyelid oedema (298)Eye or ocular discomfort (273)Conjunctival haemorrhage or breakage of a small eye vessel (236)Blepharospasm or abnormal contraction of an eye muscle(223)Vitreous floaters (192)Periorbital oedema (171)Eye haemorrhage (169)More than half of the eye disorders (10, 667) were also reported to the U.K.'s Yellow Card adverse event reporting system. These would have followed injection primarily of AstraZeneca's and Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccines but included eight reports of eye disorders among the 228 reports concerning Moderna's vaccine, of which only 100,000 first doses had been administered by April 21.

Eye disorders were not reported in the clinical trials for vaccines which have been granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) only. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's fact sheet for those administering Pfizer's experimental vaccine does not mention eye side effects. It does state, however, that ''Additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious, may become apparent with more widespread use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.''

VAERS reportsVigiBase and Yellow Card reports do not offer details of the patients' experiences of adverse side-effects. However, those in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) system include some reporting on the patient, his or her age, and the general case presentation.

One VAERS report describes a 33-year-old pilot from Mississippi who took Pfizer's vaccine and developed vision problems among numerous other symptoms.

''I noticed a headache in the very top of my head within an hour of getting the vaccine,'' he reported. ''I thought it was normal because everyone I know said they got a headache from it. Over the next few hours, the pain moved down the back of my neck and became a burning sensation at the bottom of my skull.''

''Two days after receiving the vaccine I flew my plane and immediately noticed something was wrong with me,'' the report continues. ''I was having a very hard time focusing. Approximately 2 hours into my flying I felt sudden and extreme pressure in my head and nearly blacked out. I immediately landed and stopped flying.''

The pilot experienced the same thing two days later when he tried flying again. The burning in his neck intensified and was accompanied by dizziness, nausea, disorientation, confusion, uncontrollable shaking, and tingling in his toes and fingers.

The patient was diagnosed with vertigo and prescribed a medication which provided ''no relief,'' according to the VAERS account. He underwent extensive testing including balance, eye, and hearing tests, CT and MRI scans, and he was informed that an allergic reaction to the Pfizer COVID vaccine had increased the pressure in his spinal cord and brain stem.

''That pressure causes my vision problems and ultimately ruptured my left inner ear breaking off several crystals in the process,'' the report states. ''I cannot fly with this condition. I'm currently taking Diamox to reduce the pressure in my spinal cord and brain stem.''

More than 1,200 reports to VAERS include ''eye pain'' among the listed symptoms. One report filed by a 50-year-old physician from Wisconsin for himself said he experienced ''severe sweating; fever; weakness'' and the ''worst headache of my life'' following receiving a second dose of Pfizer's Wuhan coronavirus vaccine in January. The doctor said he experienced ''searing eye pain for the last 2 months'' and ''daily headaches'' '' events described as a ''disability'' and ''permanent damage.''

'Frightening, stressful, and uncertain'Michelle Jorgenson, 31, of Arizona got her first dose of Moderna's vaccine in mid-January, and second dose mid-February and developed blurred vision along with symptoms of headaches, ''brain fog'' and fatigue. She's undergone CT and MRI scans and doctors don't know what's causing her problems,'' she said.

''It's frightening, stressful, and uncertain. I'm 31, and I have never in my life had double vision before,'' she says.

Jorgenson said illness is affecting her ability to both work and drive. ''I'm not currently driving at all, as it is just not safe.''

She has cut her at-home work schedule from 40 hours per week to about 25 hours per week, ''but that's also a struggle, because of the double vision, headache, brain fog, and fatigue.''

''I don't know what the doctors can do from here,'' she said.

Bleeding and clotting disordersNumerous vision problems are associated with hemorrhaging and blood clotting incidents:

A 25-year-old from Massachusetts began experiencing symptoms on the day of receiving her first dose of Moderna's vaccine in January and an MRI revealed ''inflammation, and brain bleed and swelling,'' according to the VAERS report filed by a healthcare professional.An 83 year-old from Indiana who had Moderna's vaccine and went blind in her left eye the same day. ''Went to emergency room at Hospital Was told I have Blood clot in my eye causing the blindness and Ophthamologist says it will probably be permanent,'' her report states.A 50-year-old woman from Oklahoma with no prior health conditions experienced a central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) 2 and ½ hours after receiving a second dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine resulted in loss of sight to her right eye, according to another VAERS report. ''I am currently prescribed baby aspirin and will have to get injections in my eye when macular edema occurs, an expected occurrence with a blood clot in the retinal vein.''''Within 12 hours of receiving the 2nd dose of the Moderna vaccine, I experienced an occipital cerebral infarction in the left occipital lobe,'' states the VAERS report of a 73-year-old Florida man. ''As a result, I have a loss of peripheral vision in the right upper quadrant.''Another VAERS report describes a 68-year-old California man's four-day hospitalization and numerous interventions after his first dose of Pfizer's vaccine: ''Permanent loss of vision in right eye three weeks after receiving first COVID 19 vaccination. Diagnosed with Branch Retina Artery Occlusion (BRAO) clotting of the retinal artery.''Previous coronavirusPennsylvania immunologist Hooman Noorchashm has warned about the potential for vaccinating the 20% to 30% of people who have already had a recent or underlying COVID infection may lead to catastrophic events. That may be the reason why a 52-year-old man from Michigan who was diagnosed with COVID-19 on December 13, 2020 who then received a series of shots on December 22 and January 10, 2021 was diagnosed one day after his second shot with opthalmic artery thrombus causing vision loss in his left eye.

Allergic eye disordersSome eye disorders happened in the context of severe allergic or ''anaphylactic'' or ''anaphylactoid'' events for which there are 915 VAERS report. More than 60 reports refer to ''anaphylaxis'' and eye symptoms in the same event, as in the case of a 55-year-old asthmatic woman with food allergies who had a reaction to Pfizer's second dose of COVID vaccine and according a VAERS report was put ''under the care of an eye doctor for her severe double vision, eye crossing, and eye drooping.''

ShinglesUveitisIn Great Britain, 35 reports of uveitis '' an inflammation of the middle layer of the eye '' following coronavirus vaccination were generated by April 21, about four months following the vaccines rollout in December.

This may seem a small number except that one 2016 study that looked for cases of ''vaccine-associated'' uveitis found 289 reports over 26 years of data from three databases '' which works out to about 11 cases per year for all vaccinations. In which case, reports for uveitis are many fold higher than what one would expect to see from vaccination.

''The nature of Yellow Card reporting means that reported events are not always proven side effects,'' according to the government website that catalogues the reports. ''Some events may have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination.''

While public health officials have frequently stated that vaccine adverse events are only ''one or two in a million'' shots, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for Britain states that for the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines, the overall reporting rate is ''around 3 to 6 Yellow Cards per 1,000 doses administered.''

As well, because both the U.S. VAERS the U.K. Yellow Card are passive collections systems, they tend to capture only a fraction of adverse events. A Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare study found that less than one percent of vaccine adverse events are reported to VAERS.

Asked about the high numbers of reported adverse eye events, a spokesperson for the MHRA, which oversees Yellow Card reports, said in an emailed statement: ''We continually review Yellow Card data, as well as other data sources, to determine if reports may indicate any previously unrecognised risks.''

The statement added that the agency applies ''statistical techniques'' which compare events to what would be expected generally in the population.

''Everything has to be looked at on a case by case basis, and there is no set trigger to determine whether something may be linked to a vaccine,'' the MHRA statement said. ''All reports are kept under review taking into account the information available and whether there are other plausible explanations.''

Among the 12,140 adverse events reported to Canada's coronavirus vaccine adverse event reporting system by April 23, there is not a single account of an eye disorder'-- which, given the extraordinarily high numbers in other countries, raises questions about Canada's reporting process.

LINKhttps://iamamalaysian.com/2021/05/04/19916-eye-disorders-including-blindness-following-covid-vaccine-reported-in-europe/

Thanks to: https://iamamalaysian.com

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:41

A U.S. lawmaker has introduced a bill in Congress to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) directly to individuals. ''It is important to note that the Fed does not, and should not, have the authority to offer retail bank accounts,'' he stressed.

Bill Introduced to Prohibit the Fed From Issuing CBDC Directly to ConsumersU.S. Congressman Tom Emmer (MN-06) announced Wednesday that he has ''introduced a bill prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) directly to individuals.''

He explained that countries like China ''develop CBDCs that fundamentally omit the benefits and protections of cash.''

In contrast, he stressed that the U.S. digital currency policy must protect financial privacy, maintain the dollar's dominance, and cultivate innovation. Otherwise, the Fed could ''mobilize itself into a retail bank, collect personally identifiable information on users, and track their transactions indefinitely,'' the lawmaker cautioned.

Emmer further warned:

Not only would this CBDC model centralize Americans' financial information, leaving it vulnerable to attack, but it could also be used as a surveillance tool that Americans should never tolerate from their own government.

''Requiring users to open up an account at the Fed to access a U.S. CBDC would put the Fed on an insidious path akin to China's digital authoritarianism,'' the congressman continued.

Rep. Emmer opined:

It is important to note that the Fed does not, and should not, have the authority to offer retail bank accounts.

He further emphasized that ''any CBDC implemented by the Fed must be open, permissionless, and private.''

The congressman concluded: ''In order to maintain the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency in a digital age, it is important that the United States lead with a posture that prioritizes innovation and does not aim to compete with the private sector.''

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve still has not published a report on its CBDC work which it promised to release last year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said earlier this week that the report will be published ''within weeks.''

Tags in this storyCBDC,

central bank digital currency,

Congressman Tom Emmer,

Digital Dollar,

Fed Chairman,

Federal Reserve,

Federal Reserve Chairman,

issuing digital currency,

jerome powell,

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tom emmer,

us lawmakerDo you think the Fed should issue a CBDC directly to individuals? Let us know in the comments section below.

Kevin HelmsA student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

More Popular News In Case You Missed It Near Foundation Raises $150 Million to Bolster Web3 Adoption

On Thursday, the Near Foundation announced the project has raised $150 million from strategic investors such as Three-Arrows Capital, a16z, Mechanism Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Circle Ventures. Following the announcement, the Near protocol's native crypto asset jumped more than 7% ... read more.

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Archived Version

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:34

woensdag 12 januari 2022, 06:03De 53-jarige man die dood onder een langs de Gordelweg in Rotterdam-Noord geparkeerde Toyota is aangetroffen, was onderdelen van de auto aan het stelen. Hij lag onder de wagen en was bezig de kostbare katalysator los te schroeven. Toen de krik lossprong, viel de auto op hem. De eigenaar van de Toyota, Gabriel, vond hem 's ochtends toen hij zijn dochtertje naar school wilde brengen. Hij zag twee benen onder zijn wagen uitsteken. Eerst dacht hij nog dat de dief daar lag te slapen. Maar hij bleek overleden te zijn.

Net na acht uur maandagochtend stapten vader Gabriel en zijn dochtertje van vijf jaar de deur uit voor de eerste schooldag na de kerstvakantie. Gabriel zette zijn dochtertje op de achterbank en liep om de auto heen naar de bestuurderskant. Toen zag hij plots twee benen onder de auto uitsteken. Hij tikte ze aan en zegt: "H(C) Bro, wat ben je aan het doen?" Maar de man onder auto gaf geen kik. Dus probeerde hij het nog een keer. "Ik zei dat hij wakker moest worden en op moest staan." Maar hij gaf geen antwoord.

Meteen belde hij 112 en haalde hij zijn zwager erbij. Deze voelde dat de man niet meer ademde en dat zijn lichaam koud was. De politie en ambulance waren razendsnel ter plaatse maar konden niets meer doen. De politie bevestigt dat de overleden man een inwoner van Rotterdam was en dat hij niet de eigenaar was van de Toyota aan de Gordelweg waaronder hij aangetroffen werd.

Katalysatoren geliefd auto-onderdeelHet was niet voor het eerst dat dieven de katalysator probeerden te stelen, vertelt Gabriel. Op hun vorige adres in Rotterdam-West was het al eerder raak. Katalysatoren van Toyota's zijn een geliefd en makkelijk te demonteren onderdeel, weet Gabriel inmiddels. Nieuw zijn ze 1500 euro waard. Voor een tweedehands exemplaar krijg je nog makkelijk 500 euro.

Waarschijnlijk is het incident midden in de nacht gebeurd. Eigenaar Gabriel en zijn zwager Jo£o vermoeden dat de dief onder de auto uit wilde kruipen en de krik daarbij met zijn voeten aanstootte. Het resultaat was dat de auto hem verpletterde. De krik lag als een stille getuige naast de auto in plaats van dat hij eronder stond.

Een buurvrouw van Gabriel die tegenover de fatale plek woont, heeft niets gemerkt, zegt ze. Ook niet toen ze om acht uur het huis uitging voor een ommetje met de hond. Toen ze daarvan terugkeerde, zag ze ineens hulpverleners met gillende sirenes door de straat rijden. Het gerucht dat het mogelijk een autodief is, is haar ook ter ore gekomen. Volgens haar heeft een buurtgenoot van de hulpverleners gehoord dat het slachtoffer een bekende van de politie is. Ze vond het al opmerkelijk dat de man onder de auto lag omdat je een krik normaal gesproken gebruikt voor het vervangen van een kapotte band. "Een krik moet je niet gebruiken om onder de auto te kruipen. Dat is veel te gevaarlijk. Juist vanwege wat er nu gebeurd is", zegt ze.

Barmhartig hart voor krikdode De eigenaar van de auto en zijn buren vinden het triest dat de dief zijn misdrijf met de dood heeft moeten bekopen. "Hij is er zwaar voor gestraft. Dat wens je niemand toe", zegt een buurman. "Ook al was hij mogelijk een crimineel. Dit is gewoon afschuwelijk", vindt een andere buurvrouw.

Gabriel heeft tegen zijn dochtertje van vijf gezegd dat de overleden man lekker onder de auto lag te dutten. "Voorlopig vertellen we deze versie tot ze oud genoeg is om het ware verhaal te horen."

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:26

Hundreds of professors, scientists, doctors and health care workers called out Spotify this week, accusing the streamer's most popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, of spreading Covid misinformation.

In an open letter addressed to Spotify, 270 science and health professionals said the podcast was "broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the Covid-19 pandemic." The letter then asked Spotify to "take action against mass-misinformation events" on its platform. Notably, it didn't recommend any specific actions for the the streaming platform to take.

The letter specifically highlighted a December 31 episode featuring Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who was recently banned from Twitter for spreading vaccine falsehoods. On the episode, Malone told host Joe Rogan that there had recently been an "explosion of vaccine-associated deaths," and that hospitals are financially incentivized to label Covid as a cause of patient deaths. He also said leaders are using "free-floating anxiety" to "hypnotize" the public.

All three theories were quickly identified as false, as reported by AP News and nonprofit fact-checking outlet PolitiFact. YouTube removed a video of the interview soon after it was posted, citing violated community guidelines.

Yet Malone's comments were likely heard and potentially internalized by millions of listeners. Rogan has claimed his show is downloaded over 200 million times each month, and his is certainly one of the most popular podcasts in the world, topping Spotify's global rankings for 2021.

"Dr. Malone's interview has reached many tens of millions of listeners vulnerable to predatory medical misinformation," the letter said. "This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform."

Rogan's popularity makes the potential for spreading misinformation especially concerning, the letter's backers wrote. Over the course of the pandemic, Rogan has received backlash for repeatedly spreading Covid misinformation: He previously discouraged young people from getting vaccinated and promoted ivermectin to treat the virus, despite numerous experts discrediting the drug as a Covid treatment.

In response, the coalition wrote they want Spotify to "immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform."

"By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals," the letter said.

While Spotify doesn't currently have any concrete policies to combat misinformation, the platform has previously removed episodes of other podcasts for spreading falsehoods. Spotify, Rogan and Malone did not immediately return CNBC Make It's requests for comment.

Update: This story has been updated to include CNBC Make It's request for comment from Dr. Robert Malone.

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 14:17

The US has intelligence that Russia is planning a 'false-flag' operation on its own forces in eastern Ukraine to create a pretext for invasion.

Officials on Friday also said they believed Russia was mounting a social media disinformation campaign to portray Ukraine as the aggressor.

The update, making the prospect of military conflict more immediate, came as Ukrainian government websites were taken offline in a 'massive' cyberattack, talks between Washington and Moscow collapsed and Russia held a combat readiness inspection of their troops.

Meanwhile, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia had 'run out of patience' with the West as Moscow demanded assurances that NATO would not expand closer to its territory.

The United States has evidence that operatives trained in urban warfare and sabotage will carry out these attacks on Russian proxy forces, officials told journalists on Friday, possibly weeks before an invasion.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki warned of human rights violations and war crimes if diplomacy failed and the Russian government went ahead with its plans.

'We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine,' she said.

'The operatives are trained in urban warfare and using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia's own proxy forces.'

She said it mimicked the playbook used when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, and included social media disinformation to show Kyiv as the instigator of violence.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the intelligence was 'very credible.'

The Kremlin quickly denied it was preparing a provocation. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the reporting was based on 'unfounded' information, according to the TASS news agency.

Russian tanks of the Novorossiysk Guards mountain formation took part in maneuvers on Friday, further raising the temperature along the border with Ukraine where 100,000 Russian troops are massed

A militant of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) observes the area at fighting positions on the line of separation from the Ukrainian armed forces in Donetsk region, Ukraine January 14, 2022.

A Ukrainian Military Forces serviceman walks on a trench on the frontline with Russia-backed separatists near Luganske village, in Donetsk region. Kiev has been on high alert since Russia moved 100,000 troops close to its border last year

A fighter jet is takes off in footage released by Russia's ministry of defence. Amid concern over Russia's troop buildup, Russia says it is up to Moscow alone where it moves its forces around on its territory and that they pose no external threat

Moscow has for weeks been massing tens of thousands of troops, tanks and artillery pieces along its eastern flank, sparking fears of an invasion, though the Kremlin has insisted it is merely a defence force (pictured, Russian forces currently massed in border regions)

Details emerged as Russia held snap combat readiness inspections of its troops on Friday and as several prominent Ukrainian government websites were taken offline Friday, authorities said, in a sweeping cyber attack.

The claim of a false-flag operation echoes Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, which said that Russian special services were preparing provocations against Russian forces in order to frame Ukraine.

And a day earlier, President Biden's national security adviser said that the U.S. had intelligence that Russia was preparing a pretext for invasion.

'Our intelligence community has developed information ... that Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for an invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine,' he told reporters at the White House

'We saw this playbook in 2014. They are preparing this playbook again.'

But he also said officials had not determined that President Vladimir Putin had made a definitive decision to invade, suggesting a diplomatic resolution might still be possible.

Officials are trying to weigh whether Putin is ready to act on his desire to swallow up Ukraine or whether it is a feint to strengthen his regional influence.

Even so, the Biden administration is considering how to back a Ukrainian insurgency should Russia invade.

Options include training fighters in nearby countries, such as Poland, Romania or Slovakia, or working with NATO allies to provide medical services or even shelter during Russian offensives, officials told the New York Times.

In a sign of the complex forces in play, Russia also announced it had detained members of the ransomware group REvil at the request of the United States.

It marked a rare moment of collaboration at a time when relations are at rock bottom.

'The investigative measures were based on a request from the... United States,' the FSB domestic intelligence service said.

'... The organised criminal association has ceased to exist and the information infrastructure used for criminal purposes was neutralised.'

Attack from multiple fronts, an escalation in Donbass or missile strikes: What a Russian invasion of Ukraine could look like - as military analysts fear it could be imminent Western military analysts have suggested Russia cannot keep such troops deployed where they are indefinitely for financial and logistical reasons and would need to pull them back by summer.

Estimates of the numbers of new Russian troops moved closer to Ukraine vary from 60,000 to around 100,000, with a U.S. intelligence document suggesting that number could be ramped up to 175,000.

U.S. officials have said Russia might attack Ukraine as early as this month when the ground will be harder, making it easier for tanks and other armour to move swiftly.

At talks this week with the United States and NATO, Russia has sought security guarantees to defuse the crisis.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday Moscow was not ready to wait forever for a response and that it wanted a detailed written response to every Russian proposal.

But what might a Russian attack look like and what could it seek to achieve?

'The current deployments are versatile. They keep Russia's options open and therefore keep the defender guessing,' said Keir Giles, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Here are some possible scenarios.

DONBASS ESCALATION

Heavily armed Russian-backed separatists have controlled a swath of eastern Ukraine since 2014 and continue to exchange fire with Ukrainian government forces despite a 2015 ceasefire that ended major hostilities.

The conflict in Donbass has killed 15,000 people, Kyiv says. Ukraine has long accused Russia of having regular troops in the region, something Moscow denies.

Russia has accused Kyiv of harbouring plans to retake the region by force, something Ukraine denies.

A militant of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) checks a machine gun at fighting positions on the line of separation from the Ukrainian armed forces near the rebel-controlled settlement of Yasne (Yasnoye) in Donetsk region

In such a febrile atmosphere, the risk of a misunderstanding or unplanned escalation is greater, and Russia could use such an incident as a casus belli.

A source familiar with the Russian Defence Ministry's thinking said this was the most likely scenario if Moscow decided to attack, but that he was unaware of any such decision. Kyiv might also be provoked into attacking by the separatists who could then ask Russia to send troops to help, he said.

Russian forces could expand the fighting in Donbass to draw Ukraine into a conventional conflict, said Neil Melvin, director of International Security Studies at the RUSI think-tank in London. He said Moscow could try to seize Ukrainian coastal areas on the Sea of Azov, creating a land bridge from the Russian city of Rostov through Donbass to Crimea, adding: 'That would put the Ukrainian government under a lot of pressure.'

ASSAULT FROM CRIMEA

Russia has brought in new forces to Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Moscow could launch an attack on Ukraine from Crimea and seize territory up to the Dnieper River that could serve as a natural barrier against any Ukrainian counter-offensive, said Konrad Muzyka, director of the Poland-based Rochan consultancy.

The operation could begin with artillery, missile and air strikes on Ukrainian units in the south, and special forces units might seize bridges and railway junctions, allowing troops and tanks to advance, he said. There are only two roads from Crimea that could be blocked or destroyed, a potential weakness, he said.

Forces would secure control of a canal that provided Crimea with fresh water supplies until Russia annexed the region and Ukraine stopped the flow, he said.

MULTI-FRONT ATTACK

A publicly available U.S. intelligence document said Russia could stage an invasion this month with up to 100 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) or some 175,000 troops. It said about 50 BTGs were already in place to the north and east of Ukraine and in Crimea to the south.

Seizing southern Ukraine could cut Kyiv off from the coast and NATO's presence in the Black Sea, Melvin said, and could play well with Russian nationalists who see the area as the historic 'Novorossiya' lands or 'New Russia'.

A multi-front assault might also involve a move into northeastern Ukraine, encircling but perhaps not entering cities where forces could get bogged down in urban fighting. Russian troops could also move into Belarus, opening a northern front for Ukraine that would put Russian forces closer to Kyiv, Giles said.

'This of course would be the most costly economically, politically and in terms of human lives and that's probably why it's least likely,' Melvin said of an all-out invasion.

Military analysts said even if it overwhelmed Ukraine's army, which is half the size of its own, Russia could face guerrilla-type resistance, making it hard to hold on to captured territory.

MISSILE STRIKES OR CYBER-ATTACK

Giles said some scenarios could involve long-range missile attacks or cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure. Missile attacks would take advantage of Ukraine's weaker anti-missile defences.

'The different scenarios for how exactly Russia might seek to persuade the West to meet its (security) demands by punishing Kyiv don't even necessarily include a land incursion,' he said.

A string of government websites was hacked on Friday. Some showed messages saying: 'Be afraid and expect the worst.'

The finger of suspicion immediately fell on Russia, although Ukrainian officials said critical infrastructure had not been targeted.

The inspections came as several key Ukrainian government websites were taken offline Friday, authorities said, in a sweeping cyber attack. Pictured: A laptop displays a warning message in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, that appeared on the official website of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry after a massive cyberattack, in this illustration taken January 14, 2022

President Biden's administration has repeatedly warned President Putin of further sanctions if his forces invade Ukraine. In return, Putin is demanding that NATO guarantees it will not allow Ukraine to join the defense alliance

American Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Michael Carpenter said the world was facing a 'crisis in European security' after the final round of talks Thursday

Meanwhile, the White House said President Biden had been briefed on the cyberattack, which took down a string of Ukrainian government websites.

Some displayed messages saying: 'Be afraid and expect the worst.'

A Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman confirmed details of a hack to AFP.

'As a result of a massive cyberattack, the websites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a number of other government agencies are temporarily down,' he said.

The education ministry wrote on Facebook that its website was down due to a 'global (cyber) attack' that had taken place overnight.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility and Kiev did not say who may have been responsible. Ukraine had blamed Russians with links to the Kremlin for previous attacks.

About 70 websites of national and regional government bodies were targeted, according to Victor Zhora, deputy chair of the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection.

He stressed, however, that no critical infrastructure was affected and no personal data was leaked.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said: 'The United States and our allies and partners are concerned about the cyber attack, and the president has been briefed.

'We are also in touch with the Ukrainians and have offered our support as Ukraine investigates the impact and nature, and recovers from the incident.

EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell said on Friday the bloc was mobilising 'all its resources' to aid Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia said it was running out of patience with its demand that NATO does not expand eastward, closer to Russia.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Moscow wouldn't wait indefinitely for the Western response, saying he expected an answer from the US and NATO next week.

'We have run out of patience,' Lavrov said at a news conference.

'The West has been driven by hubris and has exacerbated tensions in violation of its obligations and common sense.'

Pictured: Ukrainian troops take part in military drills as tensions across the country's border with Russia continue to mount

The tensions prompted Sweden to step up its visible defense preparations. Here soldiers patrol in Visby Harbor

It comes after a string of meetings between the two sides this week that failed to bring a breakthrough. As a result, American officials have stepped up their warnings.

The U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the result was a 'crisis in European security.'

'The drumbeat of war is sounding loud and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill,' Michael Carpenter said.

That drumbeat has put countries in the region on alert.

Poland warned that Europe faced its greatest threat of war in the past 30 years.

And a senior military figure in Sweden said Friday that there had been increased Russian activity in the Baltic Sea which 'deviates from the normal picture.'

'We have decided to reposition our troops. It does not have to mean an increased threat, but we always want to adapt to the prevailing situation,' Lt. Gen Leif Michael Claesson told The Associated Press.

Sweden, which is not part of NATO, has monitored landing craft from Russia's northern navy entering the Baltic Sea.

As a result, Claesson who is the operations manager at the Swedish Armed Forces, said the country had raised its level of preparedness. Some of the measures taken would be visible and others would not, he added.

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Archived Version

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 13:52

The turn of the new year has triggered errors in Microsoft Exchange mail servers, causing thousands, possibly millions, of emails around the world to not get sent and staying stuck on email transport queues, in some cases even causing entire servers to crash.

The server administration community has dubbed this bug ''Y2K22'' due to its similarity to the infamous Y2K bug, a date-related bug which was feared to cause many computer systems and potentially the world economy itself to collapse at the turn of this century.

What exactly is this Y2K22 bug?Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2019 servers have an integrated malware-scanning engine called FIP-FS. This engine uses a signature file which stores dates in a 32-bit integer format. The largest possible number that can be stored in 32 bits is 2147483647.

Things were fine for the dates in the year 2021 because it was stamped as 211231XXXX (for 31st December). In case you are still wondering, it is in YYMMDDhhmm format.

However, with the turn of the new year, January 1st, 2022, it is converted to 2201010001. When trying to be formatted in 32 bits which, as you can see, is larger than the maximum number allowed. This would cause date/time validations on the server software to fail, thus ending up with emails not being sent and piling up on servers.

What can be done about it if you manage Exchange servers?One quick fix that was discovered by Exchange administrators was to simply disable FIP-FS, though this is highly discouraged, since it obviously leaves servers vulnerable and open to attacks, unless the servers have another external antivirus software running.

Fortunately, Microsoft has already caught wind of the issue and has provided a fix. This fix, however, is not an automatic update and does require some action from its customers. In a nutshell, Microsoft has provided a script file to be executed from Microsoft PowerShell. This script must be executed on each and every Exchange server. Microsoft has also provided instructions on performing the update manually, as it is not unusual for servers to have PowerShell disabled as a security measure.

Microsoft has stated that this is only a short-term fix which sets the date on the signature file as 2112330001 (December 33rd, 2021), which is supported and lets the server continue to operate normally, despite it not being a real date, while Microsoft develops a longer-term solution.

If you manage a Microsoft Exchange 2016 or 2019 server and have been affected by the bug, you can find Microsoft's officially-provided solution here.

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Archived Version

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 13:32

Media | One America News Will Be Dropped by DirecTV, a Major Distributor https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/15/business/media/one-america-news-directv.htmlThe right-wing network has aired conspiracies about the 2020 election, last year's Capitol riot and the safety of coronavirus vaccines.

The One America News headquarters in San Diego. The channel was started in 2013 as a general news channel with a conservative bent. Credit... The New York Times Jan. 15, 2022

The right-wing cable channel One America News Network '-- which has spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the safety of coronavirus vaccines '-- will be dropped by one of its largest television distributors later this year.

The decision by the distributor, DirecTV, a satellite and streaming network with about 15 million subscribers, is a significant setback for One America News and its owners, the Herring family. Losing its slot on the DirecTV lineup will almost certainly diminish the network's overall audience and cut into its annual revenue.

DirecTV on Saturday did not elaborate on the precise reasons behind its decision.

''We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,'' a spokesman for DirecTV said in an email on Saturday. DirecTV plans to also drop a second channel owned by the Herrings called AWE, which features lifestyle and entertainment programs.

Herring Networks did not respond on Saturday to requests for comment. The move by DirecTV was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Chanel Rion, the chief White House correspondent for One America News, derided DirecTV in a Twitter post on Friday that referred to the decision to drop the channel. ''With moves like this, DirecTV will have to become state-owned to survive,'' Ms. Rion wrote, adding, ''They would have better luck in Pyongyang.''

One America News, which is based in San Diego, started in 2013. Beginning with the 2016 election, the network acted as a venue for viewpoints and coverage aligned with Donald J. Trump and his right-wing allies.

Its anchors have regularly questioned the outcome of the 2020 election. The network is facing defamation lawsuits from two election technology companies, Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems, that have accused the channel of spreading falsehoods that they manipulated vote tallies to swing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

One America News has also promoted the false theory that left-wing agitators, and not Trump supporters, were the primary instigators of the Capitol riot.

This month, on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, One America News ran a segment about ''the patriotic demonstrations at the Capitol on Jan. 6'' that suggested the attack was a so-called ''false flag'' operation by liberals intended to strip patriotic Americans of their liberties. ''Leftist, Media Narrative Surrounding January 6th, 2021 Simply an Excuse for Democrats to Seize Power,'' read an onscreen headline.

The channel has also aired false and misleading reports about the safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines. In June, one anchor, Pearson Sharp, told viewers: ''The fallout from the coronavirus vaccine continues to grow, and the toll on human life is now worse than anyone could have imagined.''

DirecTV is one of only a few major television distributors that carries One America News; another is Verizon Fios. The channel is also available to stream online, and it maintains a popular YouTube page with more than 1.4 million subscribers.

One America News and DirecTV have a complex history.

The channel has been carried by DirecTV since 2017, in the wake of a lawsuit filed the previous year by Herring Networks against AT&T, the former owner of DirecTV. (Although DirecTV is now independent, AT&T has retained a significant stake.) A Reuters report last year, citing testimony from a network employee in a separate lawsuit, said that One America News had relied heavily on fees paid by AT&T-affiliated platforms to fund its operations.

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Archived Version

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 11:50

An explosive case is currently being hotly debated on social media: In France, a rich, older entrepreneur from Paris is said to have died as a result of a Corona injection. Previously, he had taken out multi-million dollar life insurance policies for the benefit of his children and grandchildren, according to a media report.

Although vaccination is recognized as the cause of death by doctors and the insurance company, it has refused to pay out. The reason is because the side effects of the Corona jabs are known and published. They argue that the deceased took part in an experiment at his own risk. Covid-19 in itself is not classed as a ''critical illness''.

According to the company, an experimental vaccination resulting in death is like suicideThe insurance company justified the refusal of payment to the family by stating that the use of experimental medication or treatments, including Corona injections, is expressly excluded from the insurance contract. The family's subsequent lawsuit against the insurance company has been unsuccessful.

The court allegedly justified its ruling as follows: ''The side effects of the experimental vaccine are published and the deceased could not claim to have known nothing about it when he voluntarily took the vaccine. There is no law or mandate in France that compelled him to be vaccinated. Hence his death is essentially suicide.'' Since suicide is not covered by the policy from the outset, the insurance refuses to budge.

Scandalous verdict: taking a fatal risk is legally suicide''The court recognizes the classification of the insurer who, in view of the announced side effects, including death, legally regards participation in the phase three experiment, whose proven harmlessness is not given, as voluntarily taking a fatal risk that is not covered by the contract and legally recognized as suicide. The family has appealed. However, the insurer's defense is recognized as well-founded and contractually justified, as this publicly known fatal risk is legally considered suicide, since the customer has been notified and has agreed to voluntarily take the risk of death without being obliged or compelled to do so.''

No surprise: Mainstream media is silentThis case has not yet been reported in France 's mainstream media. The case was published by the family's lawyer, Carlo Alberto Brusa, on social media. Unfortunately, no sources or court records are given, which is why the authenticity of the report cannot currently be verified although there have been other warnings regarding the risk associated with the jabs recognized by insurers. In the US, the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has denied reports of non-payment.

CensorshipIn recent months, many French anti-vaccine groups of the social network Facebook have been victims of sudden, unjustified closures, especially support groups for Brusa and Professor Didier Raoult. The latter has often been criticized for his positions on vaccines, hydroxychloroquine and his criticism of the mismanagement of the epidemic by the Macron government.

At the end of last year, the main support group for Didier Raoult was deactivated before it was reactivated, thanks to a mobilization on social networks and a massive relay on alternative media. On November 27, a teacher support group for Brusa was suspended. With no less than 310 000 members to its credit, the group created in March 2020 was closed for having shared the complaint by Brusa concerning the wearing of masks for children. The Parisian lawyer and his association R(C)action-19 was accused of spreading a ''conspiracy''.

Global difficulties for insurers due to vaccinesActuaries have been warning that rising claims will be eroding the capital which insurers set aside to avoid insolvency. Notably, older people do not take out life insurance, which means that the claims have been from younger clients. Insurers say that they expect a rise in excess deaths.

According to Alex Berenson, the risk of injury or death from the jab is exceptionally high judging from Canadian data.

The refusal to pay for a vaccine-related death may not be surprising since globally the life insurance industry has been hit with reported claims of $5,5 billion in the first nine months of 2021 versus $3,5 billion for the whole of 2020, according to insurance broker Howden.

Dutch insurer Aegon, with two-thirds of its business in the US, said its American claims in the third quarter were $111 million, up from $31 million a year earlier.

Vaccine deaths may force insurers to raise premiums and some have indicated that they intend to punish the unvaccinated for their financial woes.

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Help us to produce more articles like this. FreeWestMedia is depending on donations from our readers to keep going. With your help, we expose the mainstream fake news agenda.

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Archived Version

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 11:30

Dear friends,"The wave is coming. It's coming and there is no way to prevent it, anywhere in the world.

During the short period of this new wave, we hope that at-risk individuals avoid going out, or will do so less, certainly after they have been exposed."

Who uttered those words? Who dared to suggest focused protection for at-risk groups? One of our courageous scientists? The same scientists who were slammed and smeared as ''COVID deniers''?

Nope. It was none other than the PM of Israel.'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

Israel has been a world leader in many aspects of the COVID madness, mainly known as Pfizer's global lab.

A highly convenient, free-of-charge lab boasting high profile scientists and institutes on Pfizer's payroll and a fortuitous absence of any meaningful monitoring system for adverse vaccination events.

But not anymore.....This past few weeks has seen a collapse of the narrative at an expedited pace.

The Omicron variant, while not deadly to people, has in fact proven to be deadly to the narrative and whatever remnants of trust remains between Israel's citizens and the Ministry of Health.

Here are the 10 main indications of the rapid and unavoidable collapse of the narrative:

1. The editor of Israel's leading news website, who previously refused to publish articles that contradicted the mainstream narrative regarding lockdown and vaccine coercion, suddenly writes: ''Enough COVID '' release the herd!''

Many other reporters and bureaucrats suddenly find the brains, courage or interest to challenge the narrative. They often choose sharp wording in doing so.Others have just suddenly fallen silent. .

'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

2. The lies are becoming more frequent, blatant and much more obvious. One example:On Dec 23rd Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, Israel's public health chief, announced in The Knesset that in the past 45 days, South Africa recorded approximately 900 COVID deaths, most of which were Omicron cases.

Such blatant lying was previously avoided.

'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

3. Silly desperate attempts at scaring the population by forecasting infection rates of 99% Projections that will very quickly be proven wrong.

'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

4. Censorship is increasing and is increasingly childish and counterproductive as it focuses the public attention at the censored data.

'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

5. Vaccine hesitancy reaches an all-time high, with about 6 in of every 7 of the 5-11 years old children opting out of the aggressive vaccination campaign.

Only a little more than half of the previously obedient population has what is now called ''valid protection'' and the numbers are dropping.

In a desperate workaround, the government introduces a special promotion of ''Green Pass for One Jab'''...'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

6. The government has decided to introduce house arrests (AKA home isolation) only to the 'unprotected' (meaning unvaccinated, or having had 1-2 expired doses), while promising to keep schools open. Yet classes and schools are being closed at a record speed due to the low rate of vaccinated kids.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens are under house arrest. The obedient citizenry spends hours waiting in lines to be tested in a desperate attempt to gain "freedom".'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

7. Leading health officials are contradicting the government actions and calling for cancellation of the useless ''Green Pass.''.'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

8. The public is enraged to discover that the pandemic management team includes a minority of doctors,with a majority of the like of: a media expert, security officer, administrative manager and other unqualified individuals.

This is, strangely enough, the team that has just announced the fourth vaccine dose.

In his televised response, Prof Grossman, one of the leading figures in the team is saying: "Sometimes the insight of a taxi driver regarding vaccines is just as important as what I hear at the PMT zoom meetings".'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

9. For the past 22 months, COVID-19 was idolized and the flu ridiculed.A bad flu pandemic is now sweeping the country, overshadowing COVID-19 in every aspect, including severe cases and hospitalization (even that we are in a midst of the mother of all waves of ''cases'').

'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--

10. The public is utterly confused as health officials are unable to explain the ever-more complicated and fast-changing COVID regulations of their own making

The narrative is collapsing in Pfizrael with the generous assistance of Omicron '' coming soon to the rest of the world. My apologies for the Hebrew references...

Galileo is back

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Archived Version

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 11:23

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The latest nuclear shutdown in France was announced by state energy giant EDF today. They said cracks were found near welds on a safety cooling system for two reactors at the Civaux plant in central France during routine safety checks. And EDF decided to shut down another two reactors at its Chooz plant in the eastern Ardennes region as a precaution because they are built to the same design.

Karine Herviou, deputy chief executive of the French nuclear safety regulator IRSN, said: ''The defects that were identified on the last-generation reactors have been found on another reactor.

''We don't know if there are problems elsewhere. EDF is in the process of checking all of its data.''

Now, 10 nuclear reactors out of France's 56-strong fleet are currently out of service.

This accounts for about 20 percent of the country's nuclear capacity '' which makes up around 70 percent of the country's power

Macron has been humiliated as fears of a blackout in France have soared (Image: Getty )

10 of France's nuclear power plants have shut down (Image: Getty )

Repairing the defective pipes could lead to long shutdowns at the affected plants and put a further financial strain on heavily-indebted EDF.

Worryingly for France, many of its nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their expected lifespans of 40 years.

And EDF is struggling with its plan to roll out new reactors.

On Wednesday, it announced extra delays and cost overruns for its new-generation nuclear plant in Flamanville in northern France.

Now, EDF said the Flamanville plant will not be loaded with fuel until the ''second quarter of 2023''.

READ MORE: Covid breakthrough: Face mask effectiveness exposed in study

Macron has been pushing for nuclear to be classed as a green technology (Image: Getty )

And the projected costs had increased by another '‚¬300million (£250.6million) to '‚¬12.7billion (£10.6billion)

This is about four times more than the initial forecast of '‚¬3.3billion (£2.76billion).

It comes after Javier Blas, Bloomberg's chief Energy Correspondent, said France was already "struggling to keep the lights on".

All these nuclear shutdowns may not bode well for the French President, who has vowed to invest more in the technology and build more plants.

In fact, he has repeatedly claimed that nuclear technology is a zero-emission energy source and is vital for the clean energy transition.

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Many French nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their expected lifespans of 40 years. (Image: PA)

Back in November, Mr Macron announced that ''for the first time in decades, we will restart construction of nuclear reactors in our country'' to ''guarantee France's energy independence''.

But with delays slapped down, those plans have hit a bump in the road.

Paris has been leading the charge for nuclear power to be recognised by the European Union as a green technology eligible for a carbon-neutral investment.

The EU's green taxonomy is intended to hand a green badge to companies and activities '' or to withhold it '' to ''help shift investments where they are most needed".

This is part of the bloc's aim to direct funding towards energy sources with a low or zero carbon footprint.

70% of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power (Image: Getty )

But many environmentalists are concerned about nuclear energy's worry huge cost, safety and the legacy of toxic radioactive waste.

And France's calls to include nuclear in the EU taxonomy has also faced backlash from other members of the bloc, including Germany.

Unlike France, which has had to reluctantly shut down its nuclear plants, Germany is in the process of shutting all its nuclear plants on purpose.

And now with the Green party involved in the new ruling coalition, the country's disapproval of the energy source has grown even stronger.

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Archived Version

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 06:42

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended two new drugs to combat COVID-19 infections.

The first new drug that is recommended for critical COVID-19 cases is baricitinib, an oral drug that suppresses the immune system when overstimulated.

The WHO recommends baricitinib is given with corticosteroids.

The second drug which should be used for mild cases where a person has a high chance of hospitalization is sotrovimab, a monoclonal antibody drug.

This should be given to individuals who are unvaccinated, older, have a compromised immune system or are obese, according to the WHO.

"The extent to which these medicines will save lives depends on how widely available and affordable they will be," the WHO said in its statement.

The recommendations come as concerns arise that existing COVID-19 treatments will not be effective against the omicron variant.

The two drugs were also invited on Friday to go through the WHO's Prequalification Unit, which "assesses the quality, efficacy and safety of priority health products to increase access in lower income countries."

The WHO recommended the two drugs after evaluating evidence gathered in seven trials examining 4,000 mild, severe and critical COVID-19 cases.

The Food and Drug Administration has already approved baricitinib and sotrovimab for emergency use.

The WHO has recommended against ruxolitinib and tofacitinib due to their uncertain effects.

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Archived Version

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 06:38

Show caption Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were aware of a deal to potentially manipulate advertising sales, a lawsuit says. Photograph: Jose Luis Magana, LM Otero, Jens Meyer/AP

TechnologyNewly revealed documents from the complaint against Google shed light on potential advertising sales manipulation

Fri 14 Jan 2022 21.12 EST

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were allegedly aware of and approved a deal to collaborate on the potential manipulation of advertising sales, according to newly revealed documents.

The documents, which came to light on Friday, were filed as part of a lawsuit against Google brought by the attorneys general of multiple US states. The lawsuit was first filed in December 2020 and claimed Google misled publishers and advertisers about the price and process of advertising auctions. At that time, many documents and parts of the lawsuit were redacted, but court rulings have since made them public.

The lawsuit alleges that Google maintained control over the advertising sales market '' a market that it dominates '' by inflating the price of advertisements for brands and suppressing competition from other advertising exchanges.

UK agrees to end tax on US tech giants when global deal takes effect According to the Wall Street Journal, the complaint alleges that ''Google pocketed the difference between what it told publishers and advertisers that an ad cost and used the pool of money to manipulate future auctions to expand its digital monopoly''. The documents further cite internal messages in which Google employees said it was like they were using ''insider information'' to grow the business.

The Journal reported the lawsuit also claims executives at both Facebook, which recently rebranded as Meta, and Google signed off on a deal to allegedly assure that Facebook would bid on, and win, a certain percentage of ads.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was ''explicit that 'this is a big deal strategically''' in a 2018 email thread about the deal that included Facebook's CEO.

When the two sides hammered out the terms of the agreement, ''the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO'' Zuckerberg, the lawsuit states.

If Pichai is found to have personally approved the deal, he may be found to be complicit in the expansion of Google's monopoly over the advertising market through manipulation. A Google spokesperson told the AP that while the deal was not a secret, it was inaccurate to say that Pichai approved it.

''We sign hundreds of agreements every year that don't require CEO approval, and this was no different,'' the spokesperson said.

In a statement, Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said the lawsuit is ''full of inaccuracies and lacks legal merit''.

Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said Friday that the company's ad bidding agreement with Google and similar agreements it has with other bidding platforms ''have helped to increase competition for ad placements''.

''These business relationships enable Meta to deliver more value to advertisers while fairly compensating publishers, resulting in better outcomes for all,'' Sgro said.

The new details come as the tech companies face mounting scrutiny over allegedly anti-competitive practices. A US judge ruled earlier this week that the government can proceed with a lawsuit that seeks to break up Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, in an effort to loosen its grip on the market. And on Friday, a group of nearly four dozens states asked to reinstate a separate antitrust lawsuit against the company.

Google, meanwhile, is facing its own monopoly-related charges brought by the US government. Google has denied the charges.

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 15:14

One of New Hampshire's leading political conservatives is fighting to keep his children from the state's child protection services agency after giving his 13-year-old son ivermectin.

JR Hoell is the founder of ReOpen NH, an activist group that criticizes COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Hoell, who has also led public education reform efforts and promotes Second Amendment and homeschooling rights, told The Epoch Times that the New Hampshire Division of Children Youth and Family (DCYF) showed up at his doorstep on the night of Dec. 9 with an emergency ex parte order to take custody of his son.

''I want to go on the record as calling the DCYF a terrorist organization,'' Hoell told The Epoch Times, ''they have no grounds to seek removal of my son from his home.''

Kathleen Remillard, Public Information Officer for the DCYF told The Epoch Times that the agency is unable to comment due to state and federal confidentiality laws. Hoell provided The Epoch Times with a medical report showing an Amherst, NH physician found the teen to be in overall good health less than 24 hours after the agency tried to take emergency custody of him.

Hoell's son, who stands over six feet tall and has a black belt in Taekwondo, had already returned to his martial arts classes and was over at a friend's house when the DCYF showed up with two police officers on Dec. 9 looking for his son and 17-year old daughter.

File photo: A package of ivermectin tablets. (Natasha Holt/The Epoch Times)''They told me there was an ambulance parked at the end of the road to transport my son and daughter to the hospital. 'You either take them or we'll take them,''' Hoell said the DCYF social worker told him.

The emergency order, a copy of which was provided to The Epoch Times, claimed the teen ''was at risk of coma or death due to the amount of ivermectin administered to him.''

At that point in time, it had been nearly two weeks since his son had taken any ivermectin, according to Hoell. The entire family used pharmacy-grade Ivermectin he ordered online from an international company to treat COVID back in November. By the time the DCYF sought his children, all the family members had already returned to their daily routines, according to Hoell.

It was a nurse practitioner who saw Hoell's son for a routine follow-up exam on the morning of Dec. 9 that called the DCYF on Hoell.

On Dec. 4, Hoell had taken his son to the emergency at the Catholic Medical Center because he was concerned his son was having an adverse reaction to Tylenol. Blood work performed on the teen that day showed his toxicology levels were all normal. The blood test results and the medical report from the emergency room visit, which were provided to The Epoch Times, also showed no elevated liver levels or anything suggestive of an overdose of ivermectin.

According to Hoell, the nurse practitioner, who works for an outpatient clinic in Goffstown owned by CMC, did not do any follow-up blood work or other lab tests on Dec. 9 before calling the DCYF.

Hoell said ivermectin was only discussed with the nurse practitioner in a casual manner and she never indicated she had any serious concerns about his son before leaving the practice.

''Ivermectin was not an issue at 9 o'clock in the morning and then all of a sudden it turned into a risk of coma several hours later, '' said Hoell, ''those two positions are not compatible with one another.''

JR Hoell and his wife in an undated photo. (Courtesy of J.R. Hoell)Lauren Collins-Cline, director of communications and public relations for CMD, told The Epoch Times the hospital was unable no comment due to privacy laws.

A prominent local Democrat and Republicans both agree that the case against Hoell, long labeled a ''conservative firebrand'' by the state's liberal press, sounds more like politics and less like actual child neglect.

NH Republican Executive Councilor Dave Wheeler told The Epoch Times he has no doubt that the DCYF is ''practicing politics,'' having gone through something similar himself when he was the Senate Minority Whip.

''It sounds like they're up to their old tricks,'' Wheeler said.

In 1998, when Wheeler, who is serving his sixth term as executive councilor to the governor, was leading a charge to reform the DCYF including what he called severe abuse of hearsay evidence, when two police officers showed up at his home in Milford, New Hampshire, on what they alleged was an anonymous report of an adult male beating a young minor in the backyard.

The case was covered by local media, which reported that it had been confirmed that Wheeler, the only adult male known to live in the household, was out of town at a Republican fundraiser at the time of the allegation.

However, the Republican senator found himself under investigation by the DCYF. The agency eventually filed the matter without a finding, but not before the agency questioned Wheeler about some of his parenting choices including his and his wife Joy's decision to homeschool their two children.

''The DCYF should stop chasing their tail and going after people like JR Hoell,'' Wheeler told The Epoch Times, ''It's pretty obvious there's no abuse and yet they are wasting thousands of taxpayers' dollars and the court's time instead of chasing down real abuse.''

Hoell, who has homeschooled all four of his children including two that are now in college, said since obtaining an emergency custody order for his son, the DCYF has questioned a family doctor about the homeschooling of their children. In 2018, when he was a state representative, Hoell sponsored a bill to remove ''education neglect'' as a listed cause for the DCYF to initiate a child neglect petition.

New Hampshire Democrat Patrick Long, former chairman of the state's child and family law committee and board member of an organization aimed at reforming the DCYF, said in spite of being a polar opposite of Hoell when it comes to politics, he has no doubt there is something dubious about the DCYF custody petition.

''I don't believe at all for one moment that JR for one moment would do anything that would hurt his family,'' Long, who served alongside Hoell for several years in the NH legislature, told The Epoch Times, ''based on what I am hearing, this is a disgrace.''

Long serves as the vice chairman for the New Road Project, a nonprofit formed by DCYF whistleblower Anna Carrigan, who last year reached a financial settlement with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services over claims she made against the DCYF for its own neglectful handling of child abuse and neglect cases.

Long said the DCYF's emergency ex parte custody order for Hoell's son is especially concerning given the agency's own reported shortage of foster care homes for children taken under out-of-home placement petitions.

More questions about the motive behind the DCYF petition comes from a CMC patient who recorded a conversation going on just outside her hospital room about J.R. Hoell on Dec. 10 and posted it on TikTok

At one point in the video, someone in the conversation can be heard referring to Hoell as a ''nut job'' and talking about a request put out to local police to be ''on the lookout'' for a dad who is a former state representative from Dunbarton.

Natalie Reyes, the patient who recorded and posted TikTok video, said she could overhear a DCYF social worker and hospital staff going through Hoell's Facebook pages and making comments about his use of ivermectin.

''The DCYF has filed to take this person's children because he gave them Ivermectin, I wish I was [expletive] kidding right now,'' Reyes says in her video.

The physician who saw Hoell's son the day after the DCYF tried to take custody of him, determined the teen had a mild case of hyperglycemia, which has been identified as a common lasting effect following a bout with COVID-19.

While the Food and Drug Administration has not approved ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, the drug has been approved for early treatment of the disease in all or part of 22 countries, according to a tally maintained by a group of scientists and researchers.

The NH DCYF has not rescinded its emergency custody order for Hoell's son. However, it has agreed to stay the execution of the order until a preliminary hearing is held sometime in the next two weeks.

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Alice Giordano is a former news correspondent for The Boston Globe, Associated Press, and New England bureau of The New York Times.

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Archived Version

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 15:09

Over the past month, as Wall Street turned increasingly optimistic on US growth alongside the Fed, with consensus (shaped by the Fed's leaks and jawboning) now virtually certain of a March rate hike, we have been repeatedly warning that after a huge policy error in 2021 when the Fed erroneously said that inflation is "transitory" (it wasn't), the central bank is on pace to make another just as big policy mistake in 2022 by hiking as many as 4 times and also running off its massive balance sheet... right into a global growth slowdown.

The Fed is going from one huge error (inflation is transitory) to another huge error (4 rate hikes and runoff won't crash markets).

'-- zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 11, 2022And, as we have also discussed in recent weeks, one place where this growth slowdown is emerging - besides the upcoming deterioration in US consumption where spending is now being funded to record rates by credit cards before it encounters a troubling air pocket - is China and its "covid-zero" policy in general, and its covid-locked down ports in particular.

But what until recently was a minority view confined to our modest website, has since expanded and as Bloomberg writes overnight, the effects of restrictions in China as the country maintains its Covid-zero policy "are starting to hit supply chains in the region." As a result of the slow movement of goods through some of the country's busiest and most important ports means shippers are now diverting to Shanghai, causing the types of knock-on delays at the world's biggest container port that led to massive congestion bottlnecks last summer that eventually translated into a record number of container ships waiting off the coast of California, a glut that hasn't been cleared to this day.

With sailing schedules already facing delays of about a week, freight forwarders warn of the impact on already back-logged gateways in Europe and the US and is also why HSBC economists are warning that the world economy could be headed for the ''mother of all'' supply chain shocks if the highly infectious omicron variant which is already swamping much of the global economy spreads across Asia, especially China, at which point disruption to manufacturing will be inevitable.

"Temporary, one would hope, but hugely disruptive all the same" in the next few months, they wrote in a research note this week first noted by Bloomberg.

For those who have forgotten last year's global shockwave when China locked down its ports for several days, a quick reminder: it led to an unprecedented hiccup in global logistics and shipping which hasn't been resolved to this day. That's because China is the world's biggest trading nation and its ability to keep its factories humming through the pandemic has been crucial for global supply chains.

While the outbreak of omicron in China has been small compared to other nations (if one believes China's official data, which is a big if) authorities are taking no chances, especially with China's continued "zero-covid" policy. In recent weeks scattered infections of both the delta and omicron variants have already triggered shutdowns to clothing factories and gas deliveries around one of China's biggest seaports in Ningbo, disruptions at computer chip manufacturers in the locked-down city of Xi'an, and a second city-wide lockdown in Henan province Tuesday.

Below is a brief timeline of the most recent events courtesy of Deutsche Bank:

China's first Omicron outbreak was detected in the city of Tianjin over the weekend. On the morning of Jan 8, two patients in Tianjin who actively sought medical treatment were confirmed as being infected with the Omicron variant. The local government immediately locked down certain districts, restricted travel, and conducted large-scale screening. A total of 41 positive cases have been reported as of the morning of Jan 11.The source of the local cases in Tianjin is still unknown, and community transmission is possible, according to local disease control officials. All previous local Omicron cases in Tianjin belonged to the same transmission chain. However, the above cases cannot be confirmed to be in the same transmission chain as the sequences of the imported cases of the Omicron variant that have been found in Tianjin. The early confirmed cases do not have any travel history outside Tianjin either. The specific source of the local cases found in Tianjin is still unknown at this time.More alarmingly, the same Omicron virus strain has already spread to outside Tianjin. Two positive cases were found in Anyang, Henan on Jan 8, and were later confirmed to be the same Omicron variant found in Tianjin. Through contact tracing and gene sequencing, the source was identified as a college student who returned to Anyang from Tianjin on December 28, 2021, and who did not show any symptoms. 81 cases have since been confirmed in Anyang over the past few days. This suggests that (1) the Omicron virus may have been transmitted in Tianjin for almost 2 weeks; and (2) other travelers might have already carried the Omicron virus from Tianjin to elsewhere in China.Looking at the recent data, China's Covid outbreak this winter could be worse than in the previous winter - as shown in the chart below more provinces have detected Covid outbreaks this winter. Entering Q4, there are 12 provinces which have found more than 19 local cases in the past 14 days. More significantly, the total number of new cases in the past 14 days in Shann'xi has already exceeded 1500, which is a record high, except for in Hubei when Covid first occurred in early 2020, and this has happened despite China now having very high vaccination rates and strict regulations such as lockdowns. In addition, comparing the differences between months near Chinese New Year in 2021 and 2022, not only have the number of news cases been larger this year, the provinces hit by Covid outbreaks this year also tend to have higher GDP and population density.

As Bloomberg adds, Henan and Guangdong, which also has an outbreak, are centers of electronics production. If cases continue rising there, it could impact the supply of iPhones and other smartphones.

This also brings us to what Bloomberg calls the paradox of China's aggressive ''Covid-zero'' strategy: while on one hand it helps contain the virus spread, to do so usually requires significant disruption or lockdowns as authorities limit the movement of people. The repeated mandatory testing of whole cities interrupts businessess and production, although nothing to the extent seen in places like the US, where the omicron wave caused an estimated 5 million people to stay home sick last week, leading to further economic slowdown (as discussed in "A March Rate Hike? Not So Fast")

That risk of disruption for factories is already prompting companies to spread their risk by ensuring they have alternative production facilities, Stephanie Krishnan, a supply chain expert at IDC in Singapore, told Bloomberg.

''We are starting to see companies mitigating risk, seeing where they can increase capabilities for production of different products in different factories so they can shift that around,'' she said.

Echoing what we said last night in "New Year Brings New All-Time High For Shipping's Epic Traffic Jam", Krishnan doesn't see an end to the global supply crunch anytime soon and cautions it could take several years for the snarls to unwind. It's a sobering outlook to start a year that many had hoped would mark the beginning of the end of the Big Crunch which dogged producers and consumers through much of last year.

Clearly what happens next is critical, and how China's control of the virus plays out will ultimately be crucial, said Deborah Elms, executive director of the Singapore-based Asian Trade Centre. Those companies whose supply chains are fully located inside China may be insulated by the country's mitigation strategy. But that won't apply to everyone, she said.

''Lots of products in supply chains come from outside China,'' Elms said. ''Given challenges elsewhere, even zero Covid doesn't solve all the issues of disruption.''

* * *

In its assessment of next steps, Deutsche Bank expects the government will try to contain the Omicron outbreak with more lockdowns and quarantines rather than taking a "live with Covid" approach. This will pose downside risks to near-term growth. The impact on consumption could be significant, although probably not as large as what happened in 2020.

While Omicron is far less deadly than other Covid variants, it is still deadly enough to cause healthcare service shortages in China, at least in some regions. Vaccination has proven to be ineffective in preventing Omicron from spreading, and while it offers protection against hospitalization, China still has some 20% of the population who are not vaccinated and will face serious health risks if Omicron becomes widespread. As such, DB says that a containment approach is still the government's optimal choice for this winter regardless of how fast Omicron spreads in the next few weeks. It will be good news if travel restrictions, lockdowns and large-scale testing and contact tracing work in containing the outbreak. Even if outbreaks cannot be contained in some regions, these measures will still be considered necessary in flattening the curve and preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed nationwide.

What is much more important for the US, global capital markets and the Fed's monetary policy - which has assumed much stronger growth in 2022 - is that China's Omicron outbreaks are significant downside risks for near-term consumption demand. Restrictions will likely be imposed nationwide to reduce travel before the Chinese New Year and encourage people to stay where they are. Cities where new cases were found will reimpose lockdowns and social distancing measures. The impact in each city will depend on local authorities. Experience from the past 2 years was that while some cities (such as Shenzhen and Shanghai) can manage outbreaks in a less disruptive way, other cities (such as Xi'an) have resorted to stricter and larger scale lockdowns, causing severe disruptions to consumption and service sector activities. Businesses such as restaurants, as well as those linked to travel, and leisure & entertainment will suffer from sharp revenue reductions or even temporary shutdowns. This may also cause temporary job and income losses and negatively impact consumer goods purchases. Retail sales growth dropped by 3ppt in Jan-Feb 2021 (in 2-year average terms). Retail sales might weaken again in Jan-Feb 2022, though the YoY growth rate might not drop much owing to the low base in 2021.

Nevertheless, consumption will likely recover rapidly once lockdowns are lifted. Similar to what happened before, such negative shocks will likely be transitory and will be followed by strong recovery once lockdowns are lifted and businesses reopen.

Still, the notorious bull-whip effect will emerge once again, as supply chains once again become stretched, and like in 2021 the question will be how the trade off between rising costs - as goods in transit end up stuck on a ship far longer than expected - and slowing growth will impact the Fed's view on what the optimal policy response is. While the Fed's prerogative for now is clearly to contain inflation, the reality is that much of the inflation experienced today is on the supply side, something which Brainard told the Senate in her confirmation hearing the Fed is powerless to address. Meanwhile, if we see a "surprise" drop in growth in the coming months, the Fed will have no choice but to delay or at least stagger its tightening as the last thing the Fed can afford to do is hike into another recession, which will then quickly be followed with even more easing.

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Archived Version

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:46

Reuters Fact Check : Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in an interview that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot offered ''very limited prot'... https://t.co/p3BCI68eGF

Thu Jan 13 22:37:04 +0000 2022

OcuOracle1984 : @ReutersFacts So why doesn't Pfizer issue a press release clarifying that? Why does it leave the work of 'mind read'... https://t.co/55BMGleFkw

Fri Jan 14 14:46:17 +0000 2022

rob oryl : @ReutersFacts So his comments weren't taken out of context at all. UK data shown here yesterday said 2 doses are 10'... https://t.co/i5nCtcaH6V

Fri Jan 14 14:45:46 +0000 2022

noula1965 : @ReutersFacts Lol

Fri Jan 14 14:44:51 +0000 2022

Nuggy : @ReutersFacts https://t.co/VOrBfkPRKC

Fri Jan 14 14:44:06 +0000 2022

seekthetruth : @ReutersFacts And the % of omicron cases is'.....

Fri Jan 14 14:43:16 +0000 2022

POTATUS Magnus : @ReutersFacts You can tell something is true by the fact checkers saying it's not true.

Fri Jan 14 14:42:46 +0000 2022

ΛЯSΣПΛL ЯΣPӨЯT : @ReutersFacts He said ''very limited protection, IF ANY''. Maybe if you're gonna pretend to be the arbiter of truth u'... https://t.co/vcZM1bzeTl

Fri Jan 14 14:42:13 +0000 2022

Turtle soup : @ReutersFacts This wasn't the complete quote. Why so disingenuous?

Fri Jan 14 14:41:09 +0000 2022

LT. DANS LEGS : @ReutersFacts " this message is brought to you by Pfizer "

Fri Jan 14 14:40:15 +0000 2022

Rs11 : @ReutersFacts And Omicron is 90+% of the cases in the US...soooo

Fri Jan 14 14:40:06 +0000 2022

Dankey46 : @ReutersFacts Bottom line is with 2 shots you still have limited protection against covid.

Fri Jan 14 14:38:57 +0000 2022

gham718 : @ReutersFacts What is this garbage? Your fact check is missing context. What percentage of cases are omicron?

Fri Jan 14 14:37:01 +0000 2022

jneira 🧠🌋'š (Satoshi is an alien) : @ReutersFacts https://t.co/RtC0iwqem7

Fri Jan 14 14:35:26 +0000 2022

Jason Ball : @ReutersFacts @pfizer has always had the publics health as a priority. ðŸ¤...ðŸ>>''‚¸ https://t.co/ujeU2BtFF8

Fri Jan 14 14:35:19 +0000 2022

Bonchie : @ReutersFacts He didn't say that. And the other variants are gone. So who cares?

Fri Jan 14 14:35:01 +0000 2022

Ontario Citizen, Second Class : @ReutersFacts Oh, then that changes everything.

Fri Jan 14 14:34:28 +0000 2022

RogansRoachClip : @ReutersFacts No one believes you. We all watched it. You have become a propaganda leader and regulator. GFYM

Fri Jan 14 14:34:03 +0000 2022

selflove888 : @ReutersFacts lol ya of course not

Fri Jan 14 14:32:51 +0000 2022

PeterW : @ReutersFacts Remember guys fact checkers are opinions

Fri Jan 14 14:32:13 +0000 2022

Kristoph ReinDa-Holz : @ReutersFacts https://t.co/EZfgRORiuI

Fri Jan 14 14:31:23 +0000 2022

Juliette Fayhe : @ReutersFacts "Reuters Fact Check" ðŸ‚🂠We need 4 jabs a year, every year until you are at you death day and time for Carousel.

Fri Jan 14 14:31:00 +0000 2022

Breezy : @ReutersFacts You,probs have what.. 10% of people that believe your fact checkers? Keep this bs up and its going to 0

Fri Jan 14 14:29:46 +0000 2022

The Sickest Generation : @ReutersFacts "limited protection, IF ANY. Take your "out of context" and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.

Fri Jan 14 14:29:18 +0000 2022

TJ Maxx : @ReutersFacts Just think, some people will read this tweet and say ''oh thank god, because I was about to start havi'... https://t.co/edKAvbxkIO

Fri Jan 14 14:29:08 +0000 2022

ATI nsider : @ReutersFacts Another Fake Fact Check Site designed to censor truth & protect the current false Covid Narrative tha'... https://t.co/I5wg80RBjk

Fri Jan 14 14:29:00 +0000 2022

StayTheCourse'''¸ðŸðŸ>>🇺🇸 : @ReutersFacts THE JIG IS UP

Fri Jan 14 14:27:58 +0000 2022

1219VoteRed2022 : @ReutersFacts Well when the words pour out of his mouth and I hear it with my own ears, I will tell your fact check'... https://t.co/Md63yhhZ4k

Fri Jan 14 14:27:28 +0000 2022

Annoyed Android : @ReutersFacts And the OSHA vaccine mandate was legal. Give up the fact checks guys. Nobody believes you anymore.

Fri Jan 14 14:25:06 +0000 2022

StayTheCourse'''¸ðŸðŸ>>🇺🇸 : @ReutersFacts Twitter using Reuters as a fact check tells us all we need to know since Reuters has ties to Pfizer.'... https://t.co/XnCjQomn1v

Fri Jan 14 14:24:55 +0000 2022

Jesºs : @ReutersFacts ðŸ'‰ðŸ'‰epic fail.

Fri Jan 14 14:24:26 +0000 2022

Carlton Hall : @ReutersFacts I prefer to get my information from independent scientists, not a CEO that has a responsibility to ma'... https://t.co/jZQOvd7kW6

Fri Jan 14 14:23:28 +0000 2022

myOpinionOn-it : @ReutersFacts But doesn't COVAXIN do this already....why don't we just approve it 🤷🏾''‚¸

Fri Jan 14 14:22:29 +0000 2022

Torment is Live : @ReutersFacts This is disinformation and propaganda

Fri Jan 14 14:21:31 +0000 2022

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Archived Version

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:39

The world of lab-grown meats is fast filling with all kinds of tasty bites, from burgers, to chicken breasts, to a series of increasingly complex cuts of steak. Expanding the scope of cultured beef are scientists from Japan's Osaka University, who have leveraged cutting-edge bioprinting techniques to produce the first lab-grown "beef" that resembles the marbled texture of the country's famed Wagyu cows.

From humble beginnings that resembled soggy pork back in 2009, to the classic steaks and rib-eyes we've seen pop up in the last few years, lab-grown meat has come along in leaps and bounds. The most sophisticated examples use bioprinting to "print" living cells, which are nurtured to grow and differentiate into different cell types, ultimately building up into the tissues of the desired animal.

The Osaka University team used two types of stem cells harvested from Wagyu cows as their starting point, bovine satellite cells and adipose-derived stem cells. These cells were incubated and coaxed into becoming the different cell types needed to form individual fibers for muscle, fat and blood vessels. These were then arranged into a 3D stack to resemble the high intramuscular fat content of Wagyu, better known as marbling, or sashi in Japan.

Schematic illustrates the fabrication technique of the world's first lab-grown Wagyu beefOsaka University

In a technique inspired by the production of bite-sized Japanese Kintaro-ame candy, these stacks were then sliced in a perpendicular direction to produce cuts of lab-grown beef. The process allows for a high degree of customization within the complex meat structure, in this case allowing the scientists to recreate the famous texture of Wagyu, but potentially opening the door to cultured meat with highly controllable amounts of fat.

''By improving this technology, it will be possible to not only reproduce complex meat structures, such as the beautiful sashi of Wagyu beef, but to also make subtle adjustments to the fat and muscle components,'' senior author Michiya Matsusaki says.

It certainly sounds promising, especially if it ends up tasting like the real thing and costing the environment, and the consumer, less. Time will tell.

The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Source: Osaka University via EurekAlert

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:16

In August 2007 there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth virus on a farm in Surrey. It was a few miles from the world's leading reference laboratory for identifying outbreaks of foot and mouth. Nobody thought this was a coincidence and sure enough a leaking pipe at the laboratory was soon found to be the source: a drainage contractor had worked at the lab and then at the farm.

In December 2019 there was an outbreak in China of a novel bat-borne SARS-like coronavirus a few miles from the world's leading laboratory for collecting, studying and manipulating novel bat-borne SARS-like coronaviruses. We were assured by leading scientists in China, the US and the UK that this really was a coincidence, even when the nine closest relatives of the new virus turned up in the freezer of the laboratory in question, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Now we know what those leading scientists really thought. Emails exchanged between them after a conference call on 1 February 2020, and only now forced into the public domain by Republicans in the US Congress, show that they not only thought the virus might have leaked from a lab, but they also went much further in private. They thought the genome sequence of the new virus showed a strong likelihood of having been deliberately manipulated or accidentally mutated in the lab. Yet later they drafted an article for a scientific journal arguing that the suggestion not just of a manipulated virus, but even of an accidental spill, could be confidently dismissed and was a crackpot conspiracy theory.

Jeremy Farrar '' who organised the call on 1 February with Patrick Vallance, Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci and a Who's Who of virology '' had already spilled a few of the beans in his book, Spike, published last year. He wrote that at the start of February 2020 he thought there was a 50 per cent chance the virus was engineered, while Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute was at 60-70 per cent and Eddie Holmes of Sydney University put it at 80 per cent. But some time after the call they all changed their mind. Why? They have never troubled us with an answer.

Now, however, we have an email from Farrar, sent on Sunday 2 February to Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, and Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It recounts the overnight thoughts of two other virologists Farrar had consulted, Robert Garry of Tulane University and Michael Farzan of the Scripps Research Institute, as well as Farrar's own thoughts. Even after the call, their concern centred on a feature of the SARS-CoV-2 genome that had never been seen in any other SARS-like coronavirus before: the insertion (compared with the closest related virus in bats) of a 12-letter genetic sequence that creates a thing called a furin cleavage site, which makes the virus much more infectious.

Farzan, said Farrar, 'has a hard time to explain that outside the lab' and Garry 'can't think of a plausible natural scenario'... can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature'. Farrar himself thought, on that Sunday, that 'a likely explanation could be something as simple as passage [of] SARS-like CoVs in tissue culture on human cell lines (under BSL-2) for an extended period of time, accidentally creating a virus that would be primed for rapid transmission between humans via gain of furin site (from tissue culture) and adaption to human ACE2 receptor via repeated passage'. Translated: repeatedly growing a virus in human cells in a lab will alter its genome through natural selection so it adapts to human hosts.

These are the very suspicions raised in April 2020 in a careful essay by Russian-Canadian biotech entrepreneur Yuri Deigin, which was dismissed at the time by Garry and the others as nonsense. In a very different line from the one they expressed in private, they argued, in the influential paper that Andersen, Garry and Holmes co-authored with two other virologists, that furin-cleavage-site insertions could arise naturally and one would soon be found in a virus in a wild bat.

Two years later, no such natural furin-cleavage-site insertion has yet turned up in the many wild SARS-like viruses found since then. But what has turned up is a grant proposal put to the US's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018 to fund experiments that would deliberately insert novel furin cleavage sites into novel SARS-like coronaviruses to help them grow in the lab. And who was party to that proposal? Why, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Indeed, it had already done a similar experiment with the spike protein of a MERS-like virus a few years before. It's not quite a smoking gun, because the proposal was turned down, but it's an open secret in science that you sometimes put things into grant proposals that you have already started doing, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences was funding most of the work in the Wuhan Institute of Virology anyway.

The emails unveiled this week reveal no good scientific reason at all for why these leading virologists changed their minds and became deniers rather than believers in even the remote possibility of a lab leak, all in just a few days in February 2020. No new data, no new arguments. But they do very clearly reveal a blatant political reason for the volte-face. Speculating about a lab leak, said Ron Fouchier, a Dutch researcher, might 'do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular'. Francis Collins was pithier, worrying about 'doing great potential harm to science and international harmony'. Contradicting Donald Trump, protecting science's reputation at all costs and keeping in with those who dole out large grants are pretty strong incentives to change one's mind.

In August 2020 Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry were among the lead investigators to receive $8.9million to study emerging infectious diseases, in a grant from Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of Francis Collins's National Institutes of Health.

Matt Ridley is co-author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, with Alina Chan.

Picture by: Getty.

To enquire about republishing spiked's content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:10

Covid passes are to be abandoned this month after Sajid Javid effectively killed off the policy.

The health secretary has concluded that Covid-19 certification is no longer needed as the Omicron wave eases. He told MPs that he shared their ''instinctive discomfort'' at the policy.

With ministers keen to lift guidance on working from home when plan B measures are reviewed on January 26, it is increasingly likely that compulsory masks in enclosed spaces will be the only order remaining next month, if restrictions are not dropped entirely.

Javid told MPs yesterday there were ''encouraging signs that infections'' were falling in parts of the country and that the NHS was coping.

He acknowledged that hospitals remained under ''significant pressure'' and ''we must proceed with

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 13:13

John Schreiber : Keep hearing of train burglaries in LA on the scanner so went to #LincolnHeights to see it all. And'... there's looted'... https://t.co/pqYYsbEWjW

Thu Jan 13 23:30:44 +0000 2022

BCS : @johnschreiber @UPS @CBSLA I thought @CAgovernor was some sort of environmentally freiendly state. This place looks'... https://t.co/guFd3aeLz8

Fri Jan 14 13:12:51 +0000 2022

JSR : @johnschreiber @UPS @CBSLA Someday there will be a massive apocalyptical project to rebuild and clean up large citi'... https://t.co/fH2BPj7Mm8

Fri Jan 14 13:11:32 +0000 2022

shesgotfire : @johnschreiber @UPS @CBSLA @UPS

Fri Jan 14 13:11:27 +0000 2022

Panda Pants : @johnschreiber @UPS @CBSLA Bears. Put bears in each container and it will fix everything. If not bears then maybe lions or jaguars.

Fri Jan 14 13:11:18 +0000 2022

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 12:51

Published January 13, 2022

Andrew stepped back from his royal duties in 2019News of Prince Andrew being stripped of his titles allegedly came to him straight from the Queen herself, according to a new report.

On Thursday, it was announced that as he continues to face scrutiny over his alleged sexual assault of Virginia Roberts Giuffre when she was 17, his military affiliations and royal patronages are being returned to Queen Elizabeth II.

In addition, a royal source told Fox News Digital that Andrew will no longer use his HRH title '-- "His Royal Highness" '-- in any official capacity, and now a new report suggests it was his own mother who brought down the hammer.

The New York Post reports that Andrew visited Windsor Palace on Thursday morning, where Queen Elizabeth told him that all his remaining military titles and royal patronages were to be revoked.

PRINCE ANDREW STRIPPED OF MILITARY, ROYAL TITLES AMID SEXUAL ASSAULT CASE

Prince Andrew was reportedly told that he would be stripped of his titles by the Queen herself. (Getty Images)

PRINCE ANDREW SHOULD DROP HIS HRH TITLE AMID SEX ABUSE LAWSUIT, SOURCE SAYS: 'HE'S EMBROILED IN THIS MESS'

Additionally, he was reportedly told by the Queen that he'd have to face his upcoming lawsuit as a private citizen. Royal sources told the outlet that it's believed Prince Charles and Prince William '-- both future monarchs '-- discussed the issue with the Palace.

Andrew will no longer use his HRH title in any official capacity, a royal source told Fox News Digital. (Steve Parsons/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Andrew is far from the first royal to stop using an HRH title, even in recent years, as Prince Harry, his wife Meghan Markle and his mother Princess Diana all stopped using theirs, as did Andrew's ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

"The difference between the statement that the Queen made about Harry and Meghan and Andrew could not be more telling," a royal source told the Post.

PRINCE ANDREW'S EFFORTS TO DISMISS SEX ASSAULT LAWSUIT BY LONGTIME JEFFREY EPSTEIN ACCUSER REJECTED

When Harry and Markle left their posts, Elizabeth's statement said she was "saddened" by their leaving, but that they "remain much loved members of the family."

Virginia Giuffre has long alleged that Prince Andrew sexually assaulted her when she was just 17. (Getty Images)

Her statement regarding Andrew released on Thursday, on the other hand, was more in line with her traditionally stoic attitude.

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"With The Queen's approval and agreement, The Duke of York's military affiliations and Royal patronages have been returned to The Queen," the statement said. "The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties."

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"There was nothing from the Queen about her sadness or dismay, nothing emotional at all," the royal source pointed out. "It was so cutting."

On Wednesday, a judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the British prince by the American woman who said he sexually abused her when she was 17. Andrew has long denied Giuffre's allegations.

Fox News' Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 12:49

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson attends the weekly Prime Minister's Questions at the parliament in London, Britain, January 12, 2022. UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor/Handout via REUTERS

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comPM's staff partied on night before Philip's funeralJohnson facing gravest crisis of premiershipStaff brought alcohol in suitcase, broke a swingDowning Street apologisesLONDON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's office apologised to Queen Elizabeth on Friday after it emerged that staff had partied late into the night in Downing Street on the eve of Prince Philip's funeral, at a time when mixing indoors was banned.

Johnson is facing the gravest crisis of his premiership after almost daily revelations about a series of social gatherings during COVID-19 lockdowns, some held when ordinary people could not bid farewell in person to dying relatives.

After building a political career out of flouting accepted norms, Johnson is now under growing pressure from some of his own lawmakers to quit. Opponents say he is unfit to rule and has misled parliament by denying COVID-19 guidance was breached.

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comIn an extraordinary twist to a saga that has been widely lampooned by comedians and cartoon artists, the Daily Telegraph said drinks parties were held inside Downing Street on April 16, 2021, the day before Prince Philip's funeral.

"It is deeply regrettable this took place at a time of national mourning and No. 10 (Downing Street) has apologised to the Palace," Johnson's spokesman told reporters.

Johnson was at his Chequers country residence that day and was not invited to any gathering, his spokesman said.

Such was the revelry in Downing Street, the Telegraph said, that staff went to a nearby supermarket to buy a suitcase of alcohol, spilled wine on carpets, and a swing used by the prime minister's young son was broken.

The next day, Queen Elizabeth bade farewell to Prince Philip, her husband of 73 years, following his death aged 99.

Dressed in black and in a white trimmed black face mask, the 95-year-old Elizabeth cut a poignant figure as she sat alone, in strict compliance with coronavirus rules, during the funeral service for Philip at Windsor Castle.

'LEAVE THE STAGE'

Opponents have called for Johnson, 57, to resign, casting him as a charlatan who demanded the British people follow some of the most onerous rules in peacetime history while his own staff partied at the heart of the British state.

A small but growing number in his own Conservative Party have echoed those calls, fearing it will do lasting damage to its electoral prospects.

"Sadly, the Prime Minister's position has become untenable," said Conservative lawmaker Andrew Bridgen, a former Johnson supporter. "The time is right to leave the stage."

Johnson has given a variety of explanations of the parties, ranging from denials that any rules were broken to expressing understanding for the public anger at apparent hypocrisy at the heart of the British state.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, seen as a possible successor, said "real mistakes" were made.

"We need to look at the overall position we're in as a country, the fact that he (Johnson) has delivered Brexit, that we are recovering from COVID... He has apologised."

"I think we now need to move on."

To trigger a leadership challenge, 54 of the 360 Conservative members of parliament must write letters of no confidence to the chairman of the party's "1922 Committee".

The Telegraph said as many as 30 such letters had been submitted.

Johnson faces a tough year ahead: beyond COVID, inflation is soaring, energy bills are spiking, taxation will rise in April and his party faces local elections in May.

One of the April 2021 parties was a leaving event for James Slack, a former director of communications at Downing Street, who on Friday apologised "for the anger and hurt caused".

Slack, now deputy editor of the tabloid Sun newspaper, said in a statement to PA Media that the gathering "should not have happened at the time that it did".

British police said on Thursday they would not investigate gatherings held in Johnson's residence during a coronavirus lockdown unless an internal government inquiry finds evidence of potential criminal offences. read more

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Michael Holden, Gareth Jones and Hugh Lawson

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:21

Tweet at your favorite celebrities and support us on Thunderclap ?

James Franco

He's sexy. He's artsy. Let's make him salami

The Franco salami must be smoky, sexy, and smooth. Franco's meat will pair with lean, strong venison. Sharp Tellicherry peppercorns and caramelized onions provide Franco's underlying flavors, complemented by a charming hint of lavender. The Franco salami's taste will be arrogant, distinctive, and completely undeniable.

Tweet at James Franco and help make the Franco Salami real

Jennifer Lawrence

A different type of Hunger Game

The JLaw salami will be complemented by a mixture of rabbit and pork. A charming and confident flavor profile, the JLaw salami is coarse ground in a rustic style, smoothed with notes of honey, and spiced with orange zest and ginger. Always surprising, this salami will never fail to entertain.

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Kanye West

Always push the boundaries in taste

The Kanye Salami will pull no punches: heavy, and boldly flavored, pure Kanye West meat will blend with rich, coarse-ground pork. Hungarian paprika and worcestershire give Kanye an underlying smokiness, spiced up with hints of jalapeno. The Kanye Salami is best paired with strong straight bourbon.

Tweet at Kanye West and help make the Kanye salami real

Ellen DeGeneres

Please welcome the Ellen Salami

As a salami, we see Ellen Salami composition blended with ostrich. Black pepper and garlic with a playful kick of mustard give the Ellen salami a highly approachable and well-rounded flavor. A hint of brandy and shallots will finish off the Ellen salami in exquisite fashion.

Tweet at Ellen DeGeneresand help make the Ellen Salami real

Who else do you want to eat? Tweet at them with #EatCelebrityMeat

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OTTAWA -- The House of Commons ethics committee is calling on the health minister to explain the Public Health Agency of Canada's collection of data from millions of mobile phones to understand travel patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Opposition MPs on the committee fear the pandemic is being used to undermine the privacy of Canadians who were not aware that a government agency has been collecting mobile-phone data.

During an emergency meeting Thursday, the committee of MPs passed a motion asking Jean-Yves Duclos and Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, to appear before it to answer questions on the policy.

Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox The House is still on its winter break but four opposition MPs on the committee asked for an emergency session after the Public Health Agency published a notice indicating it plans to extend the data-collection practice.

Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and NDP MPs on the committee have raised concerns about the privacy implications of the policy.

In December, the Public Health Agency issued a new request for proposals to track countrywide cell tower-based location data between Jan. 1, 2019 and May 31, 2023.

The notice says the data must be accurate, accessible and timely, as well as ensuring privacy and transparency. It must be stripped of all identifying information.

The request for proposals had been due to end before MPs returned to Parliament after their winter break but has now been extended until Feb. 4, said John Brassard, Conservative ethics spokesman and a member of the committee.

Brassard has said the collection of data by the Public Health Agency raises numerous "red flags" about privacy.

Addressing the committee on Thursday, he said the Public Health Agency had been "collecting data without the knowledge of Canadians, effectively doing it in secret."

"We need to know what security measures were in place to protect the privacy rights of Canadians," he said.

The Public Health Agency said in a statement that it had informed the privacy commissioner about the process, and has been advised by its own privacy and ethics experts too.

"Minister Duclos has also been in communication with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and has underlined PHAC's ongoing commitment to protecting and preserving the privacy of citizens and people in Canada while ensuring that Canada has the data needed to understand and inform our ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic," the statement said.

Greg Fergus, a Liberal member of the privacy committee, said that all members of the committee agree it is "important to protect Canadians' privacy rights."

But he said that the information was aggregate data which had been "depersonalized so there is no information that can identify individuals."

"It is unfair to say that we are tracking Canadians. That is not at all the case," Fergus told the committee. "When we request depersonalized data that cannot identify a person it is simply data."

The Public Health Agency said that "by analyzing population movement data, we can better understand the public's responsiveness to public-health directives."

It said that in December 2020, it established a "sole-source contract" with a telecom operator which expired in October 2021.

"PHAC is now launching a request for proposal process as a means to continue the collection of this data through an open and transparent process," it said in a statement.

Brassard last week wrote to the privacy commissioner, Daniel Therrien, to ask him to investigate the matter.

In a statement, the commissioner's office said it had not opened a formal investigation. But it said, after receiving complaints alleging violations of privacy, it would "turn our attention to the means chosen to deidentify the data mobility information."

In 2020, the commissioner's office published a document about privacy and initiatives in response to COVID-19 which cautioned institutions to be aware of the risk of reidentifying anonymized information.

The government did not ask the commissioner for specific advice about whether there were "adequate safeguards against reidentification," it said.

"The government relied on other experts to that end, which is their prerogative," the commissioner's office said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 13, 2022.

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Sun, 16 Jan 2022 15:15

CNN : Massachusetts schools use dogs to sniff out Covid-19 https://t.co/BJr7wVEddW https://t.co/rnZjquCDo1

Thu Jan 13 09:31:05 +0000 2022

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Rumble '-- Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts. (1.15.22) (There is much more in the 48 min interview.)

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here: https://usawatchdog.com/donations/

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The Post Millennial : .@KariLake: "When I am your governor, there will be no mandates and no lockdowns. Actually, let me, let me revise t'... https://t.co/EbnffDJeFC

Sun Jan 16 03:04:05 +0000 2022

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Moira : @TPostMillennial @KariLake Stop lying about Dr Fauci. Stop threatening violence and inciting hate.

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Dr Jordan B Peterson : "Scientists" https://t.co/l8fiMwc2su

Sat Jan 15 05:30:41 +0000 2022

T : @jordanbpeterson The misinformation does have to stop https://t.co/6Vs1vQSiMb

Sat Jan 15 14:20:15 +0000 2022

Joe Snowden : @jordanbpeterson Okay, so spotify does have a COVID misinformation policy, but who at spotify is qualified to deter'... https://t.co/bCzTVU9YBv

Sat Jan 15 14:20:12 +0000 2022

Gramps Buys Houses : @jordanbpeterson Clowns

Sat Jan 15 14:17:53 +0000 2022

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Fri, 14 Jan 2022 15:05

Biden's no good, very bad day just got a whole lot worse.

After the Supreme Court struck down his unconstitutional vaccine mandate, Biden suffered yet another loss.

It looks like the Democrats will NOT pass a bill that makes it easier for voter fraud to happen.

The voting legislation will not pass.

And Biden was seething after his meeting with Democrat leaders.

In fact, he approached the media and began shouting!

He also admitted that it is unlikely that he can get his agenda to pass.

Specifically, Biden said:

I don't know whether we can get this done'...We missed this time and the state legislative bodies continue to change the law, not as to who can vote, but who gets to count the vote, count the vote, count the vote!

Watch his meltdown below:

BIDEN AFTER MEETING WITH DEMS ON 'VOTING RIGHTS' BILL:

''I don't know whether we can get this done'...We missed this time and the state legislative bodies continue to change the law, not as to who can vote, but who gets to count the vote, count the vote, count the vote!" pic.twitter.com/o7gnJuaR0b

'-- Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 13, 2022

Schumer and Biden talk a lot about "voting rights," but they never describe what the bill actually does.

That's because the bill gives taxpayer funding to campaigns, mandates ballot harvesting, and abolishes voter-ID laws.

This isn't voting rights. It's an election takeover.

'-- Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) January 13, 2022

BREAKING: After President Joe Biden's speech on voting rights Sen. Kyrsten Sinema confirms she is not changing the filibuster. No chance. She is a hero as is Sen. Joe Manchin.

'-- Carmine Sabia (@CarmineSabia) January 13, 2022

Democrats are in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Yet'... they can't even pass any of these bills.

Why?

Because Biden is so historically unpopular that Democrats do not want to be associated with him!

The New Republic confirms:

Congressional Democrats have pressed ahead with their efforts to pass voting rights legislation this week, but their goals went from merely quixotic to almost fantastical on Thursday as two Democratic senators reiterated their opposition to weakening the filibuster despite a personal appeal from President Joe Biden in a visit to the Capitol.

The House voted in the morning to send the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to the Senate, but by lunchtime it was apparent that both measures would be doomed to fail, as Senator Kyrsten Sinema gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor explaining her unwillingness to change Senate rules to allow the legislation to pass. Sinema argued that, while she supported these bills and was concerned about the spate of measures being considered in Republican-led states that restrict voting rights and make it easier for partisan actors to subvert elections, she believed that weakening the filibuster would exacerbate political discord.

''These bills help treat the symptoms of the disease, but they do not fully address the disease itself,'' Sinema said in a speech that was attended by multiple Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who later praised the Arizona Democrat for her stance on the filibuster. ''And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country.''

Sinema also slammed Democrats for not doing enough in her view to court Republican support for their legislation, and called the debate over a rules change to the filibuster ''poor substitute for what I believe could have and should have been a thoughtful public debate at any time over the last year.'' Republicans had repeatedly blocked debate of voting rights legislation this year; Democrats also engaged in a months-long effort led by Senator Joe Manchin to get Republicans on board with the Freedom to Vote Act.

Sinema's words were a rebuke to Biden, who delivered a speech in Atlanta on Tuesday urging the Senate to change Senate rules to allow passage of the two bills. She also delivered her remarks just moments before Biden attended a meeting of Senate Democrats to urge them to take necessary steps to approve voting rights legislation.

Say what you want about President Trump, but even with the Deep State against him, he was a highly effective president.

He had the loyalty of the most important members of the Republican party.

Why?

Because he actually cared about America and fought for all of us!

Compare that to Biden, who gets more unpopular by the day.

First, President Biden said if you don't vote for him, you're not black. Then, he said if you question the government, you're a domestic terrorist. Now, if you disagree with his voting law, you are racist.

I thought he was supposed to bring people together?

'-- Herschel Walker (@HerschelWalker) January 13, 2022

Another brutal day for Joe Biden: on the same day his own political party rejects his voting rights bill '-- and the requisite change in the filibuster '-- the Supreme Court shoots down his vaccine mandate as an unconstitutional overreach. Total beat downs in every direction.

'-- Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 13, 2022

No American citizen has lost their 'voting rights.'

Biden's 'Voting Rights' speech in Georgia is a flat out lie.

'-- Kambree (@KamVTV) January 12, 2022

This has been a truly brutal day for Biden.

Biden claimed he would be a unifier.

He claimed he would be a return to normalcy.

Instead, DC is more gridlocked than ever before'... and that's even with a Democrat majority!

He must truly be unpopular within his own party.

The USA Today confirms:

Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin doubled down on their opposition to changing the Senate's filibuster Thursday, likely foiling President Joe Biden's efforts to pass a voting rights bill.

The Arizona moderate's position wasn't different than other times she defended the filibuster, a legislative hurdle that requires 60 votes to start debate on a bill. But her surprise speech on the Senate floor came just before Biden was expected to meet with Democrats on Capitol Hill in an effort to rally his party around changing the Senate's rules to bypass GOP opposition to the voting rights legislation.

''Eliminating the 60-vote threshold will simply guarantee that we lose a critical tool that we need to safeguard our democracy from threats in the years to come,'' Sinema said.

Sinema said she supports the two pieces of voting rights legislation championed by civil rights advocates but wants more collaboration between Democrats and Republicans to protect voting rights.

''We need a sustained robust effort to defend American democracy, an effort on the part of Democrats, Republicans, independents and all Americans and communities across this country,'' she said.

However, Sinema warned the bills are not enough to counteract state laws that restrict voting.

''These bills help treat the symptoms of the disease, but they do not fully address the disease itself,'' Sinema said. ''And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country.''

This is all excellent news as President Trump plans his comeback.

I don't know about you, but 2024 can't come soon enough.

We need President Trump '' and we need him NOW!

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Tom Elliott : CNN guest @jessicamalaty calls on Spotify to place ''warnings" around @joerogan's podcast, alerting listeners that h'... https://t.co/s3IPswNOSd

Thu Jan 13 21:56:54 +0000 2022

Thamir : @tomselliott @jessicamalaty @joerogan Freespeech !!!!

Fri Jan 14 14:34:42 +0000 2022

Clock End bellend : @tomselliott @jessicamalaty @joerogan I really wish they still taught civics in school.

Fri Jan 14 14:34:30 +0000 2022

cristianvaldez : @tomselliott @jessicamalaty @joerogan @CNNEE is lame

Fri Jan 14 14:34:18 +0000 2022

D.R. : @tomselliott @jessicamalaty @joerogan Look at this lady's Twitter page. I get more traffic than her. CNN is just pi'... https://t.co/puThBqb6dH

Fri Jan 14 14:34:08 +0000 2022

singularity05 : @tomselliott @jessicamalaty @joerogan Should someone muzzle cnn? It's hard to believe a ''news'' organization like CN'... https://t.co/HdNQLkUyqW

Fri Jan 14 14:32:41 +0000 2022

Smurphy : @tomselliott @jessicamalaty @joerogan Down with Freedom of Speech! Down with judging intellectual ideas on there me'... https://t.co/EaW0gVnTz5

Fri Jan 14 14:31:43 +0000 2022

PPW Please : @tomselliott @jessicamalaty @joerogan Please tell us the misinformation Rogan has spread. We'll wait. Advice is opinion.

Fri Jan 14 14:30:54 +0000 2022

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