1457: MAGATARD

he congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by then-President Donald Trump's supporters enters a new phase next week, kicking off a series of public hearings with a prime-time presentation aimed at focusing attention on that day's violence.

The House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the attacks announced on Thursday that the first hearings will be held on June 9 starting at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT June 10). Additional hearings are set for June 13, 15, 16, 21 and June 23, according to media reports.

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This was a strange case. The fix was in.

The reason he was acquitted was because although he lied to the FBI agents who asked him the questions, representing himself as being just a concerned citizen and did not disclose that he was working for Hillary, it was well known by the agent's superiors at the FBI that he worked for Hillary.

Thus, the requirement that the lie be 'material' to the investigation was not met because the court treats 'the FBI' as the larger organization including not just the questioning FBI agents but also their superiors. So .. the fact that 'the FBI' knew he worked for Hillary, could not have been material any more than if he told them the sky was pink because they (the FBI) already knew it was not.

This is a bogus argument given that they convicted Michael Flynn of lying when the FBI already knew the contents of the phone call that he was accused of lying about.

There was one other fuck up by Durham. He alleged but never proved that Sussman billed Hillary for the time of the FBI meeting. The records were that he billed Hillary for three hours during that day without detail and he also billed a general firm account for the time of the FBI meeting without attribution to a particular client. And there were no notes as to what the meeting was about. That should have been a red flag. Attorney billing always has those details.

I have a son who loves Sonic the Hedgehog. So I took him on a mom- son movie day to see the new one. First of all, Sonic is not a Disney property (one of the very few left in the world!). Secondly, I found most of the movie to be remarkably un-woke, and I was pretty surprised by that. I could go into a deeper analysis of the movie, but I am focusing on what you mentioned on the show for now. So, Jim Carrey (who portrays the character who said the line) is EXTREMELY woke, as I’m sure you know. He also has had a reputation in the past of improvising some of his lines in movies. He even improvised much of the same character from the first movie of this series: https://www.theilluminerdi.com/2020/02/14/sonic-the-hedgehog-jim-carrey/

I’d be very surprised if that line about “good people on both sides” was in the script. I’m guessing it is very possible that Jim Carrey added that in himself and everyone liked it and they kept it.

I did a little further research and watched some interviews with writing staff and Jim Carrey himself and this is absolutely what happened. They actually brought the writers back in after filming started so they could use his improvised ideas and work them into the script.

Overall, this was one of the better movies for kids I have seen lately. Most of the Disney stuff these days is crap, and after hearing all these clips about how they want to push their agenda on kids, I am not as interested in giving them my movie anymore. Plus their content is just not very good.

The Sonic movies are distributed by Paramount.

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,

Dame Lisa, Straddler of Universes

The pace of the pivots can feel almost frenetic. One Ottawa-based entrepreneur, worried the world was passing him by, surprised his employees on a company Zoom call by saying he was pivoting the entire company into Web3. “I said, ‘Guys, this is the future and this is where everything is going,’” he said. “‘If we miss this boat, I don't think we can ever get back on.’” (The company, which had been a print-on-demand platform, now helps creators build 3D NFTs to sell to fans in the metaverse.)

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1. Geopolitical Realignments

2. NATO Challenges

3. China

4. Indo-Pacific Realignment

5. Sino-US Tech Competition

6. Russia

7. Continuity of Government and the Economy

8. Disruption of the Global Financial System

9. Disinformation

10. Energy Security and Sustainability

11. Post Pandemic Health

12. Fragmentation of Democratic Societies

13. Trade and Deglobalisation

14. Ukraine

ITM gents,

I saw Biden's PR team on Twitter talking up his recent draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), and I wanted to send you both a follow-up from my original email because the draining is accelerating at a wild rate.

Attached is the SPR inventory graph as of the end of May, with an additional net monthly change in SPR graphed at the bottom. I've attached Biden's tweet as well.

The SPR is down to 527m barrels now, which is -7.2% from 568 million barrels since my last email on March 31st. All while the price of WTI crude, natural gas, and RBOB gasoline are at or near all-time-highs and higher since the announcement in late March. The SPR is down to 30+ year lows, and the pace at which it is being drained is the fastest since 1992 (as far back as Bloomberg data will go).

All while Biden's PR team is on Twitter boasting this move as one of his efforts to fend off "Putin's Price Hike". Malarkey...

Anyways, we're all gonna die!

Producer Nick

Is it time for the U.S. government to impose price controls? History shows that past attempts to rein in rampant inflation with such measures have sometimes worked—when there’s a national will to see them succeed.

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Pay attention to the phone shots in this commercial. I’ve seen it twice now on CBS while watching Face The Nation.

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Novavax stock lost a quarter of its value Friday after a Food and Drug Administration brief ahead of its COVID-19 vaccine’s review next week raised concerns.

“Data from passive surveillance during post-authorization use in other countries indicate a higher-than-expected rate of myocarditis and pericarditis associated with the vaccine,” the briefing document noted.

“However, interpretation of these passive surveillance data is not straightforward, and further evaluation is need to inform the risk associated with the vaccine, and their outcomes, as additional data emerge over time.”

The document was supportive of the Novavax vaccine’s effectiveness, and it is still expected to be approved.

An independent advisory committee is expected to make its recommendation on emergency use authorization for the Novavax vaccine at a meeting on June 7. The committee includes independent physicians and scientists who make recommendations to the FDA, which most often follows those recommendations.

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Most of the 21 confirmed U.S. cases identified as men who have sex with men who had recently traveled abroad

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Kerrygold, the #2 sold butter in the U.S, claims to be from cows that are “grass-fed,” which is a healthier choice.

In July of 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Kerrygold for label fraud because their cows are fed soy, corn and genetically modified grains instead of grass. The corporate entities that operate as Kerrygold were sued in California federal court. The 37-page complaint claimed the company misled consumers by representing that their butter products are made with “milk from grass-fed cows”; “made with milk from grass-fed cows not treated with rBST or other growth hormones”; “All Natural”; and “100% Pure and Natural.” The complaint argued that the cows from which Kerrygold products are derived are fed soy, corn and other grains, including grains that are genetically modified, and are thus not grass-fed as the Kerrygold's label claims.

According to the lawsuit, Kerrygold feeds its cows genetically modified and other grains instead of non-grain and non-GMO alternatives as a “cost-saving measure.” Further, the suit says Kerrygold’s position of its butter as coming from grass-fed cows is a move that preys on consumers’ preferences for healthier, higher-quality foods.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:09

DonateYou can make a donation to Americans for Financial Reform by mail or online. (To make a tax-deductible donation, please donate to our Education Fund).

To make a donation electronically:If you are a user of Act Blue, please go here.

To make a donation by mail:Write a check payable to: Americans for Financial Reform

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:09

"Crypto Bosses Flex Political Muscle With 5,200% Surge in US Giving" - Bloomberg "Tech experts urge Washington to resist crypto industry's influence" - Financial Times "Crypto Has a New Foe in Washington: Techies" - Barron's "Tech experts urge Congress to resist crypto lobbying" - New York Times "Technologists draft an open letter to US lawmakers urging them to responsibly legislate crypto industry" - Web3 Is Going Great Join the discussion on Hacker News or at Twitter. If you're a concerned computer scientist, technologist or developer and think that the status quo on crypto assets is not sustainable, please join the growing voice in our community that stands for responsible financial innovation by signing the letter. Deadline is June 10, 2022.

The Honorable Charles E. Schumer Majority Leader U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 The Honorable Mitch McConnell Minority Leader U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Kevin McCarthy Minority Leader U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Debbie Stabenow Chairwoman Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable John Boozman Ranking Member Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Sherrod Brown Chairman Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Patrick J. Toomey Ranking Member Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 2051 The Honorable Ron Wyden Chairman Senate Committee on Finance U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Mike Crapo Ranking Member Senate Committee on Finance U.S. Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Maxine Waters Chairwoman House Financial Services Committee U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Patrick McHenry Ranking Member House Financial Services Committee U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear U.S. Congressional Leadership, Committee Chairs and Ranking Members,

We are 26 computer scientists, software engineers, and technologists who have spent decades working in these fields producing innovative and effective products for a variety of applications in the fields of database technology, open-source software, cryptography, and financial technology applications.

Today, we write to you urging you to take a critical, skeptical approach toward industry claims that crypto-assets (sometimes called cryptocurrencies, crypto tokens, or web3) are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good. We urge you to resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters to create a regulatory safe haven for these risky, flawed, and unproven digital financial instruments and to instead take an approach that protects the public interest and ensures technology is deployed in genuine service to the needs of ordinary citizens.

We strongly disagree with the narrative '-- peddled by those with a financial stake in the crypto-asset industry '-- that these technologies represent a positive financial innovation and are in any way suited to solving the financial problems facing ordinary Americans.

Not all innovation is unqualifiedly good; not everything that we can build should be built. The history of technology is full of dead ends, false starts, and wrong turns. Append-only digital ledgers are not a new innovation. They have been known and used since 1980 for rather limited functions.

As software engineers and technologists with deep expertise in our fields, we dispute the claims made in recent years about the novelty and potential of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design. Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither.

By its very design, blockchain technology, specifically so-called "public blockchains", are poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit. From its inception, this technology has been a solution in search of a problem and has now latched onto concepts such as financial inclusion and data transparency to justify its existence, despite far better solutions already in use. After more than thirteen years of development, it has severe limitations and design flaws that preclude almost all applications that deal with public customer data and regulated financial transactions and are not an improvement on existing non-blockchain solutions.

Finally, blockchain technologies facilitate few, if any, real-economy uses. On the other hand, the underlying crypto-assets have been the vehicle for unsound and highly volatile speculative investment schemes that are being actively promoted to retail investors who may be unable to understand their nature and risk. Other significant externalities include threats to national security through money laundering and ransomware attacks, financial stability risks from high price volatility, speculation and susceptibility to run risk, massive climate emissions from the proof-of-work technology utilized by some of the most widely traded crypto-assets, and investor risk from large scale scams and other criminal financial activity.

We implore you to take a truly responsible approach to technological innovation and ensure that individuals in the US and elsewhere are not left vulnerable to predatory finance, fraud, and systemic economic risks in the name of technological potential which does not exist.

The catastrophes and externalities related to blockchain technologies and crypto-asset investments are neither isolated nor are they growing pains of a nascent technology. They are the inevitable outcomes of a technology that is not built for purpose and will remain forever unsuitable as a foundation for large-scale economic activity.

Given these vast externalities, together with the-at best still-ambiguous and at worst non-existent-uses of blockchain, we recommend that the Committee look beyond the hype and bluster of the crypto industry and understand not only its inherent flaws and extraordinary defects but also the litany of technological fallacies it is built upon.

We need to act now to protect investors and the global financial marketplace from the severe risks posed by crypto-assets and must not be distracted by technical obfuscations which mask an abject lack of technological utility. We thank you for your leadership on financial technology and regulation and urge you to consider our objective and independent expert judgments to guide your legislative priorities, which we remain happy to discuss anytime.

Signatories Affiliations are provided for identification purposes only. This letter expresses the views of the individual signatories, and should not be taken to be an official position of the institutions. Sal Bayat Tim Bray Grady Booch ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, IBM Fellow Brennan Carley Proton Advisors Cory Doctorow Stephen Diehl David Gerard J¼rgen Geuter Alan Graham OCL Geoffrey Huntley Miguel de Icaza Patrick McConnell Macquarie University Luke Plant Django Software Foundation Rufus Pollock Open Knowledge Foundation Matt Ranger Jorge Stolfi University of Campinas Steve Song Network Startup Resource Center Bruce Schneier Dave Troy 410 Labs Inc. Darren W. Tseng Å tefan Urbnek Open Knowledge Foundation Nicholas Weaver International Computer Science Institute Adam Wespiser SimSpace Corporation Molly White Jamie Zawinski Netscape Developer View or download a PDF of the letter here.

If you're a concerned computer scientist, technologist or developer and think that the status quo on crypto assets is not sustainable, please join the growing voice in our community that stands for responsible financial innovation. Deadline June 10, 2022.

Press Inquiries For more information on this campaign contact Mark Hays at Americans for Financial Reform or Theo Cox at LifeItself Labs. External Writing and Research The resources offered here were chosen by the authors of this letter as useful reference material only. The inclusion of a paper and/or author in this list does not constitute an endorsement of this letter of our views. Allen, Hilary J. 2022. 'DeFi: Shadow Banking 2.0?' SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4038788.

Allen, Hilary. 2022. Driverless Finance. Oxford University Press.

Chancellor, Edward. 1999. 'Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation'.

Dhawan, Anirudh, and Tālis J PutniņÅ. 2020. 'A New Wolf in Town? Pump-and-Dump Manipulation in Cryptocurrency Markets'. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3670714.

Dywer, Gerald P. 1996. 'Wildcat Banking, Banking Panics, and Free Banking in the United States', 20.

Chipolina, Scott. 2022. 'The Week That Shook Crypto'. Financial Times, 13 May 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/3e0a65bb-a953-433a-819e-ff29de847336.

Foley, Sean, Jonathan R Karlsen, and Tālis J PutniņÅ. 2019. 'Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies?' The Review of Financial Studies 32 (5): 1798-1853.

Gorton, Gary B., and Jeffery Zhang. 2021. 'Taming Wildcat Stablecoins'. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3888752.

Hamrick, JT, Farhang Rouhi, Arghya Mukherjee, Amir Feder, Neil Gandal, Tyler Moore, and Marie Vasek. 2018. 'An Examination of the Cryptocurrency Pump and Dump Ecosystem'. http://ssrn.com/paper=3303365.

Hanley, Brian P. 2018. 'The False Premises and Promises of Bitcoin'. ArXiv:1312.2048 [Cs, q-Fin], July. http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2048.

Hockett, Robert C. 2019. 'Money's Past Is Fintech's Future: Wildcat Crypto, the Digital Dollar, and Citizen Central Banking'.

Kindleberger, Charles P, Panics Manias, and A Crashes. 1996. 'History of Financial Crises'. Wiley, New York.

Kelly, Jemima. 2021. 'Why We Shouldn't Listen to Crypto "Experts"'. Financial Times, 23 June 2021. https://www.ft.com/content/26283f09-c3df-4c7e-814c-65083b063d8a.

Mehrotra, Kartikay. 2020. 'UCSF Hack Shows Evolving Risks of Ransomware in the Covid Era'. Bloomberg.Com. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-08-19/ucsf-hack-shows-evolving-risks-of-ransomware-in-the-covid-era.

Mims, Christopher. 2022. 'NFTs, Cryptocurrencies and Web3 Are Multilevel Marketing Schemes for a New Generation - WSJ'. Wall Street Journal. 19 February 2022. https://www.wsj.com/articles/nfts-cryptocurrencies-and-web3-are-multilevel-marketing-schemes-for-a-new-generation-11645246824".

Orcutt, Mike. 2020. 'This Is How North Korea Uses Cutting-Edge Crypto Money Laundering to Steal Millions'. MIT Technology Review. MIT Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/05/916688/north-korean-hackers-cryptocurrency-money-laundering/

Popper, Nathaniel. 2020. 'Ransomware Attacks Grow, Crippling Cities and Businesses'. New York Times, February.

Schneier, Bruce. 2019. 'There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology'. Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/

Shiller, Robert J. 2017. 'What Is Bitcoin Really Worth? Don't Even Ask.' The New York Times, 15 December 2017, sec. Business. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/business/bitcoin-investing.html

Steele, Graham. 2021. 'The Miner of Last Resort: Digital Currency, Shadow Money and the Role of the Central Bank'. Technology and Government, Emerald Studies in Media and Communications, Forthcoming.

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. 2021. 'Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility'. ArXiv:2106.14204 [Physics, q-Fin], July. http://arxiv.org/abs/2106.14204

Rosenthal, David. n.d. 'Stanford Lecture on Cryptocurrency'. Accessed 2 March 2022. https://blog.dshr.org/2022/02/ee380-talk.html .

Vries, Alex de. 2018. 'Bitcoin's Growing Energy Problem'. Joule 2 (5): 801-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.04.016.

'--'--'--. 2020. 'Bitcoin's Energy Consumption Is Underestimated: A Market Dynamics Approach'. Energy Research & Social Science 70: 101721.

Vries, Alex de, and Christian Stoll. 2021. 'Bitcoin's Growing e-Waste Problem'. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 175 (September): 105901. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105901.

Walch, Angela. 2019. 'Deconstructing 'Decentralization': Exploring the Core Claim of Crypto Systems'. C. Brummer (Ed.), Crypto Assets: Legal and Monetary Perspectives, 1-36. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3326244

Weaver, Nicholas. 2018. 'Risks of Cryptocurrencies'. Communications of the ACM 61 (6): 20-24.

White, Molly. 2022. 'Abuse and Harassment on the Blockchain'. Molly White. 22 January 2022. https://blog.mollywhite.net/abuse-and-harassment-on-the-blockchain/.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:07

Employee accessibility High accessible mobile app.Open Reporting enables solution for entire ecosystem. Low accessibility - hotlines only account for 6% of reports.Need to find the hotline number to start Third party increases friction into the process.Employer seem less accountable. Lacks sophisticationrequired to deal with a very human-centric processHuman will have to step in at some point Focus on 'employee empowerment' not employer enablement.Often connect employees with legal resources. Two way communication Yes, in the users language directly from the App and Resolution Hub.Yes, even if anonymous. Call centres that take a message.Follow up can only happen if employee identifies themselves. Third party increases friction.Hand over has to take place. Handover to a human is required to progress the case. Many solutions prepare an employee for legal action and/or involve a third party. Multi language support In-App support for all required languages.No Management needed. Need an operator with call centres offering each required language.Or partner with multiple suppliers Need a provider offering each required language.Or partner with multiple suppliers Multi-language is possible but has to had over to a human at some point. Multi-language may be possible. Anonymousreporting Anonymous reporting with two-way communication.Also GoTogether (strength in numbers) reporting. Yes, but follow up is difficult without identifying the reporter. Yes, but follow up is difficult without identifying the reporter. Yes, but follow up is difficult without identifying the reporter. Yes, but follow up is difficult without identifying the reporter. Data,confidentiality & security Independent instance. Data encrypted in-transit and at rest. ISO27001 certified. Restricted access to case data. Yes, but follow up is difficult without identifying the reporter. Information is collected by a third party increasing the risk profile. Information is collected by a third party increasing the risk profile. Information may be collected by a third party.Or data may need to flow through other systems, increasing the risk profile. Scalability &enterprisecapability Vault Platform was built for enterprises.Ideal for organizations of 100 employees to tens of thousands. Widely adopted by enterprises but not fit for purpose.Only used in 6% ofincident reports. Need a provider offering each required language, or partner with multiple suppliers.Multiple clients served by same resources. Information is collected by a third party increasing the risk profile. Information may be collected by a third party.Or data may need to flow through other systems, increasing the risk profile. Casemanagement Resolution Hub is a case management system.Case data is centralized in one location with a full audit log.Board-ready insight into progress and problem areas. Either induce their own case management system. Or need plugging in to a third party. Various options with different capabilities. Various options with different capabilities.May need to connect to a third party or in-house case management system. Many connect employees with legal support directly. Not focused on solving the problem internally. Reportrouting Automated routing based on multiple attributes (location, language, category of misconduct, etc.) Collaboration between different teams. Various options with different capabilities. Third party involvement increased friction. Various options with different capabilities. Various options with different capabilities.

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Archived Version

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:04

Almost 2,000 times more particle pollution is produced by tyre wear than is pumped out of the exhausts of modern cars, tests have shown.

The tyre particles pollute air, water and soil and contain a wide range of toxic organic compounds, including known carcinogens, the analysts say, suggesting tyre pollution could rapidly become a major issue for regulators.

Air pollution causes millions of early deaths a year globally. The requirement for better filters has meant particle emissions from tailpipes in developed countries are now much lower in new cars, with those in Europe far below the legal limit. However, the increasing weight of cars means more particles are being thrown off by tyres as they wear on the road.

The tests also revealed that tyres produce more than 1tn ultrafine particles for each kilometre driven, meaning particles smaller than 23 nanometres. These are also emitted from exhausts and are of special concern to health, as their size means they can enter organs via the bloodstream. Particles below 23nm are hard to measure and are not currently regulated in either the EU or US.

''Tyres are rapidly eclipsing the tailpipe as a major source of emissions from vehicles,'' said Nick Molden, at Emissions Analytics, the leading independent emissions testing company that did the research. ''Tailpipes are now so clean for pollutants that, if you were starting out afresh, you wouldn't even bother regulating them.''

Tyres produce far more particles than exhausts in modern carsMolden said an initial estimate of tyre particle emissions prompted the new work. ''We came to a bewildering amount of material being released into the environment '' 300,000 tonnes of tyre rubber in the UK and US, just from cars and vans every year.''

There are currently no regulations on the wear rate of tyres and little regulation on the chemicals they contain. Emissions Analytics has now determined the chemicals present in 250 different types of tyres, which are usually made from synthetic rubber, derived from crude oil. ''There are hundreds and hundreds of chemicals, many of which are carcinogenic,'' Molden said. ''When you multiply it by the total wear rates, you get to some very staggering figures as to what's being released.''

The wear rate of different tyre brands varied substantially and the toxic chemical content varied even more, he said, showing low-cost changes were feasible to cut their environmental impact.

''You could do a lot by eliminating the most toxic tyres,'' he said. ''It's not about stopping people driving, or having to invent completely different new tyres. If you could eliminate the worst half, and maybe bring them in line with the best in class, you can make a massive difference. But at the moment, there's no regulatory tool, there's no surveillance.''

The tests of tyre wear were done on 14 different brands using a Mercedes C-Class driven normally on the road, with some tested over their full lifetime. High-precision scales measured the weight lost by the tyres and a sampling system that collects particles behind the tyres while driving assessed the mass, number and size of particles, down to 6nm. The real-world exhaust emissions were measured across four petrol SUVs, the most popular new cars today, using models from 2019 and 2020.

Used tyres produced 36 milligrams of particles each kilometre, 1,850 times higher than the 0.02 mg/km average from the exhausts. A very aggressive '' though legal '' driving style sent particle emissions soaring, to 5,760 mg/km.

Far more small particles are produced by the tyres than large ones. This means that while the vast majority of the particles by number are small enough to become airborne and contribute to air pollution, these represent only 11% of the particles by weight. Nonetheless, tyres still produce hundreds of times more airborne particles by weight than the exhausts.

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The average weight of all cars has been increasing. But there has been particular debate over whether battery electric vehicles (BEVs), which are heavier than conventional cars and can have greater wheel torque, may lead to more tyre particles being produced. Molden said it would depend on driving style, with gentle EV drivers producing fewer particles than fossil-fuelled cars driven badly, though on average he expected slightly higher tyre particles from BEVs.

Dr James Tate, at the University of Leeds' Institute for Transport Studies in the UK, said the tyre test results were credible. ''But it is very important to note that BEVs are becoming lighter very fast,'' he said. ''By 2024-25 we expect BEVs and [fossil-fuelled] city cars will have comparable weights. Only high-end, large BEVs with high capacity batteries will weigh more.''

Other recent research has suggested tyre particles are a major source of the microplastics polluting the oceans. A specific chemical used in tyres has been linked to salmon deaths in the US and California proposed a ban this month.

''The US is more advanced in their thinking about [the impacts of tyre particles],'' said Molden. ''The European Union is behind the curve. Overall, it's early days, but this could be a big issue.''

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Archived Version

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:03

A mail ballot mystery is unfolding at an otherwise unremarkable post office box in South Philadelphia.

City elections officials last week received applications from more than three dozen Republican voters across a pocket of the neighborhood. Those applications requested that mail ballots be delivered not to the voters' homes, but to P.O. Box 54705, an address registered to a recently formed GOP political action committee, according to state data.

Many of those voters told The Inquirer they have no idea why their ballots were sent there. Some said they never even applied to vote by mail.

And yet one out of every six Republican ballot requests in the 26th Ward '-- the section of deep South Philly south of Passyunk Avenue and west of Broad Street that voted twice for Donald Trump '-- listed the post office box. That made it the largest single destination for ballots in the city other than nursing homes or elections offices.

''This doesn't even make any sense,'' said Rose DeSantis, 35, who was surprised when told by a reporter that a ballot she says she never requested had been sent to the P.O. box this week. ''You would think that would raise some red flags.''

At a time when Republican lawmakers and candidates have attacked mail voting and falsely portrayed it as rife with abuse, the ballot requests and interviews with voters reveal an effort by one GOP operative to use mail ballots that may violate or at least push the boundaries of state law.

For example, the mailing address portion of the form '-- where the P.O. box was written '-- is in a visibly different handwriting from the rest of the form on many of the applications, according to two sources who have reviewed the documents. And that handwriting appears on multiple forms, suggesting that the same person wrote in the P.O. box for the voters.

The Philadelphia City Commissioners Office, which oversees elections, said it was aware of the situation and had been ''actively monitoring'' the issue.

''After we were presented with the additional information by The Philadelphia Inquirer '... we began the process of contacting [voters] to determine if they desired a replacement ballot to be sent to an address where they can directly receive it,'' said Nick Custodio, deputy to Lisa Deeley, the chair of the city commissioners.

Some ballots had already been sent out to the P.O. box; those will be set aside for the commissioners to review when they're returned, Custodio said.

The District Attorney's Office is also aware of the issue and ''that there are inconsistencies with the handwriting'' on the applications, spokesperson Jane Roh said.

The ballots appear to be the effort of one man: Billy Lanzilotti, a 23-year-old GOP operative, South Philadelphia ward leader, and chairman of the Republican Registration Coalition, the PAC he registered at the P.O. box earlier this year.

In an interview, he said everything about the situation was legal and appropriate.

''I didn't do anything that to my understanding was against the law,'' he said.

Lanzilotti, who already runs a nearby ward, also wants to become the Republican leader for the 26th Ward. Aiming ''to help pump out the Republican voter turnout,'' he said, he began going door-to-door earlier this month and signing up residents of the 26th to vote by mail.

He'd hand them a form on which he or people he works with had already filled out the voter's name and his P.O. box as the destination, he said. Having the ballots sent there was a ''convenience to the voter,'' he said, so it could be hand-delivered to them later by someone they trusted.

''There's been a number of problems with the post office lately,'' he said. ''Checks are being stolen out of the mail. They like it this way because I'm someone they trust.''

But many of the voters said they don't know who Lanzilotti is and had no idea he was submitting mail ballot applications in their names.

The Inquirer spoke to 12 of the 39 voters whose applications requested their mail ballots be sent to Lanzilotti. Only two said they knowingly filled out a ballot application with the understanding it would be sent to him instead of their home address.

Five others were unaware their applications had requested their ballots be diverted to Lanzilotti's P.O. box, at the post office at Broad Street and Castle Avenue.

And five more were adamant they hadn't applied to vote by mail at all '-- or at least didn't know that's what they were doing when a man showed up at their doorstep to talk to them about the May 17 primary election.

Only one said he'd actually received the ballot Lanzilotti applied for in his name.

>> READ MORE: Pennsylvania's biggest primaries could get called on election night. But don't get used to it.

Rose Centeno, 59, at first insisted she would never vote by mail, echoing false Republican claims about mail ballots. But when told an application had been submitted last week and a ballot mailed out in her name, Centeno said she wasn't surprised.

''That's what they do,'' she said. ''That's why you can't trust the mail ballots. This whole city's screwed up.''

She later recalled that she had filled out some paperwork with the assistance of a man who showed up at her door and offered to help her change her voter registration from Democrat to Republican.

Maria Morris, 55, also remembered agreeing to switch her party registration during an unannounced visit from a man at her doorstep. She signed some papers, she said, not really paying attention to what they were.

''He didn't mention anything about ballots,'' she said.

And Joseph Tralie III, 63, insisted he hadn't filled out any paperwork at all.

He doesn't vote, he said, and had no plans to do so this month. He learned that a ballot in his name had been sent to Lanzilotti's address when he was contacted Thursday evening by the City Commissioners Office.

''I have my address on my voter registration,'' he said. ''If someone's asking for my ballot to be sent to a random P.O. Box, I'm not sure how that can count.''

Republicans up and down the ballot have spent two years attacking mail voting, led by Trump's lies about fraud and the 2020 election being stolen.

The top Republican candidates for governor are campaigning on repealing Act 77, the 2019 law that allows any voter to cast a ballot by mail. The reality is voter fraud in any form is vanishingly rare, and the handful of confirmed instances in 2020 involved Republicans seeking to cast votes for Trump. Even in Lanzilotti's case, which lawyers from both parties described as concerning, there's no evidence of fraudulent votes being cast.

It's unclear whether Lanzilotti's behavior crosses legal lines, the lawyers said. Much of it depends on details that aren't yet known.

''There's some things you're describing that I think have arguments that could be made that they're appropriate, there's some arguments that can be made that they're inappropriate,'' said Matt Haverstick, an elections lawyer in Montgomery County who works with Republican campaigns. ''But the whole zeitgeist of what you're telling me smacks of unlawful conduct.''

It's legal for voters to have ballots sent to an address other than their homes '-- that's what absentee ballots were intended for in the first place.

''If the circumstance is, it's mail delivered at a retirement home, and some kindly ward person gets them from the mailroom and hands them out, that's one thing,'' Haverstick said. ''Going to a P.O. box at the address for a PAC? I have to think about that one. It's certainly one that would give me pause under the election code.''

>> READ MORE: Everything you need to know about voting in Pennsylvania's May 2022 primary election

The voters don't have access to the P.O. box to retrieve their ballots. A few said this week they hadn't yet received ballots, which Lanzilotti said was because he's been busy and hasn't yet delivered them.

''I can only do this in my spare time,'' he said. ''I have a full-time job.''

It's also unclear whether delivering ballots to voters is allowed: State election law isn't explicit on the question, and Act 77 hasn't been tested on it.

Other legal questions are clearer.

Voters are supposed to fill out their own mail ballot applications, unless they're ill or did not sign an authorization for a specific person to help them.

None of the 39 requests noted any help in filling out the form. The two sources who reviewed them said many of the applications featured two different sets of handwriting, in line with Lanzilotti's explanation that he handed voters pre-filled forms.

Ballots are also to be returned only by the voters themselves, with the sole exception for disabled voters who must explicitly authorize a person to help.

Democrats have argued that third-party ballot delivery should be allowed in Pennsylvania, as it is in some other states, because it provides greater access for voters, especially those who need assistance for reasons other than disability. But current law doesn't allow it, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed in 2020.

Republicans have focused on reports of voters returning multiple ballots '-- Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, voted by mail and his wife returned his ballot along with her own '-- to criticize the mail voting system.

Emphasizing that ''ballot harvesting,'' as they call it, is illegal under state law, state Senate Republicans last month passed legislation that would ban drop boxes, calling it a necessary step to ensure voters are the only ones who return their own ballots.

Lehigh County's district attorney sparked controversy this week when he said he would send detectives to monitor drop boxes to ensure voters only return their own ballots. Leigh Chapman, who as acting Pennsylvania secretary of state is the highest-ranking elections official, asked him Thursday to reconsider, warning that it could amount to voter intimidation.

Lanzilotti said he's not returning anyone's completed ballots.

But Leonard Armstrong, 71, said Lanzilotti offered to do exactly that.

Armstrong said he's known and trusted Lanzilotti for years as a ''kid from the neighborhood.'' So when Lanzilotti brought him his ballot last week, Armstrong filled it out that same afternoon, he said, and handed it back in the sealed envelope. He said Lanzilotti had offered to deliver the ballot on his behalf.

''I wouldn't have done it if I didn't trust him,'' Armstrong said.

Lanzilotti insisted Armstrong was mistaken, telling The Inquirer that all he had done was drop off the ballot at Armstrong's home.

As for the other voters who accused him of submitting ballot applications without their knowledge, Lanzilotti said, ''I don't know what to say.''

''The voters signed those forms saying they wanted their ballot sent [to me,]'' he added. ''They're the ones that signed it.''

By Thursday evening, word of the unusual number of ballots being sent to Lanzilotti had begun to spread through the 26th Ward.

''Everybody's talking about it. Nobody any of us knows has a P.O. Box,'' Rose DeSantis said. ''This sounds like some fraud or crook stuff.''

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:03

Kiev may strike Crimea, a presidential aide says, despite assurances US weapons won't be used to hit Russian territory

Ukraine will use US-supplied rocket systems to strike into Russian territory should it deem such attacks necessary, Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Alexey Arestovich said on Thursday.

Responding to a question about whether the restrictions on the use of US-supplied rocket systems apply to Crimea, a peninsula that overwhelmingly voted to become part of Russia in a 2014 referendum, Arestovich said that it belonged to Ukraine.

''Crimea is ours. It belongs to Ukraine. And they [Russia] know it. Therefore, it will fly to Crimea double-time, should the need arise'', he pointed out, alleging that Kiev has already successfully struck targets on the peninsula.

Arestovich's comment comes despite US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying on Wednesday that Kiev has given Washington ''assurances'' that it won't use American rockets to attack targets in Russia.

The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would send Ukraine $700 million in new military aid, including the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, more commonly referred to as HIMARS. This weapon fires barrage rockets with an effective range of around 30km, but can also deploy tactical ballistic missiles that increase the range to up to 300km. Russia has previously raised concerns over such a move, but they were dismissed by Washington.

Arestovich's statement echoes the claim made by another Ukrainian politician. Egor Chernev, a Ukrainian MP, said on Wednesday that Russian aircraft and military stationed on Russia's territory are ''legitimate targets.'' ''We have taken on certain obligations, but no one can guarantee where the missile will strike. Kiev has its own weapons, such as howitzers, self-propelled guns, Tactical Operational Missile Complexes 'Tochka' which can reach such targets,'' he told local news.

Russia considers Crimea to be an integral part of its territory after the peninsula overwhelmingly voted to part ways with Ukraine and join Russia in a 2014 referendum.

Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine's failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow's eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:02

Dublin Airport has "sincerely apologised" after passengers experienced "significant" queues for check-in, bag drop and security screening today, with a number of people missing scheduled flights as a result.

Airport operator daa had earlier warned that passengers queuing outside the terminal may need to contact their airline to rebook.

It has "sincerely" apologised "for the obvious frustration and inconvenience this caused".

Outside queueing was deployed from early on to cope with the increased numbers, as 50,000 passengers were expected to departed the airport over the course of the day.

Due to significant queues inside the terminal for check-in, bag drop & security, passengers queueing outside the terminal may not make their flight & may need to contact their airline to rebook. We sincerely apologise for the obvious frustration and inconvenience this may cause.

'-- Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) May 29, 2022In a statement this evening it said passengers who missed a flight and incur additional costs as a result of today's queues should contact the airport's Customer Experience team, to claim for vouched expenses incurred.

"Our ongoing work to continue the recruitment, training and deployment of security staff will continue to receive priority focus over the coming weeks to restore the highest standards across every area of Dublin Airport and to ensure that all of our passengers have the best possible experience as the airport's recovery continues," it added.

Hundreds of passengers queue outside the terminal building this morning as Dublin Airport warned some people "may not make their flight" https://t.co/jyBiXg7dAD pic.twitter.com/enUdWpy332

'-- RT‰ News (@rtenews) May 29, 2022In a statement this evening, Aer Lingus said screening delays at the airport caused "considerable disruption" to its schedule.

The airline said it has waived fees on flights departing the airport today to allow passengers change their travel plans, although it said a fare difference may apply.

It apologised to customers, and said it would engage with the daa.

Later this afternoon, the queues appeared to have easedRead more:Minister to meet airport operator over wait times

daa wants to make sure 'no one is out of pocket'

Earlier, Head of Communications at daa Kevin Cullinane said they were "deeply sorry" for the disruption caused to passengers who faced long delays.

Speaking on RT‰'s This Week, he said the daa was aware that this was going to be a busy weekend with 50,000 passengers departing, and there was "clearly" not enough staff to deal with the numbers.

"We have to put our hands up and say we got that wrong. We wish we had more staff available."

He also said the daa wants to make sure "no one is out of pocket" as a result and they will do their best to ensure anyone who has been impacted will be reimbursed.

The daa said there was 'clearly' not enough staff to deal with the numbersMr Cullinane said they did not have enough lanes open in security for the numbers that presented early this morning. "That caused a compounding effect throughout the morning", he said.

He said for health and safety reasons they put contingency plans in place with queues forming outside Terminal 1.

"If people do incur costs we ask them to contact our team"

He said those queues grew quite considerably to beyond 500 metres and they had to make a "tough decision" at 10.30am to inform passengers with flights before midday that they might miss them.

He said some airlines have been trying to accommodate passengers by allowing them to book flights later today or tomorrow.

Despite additional staff being employed there were huge queues at Dublin Airport today"If people do incur costs we ask them to contact our team" and added they will seek to reimburse these costs.

He said they will look at each case on an individual basis and they want to make sure "no one is out of pocket" as a result of today.

Mr Cullinane also defended the staffing of the airport as he said "steady progress" is being made and the daa is "aggressively recruiting." He said this has resulted, so far, in 300 additional staff and there will be 370 more security staff on site during the month of June.

He said they put all staff available on the roster for today as they try to stay ahead of growing passenger numbers.

"This weekend it caught up with us."

Hundreds of passengers queue outside the terminal building this morning as Dublin Airport warned some people "may not make their flight" https://t.co/jyBiXg7dAD pic.twitter.com/enUdWpy332

'-- RT‰ News (@rtenews) May 29, 2022Mr Cullinane also said they have been preparing for a number of months for the rapid return of passengers after travel restrictions were completely lifted.

"We have been getting over 90% of passengers through security in under 45 minutes" and added that their goal is to return to the "gold standard" of under 30 minutes.

He said if passengers had turned up even earlier this morning there would have been lengthier queues.

Next weekend will be 'even busier'

He warned that next weekend will be even busier at the airport with around 100,000 passengers arriving and departing, and he insisted they will ensure they have the "optimum" number of workers in place.

He said the situation is now under control in Terminal 1 with some queues still in Terminal 2 and that should continue for a couple of hours.

"We are still advising passengers 2.5 hours in advance of a flight and if they have a bag to drop allow for additional time."

For long haul flight he said the advice is 3.5 hours and today, in particular, if someone has a bag to drop off or check in allow for more time. His recommendation was to add an additional hour.

Mr Cullinane referred to the "goodwill" of some passengers travelling today with one man allowed to be fast tracked so he could make his flight for his wedding abroad. However, he said it is "impossible" to facilitate everyone.

He said they will be looking at the "root cause" of today's delays and reviewing it over the coming days.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:00

By: Dr. David FriedmanKerrygold, the #2 sold butter in the U.S, claims to be from cows that are ''grass-fed,'' which is a healthier choice.

In July of 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Kerrygold for label fraud because their cows are fed soy, corn and genetically modified grains instead of grass. The corporate entities that operate as Kerrygold were sued in California federal court. The 37-page complaint claimed the company misled consumers by representing that their butter products are made with ''milk from grass-fed cows''; ''made with milk from grass-fed cows not treated with rBST or other growth hormones''; ''All Natural''; and ''100% Pure and Natural.'' The complaint argued that the cows from which Kerrygold products are derived are fed soy, corn and other grains, including grains that are genetically modified, and are thus not grass-fed as the Kerrygold's label claims.

According to the lawsuit, Kerrygold feeds its cows genetically modified and other grains instead of non-grain and non-GMO alternatives as a ''cost-saving measure.'' Further, the suit says Kerrygold's position of its butter as coming from grass-fed cows is a move that preys on consumers' preferences for healthier, higher-quality foods. JUDGE'S RULING

Last week, a judge dismissed the case because Kerrygold's label doesn't read ''100% grass-fed.'' The product packaging says that the milk used to make the Kerrygold products comes from ''grass-fed cows,'' not ''only grass-fed'' or ''100% grass,'' according to case documents. That means, if half of a cow 's diet consists of GMO grains and soy, they can legally get away with deceiving the public by claiming their product comes from cows that are "grass-fed."

You can't always trust labels! I discuss these type of word game loopholes in my book Food Sanity, How to Eat in a World of Fads and Fiction.

To be sure a product has undergone stringent testing for label accuracy, always look for:

* "USDA Certified Organic"

* "100% Grass Fed"

* "American Grass-fed Association Certified"

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT

CLICK HERE TO READ THE JUDGE'S RULING

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:28

Queen Elizabeth II made an appearance Sunday at her Platinum Jubilee Pageant '-- as a hologram waving from inside a golden carriage being led through the streets of London.

The startling digitized younger version of the 96-year-old monarch surfaced ahead of an expected in-person appearance by the monarch later in the day.

The hologram of the queen was part of a carnivalesque parade celebrating her 70-year reign. The royal's image was beamed into the 260-year golden carriage, which she had ridden to and from her coronation in 1953, as it was pulled by a team of royal white horses through the street, according to Sky News.

The coach led a 3-mile, four-act parade that was set to include some 6,000 performers, including pop singer Ed Sheeran.

The coach led a 3-mile, four-act parade. Jonathan Buckmaster/WPA Pool/Getty Images The Platinum Jubilee Pageant celebrates Queen Elizabeth II's 70-year reign. Samir Hussein/WireImage The hologram featured a younger Queen Elizabeth waving from inside the coach. Samir Hussein/WireImage Queen Elizabeth rode in the golden carriage to and from her coronation in 1953. Ben Stansall/WPA Pool/Getty ImagesThe queen was expected to make an actual, real-life appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony to conclude the event.

Additional reporting by Sara Nathan

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:21

SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk looks on as he visits the construction site of Tesla's gigafactory in Gruenheide, near Berlin, Germany, May 17, 2021.

Michele Tantussi | Reuters

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a "super bad feeling" about the economy and needs to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric carmaker, he said in an email to executives seen by Reuters.

The message, sent on Thursday and titled "pause all hiring worldwide", came two days after the billionaire told staff to return to the workplace or leave, and adds to a growing chorus of warnings from business leaders about the risks of recession.

Tesla employed almost 100,000 people at the company and its subsidiaries at the end of 2021, according to its annual SEC filing.

The company was not immediately available for comment.

Tesla shares fell nearly 3% in U.S. premarket trade on Friday and its Frankfurt-listed stock was down 3.6% after the Reuters report. U.S. Nasdaq futures turned negative and were trading 0.6% lower.

Musk has warned in recent weeks about the risk of a recession, but his email ordering a hiring freeze and staff cuts was the most direct and high-profile message of its kind from the head of an automaker.

So far, demand for Tesla cars and other electric vehicles has remained strong and many of the traditional indicators of a downturn - including increasing dealer inventories and incentives in the United States - have not materialized.

But Tesla has struggled to restart production at its Shanghai factory after Covid-19 lockdowns forced costly outages at the plant.

"Musk's bad feeling is shared by many people," said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macroeconomic research at Dutch bank ING. "But we are not talking about global recession. We expect a cooling of the global economy towards the end of the year. The U.S. will cool off, while China and Europe are not going to rebound."

Musk's gloomy outlook echoes recent comments from executives including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs President John Waldron.

A "hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way," Dimon said this week.

Inflation in the United States is hovering at 40-year highs and has caused a jump in the cost of living for Americans, while the Federal Reserve faces the difficult task of dampening demand enough to curb inflation while not causing a recession.

Musk, the world's richest man according to Forbes, did not elaborate on the reasons for his "super bad feeling" about the economic outlook in the brief email seen by Reuters.

A number of analysts have cut price targets for Tesla recently, forecasting slower deliveries due to Chinese lockdowns and lost output at its Shanghai plant, a hub supplying electric vehicles to China and for export.

China accounted for just over a third of Tesla's global deliveries in 2021, according to company disclosures and data released on sales there.

Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said in a tweet it appeared Musk and Tesla were "trying to be ahead of a slower delivery ramp this year and preserve margins ahead of an economic slowdown."

'Pause all hiring'Before Musk's warning, Tesla had about 5,000 job postings on LinkedIn from sales in Tokyo and engineers at its new Berlin gigafactory to deep learning scientists in Palo Alto. It had scheduled an online hiring event for Shanghai on June 9 on its WeChat channel.

Musk's demand that staff return to the office has already faced pushback in Germany.

"Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week," Musk wrote in his Tuesday email. "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned."

Musk has referred to the risk of a recession repeatedly in recent comments.

Remotely addressing a conference in mid-May in Miami Beach, Musk said: "I think we are probably in a recession and that recession will get worse." He added: "It'll probably be some tough going for, I don't know, a year, maybe 12 to 18 months, is usually the amount of time that it takes for a correction to happen."

In late May, when asked by a Twitter user whether the economy was approaching a recession, Musk said: "Yes, but this is actually a good thing. It has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen."

Musk also engaged on Thursday in a Twitter spat with Australia tech billionaire and Atlassian Plc co-founder Scott Farquhar, who ridiculed the back-to-office directive as "like something out of the 1950s".

Musk tweeted: "recessions serve a vital economic cleansing function", in response to a tweet by Farquhar who encouraged Tesla employees to look into its remote work positions.

Jason Stomel, founder of tech talent agency Cadre said of the return-to-work directive: "I think there's potential that this is just a disguised layoff, meaning they're able to get rid of people with attrition, or without having to actually have a layoff."

"(Musk) knows there's a percentage of workers who are just not going to come back," which he said would be cheaper because no severance would be needed.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:16

Most of the 21 confirmed U.S. cases identified as men who have sex with men who had recently traveled abroad

Federal officials said they were working to curtail the spread of monkeypox by raising awareness among healthcare workers and communities that may be at higher risk of the disease that has infected at least 21 people in 11 states.

At least 16 of the U.S. cases were people who identify as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. Monkeypox isn't considered a sexually transmitted infection, the CDC said. It can be passed through close contact with an infected...

Federal officials said they were working to curtail the spread of monkeypox by raising awareness among healthcare workers and communities that may be at higher risk of the disease that has infected at least 21 people in 11 states.

At least 16 of the U.S. cases were people who identify as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. Monkeypox isn't considered a sexually transmitted infection, the CDC said. It can be passed through close contact with an infected person, including through respiratory droplets and skin lesions. The CDC has said anyone can be infected with monkeypox.

''The high proportion of initial cases diagnosed in this outbreak in persons who identify as gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men might simply reflect an early introduction of monkeypox into interconnected social networks,'' the CDC said.

Most confirmed cases in the U.S. reported international travel in the 21 days before onset of their symptoms, said Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC's division of high-consequence pathogens and pathology. At least one case involved a woman who had recently traveled overseas, Dr. McQuiston said.

Monkeypox is a viral disease endemic to parts of Central and West Africa, where it has spread in the past from animals to humans. The disease is rare outside of Africa. But over the past few weeks, hundreds of cases have been reported in about 30 countries and territories world-wide. Public-health experts are still unsure as to the origins of the outbreak.

The CDC is working to ensure that communities in which monkeypox appeared to be circulating get the information and care they need to stop transmission, Dr. McQuiston said. Anyone with possible symptoms of monkeypox, which include rash and fever, should see a healthcare provider immediately, Dr. McQuiston said. She also urged healthcare providers to watch for patients with possible monkeypox symptoms.

Monkeypox is related to smallpox, though is typically less severe. Severe cases of the disease are possible, however, particularly with the Central African family of the virus, which has a fatality rate of as high as 10%. The West African family is considered less severe, with a fatality rate of around 1%. The CDC said most cases in the U.S., so far, appear to be caused by viruses in the West African family. In the U.S. and other countries where the disease isn't endemic, there have been no deaths associated with the current monkeypox outbreak.

The Department of Health and Human Services said it would give two vaccines to patients diagnosed with monkeypox or to people who may have been exposed to the virus. Jynneos, manufactured by Bavarian Nordic A/S, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of smallpox and monkeypox in adults. HHS said an FDA-approved smallpox vaccine manufactured by Emergent BioSolutions Inc. could also be used in patients diagnosed with monkeypox.

The department said it would also make antiviral medications, including the smallpox treatment tecovirimat, sold under the brand name TPOXX and manufactured by SIGA Technologies Inc., available to patients who need it.

Dr. McQuiston said the public risk of monkeypox transmission in the U.S. remains low.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:04

Is it time for the U.S. government to impose price controls? History shows that past attempts to rein in rampant inflation with such measures have sometimes worked'--when there's a national will to see them succeed.

In the war against inflation, an old weapon is getting new consideration.

The cost of living has surged more than 8% over the past year in the U.S. and is jumping world-wide.

Governments have three main ways to fight inflation: monetary policy, fiscal policy and price controls. Tightening the money supply, primarily by raising interest rates,...

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In the war against inflation, an old weapon is getting new consideration.

The cost of living has surged more than 8% over the past year in the U.S. and is jumping world-wide.

Governments have three main ways to fight inflation: monetary policy, fiscal policy and price controls. Tightening the money supply, primarily by raising interest rates, often works frustratingly slowly. Fiscal discipline requires a far-fetched scenario of politicians suddenly agreeing to tighten their own belts. So perhaps it's no surprise that price controls'--government-imposed limits on how much producers and suppliers can charge for goods and services'--are back in vogue.

The conventional wisdom that price controls have always failed is a myth. History shows that they have often been surprisingly effective as temporary measures in urgent crises'--such as World War I and World War II.

But controls have seldom worked during peacetime'--probably because it takes a national emergency like war to summon enough public support, political resolve and administrative savvy to make price ceilings stick.

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And jawboning almost always fails to stifle inflation. Even during wartime, when appeals to patriotism carry maximum power, demands or threats from politicians rarely deter businesses from raising prices.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on May 30, President Joe Biden wrote: ''I have made tackling inflation my top economic priority.''

So far at least, the administration seems to be ruling out a formal program of price controls. But Democrats in both houses of Congress, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), introduced a bill last month to prevent what the sponsors call ''price gouging.''

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The bill would make it illegal to sell goods or services ''at an unconscionably excessive price during an exceptional market shock.''

That language is an uncanny echo of one of the earliest known attempts to control prices in what is now the U.S. In 1623, with the settlers' war against American Indians sending prices to ''a most excessive and unconscionable height,'' the governor of Virginia, Francis Wyatt, imposed price controls on more than a dozen essential goods, including ''Beere'' and ''Sider.''

Although there's scant evidence on whether they worked, those controls were later abandoned.

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It isn't hard to find examples that failed.

In 301 AD, after the Roman Empire had spent decades diluting its coinage and bloating its bureaucracy, inflation was running at an estimated 35% or more annually.

That year, Emperor Diocletian issued an edict imposing ceilings on the prices of more than 1,200 goods and services'--everything from timber and textiles to lions, wine and ''liver of swine, fed on figs.'' Violators who engaged in ''shameless pricing'' would be put to death.

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Historians believe the emperor set the ceilings below recent retail prices, so sellers must have simply withdrawn their goods from the market. The edict fizzled; inflation continued to rage.

Controls imposed by President Richard Nixon in 1971 also failed to snuff out inflation, mainly because the Federal Reserve didn't constrain the money supply.

Such examples show that controls tend to flop when governments lack the will or resources to enforce the rules, when not enough goods are covered, or when monetary and fiscal policy remain loose.

Under such conditions, consumers awash in cash buy whichever products aren't controlled, and black markets will spring up to create more supply for those products that are controlled but hard to get.

Controls have worked best ''when they were used to calm a 'price panic,''' says Hugh Rockoff, an economic historian at Rutgers University and author of ''Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States.''

Such panics occur when people expect inflation to keep heating up. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as consumers rush to buy as much as they can as soon as possible and suppliers crank up prices to meet the surge in demand and cover their own rising costs.

In World War I, controls helped cut wholesale-price inflation to 7.1% annually from 32.4%, estimates Prof. Rockoff; in World War II, they helped get inflation down to 1.6% annually from 11.9%.

Price controls, especially on essentials like fuel and food, can be a way to break the public's expectation'--and fear'--that the cost of living has to keep climbing.

That's one reason economists are increasingly calling for selective controls. ''As rising costs of essentials like fuel and food start becoming an issue not only for consumers but also for some corporations, interests might be temporarily aligned in stabilizing these prices,'' says Isabella Weber, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of ''How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate.''

That would require cooperation between the U.S. and European governments, she says.

Inflation has also skyrocketed because the price of oil has nearly doubled since last summer; the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resurgence of Covid-19 in China have disrupted shipments of materials and goods world-wide.

But, at least so far, inflation expectations aren't climbing steeply; rightly or wrongly, consumers are expecting the cost of living to rise about 5% or 6% in the next year.

Another hitch: The comprehensive rules that successful price controls require can feel like straitjackets.

During World War I and World War II, government agencies engaged thousands of local volunteers to roam through communities investigating prices and behavior.

In 1943, ''pleasure driving'' was banned, and police pulled thousands of people over; drivers had to explain to the federal Office of Price Administration why their trips were necessary.

No wonder the brilliant and charismatic head of the Office of Price Administration, Leon Henderson, ended up deeply unpopular.

In June 1941, the Journal's editorial page warned that Henderson was veering toward ''industrial dictatorship,'' and the comic poet Ogden Nash wrote in 1942:

''There goes Leon

Glowing like neon.

He's got an appointment

In somebody's ointment.''

These examples suggest why price controls have nearly always failed during peacetime. During national emergencies, people will put up with not being able to haggle, waiting in line to get a fraction of what they want and even being hauled in front of a review board of nosy bureaucrats.

Then, those impositions feel like patriotic duty. In peacetime, they feel like a burden.

Write to Jason Zweig at intelligentinvestor@wsj.com

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 16:03

Our writer drove from New Orleans to Chicago and back to test the feasibility of taking a road trip in an EV. She wouldn't soon do it again.

Updated June 3, 2022 3:53 pm ETI thought it would be fun.

That's what I told my friend Mack when I asked her to drive with me from New Orleans to Chicago and back in an electric car.

I'd made long road trips before, surviving popped tires, blown headlights and shredded wheel-well liners in my 2008 Volkswagen Jetta. I figured driving the brand-new Kia EV6 I'd rented would...

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I thought it would be fun.

That's what I told my friend Mack when I asked her to drive with me from New Orleans to Chicago and back in an electric car.

I'd made long road trips before, surviving popped tires, blown headlights and shredded wheel-well liners in my 2008 Volkswagen Jetta. I figured driving the brand-new Kia EV6 I'd rented would be a piece of cake.

If, that is, the public-charging infrastructure cooperated. We wouldn't be the first to test it. Sales of pure and hybrid plug-ins doubled in the U.S. last year to 656,866'--over 4% of the total market, according to database EV-volumes. More than half of car buyers say they want their next car to be an EV, according to recent Ernst & Young Global Ltd. data.

Oh'--and we aimed to make the 2,000-mile trip in just under four days so Mack could make her Thursday-afternoon shift as a restaurant server.

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Less money, more timeGiven our battery range of up to 310 miles, I plotted a meticulous route, splitting our days into four chunks of roughly 7½-hours each. We'd need to charge once or twice each day and plug in near our hotel overnight.

The PlugShare app'--a user-generated map of public chargers'--showed thousands of charging options between New Orleans and Chicago. But most were classified as Level 2, requiring around 8 hours for a full charge.

While we'd be fine overnight, we required fast chargers during the days. ChargePoint Holdings Inc., which manufactures and maintains many fast-charging stations, promises an 80% charge in 20 to 30 minutes. Longer than stopping for gas'--but good for a bite or bathroom break.

The government is spending $5 billion to build a nationwide network of fast chargers, which means thousands more should soon dot major highways. For now, though, fast chargers tend to be located in parking lots of suburban shopping malls, or tethered to gas stations or car dealerships.

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Cost varies widely based on factors such as local electricity prices and charger brands. Charging at home tends to be cheaper than using a public charger, though some businesses offer free juice as a perk to existing customers or to entice drivers to come inside while they wait.

Over four days, we spent $175 on charging. We estimated the equivalent cost for gas in a Kia Forte would have been $275, based on the AAA average national gas price for May 19. That $100 savings cost us many hours in waiting time.

But that's not the whole story.

Charging nuancesNew Orleans, our starting point, has exactly zero fast chargers, according to PlugShare. As we set out, one of the closest is at a Harley-Davidson

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dealership in Slidell, La., about 40 minutes away. So we use our Monday-morning breakfast stop to top off there on the way out of town.

But when we tick down 15% over 35 miles? Disconcerting. And the estimated charging time after plugging in? Even more so. This ''quick charge'' should take 5 minutes, based on our calculations. So why does the dashboard tell us it will take an hour?

''Maybe it's just warming up,'' I say to Mack. ''Maybe it's broken?'' she says.

Over Egg McMuffins at McDonald 's , we check Google. Chargers slow down when the battery is 80% full, the State of Charge YouTube channel tells us.

Worried about time, we decide to unplug once we return to the car, despite gaining a measly 13% in 40 minutes.

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When 'fast' isn't fastOur real troubles begin when we can't find the wall-mounted charger at the Kia dealership in Meridian, Miss., the state's seventh-largest city and hometown of country-music legend Jimmie Rodgers.

When I ask a mechanic working on an SUV a few feet away for help, he says he doesn't know anything about the machine and points us inside. At the front desk, the receptionist asks if we've checked with a technician and sends us back outside.

Not many people use the charger, the mechanic tells us when we return. We soon see why. Once up and running, our dashboard tells us a full charge, from 18% to 100%, will take 3-plus hours.

It turns out not all ''fast chargers'' live up to the name. The biggest variable, according to State of Charge, is how many kilowatts a unit can churn out in an hour. To be considered ''fast,'' a charger must be capable of about 24 kW. The fastest chargers can pump out up to 350. Our charger in Meridian claims to meet that standard, but it has trouble cracking 20.

''Even among DC fast chargers, there are different level chargers with different charging speeds,'' a ChargePoint spokeswoman says.

Worse, it is a 30-minute walk to downtown restaurants. We set off on foot, passing warehouses with shattered windows and an overgrown lot filled with rusted fuel pumps and gas-station signs. Clambering over a flatcar of a stalled freight train, we half-wish we could hop a boxcar to Chicago.

Missed reservationsBy the time we reach our next station, at a Mercedes-Benz dealership outside Birmingham, Ala., we've already missed our dinner reservations in Nashville'--still 200 miles away.

Here, at least, the estimated charging time is only an hour'--and we get to make use of two automatic massage chairs while we wait.

Salesman Kurt Long tells us the dealership upgraded its chargers to 54-kW models a few weeks earlier when the 2022 Mercedes EQS-Class arrived.

''Everyone's concern is how far can the cars go on a charge,'' he says. He adds that he would trade in his car for an EV tomorrow if he could afford the $102,000 price tag. ''Just because it would be convenient for me because I work here,'' he says. ''Otherwise, I don't know if I would just yet.''

A customer who has just bought a new BMW says he'd consider an EV one day'--if the price drops.

''You remember when the microwave came out? Or DVD players?'' says Dennis Boatwright, a 58-year-old tree surgeon. ''When you first get them the prices were real high, but the older they are, the cheaper they get.''

When we tell him about our trip, he asks if we'll make it to Chicago.

''We're hoping,'' I say.

''I'm hoping, too,'' he says.

A giant chickenAfter the Birmingham suburbs, our journey takes us along nightmarish, dark mountain roads. We stop for snacks at a gas station featuring a giant chicken in a chef's costume. We lean heavily on cruise control, which helps conserve battery life by reducing inadvertent acceleration and deceleration. We are beat when we finally stumble into our Nashville hotel at 12:30 a.m.

To get back on schedule, we are up and out early, amid pouring rain, writing the previous day off as a warm-up, an electric-car hazing.

For the most part, we are right. Thanks to vastly better charging infrastructure on this leg, all our stops last less than an hour.

It isn't all smooth sailing, though. At one point we find ourselves wandering through a Kroger , sopping wet, in search of coffee after wrestling with a particularly finicky charger in the rain. By this point, not once have we managed to back in close enough to reach the pump, or gotten the stiff cord hooked around the right way on the first try.

In the parking lot of a Clarksville, Ind., Walmart , we barely have time for lunch, as the Electrify America charging station fills up our battery in about 25 minutes, as advertised.

The woman charging next to us describes a harrowing recent trip in her Volkswagen ID.4. Deborah Carrico, 65, had to be towed twice while driving between her Louisville, Ky., apartment and Boulder, Colo., where her daughter was getting married.

''My daughter was like, 'You've lost it mom; just fly,' '' the retired hairdresser says. She says she felt safer in a car during the pandemic'--but also vulnerable when waiting at remote charging stations alone late at night. ''But if someone is going to get me, they're going to have to really fight me,'' she says, wielding her key between her fingers like a weapon.

While she loves embracing the future, she says, her family has been giving her so much pushback that she is considering trading the car in and going back to gas.

Smiling at gas pricesAt another Walmart, in Indianapolis, we meet Bill Stempowski as he waits for his Ford Mustang Mach-E to charge. A medical-equipment operations manager, 45, he drives all over the Midwest from his home in LaGrange, Ohio, for work.

In nine months, he says, he's put 30,000 miles on the car and figures he's saved thousands on gas. ''I smile as the gas-sign prices tick up,'' he says. That day, his charge comes to about $15, similar to what we are paying to fill up.

We pull into Chicago at 9 p.m., having made the planned 7½-hour trip in 12 hours. Not bad, we agree.

'What if we just risk it?'Leaving Chicago after a full night of sleep, I tell Mack I might write only about the journey's first half. ''The rest will just be the same,'' I predict, as thunder claps ominously overhead.

''Don't say that!'' she says. ''We're at the mercy of this goddamn spaceship.'' She still hasn't mastered the lie-flat door handles after three days.

As intense wind and rain whip around us, the car cautions, ''Conditions have not been met'' for its cruise-control system. Soon the battery starts bleeding life. What began as a 100-mile cushion between Chicago and our planned first stop in Effingham, Ill., has fallen to 30.

''If it gets down to 10, we're stopping at a Level 2,'' Mack says as she frantically searches PlugShare.

We feel defeated pulling into a Nissan Mazda dealership in Mattoon, Ill. ''How long could it possibly take to charge the 30 miles we need to make it to the next fast station?'' I wonder.

Three hours. It takes 3 hours.

I begin to lose my mind as I set out in search of gas-station doughnuts, the wind driving sheets of rain into my face.

Seated atop a pyramid of Smirnoff Ice 12-packs, Little Debbie powdered sugar sprinkled down the pajama shirt I haven't removed in three days, I phone Mack. ''What if we just risk it?'' I say. ''Maybe we'll make it there on electrical fumes.''

''That's a terrible idea!'' she says, before asking me to bring back a bag of nuts.

'Charge, Urgently!'Back on the road, we can't even make it 200 miles on a full charge en route to Miner, Mo. Clearly, tornado warnings and electric cars don't mix. The car's highway range actually seems worse than its range in cities.

Indeed, highway driving doesn't benefit as much from the car's regenerative-braking technology'--which uses energy generated in slowing down to help a car recharge its battery'--Kia spokesman James Bell tells me later. He suspects our car is the less-expensive EV6 model with a range not of 310 miles, as listed on Turo, but 250. He says he can't be sure what model we were driving without physically inspecting the car.

''As we have all learned over many years of experience with internal combustion engine vehicles, factors such as average highway speed, altitude changes, and total cargo weight can all impact range, whether derived from a tank of gasoline or a fully charged battery,'' he says.

To save power, we turn off the car's cooling system and the radio, unplug our phones and lower the windshield wipers to the lowest possible setting while still being able to see. Three miles away from the station, we have one mile of estimated range.

''Charge, Urgently!'' the dashboard urges. ''We know!'' we respond.

At zero miles, we fly screeching into a gas-station parking lot. A trash can goes flying and lands with a clatter to greet us. Dinner is beef jerky, our plans to dine at a kitschy beauty shop-turned-restaurant in Memphis long gone.

Then we start to argue. Mack reminds me she needs to be back in time for her shift the next day. There's no way we'll make it, I tell her.

''Should we just drive straight through to New Orleans?'' I finally ask desperately, even as I realize I've failed to map out the last 400 miles of our route.

To scout our options, Mack calls a McDonald's in Winona, Miss., that is home to one of the few fast chargers along our route back to New Orleans. PlugShare tells us the last user has reported the charger broken. An employee who picks up reasonably responds that given the rain, she'll pass on checking to see if an error message is flashing across the charger's screen.

Home, sweet $4-a-gallon homeAt our hotel, we decide 4 hours of sleep is better than none, and set our alarms for 4 a.m.

We figure 11 hours should be plenty for a trip that would normally take half as long. That is, if absolutely everything goes right.

Miraculously, it does. At the McDonald's where we stop for our first charge at 6 a.m., the charger zaps to life. The body shop and parts department director at Rogers-Dabbs Chevrolet in Brandon, Miss., comes out to unlock the charger for us with a keycard at 10 a.m. We're thrilled we waited for business hours, realizing we can only charge while he's there.

We pull into New Orleans 30 minutes before Mack's shift starts'--exhausted and grumpy.

The following week, I fill up my Jetta at a local Shell station. Gas is up to $4.08 a gallon.

I inhale deeply. Fumes never smelled so sweet.

Corrections & Amplifications Effingham is a town in Illinois. An earlier version of this article called it Effington. (Corrected on June 3, 2022.)

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 15:52

Test tubes labelled "Monkeypox virus positive and negative" are seen in this illustration taken May 23, 2022.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

The Biden administration has distributed 1,200 monkeypox vaccine doses for people who have had high-risk exposures to the virus, part of a nationwide public health response to stamp out the disease before it causes a major outbreak.

U.S. health officials, worried the virus is spreading faster than previously thought, have said the global outbreak of monkeypox is the largest ever. The World Health Organization said Wednesday that there are now more than 550 cases across 30 countries. In the U.S., at least 20 confirmed or suspected cases have been reported in 11 states, including California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Utah and Washington state, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"A monkeypox outbreak of this scale and scope across the world, it has not been seen before," Dr. Raj Panjabi, who leads the White House pandemic preparedness office, told reporters on a call last week.

However, CDC officials have sought to reassure the public that the arrival of monkeypox in the U.S. is vastly different from Covid-19, which blindsided the country two years ago. Scientists knew little about Covid when it first emerged and the U.S. had no vaccines or antiviral treatments to fight the virus in 2020.

Monkeypox, on the other hand, has been known to scientists since 1958 when the virus was first identified during outbreaks among monkeys kept for research purposes, and its transmission in humans has been studied since the 1970s. Global health authorities also have extensive experience successfully fighting smallpox, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated in 1980 after a successful global vaccination effort. Monkeypox is in the same virus family as smallpox though it is much milder.

Stockpiling vaccineCDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters last week that the U.S. has been preparing for an outbreak from a virus like monkeypox for decades. The U.S. has millions of vaccine doses in the strategic national stockpile that protect against monkeypox and smallpox as well as antiviral pills to treat the diseases.

Dawn O'Connell, who leads the Health and Human Services office responsible for the strategic national stockpile, said on Friday that the U.S. has enough vaccine on hand to manage the current monkeypox outbreak. However, O'Connell would not disclose how many shots the U.S. has at the ready.

The U.S. has two vaccines but the preferred option is in shorter supply. Jynneos is a two-dose vaccine approved by the FDA in 2019 to prevent monkeypox in people ages 18 and older. The CDC generally recommends Jynneos over the other option, ACAM2000, which is an older generation smallpox vaccine that can have serious side effects.

Last week, CDC official Dr. Jennifer McQuiston said the U.S. has 1,000 doses of Jynneos available. However, the Danish biotech company that makes the shots, Bavarian Nordic, said the U.S. actually has a supply of more than 1 million Jynneos frozen doses stored in the U.S. and Denmark under an order placed in April 2020. The shots have a shelf life of three years.

The U.S. has ordered close to 30 million Jynneos doses since 2010 but 28 million of them expired, the spokesperson said. Bavarian Nordic plans to increase production this summer and has the capacity to produce 30 million shots a year, the spokesperson said.

The U.S. government also has a stockpile of more than 100 million doses of ACAM2000, made by Emergent BioSolutions, McQuiston told reporters last week. The U.S. had released 500 doses of Jynneos and 200 doses of ACAM2000 as of Tuesday, according to the CDC. The U.S. has also sent out 100 courses of the oral antiviral tecovirimat to the states, health officials said Friday.

"We want to ensure that people with high risk exposures have rapid access to vaccines and if they become sick, can receive appropriate treatment," Panjabi said on a call with reporters Friday. Jynneos and ACAM2000 can be administered before or after exposure to the virus. However, patients need to receive the vaccines within 4 days of exposure to prevent disease onset.

ACAM2000 has demonstrated high levels of protection against monkeypox in animal models and is expected to provide 85% protection against disease from the virus similar to earlier versions of smallpox vaccines, according to Mike Slifka, an immunologist at Oregon Health and Science University who has studied monkeypox. Less is known about Jynneos because the vaccine is newer but it produced reasonable antibody levels in humans and should protect against severe disease, Slifka said.

Side effectsThe CDC generally recommends Jynneos over ACAM2000 because it is considered safer. ACAM2000 can have serious side effects, and distributing the vaccine widely would require serious discussion, McQuiston said in a call with reporters last week. ACAM2000 uses a mild virus strain in the same family as monkeypox and smallpox that can still replicate, which means there's a risk that the live virus in the vaccine can spread in the human body or to other people.

ACAM2000 is administered with a two-pronged needle that is scratched into the upper arm and the virus then grows into a localized infection in the form of a blister. The patient can potentially spread the virus to other people, or to other parts of their body if they scratch the blister and then rub their eye for example, which can result in vision damage. The FDA warns that it's very important for people vaccinated with ACAM2000 to take proper care of the vaccination site so they don't spread the virus to other people or other parts of the body.

CDC warningThe CDC has said women who are pregnant or breast feeding, people with weak immune systems, those with skin conditions such as eczema or atopic dermatitis, and people with heart disease should not receive ACAM2000. In pregnant women, the virus can spread to the fetus and cause stillbirth. People with weak immune systems face a risk that the virus will grow uncontrollably and cause a dangerous infection, Slifka said. People with skin conditions such as eczema or atopic dermatitis are also at risk of the virus spreading on their skin which can turn into a life-threatening infection, he said.

The Jynneos vaccine, on the other hand, is not associated with these risks because it uses a virus strain that is no longer able to replicate in humans, according to Slifka. It is also administered with a normal syringe like other common shots such as the flu vaccine.

Given the potential side effects of ACAM2000, the vaccine would likely only see wide use in the context of a major smallpox epidemic because that virus is so deadly, according to Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease and vaccine expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Monkeypox, on the other hand, is a much milder virus and no deaths have been reported in the recent cases in Europe and North America.

Mortality rateSmallpox can have a fatality rate as high as 30%, according to the WHO. The West African strain of monkeypox that appears to be driving the current outbreak likely has a mortality rate somewhere around 1%, though data is sparse because the virus has previously spread mostly in remote parts Africa. Most people recover within two to four weeks without specific medical treatment, according to the CDC. There's another monkeypox strain, Congo Basin, associated with a higher death rate of 3% to 10%, according to the WHO.

"We're very lucky that the outbreak right is the low virulence West African strain," said Dr. Rachel Roper, a professor of microbiology and immunology at East Carolina University who has studied monkeypox.

Though the U.S. has far more tools and more knowledge to fight monkeypox than it had against Covid in 2020, there are still many unknowns about the current outbreak. It's unclear why the virus is now spreading in countries outside West and Central Africa where virus is endemic. Historically, the virus spread in small villages in Africa by jumping from rodents that carry the virus to humans with very little transmission between people, Slifka said. However, the virus now appears to be spreading better between people, he said.

"Through intimate contact and skin-to-skin transmission, it's transmitting better than it has under other circumstances," Slifka said.

Most monkeypox patients in the U.S. travelled internationally in the 21 days before symptom onset which suggests they picked up the virus outside the country, according to McQuiston. The CDC doesn't believe monkeypox is spreading widely in the U.S right now but is closely monitoring the situation. The U.S. has conducted 120 tests so far for orthopoxvirus, the family that includes monkeypox.

Community transmission"There could be community level transmission that is happening, and that's why we want to really increase our surveillance efforts," McQuiston told reporters during a call on Friday. "We want to really encourage physicians that if they see a rash and they're concerned it might be monkeypox to go ahead and test for that," she said.

WHO officials said on Wednesday that the sudden appearance of monkeypox in multiple countries in North America and Europe indicates that the virus has probably been spreading outside West and Central Africa undetected for some time, though it is unclear for how long. Dr. Rosamund Lewis, the WHO's technical lead for monkeypox, said the virus may be spreading more now because immunity in the human population has waned since smallpox vaccination was halted after the disease was eradicated.

Lewis said the WHO is not recommending mass vaccination against monkeypox because the current outbreak can still be contained. Most of the cases so far have been reported among men who have sex with men, developed symptoms and sought care at sexual health clinics, according to the WHO. Lewis said it is important to provide gay and bisexual men with the information they need to protect themselves from the virus and prevent it from spreading.

SymptomsThe CDC has told people with confirmed or suspected monkeypox infections to isolate at home until local or state health departments say otherwise. People with confirmed infections should remain in isolation until the skin lesions that characterize the disease have completely resolved, the scabs have fallen off and a new layer of skin has formed.

Monkeypox typically starts with symptoms similar to the flu including fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, exhaustion and swollen lymph nodes. Lesions then form on the body, and the virus spreads primarily through skin-to-skin contact with these lesions. Monkeypox can spread through respiratory droplets if a person has lesions in their throat or mouth, but it does not transmit easily this way.

People exposed to monkeypox should monitor for symptoms for 21 days, according to the CDC. They should check their temperature twice daily and monitor for chills, swollen lymph nodes and new skin rashes. If a fever or rash develops, the person should self isolate and contact the local health department immediately.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 15:39

Novavax stock lost a quarter of its value Friday after a Food and Drug Administration brief ahead of its COVID-19 vaccine's review next week raised concerns.

Novavax stock lost a quarter of its value Friday after a Food and Drug Administration brief ahead of its COVID-19 vaccine's review next week raised concerns.

''Data from passive surveillance during post-authorization use in other countries indicate a higher-than-expected rate of myocarditis and pericarditis associated with the vaccine,'' the briefing document noted.

More Business News''However, interpretation of these passive surveillance data is not straightforward, and further evaluation is need to inform the risk associated with the vaccine, and their outcomes, as additional data emerge over time.''

The document was supportive of the Novavax vaccine's effectiveness, and it is still expected to be approved.

An independent advisory committee is expected to make its recommendation on emergency use authorization for the Novavax vaccine at a meeting on June 7. The committee includes independent physicians and scientists who make recommendations to the FDA, which most often follows those recommendations.

Bloomberg News, citing industry analysts, reports it is still expected to win advisory panel approval. Jeffries analyst Roger Song, who rates Novavax a buy, told Bloomberg he expects the review to be positive and nothing in the document is ''really a deal breaker.''

Novavax completed its application for FDA emergency use approval more than five months ago, on Dec. 31, 2021.

The two-dose Novavax COVID vaccine is already approved for use in for use in several other countries in Asia and Europe.

If approved, the more traditional protein-based vaccine would differentiate itself from the mRNA vaccines already approved. Novavax has said some hesitant to get those vaccines may be more willing to take its vaccine.

Novavax was among early participants in the federal government's Operation Warp Speed, receiving $1.6 billion in 2020 to develop and manufacture a COVID vaccine.

Novavax stock, which soared after it began developing its vaccine, is down more than 85% from its record high in February 2021.

Jeff ClabaughJeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 14:59

(This week's editorial is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of my personal heroes. Bonhoeffer was hanged by Adolf Hitler in 1945.)

Taken from a circular letter, addressing many topics, written to three friends and co-workers in the conspiracy against Hitler, on the tenth anniversary of Hitler's accession to the chancellorship of Germany'...

'Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one's prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical '' and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

'If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

'Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what 'the people' really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

'But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people's stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.'

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from 'After Ten Years' in Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, vol. 8) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 14:08

BILDERBERG MEETING 2022 Washington D.C., 2 June - 5 June 2022 Achleitner, Paul M. (DEU), Former Chairman Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank AG; Treasurer Bilderberg Meetings

Adeyemo, Adewale (USA), Deputy Secretary, Department of The Treasury

Albares, Jos(C) Manuel (ESP), Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation

Altman, Roger C. (USA), Founder and Senior Chairman, Evercore Inc.

Altman, Sam (USA), CEO, OpenAI

Applebaum, Anne (USA), Staff Writer, The Atlantic

Arnaut, Jos(C) Lu­s (PRT), Managing Partner, CMS Rui Pena & Arnaut

Auken, Ida (DNK), Member of Parliament, The Social Democrat Party

Azoulay, Audrey (INT), Director-General, UNESCO

Baker, James H. (USA), Director, Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense

Barbizet, Patricia (FRA), Chairwoman and CEO, Temaris & Associ(C)s SAS

Barroso, Jos(C) Manuel (PRT), Chairman, Goldman Sachs International LLC

Baudson, Val(C)rie (FRA), CEO, Amundi

Beurden, Ben van (NLD), CEO, Shell plc

Bourla, Albert (USA), Chairman and CEO, Pfizer Inc.

Buberl, Thomas (FRA), CEO, AXA SA

Burns, William J. (USA), Director, CIA

Byrne, Thomas (IRL), Minister of State for European Affairs

Campbell, Kurt (USA), White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific, NSC

Carney, Mark J. (CAN), Vice Chair, Brookfield Asset Management

Casado, Pablo (ESP), Former President, Partido Popular

Chhabra, Tarun (USA), Senior Director for Technology and National Security, National Security Council

Donohoe, Paschal (IRL), Minister for Finance; President, Eurogroup

D¶pfner, Mathias (DEU), Chairman and CEO, Axel Springer SE

Dudley, William C. (USA), Senior Research Scholar, Princeton University

Easterly, Jen (USA), Director, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Economy, Elizabeth (USA), Senior Advisor for China, Department of Commerce

‰mi(C), Bernard (FRA), Director General, Ministry of the Armed Forces

Emond, Charles (CAN), CEO, CDPQ

Erdogan, Emre (TUR), Professor Political Science, Istanbul Bilgi University

Eriksen, yvind (NOR), President and CEO, Aker ASA

Ermotti, Sergio (CHE), Chairman, Swiss Re

Fanusie, Yaya (USA), Adjunct Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security

Feltri, Stefano (ITA), Editor-in-Chief, Domani

Fleming, Jeremy (GBR), Director, British Government Communications Headquarters

Freeland, Chrystia (CAN), Deputy Prime Minister

Furtado, Isabel (PRT), CEO, TMG Automotive

Gove, Michael (GBR), Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Cabinet Office

Halberstadt, Victor (NLD), Co-Chair Bilderberg Meetings; Professor of Economics, Leiden University

Hallengren, Lena (SWE), Minister for Health and Social Affairs

Hamers, Ralph (NLD), CEO, UBS Group AG

Hassabis, Demis (GBR), CEO and Founder, DeepMind

Hedegaard, Connie (DNK), Chair, KR Foundation

Henry, Mary Kay (USA), International President, Service Employees International Union

Hobson, Mellody (USA), Co-CEO and President, Ariel Investments LLC

Hodges, Ben (USA), Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies, Center for European Policy Analysis

Hoekstra, Wopke (NLD), Minister of Foreign Affairs

Hoffman, Reid (USA), Co-Founder, Inflection AI; Partner, Greylock

Hut, Jean Marc (NLD), Chairman, Heineken NV

Joshi, Shashank (GBR), Defence Editor, The Economist

Karp, Alex (USA), CEO, Palantir Technologies Inc.

Kissinger, Henry A. (USA), Chairman, Kissinger Associates Inc.

Ko§, –mer (TUR), Chairman, Ko§ Holding AS

Kofman, Michael (USA), Director, Russia Studies Program, Center for Naval Analysis

Kostrzewa, Wojciech (POL), President, Polish Business Roundtable

Krasnik, Martin (DNK), Editor-in-Chief, Weekendavisen

Kravis, Henry R. (USA), Co-Chairman, KKR & Co. Inc.

Kravis, Marie-Jos(C)e (USA), Co-Chair Bilderberg Meetings; Chair, The Museum of Modern Art

Kudelski, Andr(C) (CHE), Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group SA

Kukies, J¶rg (DEU), State Secretary, Chancellery

Lammy, David (GBR), Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, House of Commons

LeCun, Yann (USA), Vice-President and Chief AI Scientist, Facebook, Inc.

Leu, Livia (CHE), State Secretary, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Leysen, Thomas (BEL), Chairman, Umicore and Mediahuis; Chairman DSM N.V.

Liikanen, Erkki (FIN), Chairman, IFRS Foundation Trustees

Little, Mark (CAN), President and CEO, Suncor Energy Inc.

Looney, Bernard (GBR), CEO, BP plc

Lundstedt, Martin (SWE), CEO and President, Volvo Group

L¼tke, Tobias (CAN), CEO, Shopify

Marin, Sanna (FIN), Prime Minister

Markarowa, Oksana (UKR), Ambassador of Ukraine to the US

Meinl-Reisinger, Beate (AUT), Party Leader, NEOS

Michel, Charles (INT), President, European Council

Minton Beddoes, Zanny (GBR), Editor-in-Chief, The Economist

Mullen, Michael (USA), Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Mundie, Craig J. (USA), President, Mundie & Associates LLC

Netherlands, H.M. the King of the (NLD)

Niemi, Kaius (FIN), Senior Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat Newspaper

Nº±ez, Carlos (ESP), Executive Chairman, PRISA Media

O'Leary, Michael (IRL), Group CEO, Ryanair Group

Papalexopoulos, Dimitri (GRC), Chairman, TITAN Cement Group

Petraeus, David H. (USA), Chairman, KKR Global Institute

Pierrakakis, Kyriakos (GRC), Minister of Digital Governance

Pinho, Ana (PRT), President and CEO, Serralves Foundation

Pouyann(C), Patrick (FRA), Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies SE

Rachman, Gideon (GBR), Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator, The Financial Times

Raimondo, Gina M. (USA), Secretary of Commerce

Reksten Skaugen, Grace (NOR), Board Member, Investor AB

Rende, Mithat (TUR), Member of the Board, TSKB

Reynders, Didier (INT), European Commissioner for Justice

Rutte, Mark (NLD), Prime Minister

Salvi, Diogo (PRT), Co-Founder and CEO, TIMWE

Sawers, John (GBR), Executive Chairman, Newbridge Advisory Ltd.

Schadlow, Nadia (USA), Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

Schinas, Margaritis (INT), Vice President, European Commission

Schmidt, Eric E. (USA), Former CEO and Chairman, Google LLC

Scott, Kevin (USA), CTO, Microsoft Corporation

Sebasti£o, Nuno (PRT), CEO, Feedzai

Sedwill, Mark (GBR), Chairman, Atlantic Futures Forum

Sikorski, Radoslaw (POL), MEP, European Parliament

Sinema, Kyrsten (USA), Senator

Starace, Francesco (ITA), CEO, Enel S.p.A.

Stelzenm¼ller, Constanze (DEU), Fritz Stern Chair, The Brookings Institution

Stoltenberg, Jens (INT), Secretary General, NATO

Straeten, Tinne Van der (BEL), Minister for Energy

Suleyman, Mustafa (GBR), CEO, Inflection AI

Sullivan, Jake (USA), Director, National Security Council

Tellis, Ashley J. (USA), Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs, Carnegie Endowment

Thiel, Peter (USA), President, Thiel Capital LLC

Treichl, Andreas (AUT), President, Chairman ERSTE Foundation

Tugendhat, Tom (GBR), MP; Chair Foreign Affairs Committee, House of Commons

Veremis, Markos (GRC), Co-Founder and Chairman, Upstream

Vitrenko, Yuriy (UKR), CEO, Naftogaz

Wallander, Celeste (USA), Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs

Wallenberg, Marcus (SWE), Chair, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB

Walmsley, Emma (GBR), CEO, GlaxoSmithKline plc

Wennink, Peter (NLD), President and CEO, ASML Holding NV

Yetkin, Murat (TUR), Journalist/Writer, YetkinReport

Yurdakul, Afsin (TUR), Journalist, Habert¼rk News Network

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Archived Version

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 13:53

A Justice Department probe found that members of the Obama administration did not seek to reveal the identity of Michael Flynn ''for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons,'' a newly disclosed report reveals.

The document details the results of a monthslong investigation into the so-called unmasking of Flynn, who briefly served as national security adviser to then-president Donald Trump before he resigned in February 2017 in the wake of the revelation that he had lied about phone conversations he held with Russia's ambassador to the US.

Republicans later accused officials in the Obama administration of using their positions to reveal anonymized names in classified documents, known in the intelligence community as unmasking, in order to target individuals in Trump's orbit. In May 2020, Trump's attorney general, William Barr, ordered an investigation into the practice of unmasking. That review, conducted by John Bash '-- at the time the US attorney for the Western District of Texas '-- was finished the following September without finding any evidence of wrongdoing.

Although Bash's conclusions, including his decision not to prosecute anyone, were first reported in late 2020, the report itself has not previously been seen by the public. The full 52-page document, which had been classified top secret, was obtained by BuzzFeed News in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and is being shared here for the first time in its entirety.

The probe was one of several ordered up by Barr scrutinizing the origins of federal investigations into ties between Trump and the Russian government. On Tuesday, a federal jury acquitted a Democratic lawyer who had been charged with lying to the FBI in one of those probes, overseen by special prosecutor John Durham.

In his case, Bash employed a team of two prosecutors, three FBI agents, and one FBI analyst to review unmasking requests made to the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and the FBI between March 1, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2017, and to conduct interviews with 20 government employees involved in intelligence briefings. He examined whether anyone in the Obama administration had improper motives when seeking to reveal the true identities of US citizens '-- including Flynn '-- whose names were not disclosed in classified intelligence reports.

Bash, who left the Justice Department in October 2020, found no such activity.

''My review has uncovered no evidence that senior Executive Branch officials sought the disclosure of'' the identities of US individuals ''in disseminated intelligence reports for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons during the 2016 presidential-election period or the ensuing presidential-transition period,'' Bash's report says.

A central focus of the probe was the leak showing that Flynn had been in communication with then''Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak prior to Trump's inauguration, and whether Flynn's involvement was revealed through an unmasking request from a government official.

But Bash's review of unmasked intelligence reports about the calls found that the FBI did not in fact disseminate any that contained Flynn's information, and that a single unmasked report that did contain Flynn's information did not describe the calls between him and Kislyak. ''For that reason, the public disclosure of the communications could not have resulted from an unmasking request,'' Bash's report concludes.

Intriguingly, the prosecutor did find that ''the FBI shared transcripts of the relevant communications outside the Bureau without masking General Flynn's name,'' but notes that he did not investigate those incidents any further because ''evaluating that dissemination, and determining how the information was provided to the media, is beyond the scope of this review.'' Bash's report contains no information about who shared those transcripts and who received them.

Although Bash writes that he had not found a justification to conduct a criminal investigation into anyone who was involved in the unmasking process, he says he was ''troubled'' by ''how easy it is for political appointees of the incumbent administration to obtain nonpublic information about individuals associated with a presidential campaign or a transition team.''

''There exists a significant potential for misuse of such information'-- misuse that could be difficult to detect,'' Bash writes. His report recommends that the intelligence community should consider implementing ''certain prophylactic safeguards for unmasking requests that relate to presidential campaigns or transitions, including a more demanding substantive standard for granting those requests, special notification requirements, and a centralized approval process.''

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Archived Version

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 13:24

(C) Evgen Kotenko/Avalon/Photoshot/picture alliance Liudmyla Denisova at a recent event in Kyiv The country's ombudsperson for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, is accused of having neglected her duties. But human rights activist criticize her dismissal.A majority of Ukrainian parliamentarians from different parties, including President Zelenskyy's governing Servant of the People party, removed Lyudmyla Denisova after a vote of no-confidence on May 31.

Ukraine's opposition Fatherland party, headed by Yulia Tymoshenko, and ex-President Petro Poroshenko's European Solidarity party voted against the move. Few saw Denisova's dismissal coming.

Denisova, who until recently served as the country's ombudsperson for human rights, had considerable authority to protect civil rights and oversee prisoner swaps.

Her term would have ended next year. Neither the constitution nor any other legislation ordinarily allows for premature dismissal from her office. Lawmakers, however, made use of martial law, which permits the removal of all appointees.

Accusations against Denisova

The deputy chairman of the parliament regulatory committee, Pavlo Frolov, says Denisova failed to oversee the opening of humanitarian corridors in Ukraine warzones, address the abduction of Ukrainians from occupied territories, and the protection and exchange of prisoners.

Instead, Frolov says that Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk stepped in. Her ministry, which in charge of the occupied regions, took on most human rights-related challenges relating to the war, according to the Servant of the People lawmaker.

He also accuses her of having focused too much on media work, and on describing sexually motivated crimes in gratuitous detail as well as the raping of children in occupied territories. However, some of these accounts, he said, had not been verified, which had harmed Ukraine's reputation and distracted media attention from other, proven crimes and problems.

Frolov also accuses Denisova of having spent considerable time abroad after Russia attacked the country on February 24. He says instead of traveling to Russia or Belarus, where she could have worked to free Ukrainian prisoners, or alleviate the suffering of people in occupied Kherson, Denisova was staying in "warm, peaceful western Europe."

Many Ukrainian journalists and human rights activists were outraged when they read Denisova's detailed descriptions on her Facebook account.

"Sexually motivated crimes during wartime are a tragedy, but they should not be the subject of a kind of 'chronicle of scandal'," an open letter penned by 140 activists, media professionals, lawyers, psycologists and other public figures stated.

The letter goes on to say "it is the job of the ombudsperson to first and foremost consider the rights and dignity of survivors and their relatives."

Politicized office?

Many signatories of the letter nevertheless take issue with Denisova's sudden dismissal. "We as human rights activists doubt [Denisova's] competence and independence," says Tetiana Pechonchyk, who heads Kyiv's human rights organization ZMINA. "Four years ago, we protested against the politicization of her nomination; but what is happening now is totally arbitrary and damages the office of Ukraine's human rights chief."

The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) and its European partners have also spoken up. A letter penned by them to parliamentary speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warns her dismissal could "severely disrupt the important work that needs to be done in these times of conflict." The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says Denisova's removal "violates international standards."

Denisova, meanwhile, claims the presidential office pushed for her removal. She says it "did not approve of my work, which aimed to gather and analyze information about human rights violations in occupied areas." She will contest her dismissal in court.

There have been other attempts to remove her from office. Last autumn, a lawmaker with the ruling Servant of the People party set up an inquiry committee to look into Denisova's failure to move ahead with several lawsuits, although courts had asked her to.

Opposition lawmakers at the time said the inquiry was launched by the presidential office to exact revenge on Denisova for criticizing the "anti-oligarchy law" as unconstitutional.

Who will take over?

Before Denisova took over as human rights chief in March 2018, the post had remained vacant for a year after her predecessor, Valeriya Lutkovska, was dismissed. She had been the first woman to hold the post.

Who should succeed her sparked intense political negations between what was then the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, and the People's Front party, which ultimately nominated Denisova.

Ukrainian human rights activist now warn against further politicizing the office. They are calling for human rights experts, rather than lawmakers, to apply for the job in an open, transparent procedure. Nelly Yakovleva, deputy head of the parliamentary human rights committee, says, so far, no candidates had submitted applications.

This article was originally written in Russian.

Copyright 2022 DW.COM, Deutsche Welle. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 12:54

The new evolving hysteria surrounding the alleged emergence of 'monkeypox' in Western nations is not what it appears to be. We are not witnessing the monkeypox virus run rampant across first world countries for the first time ever.

Instead, we are witnessing the latest attempt to advance Draconian biosecurity policies through a monumental coverup of the devastating damage done to the immune systems of people who have had the Covid-19 vaccine. Damage so severe that it can be likened to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.

And we can prove it'...

Human monkeypox is a zoonosis thought to usually occur sporadically in the tropical rainforest of western and central Africa. But the exact incidence and geographical distribution are actually unknown because many cases are not recognised. The reason being is that it is commonly mistaken for chickenpox / shingles.

According to a scientific study published in 1988 , between 19981-1986, 977 persons with skin eruption not clinically diagnosed as human monkeypox were laboratory tested in Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo).

The results were as follows ''

'3.3% of human monkeypox cases were found among 730 patients diagnosed as cases of chickenpox, 7.3% among cases diagnosed as ''atypical chickenpox'' and 6.1% among cases with skin rash for which clinical diagnosis could not be established.

The diagnostic difficulties were mainly based on clinical features characteristic of chickenpox: regional pleomorphism (in 46% of misdiagnosed cases), indefinite body-distribution of skin eruptions (49%), and centripetal distribution of skin lesions (17%). Lymph-node enlargement was observed in 76% of misdiagnosed patients. In the absence of smallpox, the main clinical diagnostic problem is the differentiation of human monkeypox from chickenpox.'

Can you spot any major differences between the following two images?

Chickenpox / ShinglesMonkeypoxNow you can see why it was regularly misdiagnosed.

Human monkeypox was first identified in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a 9-year-old boy. Since then, human cases of monkeypox have been reported in 11 African countries. It wasn't until 2003 that the first monkeypox outbreak outside of Africa was recorded, and this was in the United States.

The main points to take away from this are that the alleged monkeypox disease is extremely rare, has rarely been seen outside of Africa, and has never been recorded in multiple countries outside of Africa at the same time.

So with that being the case, do you not find it strange that we are suddenly being told that cases of monkeypox are now being recorded in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Germany, all at the same time?

Especially when the World Health Organization has confirmed that there is zero evidence that the monkeypox virus has mutated.

But if you don't find it strange, then the following map showing the countries where the Pfizer Covid-19 injection has mainly been administered might change your mind ''

Because evidence suggests we're not witnessing an outbreak of monkeypox across first-world countries at all. Instead, we're witnessing the consequences of the damage that has been caused to immune systems by the Covid-19 injections in the very same first-world countries, and authorities are rushing to cover it up.

Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) is a common cause of ulcerative skin disease in both immune-compromised and immune-competent individuals. Most individuals infected with HSV have either no symptoms or mild symptoms that go unnoticed.

When symptoms do appear, they initially present with tingling and/or redness, followed by blister-like lesions that rapidly merge into open, weeping sores. The sores are often quite painful and can be accompanied by a fever and swollen lymph glands.

Just like monkeypox.

In immune-compromised people, as in those with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, the frequency and symptoms of HSV outbreaks can sometimes be severe, spreading from the mouth or genitals to deeper tissues in the lungs or brain. As such, HSV has been classified as an ''AIDS-defining condition'' if lasting longer than a month or presenting in the lungs, bronchi or oesophagus.

Did you know herpes is listed as an adverse event of special interest (AESI) by Pfizer in relation to their Covid-19 injection? You could be forgiven for not knowing because it was only recently revealed in the confidential Pfizer documents that the FDA were forced to publish by Court order in 2022.

Confidential Pfizer DocumentsThe US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to delay the release of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine safety data for 75 years despite approving the injection after only 108 days of safety review on December 11th, 2020.

But in early January 2022, Federal Judge Mark Pittman ordered them to release 55,000 pages per month. They released 12,000 pages by the end of January.

Since then, PHMPT has posted all of the documents on their website. The latest drop happened on May 2nd 2022.

One of the documents contained in the data dump is 'reissue_5.3.6 postmarketing experience.pdf' . Page 21 of the confidential document contains data on adverse events of special interest, with one of these specifically being herpes viral infections.

According to the document by the end of February 2021, just 2 months after the Pfizer vaccine was granted emergency use authorisation in both the USA and UK, Pfizer has received 8,152 reports relating to herpes infection, and 18 of these had already led to multiple organ dysfunction syndrome.

Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) is a systemic, dysfunctional inflammatory response that requires long intensive care unit (ICU) stay. It is characterized with a high mortality rate depending on the number of organs involved. It can be caused by herpes infection as this scientific study proved back in 2012 ''

It should be noted how according to the study, septic shock alongside multiple organ failure led to the persons death, because we will be moving on to sepsis very shortly.

The confidential Pfizer documents also list another condition that has extreme similarities to monkeypox: autoimmune blistering disease.

The condition is hidden within the 9 pages long list of adverse events of special interest at the end of Pfizer's reissue_5.3.6 postmarketing experience.pdf document.

Autoimmune blistering disease causes blisters on the skin and mucous membranes throughout the body. It can affect the mouth, nose, throat, eyes, and genitals. It is not fully understood but ''experts'' believe that it is triggered when a person who has a genetic tendency to get this condition comes into contact with an environmental trigger. This might be a chemical or a medicine. Such as the Pfizer Covid-19 injection?

So now we know that Pfizer listed several conditions with extremely similar symptoms to monkeypox as 'adverse events of special interest to their Covid-19 injection, it would be very helpful to know if those same conditions have actually occurred regularly in the real-world. Thankfully, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has a very useful tool that allows us to find out.

Adverse Events Reported in the U.S.AThe Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) hosted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) contains historical data on adverse reactions reported against every vaccine that has been administered in the United States of America and it can be accessed here .

We ran several searches on the database and have imported the data into charts. But here's an example of what you will find if you run the search yourselves.

The following is a list of all vaccines related to herpes, smallpox, chickenpox, hepatitis etc.

And the following is the list of search results returned on adverse reactions to the above vaccines in relation to herpes, infection between 2008 and 2020.

The following chart shows adverse events reported to VAERS related to herpes, shingles and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. It shows the number of adverse events reported against the Flu Vaccines, all vaccines combined (excluding Covid-19 injections) and the HPV/Smallpox vaccines between 2008 and 2020. As well as the number of adverse events reported against the Covid-19 injections up to 13th May 2022.

As you can see the Covid-19 injections have caused the most herpes related infections, and this is within 17 months. When comparing these to the number of flareups reported against the HPV/Smallpox vaccines in 13 years, these numbers are extremely concerning.

Many will argue that this could be completely unrelated and is just down to so many Covid-19 injections being administered. But same people who argue this also won't provide any evidence to back it up. So we will.

According to 'Our World in Data' , as of 6th May 2022, a total of 579.9 million Covid-19 injections had been administered across the USA.

But according to figures released by the CDC, a total of 1.72 billion flu vaccines were administered across the USA between 2008 and 2020.

So as you can see, there were over 3 times as many flu jabs administered between 2008 and 2020 alone.

Now that we know these figures we can use them to work out the rate of adverse events related to herpes etc. per 1 million doses administered. We just have to perform the following calculation ''

Number of doses administered / 1 million = YNumber of Adverse Events / Y = Rate of adverse events per 1 million doses

The following chart reveals the answer to that calculation ''

The rate of herpes-related infections reported as adverse reactions to the Flu jabs is 0.75 adverse events per 1 million doses administered. But the rate of herpes-related infections reported as adverse reactions to the Covid-19 injections is 31.31 adverse events per 1 million doses administered.

That's a 4,075% difference, and indicative of a very serious problem. But what mechanism of Covid-19 vaccination is causing this to happen?

The answer lies in the fact that the Covid-19 injections cause recipients to develop Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.

Vaccine Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (VAIDS)Governments worldwide have been quietly publishing data for months on end that strongly suggests the Covid-19 injections cause extensive damage to the natural immune system, causing recipients to develop a new form of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.

Here's one example of that data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

The following table has been stitched together from the case-rate tables found in the Week 3, Week 7 and Week 13 UKHSA Vaccine Surveillance Reports and it shows the Covid-19 case rates per 100,000 among the unvaccinated and triple vaccinated population in England ''

As you can see from the above, the case-rates per 100k were highest among the triple vaccinated population over these 3 months, except for the 18-29-year-olds in the week 3 report only, and the under 18's in all 3 months. But it is worth noting the rapid decline in rates among unvaccinated children compared to the small decline in rates among vaccinated children.

With those rates we can calculate the real-world vaccine effectiveness using Pfizer's efficacy formula ''

Unvaccinated Case Rate '' Vaccinated Case Rate / Unvaccinated Case Rate x 100

The following chart shows the Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness among the triple vaccinated population in England in the Week 3, Week 7 and Week 13 reports of 2022 ''

As you can see from the above, by the beginning of 2022, things were significantly worse than they were in October in terms of effectiveness; and disastrously worse by the end of March.

Data shows that vaccine effectiveness fell month on month, with the lowest effectiveness recorded among 60-69-year-olds at a shocking minus-391%. This age group also experienced the sharpest decline, falling from minus-104.69% in week 3.

But one of the more concerning declines in vaccine effectiveness has been recorded among 18-29-year-olds, falling to minus-231% by Week 12 of 2022 from +10.19% in Week 3.

A negative vaccine effectiveness indicates immune system damage because vaccine effectiveness isn't really a measure of the effectiveness of a vaccine. It is a measure of a vaccine recipient's immune system performance compared to the immune system performance of an unvaccinated person.

The Covid-19 vaccine is supposed to train your immune system to recognise the spike protein of the original strain of the Covid-19 virus. It does this by instructing your cells to produce the spike protein, then your immune system produces antibodies and remembers to use them later if you encounter the spike part of the Covid-19 virus again.

But the vaccine doesn't hang around after it's done the initial training, it leaves your immune system to take care of the rest. So when the authorities state that the effectiveness of the vaccines weakens over time, what they really mean is that the performance of your immune system weakens over time.

The problem we're seeing in the official data is that the immune system isn't returning to its original and natural state, and the following chart shows the immune system performance of the triple vaccinated population in England by age group in four week periods, compared to the natural immune system of the unvaccinated population ''

By the end of March 2022, the lowest immune system performance was among 60-69-year-olds at a shocking minus-80%, but all triple vaccinated people aged 30 to 59 were not far behind, with an immune system performance ranging from minus-75% to minus-76%.

Even the 18 to 29-year-olds were within this region at minus-70%, falling from an immune system performance of +11.35% between week 51 and week 2, meaning they had suffered the fastest decline in immune system performance.

This has also translated into deaths.

The following chart shows the Covid-19 death rates per 100,000 by vaccination status across England in March 2022 based on data published by the UKHSA ''

Here's what that meant in terms of real-world vaccine effectiveness against death ''

All of this is indicative of Covid-19 vaccine acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which in turn can lead to activating dormant herpes infections, and further data from the Centers for Disease Control's VAERS system supports this.

The following chart shows the percentage of all of the above AIDS-associated adverse reactions reported to VAERS to all vaccines by year ''

Fifty-one-percent of all adverse reactions associated with AIDS reported since the year 2000 were reported in 2021, and a further 16% have been reported in 2022 so far.

The following chart shows the number of acquired immune disorders, including AIDS, that have been reported to VAERS as adverse reactions to all vaccines (including the Covid-19 jabs) by the year reported, and the Covid-19 vaccines only by the year reported ''

There was a huge increase in reports in 2021 and in 2022 so far, with the vast majority being attributed to the Covid-19 injections.

The average number of acquired immune disorders being reported as adverse reactions to any vaccine between the years 2000 and 2020 equates to 31.

The total number of acquired immune disorders reported as adverse reactions in 2021 was 386. This represents a 1145% increase.

It is however important to note that not all adverse reactions are reported to VAERS. In fact the CDC has admitted just 1 to 10% of adverse reactions are actually reported to the system. But a brilliant analysis conducted by Jessica Rose Phd accurately estimates the underreporting factor to be at least 41.3. See here .

The following chart shows the number of common cancers usually associated with AIDS that have been reported to VAERS as adverse reactions to all vaccines (including the Covid-19 jabs) by the year reported, and the Covid-19 vaccines only by the year reported ''

As you can see there was a huge increase in reports in 2021 and in 2022 so far, with the vast majority being attributed to the Covid-19 injections.

The average number of common cancers associated with AIDS being reported as adverse reactions to any vaccine between the years 2000 and 2020 equates to 21.3.

The total number of common cancers associated with AIDS reported as adverse reactions in 2021 was 430. This represents a 1919% increase.

The following chart shows the number of herpes infections/complications that have been reported to VAERS as adverse reactions to all vaccines (including the Covid-19 jabs) by the year reported, and the Covid-19 vaccines only by the year reported ''

We assume you're beginning to see the pattern here? Another huge increase in 2021 and 2022.

The average number of herpes infections being reported as adverse reactions to any vaccine between the years 2000 and 2020 equates to 926.

The total number of herpes infections reported as adverse reactions in 2021 was 18,336. This represents a 1880% increase.

The following chart shows the number of sepsis cases that have been reported to VAERS as adverse reactions to all vaccines (including the Covid-19 jabs) by the year reported, and the Covid-19 vaccines only by the year reported ''

Sepsis is the body's extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical emergency. Sepsis happens when an infection you already have triggers a chain reaction throughout your body. Infections that lead to sepsis most often start in the lung, urinary tract, skin, or gastrointestinal tract.

The average number of sepsis cases being reported as adverse reactions to any vaccine between the years 2000 and 2020 equates to 75.

The total number of sepsis cases reported as adverse reactions in 2021 was 1593. This represents a 2024% increase.

This isn't only limited to the UK and USA. We're also seeing the same patterns in Canada and New Zealand. The evidence strongly suggests the Covid-19 injections cause recipients to develop acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

This is in turn leading to flare-ups of herpes infections resulting in conditions such as shingles, auto-immune blistering disease and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. But the authorities are telling you that monkeypox is to blame in an attempt to cover up the consequences of the damage that has been done to the natural immune system by Covid-19 vaccination.

The confidential Pfizer documents suggest this, the Centres for Disease Control VAERS database suggests this, Government data published around the world suggests this, and this scientific study published in October 2021 suggests this ''

The question now is how far the authorities are prepared to take this. The UK Government is already ''advising'' that identified close contacts of ''confirmed'' monkeypox cases should isolate for a minimum of three weeks. Is ''monkeypox'' about to be used as the latest excuse to further advance draconian biosecurity policies and global power grabs?

We're about to find out.

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Archived Version

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 12:51

Dozens of container ships are piling up outside Germany's largest seaport by volume, known as the Port of Hamburg. It's the third busiest port in Europe and the 15th largest globally and could be plunged into chaos next week as dockworkers may strike.

German newspaper Die Welt reports congestion at Hamburg is worsening, and container ships have to wait two weeks before entering the port.

"The waiting times are unsatisfactory," a spokesman for shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said, referring to Hamburg.

Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA), a top European port and transport logistics company, said the reason for increasing congestion is a slowdown in the processing of containers, especially imports from the Far East not being transported fast enough by truck and train.

Besides congestion, Kiel Institute for Economic Research estimates that around 2% of the global container load is stuck at the port. There are also mounting concerns dockworkers could be ready to strike.

"There could be additional problems from next Tuesday. Many reckon that dockers could then go on strike in order to increase the pressure on the ongoing wage negotiations. The next round of negotiations is scheduled for June 10, but the peace obligation has already expired," Die Welt said.

According to the Verdi services union, the strike could begin next Tuesday. The last time strikes hit Hamburg was in the late 1970s, a period when the world suffered from disastrous stagflation, similar to the economic climate today.

A shipowner told the German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt: "If it comes to that, we'll have a super meltdown in Hamburg."

The timing of the proposed strike by dockworkers comes as consumer prices in Europe's largest economy surged 8.7% YoY last month (the highest since the start of the monthly statistics in 1963).

The squeeze for households is far from over as consumers pay record prices for fuel and food and power bills. Inflation is only getting worse for households as the country could be on the verge of a recession.

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Archived Version

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 12:50

Studies on COVID-19 vaccines have suggested links between Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD)'--an incurable and fatal prion disease'--and getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

A recent French pre-print on CJD and COVID-19 vaccination has suggested that the COVID-19 vaccine may have contributed to the emergence of a new type of sporadic CJD disease that is a lot more aggressive and rapid in disease progression as compared to the traditional CJD.

CJD is a rare disease caused by an abnormal protein in the brain called a prion.

Prions naturally occur in the brain and are usually harmless, but when they become diseased or misfolded, they will affect nearby prions to also become misshapen, leading to deterioration of brain tissue and death.

The disease is incurable as once one prion becomes infected, it will continue to propagate to other prions with no treatment capable of stopping its progress.

The majority of people with CJD have sporadic CJD; they become infected for no apparent reason. However, small subsets of people are diagnosed due to inheritance.

Sporadic CJD, though occurring at random, has been linked to consumption of meat that has been infected with diseased prions, such as affecting individuals that ingest beef from a cow that has been infected.

Though the Omicron variant of COVID-19 does not carry a prion region in its spike protein, the first Wuhan COVID-19 variant has a prion region on its spike protein. A U.S. study indicates that the prion area is able to interact with human cells.

Therefore, when the Wuhan variant's spike protein gene information was made into a vaccine as part of the mRNA and adenovirus vaccines, the prion region was also incorporated.

As part of the natural cellular process, once the mRNA is incorporated into the cells, the cell will turn the mRNA instructions into a COVID-19 spike protein, tricking the cells into believing that it has been infected so that they create an immunological memory against a component of the virus.

However, the biological process of translating mRNA information into proteins is not perfect and immune to mistakes.

A U.S. study has speculated that a misfolded spike protein could in turn create a misfolded prion region that may be able to interact with healthy prions to cause damage, leading to CJD disease.

A peer-reviewed study in Turkey (pdf) and the French preprint have identified sudden CJD cases appearing after getting the Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca vaccines, suggesting links between getting vaccinated and being infected.

The French study found an onset of symptoms within 11.38 days of being vaccinated while the case study in Turkey has found symptoms appearing 1 day after vaccination.

Previous studies of CJD in cannibal groups have indicated that CJD can remain dormant after infection for around 10 years or more. However, authors of the French study have found that the CJD cases observed after being vaccinated by COVID-19 are a lot more rapid in onset.

The study identified 26 cases across Europe and United States; 20 of the cases had already died by the time the study was written, with death occurring on average 4.76 months after being vaccinated.

''This confirms the radically different nature of this new form of CJD, whereas the classic form requires several decades,'' wrote the researchers, led by Dr. Jean-Claude Perez.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 12:48

It can feel at times as if the entire world is pivoting into Web3, and the question is why. There are, suddenly, Web3 media companies, Web3 advertising firms, Web3 studios, Web3 marketing tactics, and Web3 publishing networks. LimeWire and MoviePass have risen from the dead, newly ''powered'''--as one of their CEOs put it'--''by Web3 technology.'' Web3 apparently is not only ''transforming gaming'' and ''re-engineering real estate,'' but also the future of the internet, and maybe the entire global economy as well.

Never mind that very few people can agree on exactly what Web3 is (and isn't). What matters to investors is that Web3 is the hot new thing and the entrepreneurs are piling in. One venture capitalist, Hadley Harris, told me that roughly half the Web3 pitches he'd recently looked over came from founders who weren't even in the space half a year ago. That's a claim backed up by Alchemy, a company that considers itself the Web3 infrastructural equivalent of Amazon Web Services; it said in February that ''hundreds of established Web2 companies'' are pivoting into Web3 using its platform. Even new pharmaceutical companies are now taking a Web3 ''crypto-first approach,'' with one raising the possibility of issuing a ''cryptocurrency token to participants in its clinical trials.''

''A lot of people are trying to get in on it, and a lot of people are more afraid of not getting in.''

The pace of the pivots can feel almost frenetic. One Ottawa-based entrepreneur, worried the world was passing him by, surprised his employees on a company Zoom call by saying he was pivoting the entire company into Web3. ''I said, 'Guys, this is the future and this is where everything is going,''' he said. '''If we miss this boat, I don't think we can ever get back on.''' (The company, which had been a print-on-demand platform, now helps creators build 3D NFTs to sell to fans in the metaverse.)

Like a lot of his fellow entrepreneurs, Nick Gerard, the CEO and co- founder of Norby, a startup focused on the creator economy, started to notice last year that one by one, his competitors were also diving headfirst into the world of crypto and Web3. Gerard said potential investors in Norby were pushing him to take the Web3 leap as well.

But Gerard couldn't help but feel confused by the whole thing. His customers, the people he thought mattered most, rarely showed much interest in Web3 technologies at all. ''I can count on one hand the number of times I have actually heard 'NFTs' come out of one of these people's mouths,'' he told me. Even still, he and the rest of his team mulled over whether to make the switch, fearful that they were missing something everyone else could see.

''Nobody wants to be Paul Krugman,'' Gerard said, referring to an infamous 1998 quote in which the Nobel Prize''winning economist predicted that the internet would ultimately become no more consequential than the fax machine. (He's also famously anti-Bitcoin and crypto.)

Have you worked or invested in Web3? We want to hear from you. From a non-work device, contact our reporter at maxwell.strachan@vice.com or via Signal at 310-614-3752 for extra security.

The Web3 hysteria has continued this year even as the tech industry more broadly has struggled with rising interest rates and plummeting share prices. ''In the last six months, it's gotten fairly ridiculous,'' said one partner at a crypto-focused investment firm. In the first three months of the year, the top 15 venture firms poured more money into Web3 and DeFi early- and seed-stage deals than any other area, the third straight quarter they have done so, according to the research firm Pitchbook. In total, the early- and seed-stage Web3 world nabbed $2 billion from top firms last quarter, more than double what the next-highest sector, biotechnology, received, and triple what traditional fintech got. Those figures understate the total level of interest'--and money'--in the space. Blockchain companies have raised at least $9.5 billion after receiving $18 billion in funding in 2021, according to numbers the research firm CrunchBase provided to Motherboard. And more firepower is on the way. In late May, amid plunging crypto prices, one of Web3's biggest institutional backers, the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, announced it had raised a monstrous $4.5 billion crypto fund following a series of high-profile investments into Web3 projects like play-to-earn game Axie Infinity and the parent company of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

''It's a gold rush for sure,'' said Dayton Mills, the co-founder and CEO of Branch. Mills' company had been a struggling remote-work startup before he transformed it into a Web3 gaming platform. The moment he started talking about his Web3 vision, investor interest skyrocketed. ''It was a tremendous difference,'' he said. ''There were people who I didn't even meet with who were just committing over email without ever even talking to me.'' He had planned to raise $2 million, only to receive $20 million in commitments in two weeks. ''We stopped because it just was incredibly overwhelming.''

''Something big is happening,'' Mills added. ''A lot of people are trying to get in on it, and a lot of people are more afraid of not getting in.''

What exactly they are getting in on is harder to pin down. The term ''Web3'' is sometimes attributed to Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of the Ethereum blockchain, who, in 2014, described an idealized version of the web in which the system placed no trust in organizations but near-complete trust in blockchain technology. But it didn't enter the mainstream cultural vernacular until last year, when it started to serve as a catchall (and, coincidentally, a venture-led rebranding) for the collection of controversial financial-technology products that include cryptocurrencies, blockchains, non-fungible tokens, decentralized autonomous organizations (or ''DAOs''), the metaverse, and decentralized financial (or DeFi) products.

''It's like a collective Theranos. A wildly unproven product with nobody at the helm,'' one venture capitalist said.

To some, like Andreessen Horowitz, what ties these innovations together is that they collectively offer a theoretical vision where people have ''the ability to own a piece of the internet'''--for example, through the use of NFTs, which are essentially tradable proof-of-ownership receipts. In such a world, people could use and even monetize their NFTs on multiple platforms, rather than just on, say, Instagram. Such a system, boosters believe'--or, at least, claim to believe'--will lead to a fairer, more communal version of the web, one that will wrest control back from technological giants that have profited off people's data and creativity, creating a world where community comes before all else. Much of the ideological rhetoric hence involves talk of using Web3 ''to truly empower financial inclusion'' (again, Andreessen Horowitz's words) by bringing people into the fold who have been marginalized by the traditional financial structure.

Such arguments are inarguably alluring. Very few people feel the financial and internet structures that underpin society could not be vastly improved. But they also belie the fact that professional investors do not push their money into the middle of the craps table solely in order to better the world. As Hilary J. Allen, a law professor at American University, succinctly put it: ''The reason why venture capitalists are pushing all of this is to make money.''

And in Web3, the venture class and other professional investors have found a uniquely appealing set of circumstances they believe will allow them to make a giant pile of money that does not rely on vast leaps in virtual reality or haptics technology'--sometimes by pulling off an impressive degree of regulatory arbitrage, other times by taking advantage of a wholly new kind of internet marketplace.

''If there is any innovation in crypto assets, it's not in software engineering but in financial engineering,'' the London-based software engineer and crypto critic Stephen Diehl has written.

Allen, who studies financial regulation, sees the rhetoric around empowerment and inclusion as little more than a ''cynical'' ploy. She and others believe it masks the aspects of the Web3 apparatus that have made it appetizing to venture capitalists, billionaires, and other institutional players'--so much so that they have moved aggressively to plant a foothold in spite of the industry's unmistakable propensity for scams, fraud, and regulatory scrutiny.

Here we have a largely unregulated marketplace ripe for exploitation and stuffed full of unclear valuation metrics, arguable unregistered securities, peculiar financial products, ways to cash out, and a public-facing ideological mission statement.

Of particular fascination has been the critical role in the Web3 ecosystem of the token, a new type of financial product that regulators are still struggling to get a handle on but that venture capitalists have realized allows them to cash out quickly and handsomely even if the company never goes public (and twice over if they do).

It is, at least for now, close to a perfect playing field for the professional money-making class, one that is leading to pressures to pivot or die, whatever the utility. One entrepreneur described with great frustration that he had recently spoken to a founder at a VC mixer who was building a ''decentralized'' dinner reservation system. When he asked why a reservation system needed to be on the blockchain, the founder simply said: ''It's the future.''

It's at least possible that Web3 could bring about a better, more fulfilling version of the internet. It's just as likely, though, to prove to be what its harshest critics fear: a ''hyper-capitalistic'' reframing of the web that ''contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare.''

''It's like a collective Theranos,'' one venture capitalist said. ''A wildly unproven product with nobody at the helm.''

A great many Web3 entrepreneurs and investors appear sincerely passionate about their mission of creating a better version of the internet. To many of these people, Web3 is not an idyllic possibility but an all-out inevitability, spoken about with an almost religious fervor. ''It really feels ideological to me, and it's weird, because VCs tend not to invest in ideologies,'' said Phil Libin, the former co-founder and CEO of Evernote. Indeed, soon after a recent string of crypto controversies, including the precipitous May crash of the Luna cryptocurrency and its sister ''stablecoin'' UST, Andreessen Horowitz said Web3 was just now entering its ''golden era.'' The same week, it announced an investment in former WeWork CEO's Adam Neumann's Web3 climate venture selling ''Goddess Nature Tokens.''

Another such believer, Benjamin Cohen, who recently started a Web3-focused investment fund, told a crypto site in March that it was ''inevitable that blockchain technology and smart contract technology will become implemented in every single facet of our life.'' That is not an isolated opinion. ''Every single company that exists is going to exist in some form of Web3,'' Alexander Taub, the Miami-based co-founder of the DAO-creation tool Upstream, told Motherboard in a Zoom interview. (Taub, who wore a ''Just DAO It'' hat, added that ''the potential market size for DAOs is, like, trillions.'')

A lot of the believer class come across as ''zealots'' who are dismissive of those who question them, according to Jason Henrichs, the CEO of Alloy Labs Alliance, who has spoken to Web3 projects about potential investment (and moved forward with some). The technology writer and researcher Evgeny Morozov has gone so far as to compare them to ''annoying vulgar Marxists who, for all the evidence to the contrary, kept [and keep] insisting that the objective developments within capitalism favor the inevitable transition to socialism.''

On its face, their level of confidence does indeed appear odd, or at least premature. One January survey by the strategy firm National Research Group found that only 13 percent of surveyed American adults knew what Web3 meant, and that more than half have never heard the term. A separate poll from around the same time said less than two in five members of Generation Z believed ''the metaverse is the next big thing and will become part of our lives in the next decade.''

Andreessen Horowitz claims there are 22,400 Web3 creators, and only 18,000 developers were working in crypto or Web3 by the end of 2021, according to one recent survey by Electric Capita, nothing compared to the more than 27 million developers in the world.

Some wonder if the Web3 hype is justified at all. Libin had been initially drawn to the ''beautiful'' and ''elegant'' concepts of Web3, he said. The CEO of the startup studio All Turtles and the virtual camera application mmhmm, as well as a former VC at General Catalyst, Libin has made a career out of searching out companies that solve real problems with clear business models. But as he started hearing from more and more Web3 companies, he found himself unable to understand what benefit came from developing certain projects on the blockchain as opposed to, for example, using an internal database. When he started to challenge some of the pitches he received, he didn't like the answers he got. Using such technologies often seemed needlessly expensive and prone to exploitation by hackers and scammers.

''Web3 proponents are trying to solve real problems that need solving. I just don't think that Web3 is the solution,'' he said. ''It doesn't make sense to me as a programmer.''

The common pro-Web3 counterargument'--often repeated by VCs'--is that proponents are simply early, like with the internet of the 1990s. Such unbridled optimism is not novel to Web3, but instead core to the venture and technology industries' model, according to Martin Kenney, a professor at the University of California, Davis who studies the industry. The investors' goal is always to sell the company, and they have an incentive to target hot sectors and then aid in raising interest in them.

''Whatever the new thing is, it's absolutely in the VC's interest to hype it. You'd be a fool not to,'' said Kenney. ''So you feed it to the press. You tell everyone it's going to change the world, that it is the best thing since sliced bread, whatever it is that will convince the investors that they need to have it.''

It can be convincing, and was famously so in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, during which time companies that added a ''.com'' to their name experienced a ''dramatic'' and ''permanent'' rise in valuation immediately after the rebrand, ''regardless of the firm's level of involvement with the Internet,'' according to a study on the so-called ''dotcom'' effect. The researchers determined this so-called ''dotcom'' effect was attributable to a desire to be ''associated with the Internet at all costs'' even if the companies were ''at best, only loosely, if at all, connected'' to it. Eventually, the boom turned to a bust, but not before many venture capitalists cashed out.

''Web3 proponents are trying to solve real problems that need solving. I just don't think that Web3 is the solution.''

Inarguably, the hype cycle is back in full force. Kyle Samani, a managing partner at a crypto-focused investment firm, told me that although most of his limited partners don't always fully understand the technologies behind Web3, they want exposure to ''all of it.'' A research report out of Citi estimated that one component of Web3, ''the metaverse,'' alone could have a total addressable market of $13 trillion within eight years and as many as 5 billion users. (For comparison, the entire California housing stock is currently worth $9.2 trillion; Citi is essentially claiming to believe that the metaverse will, or could, be bigger than all but three or four entire U.S. industries by the time current middle-schoolers graduate college.)

Slava Rubin, an early-stage investor who founded Indiegogo and an alternative asset investing search engine, said the enthusiasm reminded him of the e-commerce boom of the 1990s. ''Whenever there's change, there's opportunity to displace the legacy players and potentially make a lot of money on investments,'' he said.

This time, however, the world's most well-known brands are diving in too, in order to avoid falling behind. Starbucks, ESPN, Spotify, and GameStop are developing NFT plans; Fidelity Investment, the nation's largest 401(k) provider, is allowing people to shove their retirement savings into Bitcoin. Goldman Sachs is offering crypto-backed loans. JPMorgan Chase, Gucci, and Miller Lite are hunkering down in the metaverse. Google has a dedicated Web3 team. Facebook is Meta.

Over the last century, venture capitalists have backed industries that have changed the world and created millions of jobs, most famously during those early years of the internet. Less talked about is the fact that the venture class has gotten it wrong as well, said Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner, who also studies the venture industry. As an example, Lerner cited the VC-funded cleantech boom and bust at the end of the 2000s as a recent example.

''It turned out that not only was the technology a lot harder than they thought, but many of the businesses were just extremely poorly run, and some of the best firms in the business were just blinded by their enthusiasm into burning huge amounts of investor money,'' Lerner said.

Tomasz Tunguz didn't become interested in Web3 because of its ideological underpinnings. Like a lot of investors, he saw a chance to make a lot of money because of the economic particularities of the Web3 ecosystem.

Tunguz, a venture capitalist at Redpoint Ventures who writes a popular blog about the industry, became active in the Web3 market in the first half of last year after he noticed the businesses were both capital efficient and could scale to enormous size. In August, Tomasz like many others watched in amazement as the price of the blockchain platform Solana's token rose from $40 to $190 by mid-September, briefly reaching a market cap of almost $80 billion by November.

''That really opened up a lot of people's eyes to the size of these companies,'' Tunguz said. ''The scale compels you to figure out what's going on.''

The closer he looked, the greater the investment opportunity seemed. For one thing, the businesses did not have clear metrics by which they could be valued. Over the last 20 years, investors and entrepreneurs have together developed fairly reliable, standardized financial models that allow them to confidently place values on traditional software businesses after comparing them to similar older ones. ''Most software businesses are really well understood. A startup walks in, and the venture capitalist just as much as the private market investors know exactly what it ought to be worth,'' said Tunguz.

''In Web3, that's not the case,'' he added. ''Nobody has any idea how to value these businesses.'' He doesn't see that as a bad thing but rather as indicative that the Web3 industry is in a period of ''broad invention as opposed to optimization.''

''Nobody has any idea how to value these businesses '... It's so new that people aren't worried about unit economics,'' one venture capitalist said.

''I haven't walked into a single pitch with a Web3 company where the words 'cost of customer acquisition' or 'payback period' has been uttered. It's so new that people aren't worried about unit economics,'' Tunguz said. (Raghavendra Rau, a Cambridge finance professor who helped discover the ''dotcom'' effect, agreed the Web3 industry's underlying fundamentals were ''tough to decipher,'' as did others.)

Tunguz knows that lack of focus on economic fundamentals will sound ''crazy'' to some people, and he does believe that a ''significantly higher'' percentage of Web3 ventures will fail than the typical crop of startups found in a venture fund's portfolio. But he also sees Web3's unclear valuation metrics as a financial opportunity compared to the world of Web 2.0, which has become so well understood that it has proven harder for investors to gain an edge.

''One of the ways of making lots of money is to have information asymmetry,'' Tunguz said. ''If you know something I don't about a company and you trade on that information, you're gonna make a bunch of money, right? In the stock market, it's illegal. It's called MNPI'--material nonpublic information. You can't do that. In the private markets, you can.''

There was one more reason Tunguz got drawn to the Web3 market: He started to see the financial potential of one of crypto's central innovations, the token. The term ''token'' can mean many things in the crypto sphere, which makes it difficult to define in any way that is simultaneously all-encompassing and useful. Most simply, it is a tradable unit on any blockchain, but it has come to take numerous forms and functions: Tokens can be currencies, as they are with Bitcoin; they can represent voting shares, as with DAO governance tokens; they can be digital collectibles, as with an NFT of a Bored Ape; and they can be earned through online work, as they are with the ''play-to-earn'' game Axie Infinity.

But professional investors have also started to view them as tradable shares of crypto projects. One such firm is Multicoin Capital, an Austin-based investment firm that ''primarily'' invests in tokens rather than traditional equity in startups, according to Kyle Samani, its co-founder and managing partner. Multicoin's recent returns have been nothing short of astonishing; its hedge fund assets reportedly shot up 20,200 percent between October 2017 and December 2021, and its venture fund secured a 28x return. Samani said he's figured out how to approach investment in ''crypto assets'''--he believes the term ''cryptocurrency'' to be a misnomer'--similarly to how a traditional investor might approach the analysis of a stock.

''You can think of the mechanisms by which these tokens capture value to be comparable to the equity of a startup,'' Samani told Motherboard. ''Many of these assets capture revenue directly in the same way that a startup would have revenue. And if an asset captured revenue, then you can model the valuation using a discounted cash-flow model.'' Such descriptions are the reason many believe tokens should be regulated like an investment contract, or a security, since people invest in them ''with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others'''--the legal criteria for qualifying as a security.

''The entirety of most web3 epiphanies is 'what if instead of selling products we sold shares instead?''' Meta product manager and frequent crypto cynic Dare Obasanjo has written.

''You can think of the mechanisms by which these tokens capture value to be comparable to the equity of a startup,'' said a partner at a crypto-focused investment firm.

Tunguz has himself referred to token-based reward systems as ''paying customers in 'equity,''' writing that as ''the network becomes more valuable, so does the user's stake in the company.'' Doing so provides a reason for initial users to be invested in the company's success, sometimes even before the company knows what product it's going to make. This is why venture capitalists have taken to saying things like ''Web2 companies start with product. Web3 companies start with community.'' The tokens bring the people. Inspired by Axie Infinity, for example, Alex Kehr adopted a token-based approach with his startup, Superlocal, a version of Foursquare for the 2020s where people earn ''crypto when you go places.'' The token, he said, would give people ''something to do in our app when nobody's there yet.'' (He considers play-to-earn tokens, in particular, less likely to be deemed securities in the future.)

Andreessen Horowitz, in its recent ''State of Crypto'' report, argued that the token-focused structure of Web3 companies aligned the incentives of users, creators, builders, and investors in a way untokenized companies could not. ''Web3 aligns network participants to work together toward a common goal'--the growth of the network,'' the report stated. Together, so the line of thinking goes, they all can theoretically make it.

But Tunguz (and others) saw opportunities for professional Web3 investors that those stuck in the earlier iteration of the web could not access. He realized the sector was broadly well suited for ''regulatory arbitrage,'' a practice in which businesses move to jurisdictions with more favorable laws or position themselves as one type of company rather than another in order avoid regulatory oversight (say, a ride-sharing company that positions itself as an app startup instead of a cab company). As Tunguz put it, the ''the regulation doesn't exist'' yet in Web3, which allows the companies to access funds not available to more-traditional companies.

Traditionally, venture capitalists have had to wait years before they can receive a payout for their investments, usually during an initial public offering. Since tokens could be sold at any time, Tunguz realized Web3 investors in them had access to an asset with ''immediate liquidity'' instead, which can lead to a return even if the company never goes public. If they do, all the better: the equity investor can then cash out twice.

One other token-related process'--known as ''staking'''--proved particularly enticing to Tunguz. To him, it seemed as sure of a thing as they come in finance. With staking, the owner of the token hands them over for a project to use as liquidity'--for crypto loans, to take one example'--and in exchange earns ''a percentage-rate reward over time,'' as the crypto exchange Coinbase puts it. This, Tunguz realized, meant he could make money from a token regardless of whether its price went up or down. Soon enough, he was actively staking tokens in order to generate what he viewed as a remarkably high ''interest rate.'' ("Tokens can generate somewhere between like 15 to, let's say, 100 percent in fixed income,'' Tunguz said.)

The discovery of such enormous fixed income in the Web3 space proved of financial interest to VCs, but Tunguz expects it will prove exceedingly exciting to institutional investors who have been focused on the bond market'--''the people who buy mortgage-backed securities, CDOs, collateralized debt obligations, basically the stuff that caused the 2008 financial crisis,'' he told me. ''Those are the big institutional pools of capital that really want to get into DeFi because they can generate those yields.''

''These big institutions are looking at these crypto tokens and saying if I can isolate myself from whether or not the price of the token goes up or down, but if I can capture the yield on a consistent basis, then I can generate maybe 10 times what I could on a bond,'' he continued.

The risk inherent in such a system became clear, though, soon after we spoke. In May, the $40 billion Terra-Luna ecosystem collapsed. A major factor had been that an affiliated lending protocol, Anchor, had promised a 20 percent staking yield. Once people started to lose confidence in the sustainability of that yield, they rushed to pull their money out, leading to Terra's algorithmic stablecoin, UST, losing its peg to the U.S. dollar and a dramatic crash in its sister cryptocurrency, Luna.

Within days, it was reported that one of Terraform Labs' early and biggest investors, the crypto-focused hedge fund Pantera Capital, had quietly cashed out ''roughly'' four-fifths of its investment ahead of UST's collapse, a little under $170 million on a $1.7 million investment. The news infuriated many retail investors, who saw it as proof of what many in crypto suspected: professional investors gaining an early edge, loudly pumping up the project, quietly cashing out'--the dump'--and then moving on to the next token.

A video clip of the investors and podcasters Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya seemingly joking about dumping their Solana tokens drew similar ire last year, as the blockchain was heavily supported by professional investors early on. ''One way an impatient VC could manipulate a project is by insisting that a startup offer tokens as part of their project, and require that a certain amount of tokens be set aside for the VC,'' the technology journalist Casey Newton recently wrote. ''That way, once the tokens become available for trading on public crypto exchanges, VCs can cash out part of their investment years ahead of schedule. Or, if the project fails before it can sell or go public, the VC can earn a profit on an investment that would have otherwise been a loss.''

Newton made the comments following the release of ApeCoin token, all but officially associated with Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, or BAYC. ApeCoin's organizing body, ApeCoin DAO, had dedicated nearly a fourth of all tokens to BAYC's co-founders and "the companies and people that helped make this project a reality," which reportedly included venture capitalists.

This sort of insidery dealmaking is why many in the crypto sphere have become suspicious of the professional investor class. Web3 projects have started requiring VCs to lock up their holding to avoid a professional pump-and-dump, and VCs have been reduced to writing about why people should take their money. (''There are many alternatives to venture capital these days, particularly in web3, but there are few, if any, alternatives that stick with you, when times are tough,'' the investor Fred Wilson wrote in December.)

And yet, the VCs' influence over the startup system remains unquestionable. A ''VC friend'' recently told Newton ''they are hearing about startups being pressured to offer tokens.'' Gerard, the Norby CEO, similarly started to hear of companies getting pressure to mint tokens.

''They've failed to find incentives in their Web2 companies. So building something in Web3, it's almost like a cop-out for some people. They're like, 'Oh, we're just gonna ping a token on top of it.'''

But the more he learned about them, the more skeptical he became. He started to believe that tokens, rather than the ideological ''future of a fully decentralized internet,'' were behind a lot of the investor interest in Web3, he told me. As he sees it, an investment firm could invest in a startup in exchange for equity and inside information and then negotiate a hoard of early tokens. ''What I have now is asymmetric access to information,'' Gerard said. ''I have a direct line to a founder that every single person in the Discord doesn't have. I have access to financial information. I know if user adoption is tanking. I know if usage is skyrocketing. I know if the founder is depressed or hooked on Adderall or is spiraling out of control.''

Then, at the first internal sign of trouble, the investor can dump the token on the ''quote-unquote community,'' Gerard said.

''That is a radical change in the way this industry works,'' he said. ''Some of them are quite transparent about it, but they're still able to couch all of this in language that revolves around ownership and the community.''

Last summer, as Gerard weighed his own pivot, he kept hearing about founders who were making the switch simply because doing so made it easier to raise money.

A venture capitalist who asked that I not use his name so he could speak freely about his firm's investments, admitted with concern that one of his own portfolio companies did the same, and other founders and CEOs similarly said they'd noticed startups cynically bolting on Web3 elements after running out of other options and needing more funding to survive.

''They've failed to find incentives in their Web2 companies,'' said Mills, the CEO who himself pivoted to start a Web3 gaming platform, said of such companies. ''So building something in Web3, it's almost like a cop-out for some people. They're like, 'Oh, we're just gonna ping a token on top of it.'''

''We see so many of these,'' agreed Jeff Clavier, the founder of the venture firm Uncork Capital. ''Web3 is the new trend, and a lot of entrepreneurs add that as an afterthought.'' Tiny Rebel Games CEO Susan Cummings said attempting to superficially ''jerry-rig'' an element to raise money can be a dangerous bet for a startup. Who is doing that in Web3 is difficult to decipher. An investor accused Cummings herself of bolting on an unnecessary Web3 element when she pitched him on the Petaverse Network, a Web3 project in which people build digital pets that can then live with them in various metaverses. ''He turned us down, saying I don't see why you need blockchain,'' she said. ''That's true. You could store it in a database.'' She contended that the potential interoperability and ownership of the Web3-based idea ''made it better'' and went on to raise $7 million, double what she set out to raise.

What everyone can seem to agree on is that the boom has created a lot of vaporware and useless entrepreneurial attempts to get rich quick, even if no one wants to name names on the record.

''Tack on Web3, and investors will throw money blindly and inflate valuations 2-3x.''

Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists alike described companies that bolt on a Web3 element in order to raise a few more bucks as ''grifters.'' Venture capitalists say such companies are easy to spot. Even if that's true for the most part, a founder told me he's noticed bolting on a Web3 element adds investor interest, whatever its relevance. ''Tack on Web3,'' the founder said, ''and investors will throw money blindly and inflate valuations 2-3x.''

Gerard, the Norby CEO, dealt with real periods of ''self-doubt'' as he decided whether to pivot into Web3. Sometimes, he worried he was being stupid. But ultimately, he decided, if his customers weren't clamoring for it, he didn't see a reason to pivot.

''If that's something that we start to hear from our customers, then it's absolutely something that we are going to take a look at and figure out what version of it makes sense for us,'' he told me. But for now, he added, ''We can't force people to want something that they don't want.''

The question for now is how long the regulatory-arbitrage party will last. The regulators are encircling what many see as illegal financial activity. Repeatedly in recent months, SEC chairman Gary Gensler has reiterated that he believes many crypto tokens should be regulated as securities. ''Let's not risk undermining 90 years of securities laws and create some regulatory arbitrage or loopholes,'' he said at the University of Pennsylvania's April law conference.

The rise of tokenization in particular has frustrated Web3 critics. Meta's Obasanjo has said it's a ''mind-blowing'' and ''tremendous hack'' that ''it's legal to effectively sell stock without regulation if you say it grants voting rights but not ownership.'' Martha Bennett, a vice president at Forrester Research who studies blockchain technology and digital assets, described them as an ''abuse of the system.'' The English crypto critic Stephen Diehl has contended that the ''crypto-token-as-equity-proxy scheme'' put the financial rules of the 1920s back in play by allowing people to ''insider trade, wash trade, and pump and dump'' with impunity.

''What we have with tokens is another way of creating leverage. Now, it's the asset itself that is synthetic,'' said a law professor comparing crypto tokens to credit default swaps.

Hilary J. Allen, the law professor who studies financial regulation, has spent much of her time recently studying the similarities between financial products that make up Web3 and the collection of instruments that led to the Great Recession. In tokens, Allen sees an innovation that is at its core comparable to the credit default swap. The two are different'--credit default swaps allow numerous people to make a bet on a bond's future performance'--but at the end of the day, both help greatly increase potential leverage in the financial system, she said.

''Leverage is great in good times, because it allows you to multiply your profits. But it means that the system is very much more fragile, because even small amounts of losses on your investments will wipe you out,'' she said. ''What we have with tokens is another way of creating leverage. But now, it's not about lots of contracts referencing the bonds; now, it's the asset itself that is synthetic'--there's no limit on the number of tokens that we can create.''

Allen doesn't mince words when she discusses her worst-case future scenario: ''major systemic implosion.'' Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the crypto industry is not yet at the scale to pose ''financial stability concerns," and President Joe Biden has expressed support for ''responsible'' crypto innovation, but the rhetoric of financial democratization nevertheless reminds Allen of before the subprime housing bubble burst, when a collection of complex financial innovations like mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations were seen as avenues through which new swaths of people could have access to wealth. And now, Allen and others hope the Web3 system will be placed under regulatory control before history repeats itself.

Tunguz, the pro-Web3 venture capitalist, is ready for such a day, but reaping the rewards until then.

''There will be a Securities Act of 2033, whatever the year is,'' said Tunguz. ''Whenever the regulation comes out, we will respond to it. But I think there's definitely an opportunity here to make money in a way that benefits everybody within the ecosystem.''

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Sat, 04 Jun 2022 14:03

How the gleaming white fridge changed our relationship to food.

Refrigerator ads from the April 16, 1933 edition of the San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX)

When I moved to Los Angeles and began my search for an apartment I was a little surprised by the fact that a refrigerator wasn't included with most of the units I toured. In every other city where I've ever lived, the average apartment always included a refrigerator with the cost of rent. I was only looking for a one-bedroom apartment, but I was expecting that this was the norm everywhere for the most basic of apartments.

When I asked the manager of the apartment building I wound up renting from why there was no refrigerator, she explained that the property only supplies "the essentials." When I pointed out that the building came with an underground parking space, she just stared at me blankly. It was in her silence that I came to understand a subtle difference between Los Angeles and the rest of the country: parking is essential, keeping perishable food fresh is not.

My belief that a refrigerator is an essential part of any home obviously comes from a place of tremendous privilege. For centuries, people have struggled with attempts at keeping food fresh. Only in the 20th century (after the first World War) did American consumers see the arrival of a slick new invention that would dramatically change our relationship with food; how we shopped and how we ate. But somewhat surprisingly, the rapid adoption of the electric refrigerator in American homes has its roots in an unlikely decade: the 1930s.

The Great Depression, despite all the hardships of the American people, would see the meteoric rise of the refrigerator. At the start of the 1930s, just 8 percent of American households owned a mechanical refrigerator. By the end of the decade, it had reached 44 percent. The refrigerator came to be one of the most important symbols of middle class living in the United States. While the upper class rarely interacted with such appliances, given the fact that they had servants, the middle class woman of the 1930s lived in a "servantless household"'--a phrase you see repeatedly in scholarship about this era. The refrigerator was tied to one of the most fundamental and unifying of middle class events: the daily family meal. And it was in providing for your family that the refrigerator became a point of pride.

The refrigerator of the 1930s was often the color white, which people associated with cleanliness and proper hygiene. As Shelley Nickles notes in her 2002 paper "Preserving Women: Refrigerator Design as Social Process in the 1930s," the whiteness of the appliance was supposed to signify that a woman cared about the safety and health of her family:

The refrigerator's primary function, preserving food, was now linked visually to the responsibilities of the average housewife to provide a clean, safe environment for her family. Contrasting to diverse, localized practices of food preservation and wooden iceboxes kept in service areas and used primarily by servants, these white, steel refrigerators were conceptualized as part of the ordinary kitchen. By buying a white refrigerator and keeping it in the kitchen, the housewife expressed her awareness of modern sanitary and food preservation standard; her ability to keep the refrigerator white and devoid of dirt represented the extent to which she met these standards.

Ad for a Sears Coldspot refrigerator in the February 1932 issue of The American Magazine

The newspapers and magazines of the 1930s were filled with advertisements for the refrigerator'--a luxury that was rapidly coming down in price. The advertisements above appeared in a 1933 edition of the San Antonio Light in Texas and show the hard push by advertisers to reach the middle class, despite tough economic times. That refrigerator advertised in 1933 as $99.50 would cost about $1,700 adjusted for inflation'--not cheap, but within reach of families who might consider it a priority to feel a part of the aspirational American middle class.

The electric refrigerator was also touted as economical in the long term, after the initial investment. The advertisement at right appeared in the February 1932 issue of The American Magazine. Billing the Sears Coldspot electric refrigerator as "Tomorrow's refrigerator!" the ad claims that it operates at half the cost of iceboxes:

Tomorrow's refrigerator! Ultra-modern to its massive chromium-plated hardware. Sealed freezing unit with a lifetime oil supply that never needs thought. Operates at about half the cost of ice. One-piece, no-seam porcelain interior with rounded corners is easy to clean. Unqualified guarantee. Approved by Good Housekeeping Institute. Four sizes, each priced at a triple saving.

The magazine ad implored shoppers to shop at Sears because it was "The Thrift Store of the Nation." Despite the rise of the modern refrigerator, the 1930s were an incredibly dark time for cash-strapped Americans. And yet here in the year 2012, I can't imagine the refrigerator as anything but essential; much like an Angeleno's car, I suppose.

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Sat, 04 Jun 2022 12:09

The August 23, 2021 FDA approval of Pfizer's Comirnaty vaccine was a cause for celebration. Marked as a turning point in the battle against COVID19, the announcement was highly publicized by the Biden Administration with the clear intention to extinguish ''vaccine hesitancy'' and boost uptake.

It was celebrated as a cause for national relief, and many Americans arrived at their local pharmacies under the impression, via government and pharmaceutical propaganda, that they were receiving an FDA-approved COVID vaccine. Yet that legally distinct product, as we know it, never existed. And now we know, via Pfizer, that it will never exist.

For the uninitiated:

Comirnaty is a legally distinct product from the emergency use authorization (EUA) shots, and It has never made its way to market. For months on end, no such vaccine has ever become available. Those who received the ''Pfizer shot(s)'' have been injected with the emergency use authorization (EUA) version of the shots. See my piece in The Dossier for more info:

The information operation succeeded. There was indeed an FDA approved vaccine, at least on paper, but you couldn't get it.

When originally confronted with this ordeal, Pfizer labeled this issue an inventory question that had nothing to do with the legal distinction between an experimental EUA product and an FDA-approved vaccine. Up until just weeks ago, this was the statement up on the CDC website via Pfizer:

''Pfizer received FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename.

At present, Pfizer does not plan to produce any product with these new NDCs and labels over the next few months while EUA authorized product is still available and being made available for U.S. distribution. As such, the CDC, AMA, and drug compendia may not publish these new codes until Pfizer has determined when the product will be produced with the BLA labels.''

In May, Pfizer updated its statement to mention a December 2021 licensed Comirnaty product, which was granted a license four months after the highly-publicized August FDA press release.

And just last week, Pfizer finally acknowledged that its original licensed product will never be distributed. In an unreported update on the CDC website, Pfizer told the agency:

''Pfizer received initial FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename. These NDCs will not be manufactured. Only NDCs for the subsequently BLA approved tris-sucrose formulation will be produced.''

The key distinction between the originally approved formulation and the tris-sucrose formulation is that '-- according to manufacturers '-- the latter can be held for a much longer period of time outside of an ultra cold freezer. These freezers cost over $10,000 a piece and each unit uses as much energy per day as an average American household. Improper storage can render the mRNA unstable.

Notably, the clinical trials for the Pfizer shot were conducted without the modified tris-sucrose ingredient. Given the partisan nature of Pfizer, the corporate media, government health bureaucracies, and your correspondent's lack of expertise in this area, it is unclear whether this is significant.

Another notable thing to look out for in the coming days and weeks is the possibility that the subsequently FDA approved product finally becomes available in the United States. In recent days, the CDC removed the language of ''not orderable at this time'' above the description of both Comirnaty and Moderna's Spikevax.

Additionally, as reported by Uncover DC, the Defense Department appears to be in the early stages of ordering what it has interpreted as a legally required minimum of Comirnaty in order to continue its mRNA mandate of American service members.

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Fri, 03 Jun 2022 12:50

A new study by Israeli researchers and published in Nature has revealed an increase of over 25 percent in cardiovascular-related emergency calls in the young-adult population, following the rollout of COVID vaccines, among both males and females. No similar increase was found due to COVID infection alone.

Israel health authorities and the U.S. Centers of Disease Control (CDC) have acknowledged a link between COVID vaccines and specific cardiovascular complications. The risk of myocarditis after receiving a second vaccine dose is now estimated to be between 1 in 3000 to 1 in 6000 in men aged 16 to 24.

Recent articles in scientific journals, however, have sought to suggest that cardiovascular complications following COVID infection are more common than those following vaccination. This assertion is contradicted by the findings from a recent study conducted by Israeli researchers, using data from Israel National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) related to "cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls in the 16''39-year-old population" between 2019 and 2021. This enabled them to compare baseline (pre-COVID epidemic) to COVID epidemic without vaccines, to COVID epidemic following widespread vaccine takeup.

An increase of over 25% was detected in both call types during January''May 2021, compared with the years 2019''2020. That is to say, "increased rates of vaccination ... are associated with increased number of CA [cardiac arrest] and ACS [acute coronary syndrome]." By contrast, the trial "did not detect a statistically significant association between the COVID-19 infection rates and the CA and ACS weekly call counts."

While the dangers of myocarditis for young males have gained widespread attention, this study found a larger increase in CA and ACS events among females that was linked to COVID vaccination.

Myocarditis is known to be a "major cause of sudden, unexpected deaths in adults less than 40 years of age and is assessed to be responsible for 12''20% of these deaths," the study's authors note. They add that their findings have been mirrored by researchers in Germany and Scotland.

They caution that given these findings, "It is essential to raise awareness among patients and clinicians with respect to related symptoms (e.g., chest discomfort and shortness of breath) following vaccination or COVID-19 infection to ensure that potential harm is minimized."

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True North : Pearson Airport is conducting training exercises with fake freedom protests. #cdnpoli https://t.co/xMoC8tP316

Sun May 29 14:30:00 +0000 2022

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The CDC is now investigating 180 cases of children with hepatitis of an ''unknown cause,'' although health experts in the UK say the cause is likely kids having weakened immune systems due to lockdown.

Five deaths have occurred in the U.S. as a result of the infections, which have swept the globe, impacting numerous countries.

''Adenovirus infection is being investigated as being the possible cause, with nearly half the kids testing positive for the pathogen,'' reports CNBC. ''Adenovirus is a common virus that normally causes cold or flu-like symptoms. It is not a known cause of hepatitis in otherwise healthy children.''

As we highlighted last month, health experts in the UK warned that the outbreak was likely caused by multiple COVID-19 lockdowns preventing kids from socializing with others and therefore developing strong immune systems.

Adenoviruses cause the common cold, but this can develop into hepatitis if a weakened immune system is unable to fight it off.

''I think it is likely that children mixing in kindergartens and schools have lower immunity to seasonal adenoviruses than in previous years because of restrictions,'' said Professor Simon Taylor-Robinson.

JUST IN '' Hepatitis cases of "unknown cause" in US children rises to 180. pic.twitter.com/JIAKV5XoNY

'-- Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 18, 2022

''This means they could be more at risk of developing hepatitis because their immune response is weaker to the virus,'' he added.

Nowhere in the mainstream reporting of this new surge in cases is it mentioned that multiple lockdowns could have caused the outbreak

Instead, the CDC is still ''conducting lab tests to see if the Covid virus might also be a possible cause,'' despite the fact that the children impacted in the initial cluster of cases in Alabama did not have COVID-19.

The legacy media is loathe to admit that the same lockdowns they vehemently supported will have drastic consequences for years to come.

As we previously highlighted, a new study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal found that lockdowns in the UK caused around 60,000 children to suffer clinical depression.

A major study by Johns Hopkins University concluded that global lockdowns have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit, with researchers urging that they ''are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.''

Many infants are also suffering from cognitive developmental and speech disorders due to adults wearing face coverings during the pandemic.

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Sun, 05 Jun 2022 13:58

CORAL SPRINGS, FLA. (WSVN) - As authorities continue to unearth more details about a violent crime spree that left an infant and two other people dead in Broward County, a Coral Springs resident is speaking out about the possible suspect in the case.

Investigators believe the trail of mayhem began Friday at an apartment complex located on the 4100 block of Northwest 88th Avenue. It was here, they said, where the man responsible killed a woman and left her baby boy seriously injured.

Paramedics transported the infant to Broward Health Medical Center. Police on Saturday confirmed the baby succumbed to his injuries.

During a mass on Sunday at St. Andrew's Catholic Church, Rev. Pedro Freitez identified the woman as Elizabeth Carmona and her nephew Mateo Morales.

Carmona was watching Mateo when the murder took place.

Freitez said they were battered with a hammer.

Court records show 35-year-old Dale Spidle was booked into the Broward County Jail and faces a list of charges, including murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and fleeing the scenes of multiple accidents.

Saturday afternoon, neighbor Diane Hirschfield said Spidle lives in the same complex.

''I feel very bad for him 'cause his life is over, but I feel very bad for the couple that would lose a child, a baby,'' she said.

Hirschfield said Spidle had problems with his neighbors.

''They would move furniture, and he would bang on the wall, and she'd complain that he was waking the baby up,'' she said.

According to Freitez, Spidle went into the neighboring apartment and murdered both Carmona and Mateo.

''A neighbor came in without asking, kills and murders a woman and a child with a hammer,'' said Freitez during a Spanish language Mass. He went on to call hate a sickness of the spirit.

''People snap, and drugs are a terrible thing,'' said Hirschfield. ''You know, some drugs you take, you know really make you psychotic or something, and he had this grudge. I don't know how this happened.''

Police said the rampage that followed on Friday afternoon resulted in three separate crashes.

At around 2 p.m., first responders arrived at the scene of a hit-and-run along the 8100 block of Wiles Road in Coral Springs.

Surveillance video from a nearby gas station captured the silver Kia that, detectives said, the suspect was driving when he caused a chain-reaction crash and took off.

''The officer did initially make contact with that driver, who then ended up fleeing from that scene,'' said Coral Springs Police Deputy Chief Brad McKeone.

Shortly after, police said, the driver of the Kia was involved in a four-car crash at Powerline and Sample roads in Coconut Creek.

It was at this scene where, detectives said, the driver of the Kia fatally shot someone, hopped into a white pickup truck, possibly the victim's, and fled again.

Police said the third crash took place near a Walgreens on the 4300 block of Sample Road in Coconut Creek.

After crashing the truck, police said, the driver got out of the truck without any clothes on and took off on foot.

A woman recorded cellphone video of the nude suspect walking away.

''He's completely naked, and then I saw he's out of his mind,'' said witness Lorena Sagna.

Shortly after, police said, he was taken into custody at a Shell gas station along the 4700 block of Sample Road.

Spidle appeared before a judge on Saturday and was officially charged.

Investigators said the Kia led them to the suspect's apartment, located next door to the unit where the woman and infant were found.

Saturday evening, 7News cameras captured crime scene investigators removing evidence from the victims' unit, as they continue their investigation.

Spidle was said to have lived in the complex for about 15 years.

The family of Carmona and Mateo are in the process of the final arrangements for their burial and ask on social media for lots of prayers.

Copyright 2022 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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