1387: Clippers 'n Whittlers

Well, now we have an answer. On June 9, Merck announced that it had entered into a procurement agreement. Merck will receive approximately $1.2 billion to supply approximately 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir to the United States government. Molnupiravir is a new drug Merck is currently evaluating in a Phase 3 clinical trials to serve as the wonder drug to treat COVID. The estimated cost of the drug per treatment is $700!

So now we can understand why the company would swap out its own drug that has already been proven safe and effective for something new and experimental. Without the government sending a penny to Merck, I can buy a lifesaving dose of ivermectin for just $26 through GoodRX.

Link

About 50,000 Israelis (!) have filed complaints with the police against the Israeli government regarding the Green Pass policy - claiming that it constitutes fraud, coercion, abuse of office and more - offenses under the Penal Code.

1. The scare was set in motion by a Remain (IE anti-Brexit) head of a trade

association telling the BBC (violently anti-Brexit) that the UK would face

a fuel shortage. That was duly and uncritically reported by the BBC,

amplified through much of the the dimwit M5M causing a run on the gas

pumps.

2. Covid and slack-arsed government employees. The Driver and Vehicle

LIcensing Agency (working from home, because Covid) is sitting on 40,000

HGV license tests (applications for the test or licenses being issued).

Therefore there is a shortage of new entrants to the industry because Covid

and government laziness.

3. In the days of us being in the EU, HGV drivers from eastern Europe

flooded into the UK, allowing employers to drive down wages and impose

shitty conditions on drivers. Many drivers saw their earnings drop by 60%,

and left the industry.

4. The average age of HGV drivers is mid-late 50s. Many were furloughed,

then found other jobs like delivering for Amazon; they now get home every

night instead of sleeping in their can beside a motorway in a sordid

truckstop.

The BBC clip you played was BS.

There is something in play here; the establishment Remain pro-EU camp,

having been violently kicked in the bollocks in 2016 and 2019 are

undoubtedly organising to rejoin. Keep an eye on this. No, I'll do it for

you. You have enough on your desk.

Please keep me anonymous, or as Local Delivery Slave. We had a stationwide meeting today at our FedEx warehouse, where we learned quite a bit.

1. Memphis, or central hub, is way understaffed, in some cases only 55% staffed. Packages are being routed to Indy, costing FedEx a ton of money.

2. “Unrelated” (but related due to staffing, I assume), the vaccine mandate will be slow-rolled. They foresee lawsuits, so those of us unvaccinated were told to “hold tight.”

So good news on that front. Your Christmas packages will arrive (mostly) on time this year. No mass firings for FedEx (for the time being).

Regards,

Local Delivery Slave

Sorry it’s a long one but for those of you who are not in the industry this is a factual insight into the UK driving industry today without media bias or political spin....

Plenty of UK drivers but they no longer drive or are walking away from the industry because.......

8. Once you reach the age of 45 you have to have a medical to renew your licence, doctors charge between £80 - £150 which the driver has to pay for personally.

9. Driving hours and duty are recorded on a digital card which again costs £32 initially and then £19.00 to renew every few years. Which again the driver pays for but is required to record their duty periods for company use and data capture.

10. Driver CPC ... 35 hours training (5 sessions spread over five years) of learning of what most drivers already know which can be part repeated modules and cost around £60 a session, some companies will pay this on a session a year for each year of service basis but in a lot of cases you are then expected to attend this training on a Saturday or Sunday during your weekly rest period and without being paid. If the company does not pay your training then it is down to the individual again to pay it personally.

So a driver who has an HGV and is over the age of 45 who perhaps gave it up but decides to return to driving has to pay up front £500 + before they go out and earn a penny.

Again petroleum requires additional training to obtain a Haz Chem card which may be down to the driver pay and must held before they can transport those goods so BP can’t just get a European driver or soldier and put them behind the wheel.

11. Is it right that a person can work 15 hours a day, have the minimum 9 hours off then start work again for three consecutive days before they get 11 hours off, however if during the 4th and 5th day the driver has a delay of over 3hrs at one customer point and books the delay as break he can continue taking 9 hour daily breaks on those days too. Could you image the public out cry if a Pilot flew to those hours, and yet we are expected to be in control of a vehicle designed to be a total train weight of 44tonnes and drIving for up to 9 hrs a day which can be increased to 10 hrs twice a week with sleep deprivation.

12. Not all companies pay to park in services or truck stops so drivers are forced to park and sleep in lay-bys or trading estates with no facilities and trying to rest knowing they face a real risk of being confronted by the criminal element either wanting to steal diesel or the load during the night. If company’s do pay for parking which on average is £30+ per night most firms take a couple of weeks to process the receipt before the driver gets his cash back through his payroll this can easily be £250 owed to the driver if they are out 4 nights a week.

13. Most firms only give 20 days paid holiday plus bank holidays a year, which to be honest is not enough, as by the time you have done 4-5 months of working under these conditions you are hanging.

At present drivers suffer from overweight, high blood pressure, diabetes, failed relationships, depression and poor posture all that is associated and attributable with spending 60hrs a week plus in a truck without basic facilities or a clear plan of work hours, or knowing when/if they will see their home and family that week.

Not everybody is tempted by the money there are more important things in life like “the work life balance.”

The only way this situation can be improved is for the Department of Transport and the Employers to sit down and rethink how the conditions can be improved, the work life balance to be reinstated, to provide quality parking facilities with decent amenities at a sensible cost, create access to healthy eating options rather than KFC, McDonalds or Burger King which is the food franchise in every service station. Make it mandatory that every vehicle is equipped with a fridge and microwave to allow the driver to take and keep or prepare healthy food options whilst at work or away from home. Put the onus on RDC’s etc to turn drivers around in the shortest possible times, reduce the financial burden of medicals, licence renewal fees, driver CPC digicards and the like, and the myriad of other issues that I haven’t raised, then family men and women might want to return or take the profession up as a career.

This is my opinion as a HGV driver and that of other license holders I know that no longer drive, or who are thinking of leaving the industry.

Keep me anonymous please if you share,

Make this quick as I can. I’m a Nurse working in a Psychiatric facility in California since 2005 & feel obligated to give you guys an update on drug detox at my hospital as follows:

1) in the past 9 months I have never in my life seen so many people detox off what they think is “Fentanyl” but actually “carfentanyl” a street version much stronger than pharmaceutical fentanyl. The average opiate (heroine, OxyContin, Vicodin) detoxer detoxes a shitty detox for about 3-5 days. The “Fentanyl “ detoxer seems to take much longer and the detox makes them almost 10 times more sick. At this point I can tell the difference between the regular heroine detoxer vs the Fentanyl detoxer.

We have had such a huge increase of “Fentanyl” detoxers these past two months that it boggles my mind. It feels there has been a flood of this Fentanyl in California and it is very suspicious.

Also Spice detox is almost non-existent these days in general population as marijuana is now legal in California.

On the other hand amongst military patients the use of spice is up as it is undetectable in current drug tests in California but seems to make people act out in a way that gets them arrested/caught by their CO’s and dropped off at a psych ward for evaluation and drug treatment.

Link

Poland MPs protest at their Aussie embassy, they've joined the international movement of condemning Australia’s treatment of citizens comparing its radical left wing policies to that of North Korea!

The reports of strange election incidents are increasing more and more, so that we should already have parallels to the last US election.

In 16 Berlin electoral districts, voter turnout was over 100%. Then this:

"As a data analysis of the election results by the broadcaster has shown, exactly the same voting shares for all parties were stated on the website of the state election control for the Berlin election for 22 electoral districts. For each of the electoral districts it was also stated that 360 valid and 40 invalid votes had been cast be. "

Postal voting documents have disappeared in many places, such as in the Rosenheim district, in Koblenz or in Freiburg. And these are just a few cases published in the media.

If we then expand this to the entire FRG area, then there has been an exorbitant amount of manipulation.

*I* gave an Uber ride a few months ago, after which he called me immediately to report:

"Normie" passenger, friendly guy, opened up that he has a buddy in the National Guard stationed in DC. Passenger had recently returned from visiting him, and volunteered to my driver friend how he got to see an exact replica of the Oval Office and Press Room in the PENTAGON. He showed my friend pictures, but declined to forward them to my friend, saying he promised the Guard pal he wouldn't post or share them. In fact, he wasn't supposed to be able to take them (and likely wasn't supposed to be given a tour).

According to my friend, it appeared just like the usual oval and press room. The "normie" guy just thought it was a good story and he had a little behind-the-scenes look, no implications to him beyond, "hey get a load of this!"

Link to Article

Archived Version

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 14:26

Chemical compound

Carfentanil or carfentanyl is a structural analog of the synthetic opioid analgesic fentanyl.[1] Carfentanil was first synthesized in 1974 by a team of chemists at Janssen Pharmaceutica which included Paul Janssen.[2] The effects of carfentanil, including overdose, can be reversed by naloxone.[3]:'Š23'Š Carfentanil is legally controlled in most jurisdictions, but has veterinary uses for anaesthetising large animals, such as elephants and bears.

Typical use [ edit ] Chosen for its high therapeutic index, carfentanil was first sold in 1986 under the brand name "Wildnil" for use in combination with an α2-receptor agonist as a tranquilizing agent[3]:'Š9'Š for large mammals like elk and elephants.[2][4] Commercial production of Wildnil ceased in 2003; the drug is now available only in compounded form.[5]

Modern history [ edit ] Increase in illicit use [ edit ] This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. ( March 2021 )

2 milligrams of

fentanyl, a lethal dose for most people.

[6] The lethal dose of carfentanil is uncertain,

[7] but is predicted to be much smaller.

[8] Diameter of a

US penny is 19.05 mm, or 0.75 inches.

Over three hundred cases of overdose related to fentanyl and fentanyl analogues were reported between August and November 2016 in several of the United States, including Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky and Florida.[9] In 2017, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, man died from a carfentanil overdose, likely taken unknowingly with another illegal drug such as heroin or cocaine.[10] Carfentanil is most often taken with heroin or by users who believe they are taking heroin. Carfentanil is added to or sold as heroin because it is less expensive, easier to obtain, and easier to manufacture than heroin.[11] Health professionals are concerned about the potential escalation of public health consequences of its recreational use.[12]

Importation from China [ edit ] Authorities in Latvia and Lithuania reported seizing carfentanil as an illicit drug in the early 2000s.[11][13]

Around 2016, the United States and Canada reported a dramatic increase in shipment of carfentanil and other strong opioid drugs to customers in North America from Chinese chemical supply firms. In June 2016 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized one kilogram of carfentanil shipped from China in a box labeled "printer accessories". According to the Canada Border Services Agency, the shipment contained 50 million lethal doses of the drug, more than enough to annihilate the entire population of the country, in containers labeled as toner cartridges for HP LaserJet printers.[11]

Carfentanil was not a controlled substance in China until 1 March 2017,[14] and until then was manufactured legally and sold openly over the Internet, actively marketed by several Chinese chemical companies.[11]

Moscow theater hostage crisis [ edit ] In 2012, a team of researchers at the British chemical and biological defence laboratories at Porton Down found carfentanil and remifentanil in clothing from two British survivors of the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis and in the urine from a third survivor. The team concluded that the Russian military had used an aerosol mist of carfentanil and remifentanil to subdue Chechen hostage takers.[15] Researchers had previously surmised from the available evidence that the Moscow emergency services had not been informed of the use of the agent, despite being instructed to bring opioid antagonists to the scene. Unaware that hundreds of patients had been exposed to high doses of strong opioids, the emergency workers failed to bring sufficient quantities of naloxone and naltrexone to counteract the effects of carfentanil and remifentanil. As a result, one hundred twenty-five people exposed to the aerosol are confirmed to have died from respiratory failure during the incident.[16]

Potential as a chemical weapon [ edit ] The toxicity of carfentanil in humans and its ready commercial availability has raised concerns over its potential use as a weapon of mass destruction by rogue nations and terrorist groups. The toxicity of carfentanil has been compared to that of nerve gas.[11]

Pharmacology [ edit ] A lipophilic chemical that can easily cross the blood-brain barrier, carfentanil has a very rapid onset of action and is longer acting than fentanyl.[3]:'Š9'Š For pain relief, a unit of carfentanil is one hundred times as potent as fentanyl, five thousand times as potent as heroin, and ten thousand times as potent as morphine, despite having only 14 to 135 times the affinity for the mu receptor.[17][3]:'Š9'Š Despite its higher potency, carfentanil is less fatal than fentanyl in rats.[18][19]

Legal status [ edit ] China [ edit ] Carfentanil has been controlled in China since 1 March 2017.[3]:'Š21'Š The trade war between China and the US has included controversy over the effectiveness of this control.[20][21][22]

United States [ edit ] Carfentanil is classified as Schedule II under the Controlled Substances Act in the United States with a DEA ACSCN of 9743 and a 2016 annual aggregate manufacturing quota of 19 grams (less than 0.7 oz.).[23]

United Kingdom [ edit ] Carfentanil has been specifically controlled as a Class A drug since 1986.[24]

See also [ edit ] 4-PhenylfentanylLofentanil (3-methylcarfentanyl)N-MethylcarfentanilSufentanilThiafentanilOpioid comparisonR-30490 (4-methoxymethylfentanyl)References [ edit ] ^ "Fentanyl drug profile". EMCDDA. ^ a b Stanley TH, Egan TD, Van Aken H (February 2008). "A tribute to Dr. Paul A. J. Janssen: entrepreneur extraordinaire, innovative scientist, and significant contributor to anesthesiology". Anesthesia and Analgesia. 106 (2): 451''62, table of contents. doi:10.1213/ane.0b013e3181605add. PMID 18227300. S2CID 20490363. ^ a b c d e "Report on the risk assessment of methyl 1-(2-phenylethyl)-4-[phenyl(propanoyl) amino]piperidine-4-carboxylate in the framework of the Council Decision on new psychoactive substances" (PDF) . European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. 8 July 2018. ^ Jacobson ER, Kollias GV, Heard DJ, Caligiuri R (1988). "Immobilization of African Elephants with Carfentanil and Antagonism with Nalmefene and Diprenorphine". The Journal of Zoo Animal Medicine. 19 (1/2): 1''7. doi:10.2307/20094842. JSTOR 20094842. ^ World Health Organisation, Carfentanil Critical Review Report (PDF) , retrieved 3 September 2018 ^ "Fentanyl. Image 4 of 17". Drug Enforcement Administration. ^ "DEA Issues Carfentanil Warning To Police And Public". United States Drug Enforcement Administration. 22 September 2016. The lethal dose range for carfentanil in humans is unknown ^ Concheiro M, Chesser R, Pardi J, Cooper G (2018). "Postmortem Toxicology of New Synthetic Opioids". Frontiers in Pharmacology. 9: 1210. doi:10.3389/fphar.2018.01210 . PMC 6212520 . PMID 30416445. 26 October 2018. From the conclusion: "Postmortem concentrations seemed to correlate with their potency, although the presence of other CNS depressants, such as ethanol and benzodiazepines has to be taken into account." ^ Sanburn J. "Heroin Is Being Laced With a Terrifying New Substance". Time . Retrieved 24 November 2016 . ^ Stephenson C (17 April 2017). "Carfentanil, 10,000 times more potent than morphine, kills homeless man in Milwaukee". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . Retrieved 17 April 2017 . ^ a b c d e Kinetz E, Butler D (7 October 2016). "Chemical weapon for sale: China's unregulated narcotic". AP News. New York, NY 10281 USA. The Associated Press. Archived from the original on 30 July 2018 . Retrieved 12 April 2016 . CS1 maint: location (link) ^ Baumann MH, Pasternak GW (January 2018). "Novel Synthetic Opioids and Overdose Deaths: Tip of the Iceberg?". Neuropsychopharmacology. 43 (1): 216''217. doi:10.1038/npp.2017.211. PMC 5719114 . PMID 29192657. ^ Mounteney J, Giraudon I, Denissov G, Griffiths P (July 2015). "Fentanyls: Are we missing the signs? Highly potent and on the rise in Europe". The International Journal on Drug Policy. 26 (7): 626''31. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2015.04.003. PMID 25976511. ^ "China makes deadly opioid carfentanil a controlled substance". Associated Press via theday.com. 15 February 2017 . Retrieved 29 July 2019 . ^ Riches JR, Read RW, Black RM, Cooper NJ, Timperley CM (November 2012). "Analysis of clothing and urine from Moscow theatre siege casualties reveals carfentanil and remifentanil use". Journal of Analytical Toxicology. 36 (9): 647''56. doi:10.1093/jat/bks078 . PMID 23002178. ^ Wax PM, Becker CE, Curry SC (May 2003). "Unexpected "gas" casualties in Moscow: a medical toxicology perspective". Annals of Emergency Medicine. 41 (5): 700''5. doi:10.1067/mem.2003.148. PMID 12712038. S2CID 44761840. ^ "Comparing the lethality and potency of opioid drugs". The Boston Globe. 15 November 2017 . Retrieved 14 December 2017 . ^ "Report on the risk assessment of methyl 1-(2-phenylethyl)-4-[phenyl(propanoyl) amino]piperidine-4-carboxylate in the framework of the Council Decision on new psychoactive substances" (PDF) . 8 July 2018. p. 64. ^ ^ Bernstein, Leandra (3 October 2018). "Drug trade war: Chinese fentanyl is fueling the US opioid crisis". WJLA . Retrieved 25 August 2020 . ^ Landay, Jonathan (2 August 2019). "Trump accuses China's Xi of failing to halt fentanyl exports to U.S." Reuters . Retrieved 25 August 2020 . ^ Myers, Steven Lee (1 December 2019). "China Cracks Down on Fentanyl. But Is It Enough to End the U.S. Epidemic?". The New York Times . Retrieved 25 August 2020 . ^ "Established Aggregate Production Quotas for Schedule I and II Controlled Substances and Assessment of Annual Needs for the List I Chemicals Ephedrine, Pseudoephedrine, and Phenylpropanolamine for 2016". Federal Register. 6 October 2015. ^ "Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (c. 38): SCHEDULE 2: Controlled Drugs". Office of Public Sector Information . Retrieved 15 June 2009 . MORDORKORAgonists: 3CS-nalmefene6'-GNTI8-CAC18-MC14-Methoxymetoponβ-Chlornaltrexamineβ-FunaltrexamineAdrenorphin (metorphamide)AkuuamicineAlazocine (SKF-10047)AllomatrineApadolineAsimadolineBAM-12PBAM-18PBAM-22PBig dynorphinBremazocineBRL-52537ButorphanButorphanolBW373U86CebranopadolCiprefadolCR665CyclazocineCyclorphanCyprenorphineDesmetramadol (desmethyltramadol)Diamorphine (heroin)DiacetylnalorphineDifelikefalinDihydroetorphineDihydromorphineDinalbuphine sebacateDiprenorphineDynorphin ADynorphin B (rimorphin)EluxadolineEnadolineEptazocineErinacine EEthylketazocineEtorphineFedotozineFentanylGemazocineGR-89696GR-103545Hemorphin-4HerkinorinHS665HydromorphoneHZ-2IbogaineICI-199,441ICI-204,448KetamineKetazocineLaudanosineLeumorphin (dynorphin B-29)LevallorphanLevomethorphanLevorphanolLexanopadolLofentanilLPK-26LufuradomMatrineMB-1C-OHMentholMetazocineMetkefamideMianserinMirtazapineMorphineMoxazocineMR-2034N-MPPPNalbuphineNalBzOHNalfurafineNalmefeneNalodeine (N-allylnorcodeine)NalorphineNaltribenNiravolineNorbuprenorphineNorbuprenorphine-3-glucuronideNoribogaineNorketamineOripavineOxilorphanOxycodonePentazocinePethidine (meperidine)PhenazocineProxorphanRacemethorphanRacemorphanRB-64Salvinorin A (salvia)Salvinorin B ethoxymethyl etherSalvinorin B methoxymethyl etherSamidorphanSpiradoline (U-62,066)TH-030418ThienorphineTifluadomTricyclic antidepressants (e.g., amitriptyline, desipramine, imipramine, nortriptyline)U-50488U-54,494AU-69,593XorphanolAntagonists: 4'²-Hydroxyflavanone4',7-Dihydroxyflavone5'-GNTI6'-GNTI6β-Naltrexol6β-Naltrexol-d4β-ChlornaltrexamineBuprenorphine/samidorphanAmentoflavoneANTIApigeninArodyneAT-076AticaprantAxelopranAZ-MTABBinaltorphimineBU09059BuprenorphineCatechinCatechin gallateCERC-501 (LY-2456302)ClocinnamoxCyclofoxyDezocineDIPPAEGCECGEpicatechinHyperosideJDTicLY-255582LY-2196044LY-2444296LY-2459989LY-2795050MeJDTicMethylnaltrexoneML190ML350MR-2266N-Fluoropropyl-JDTicNaloxoneNaltrexoneNaltrindoleNaringeninNorbinaltorphimineNoribogainePawhuskin APF-4455242RB-64QuadazocineTaxifolinUPHITZyklophinUnknown/unsorted: AkuammicineAkuammineCoronaridineCyproterone acetateDihydroakuuamineIbogamineTabernanthineNOPUnsortedOthers

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Archived Version

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 13:49

The European Commission will be carrying out vaccination trials on Finnish mink farms until March 2022. Image: YLE/ Marcus Lillkvist Finland is set to vaccinate fur production animals against Covid. The Finnish Breeders' Association (FIFUR) will be vaccinating minks against coronavirus in the coming weeks, after being granted a conditional license by the Finnish Food Authority.

The vaccine covered by the license was developed by a research team at the University of Helsinki. In addition to the university's laboratories, the vaccine has been tested at a fur farm in Kannus, Central Ostrobothnia.

FurcoVac is classed as an experimental vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 and has been granted a conditional license although it still lacks a trading license.

The process of developing the vaccine has been challenging, with a tight schedule only adding to the pressure, according to Jussi Peura, the FIFUR project's research director. FurcoVac utilises the same raw materials that are needed to produce the vaccines used in humans.

"There were challenges in manufacturing the vaccines and acquiring the raw materials, as human vaccines were also being produced at the same time and they largely required the same raw materials that we used," Peura told Yle.

According to the research director, skinning on the Kannus fur farm is due to begin in the next few weeks, after which they can begin vaccinating the remaining breeder animals.

"We have enough vaccine doses to vaccinate all Finnish breeding mink twice. A booster vaccine will also be needed," Peura said.

About half a million doses of vaccine have been set aside for the process.

No infections on Finnish farmsThere have been no recorded cases of coronavirus infections in minks at Finnish farms. Farms in other EU countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain, culled millions of mink to prevent the infection from spreading to humans after cases were detected.

According to FIFUR, minks and raccoon dogs, which are bred for fur in the country, are susceptible to the virus, as are cats and white-tailed deer.

"We will continue tackling the epidemic and protecting against the disease in cooperation with the authorities. Having been granted permission for use, this mink vaccine is part of protection measures. This has been a strenuous time for producers who have had to isolate themselves while ensuring workers' protection," Peura said.

Studies suggest that minks could transmit the virus back into humans.

''Having these mink farms is a big risk because it makes it much more difficult to manage the epidemic and creates such big reservoirs of susceptible hosts,'' Francois Balloux, a geneticist with University College London and co-author of a paper on Covid-19 transmission in minks, told Reuters.

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Archived Version

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 11:42

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American Airlines, JetBlue and Alaska Airlines have joined United Airlines in mandating that employees must be vaccinated against COVID-19, per the Wall Street Journal.

Why it matters: The Biden administration has been pressing businesses to require workers to be vaccinated against the virus as vaccination rates flatten across the U.S.

The airlines provide government services including cargo hauling and special flights, which they say makes them contractors to the government so they fall under President Biden's mandatory vaccination directive, AP reports.The big picture: American Airlines told staff on Friday that it would require all employees based in the U.S. and "certain international crew members" to be vaccinated, per a memo obtained by Reuters.

The American memo gave no timeline. But JetBlue Airways and Alaska Airlines said Friday they'd implement a vaccine mandate as early as Dec. 8, AP notes. That's the deadline the White House has given for federal contractors to be inoculated, with limited exceptions. Delta said it's "still evaluating Biden's order," according to AP.

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Archived Version

Sat, 02 Oct 2021 13:33

Dr. Bruce Boros with Louis Gossett Jr. in Atlanta at Gossett's 85th birthday party on May 27. ''Any particular reason you want me to come up?'' Boros asked when he got the invitation. ''I wouldn't be having a birthday party if you hadn't saved my life,'' Gossett replied.Academy Award-winner Louis Gossett Jr. is best remembered as the tall and straight-as-a-sword, old-school Marine Corps drill instructor in An Officer and a Gentleman, barking commands at fresh-faced Naval Officer aviation wannabee Zack Mayo (Richard Gere). Late last December, Gossett created national news for walking out of a suburban Atlanta hospital. Sick with COVID-19 for about a week, he'd spent two fearful days deteriorating on the COVID-19 ward. He didn't want the ward's walls to be the last thing he saw before dying.

''I watched the best doctors and nurses in the world doing all they could to help people sick with COVID,'' he says in a telephone interview. ''Doctors and nurses were stressed out from the strain of taking care of COVID patients and working long hours. I saw desperation in their eyes. My sense of security just left me.''

''The pandemic hit our country like a big bomb went off,'' he adds. ''I saw people dying in hospital beds. I thought I'm going to die with them. I could do better outside. I got out of bed and walked out of the hospital.''

His grown son, Satie Gossett, lived outside Atlanta and took him home on December 29, 2020'--a day coinciding with a nationwide spike in the coronavirus, totaling 19.9 million people, and a reported 633,000 confirmed cases in Georgia, which topped 10,000 deaths. Gossett was home with no medical care. He was eighty-four years old with significant co-morbidities and getting sicker by the hour. The deadly inflammatory phase of COVID was blooming in his lungs.

Word of the aging actor's dire health flashed around the entertainment industry, where he has been a leading player for decades and a mentor to young actors. His Facebook page received some 10,000 responses. Fans around the world prayed for the beloved figure, the first black actor in history to win an Academy Award as best supporting actor.

A native of the Brooklyn neighborhood home to actor Harvey Keitel and playwright Arthur Miller, Gossett grew to an imperial six-feet-four and was fast on his feet playing basketball. He earned a scholarship to play for New York University but subsequently left sports for theater. His credits include an Emmy Award for his 1977 role in Alex Haley's miniseries Roots and, most recently, another Emmy in HBO's nine-episode series Watchmen. He also founded the not-for-profit Eracism Foundation, dedicated to racial equality by fighting ignorance and apathy.

Now, with Gossett's life at stake, his friends went into action. One of his prot(C)g(C)s, Michele Shay, a Tony Award-nominated actress and a professor at the University of Southern California School of the Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, learned that Gossett had walked out of the hospital because COVID-19 patients around him were dying. ''I freaked out,'' she says.

She called Jeremy Boros, a former student of hers at New York University's Atlantic Theater Company who was now an aspiring actor and producer living in West Hollywood. Boros had been posting on Facebook, before vaccines were available, that his father, a prominent physician in the Florida Keys, was using an effective alternative medial therapy for treating patients with COVID-19: ivermectin. ''I mentioned that my dad had been doing a lot of research about another drug that helped to treat COVID,'' he says.

Shay asked Jeremy if his father could phone her friend, a famous actor who was in desperate need of help, and give him urgent medical care.

Louis Gossett Jr., starring in An Officer and a Gentleman, was the first black actor in history to win a supporting actor Academy Award, in 1983, for his portrayal of tough-as-nails Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley, here giving life lessons to officer candidate Zack Mayo (Richard Gere).Shay, an acclaimed actress in more than twenty productions, says she owed everything to Gossett. ''Lou is responsible for my being an actress,'' she says in a phone interview. ''He literally coached me for my auditions for school at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and literally walked me to the audition. I had never been in a play before. He was the first person to tell me I had talent and he brought it out of me. I was terrified for Lou. He is a mentor and a beloved friend. So I put Lou in contact with Jeremy's dad as quickly as I could.''

Jeremy's father, board-certified cardiologist Dr. Bruce L. Boros, had been successfully treating COVID-19 patients with an ivermectin protocol that he had created in July 2020, one of the first doctors in the United States to aggressively use ivermectin for COVID.

Ivermectin is an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug, often used to treat scabies and lice, with a forty-year history as one of the safest drugs in the world. The World Health Organization includes it on its list of a hundred ''essential medicines.'' In 2015 the Nobel Prize for Medicine went jointly to the drug's discovers William Campbell, at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey; Satoshi Ōmura, at Kitasato University in Tokyo; and Tu Youyou of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing.

Ivermectin is the generic name for Stromectol, developed in 1981 by pharmaceutical giant Merck. Its patent expired in 1996, and when Boros started his treatments the cost was about five dollars a pill in the U.S. and less than a dollar in the rest of the world. Ivermectin is also used to treat heartworm in dogs and worms and other parasites in horses, cattle, and livestock. But that is far overshadowed by its use in many evolving human illnesses that created its reputation among scientists as a wonder drug for humans, and led to the Nobel Prize for its wide benefit to humanity. In treating COVID-19, prescription ivermectin is administered along with vitamins, antibiotics, and steroids as needed.

Dr. Boros, seventy-one, stands an inch under six feet with a burly build. Miami-born and a second-generation medical doctor, he owns three urgent care centers ranging over 110 miles in the Florida Keys'--in Key West, Marathon, and Key Largo'--employing seventy medical staff. His care centers were taking a priority over his forty-year cardiology practice when the COVID-19 pandemic swept Florida. Waves of patients complained of fever, severe muscle and joint pain, and extreme difficulty breathing. As the main doctor on the island, he was asked to talk about COVID to the Key West city commission meeting on March 3, 2020, eight days before the WHO declared an official pandemic.

It was two months later, May 2020, when the federal government launched Operation Warp Speed to pursue public-private partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and accelerate the development, manufacture, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

Boros felt the wait for the vaccines would be dangerous and lead to many deaths: ''Doing nothing to help patients would be doing harm.''

Christina Boros, here with husband Dr. Bruce Boros and one of their grandchildren, spotted the Monash University study in Melbourne, Australia, demonstrating ivermectin's role in killing the coronavirus in vitro.In April 2020, as COVID-19 dominated the daily news, Boros's wife, Christina Boros, who had been doing ongoing research to help him, directed his attention to an article about a study from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, that demonstrated ivermectin effectively killed the coronavirus in vitro.

In May 2020 Dr. Boros found a large observational study of 1,300 COVID-19 patients in the Dominican Republic published by the renowned cardiologist and internist Dr. Jos(C) Natalio Redondo, involving clinical observations in three medical centers. The study reported that 99.3 percent of patients presenting COVID-19 symptoms recovered in the first five days with care that included ivermectin. Redondo also noted a marked reduction in the length of hospital stays and a profound reduction in deaths of patients on ventilators.

Dr. Boros called Dr. Redondo and had a lengthy conversation with the Dominican physician, who also has a home in Miami, because ''I needed more information from the horse's mouth.'' Boros relates that Redondo told him, ''They were having incredible success and tremendous results, with minimal side effects. Ivermectin has occasional uses in the United States, but it was a medication they had been using their entire lives in the Caribbean to treat parasitic diseases and knew how safe it was.''

Boros kept researching. ''I felt compelled that if I'm going to run three urgent care centers, then I had to know a lot about COVID,'' Dr. Boros says. ''I had to become expert from prophylaxis to outpatient treatment.'' He was reading everything he could find in medical literature and on the Web about ivermectin as a possible off-label drug with anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties available now that could be used to treat COVID-19 patients.

''And I looked around the (hospital) room and I said this might be the last room I'll be on Earth, let me get out of here. So I fought it day and night (at home) and I got this avalanche of well wishers. I was blown away; I was touched. People around the world. I call them angels. And one of those angels called and said, ''I have something for you.''

~ Lou Gossett Jr., from his FLCCC interview: click here.

He researched ivermectin with the same eagerness he had devoted to his undergraduate years at the University of South Florida followed by the University of Miami Medical School, a medical internship, two years of a medical residency program, and two more years in a cardiovascular fellowship'--thirteen years of medical study.

''Ivermectin has been working for decades in other countries on deadly viruses like dengue fever, Zika, Ebola, eastern equine encephalitis, and others,'' he says. ''These were success stories. And this led me to believe it could be extremely helpful with coronaviruses.''

By July 2020, ''I was ready to use it, I was ready to prescribe. And based upon the Helsinki Accord of 1964 [which recommends guiding medical doctors in clinical research based on the doctor's mission to safeguard the health of the people], since there was no other medication available to treat COVID, and given its incredible safety profile, I was prepared to start treating patients even if it meant I might lose my medical license. I'm not going to let people I know die when I know there is something we can do and the rest of the world is doing it.''

While doctors and government health ministries around the world are using ivermectin to treat Covid with great clinical success and support from many observational studies and randomized controlled trials, critics including the FDA, NIH, and WHO say there's not enough evidence from large, European or American randomized controlled trials for use to treat the disease. Critics of the critics, like Boros, answer that it's unethical in a pandemic not to use a safe drug that's working. Yet on September 2, the American Medical Association called for the ''immediate end'' to using the drug to treat COVID-19.

''Ivermectin has many big, powerful enemies, and getting the issue of administering ivermectin to patients suffering from COVID-19 seems like the epic battle of David versus Goliath,'' Dr. Boros says on a phone call. ''I was terribly frustrated that I couldn't get the word out because it was working.'' In an email, he adds: ''I need a more aggressive and open-mic forum to get all the truth out! We don't have a big enough hammer to beat this nail of disinformation in the ground! I'm very sad and frustrated and so limited in expressing my front line experiences.''

In October, Boros discovered the non-profit Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance (www.flccc.net), a worldwide organization led by five renowned U.S. academic critical care doctors who offer leading treatment and prevention protocols that include ivermectin for all stages of COVID.

He found support for his beliefs in ivermectin's anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties in the FLCCC Alliance's president, Dr. Pierre Kory, a former University of Wisconsin-Madison medical school professor, and Kory's mentor, Dr. Paul Marik, a professor at the Eastern Virginia Medical School with an international reputation for clinical research garnered from published books and hundreds of peer-reviewed papers.

''I got in touch with Dr. Kory and we hit it off,'' Boros says. It was Dr. Marik who first discovered the ''data signal'' that ivermectin was being successfully studied and used around the world to battle COVID, and Dr. Kory started the global clamor for ivermectin with his U.S. Senate testimony on December 8, when he strongly urged the drug's global use based on dramatic benefits in preventing COVID and stopping viral load, hospitalization, and mortality.

While Drs. Kory and Marik were intensivists concentrating on ''the sickest of the sick'' in the ICU, Boros was providing innovative outpatient care, successfully keeping people out of the hospital and out of intensive care.

By July, Dr. Boros and the staff of his three urgent care centers up the length of the Florida Keys were prescribing ivermectin with protocols that had many similarities to the FLCCC protocols. For every hundred patients tested for COVID-19 at his urgent care centers, thirty-five tested positive. In September he created a test-and-treat protocol to get people started on ivermectin immediately and not wait for results that might take up to eight days, by which time many patients could be critically ill. ''Early treatment saves lives,'' he says.

''My clinics first checked to see if patients didn't have a cold or something else before we treated them for COVID,'' he says. ''If anybody came in with any viral symptoms, we tested them with a nasal swab and sent the tests via FedEx for analysis. We gave them a prescription the same day. Some people were indigent. For them, I bought $7,000 of ivermectin and gave it to those patients.''

On December 29, Dr. Boros was at home and ready to board a boat with his wife, along with his sister and brother-in-law visiting from their home in Virginia, for a 5 p.m. sundown cruise and dinner in the Straits of Florida off the island of Key West when son Jeremy phoned.

''He said he knew of a famous actor who needed medical help,'' says Dr. Boros. ''I asked him who it was and he said he's Lou Gossett, Jr. I made it clear to Jeremy that I would help anybody who has COVID. I said, 'We need to do it now, I've got about twenty minutes before the boat leaves, let's get started.'''

Gossett called Dr. Boros. The actor said he had just walked out of a hospital and asked for help. ''We're talking on cell phones,'' Dr. Boros says. ''I told him I need for you now to go look at the FLCCC Alliance website (flccc.net) and become briefly familiar with ivermectin. I texted him the website and he went over it. By then I had treated 300 people successfully with ivermectin.''

The actor promptly called back, asking a few questions. ''He was very sick, on day eight of COVID, when the lungs start blowing up,'' Dr. Boros says. ''He had difficulty breathing, couldn't speak a sentence without stopping to cough. He had pain in his muscles and joints. He was tired. He said he felt like he was going to die. I said give me the telephone number of the pharmacy that's closest to where you live.''

Dr. Boros asked how much Gossett weighed and took a medical history to clear the pathway to prescribe ivermectin, inquiring about any underlying conditions. It's public record that in 2010 Gossett had recovered from prostate cancer after early detection. At the time of their phone conversation, vaccinations weren't available to the public, and Gossett had not had a shot.

In an interview, Gossett recounted their first conversation: ''He asked: 'how was I doing?' I said I was desperate.''

Dr. Boros phoned Gossett's pharmacy with the ivermectin prescription for small three-milligram tablets along with an antibiotic that had two properties'--one as an anti-viral, and the other to help absorb zinc, a major component of killing viruses. Gossett's son Satie drove to the pharmacy and picked up the prescriptions while the doctor joined his wife and their guests for the planned sunset dinner cruise.

''I called him at eleven o'clock that night to see how he was doing,'' Dr. Boros says. ''He said pretty good.'' Gossett said in another interview that he was amazed that the brain fog COVID often causes had already dissipated. ''I told him to take the pills again tomorrow. I called him two or three times a day like I do with all very sick patients. I called him in the middle of the next day and asked how he was doing. He said he was doing good. His voice sounded stronger. He was substantially improved.''

Gossett took six ivermectin pills one day and eight pills the next day. ''I felt much better,'' he says. ''After four days, I went to a clinic that people recommended. I was told that I didn't have COVID anymore.''

When the vaccine became available, Gossett said he and his son got their shots.

Gossett said he walked out of that hospital ''because there was death in the air.'' The doctor and the actor celebrated warmly at the actor's eighty-fifth birthday party, and have remained close friends.

Gossett calls Dr. Boros ''the angel that saved my life.''

The Angel That Saved My LifeYou can see the actor's heartfelt testimony here on Dr. Boros's Facebook page. Share RESCUE with Michael Capuzzo

Peter Joffre Nye is a prize-winning journalist, magazine editor, and author of several books, including the revised and updated second edition of Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing and The Fast Times of Albert Champion: From Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon, An Untold Story of Speed, Success, and Betrayal.

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Sat, 02 Oct 2021 12:55

Bill Nelson says there's "no evidence" to justify renaming the James Webb Space Telescope.Stuck With WebbNASA has announced that it will not be changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope despite criticism from the public, astronomers, and even NASA employees.

The orbital observatory, which is expected to revolutionize astronomy by letting scientists see farther into space in greater detail than ever before, has come under fire this year due to the bigoted history of its namesake, former NASA administrator James Webb. The agency concluded that Webb, who allowed NASA security to interrogate employees for being gay, is still deserving of the honor '-- leaving critics dissatisfied.

''We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope,'' NASA administrator Bill Nelson told NPR.

Questionable InvestigationNASA told NPR that it conducted an investigation in Webb's track record, but has shared very few details about what the investigation entailed.

Meanwhile, over 1,200 critics, many of whom are astronomers or work in a related field, have signed a petition demanding a name change.

''At best, Webb's record is complicated,'' University of New Hampshire cosmologist and petition organizer Chanda Prescod-Weinstein told NPR. ''And at worst, we're basically just sending this incredible instrument into the sky with the name of a homophobe on it, in my opinion.''

Breaking PrecedentThe decision isn't all that shocking '-- the James Webb has been under development for what feels like ages and a lot of work has gone into developing a project that, despite being 14 years behind schedule, is finally scheduled to launch this December. So NASA leadership probably doesn't want to lose any fleeting sense of momentum that the project has.

But still, NASA has been receptive in recent years to requests to change some of its names for various space objects, like how NASA renamed an asteroid ''Arrokoth'' in 2019 after learning that its original name, ''Ultima Thule,'' had Nazi connotations. The next year, the space agency also vowed to stop using racist names for various objects in space '-- but apparently that vow doesn't quite extend naming things after real-life homophobes.

READ MORE: Shadowed By Controversy, NASA Won't Rename New Space Telescope [NPR]

More on the James Webb Space Telescope: James Webb Hated Gay People. Why Are We Naming a Telescope After Him?

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 19:50

Merck & Co. shows their new antiviral medication. Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. announced Friday, that its experimental COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people recently infected with the coronavirus and that it would soon ask health officials in the U.S. and around the world to authorize its use. Merck & Co. /AP hide caption

toggle caption Merck & Co. /AP Merck & Co. shows their new antiviral medication. Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. announced Friday, that its experimental COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people recently infected with the coronavirus and that it would soon ask health officials in the U.S. and around the world to authorize its use.

Merck & Co. /AP WASHINGTON '-- Merck & Co. said Friday that its experimental COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people recently infected with the coronavirus and that it would soon ask health officials in the U.S. and around the world to authorize its use.

If cleared, Merck's drug would be the first pill shown to treat COVID-19, a potentially major advance in efforts to fight the pandemic. All COVID-19 therapies now authorized in the U.S. require an IV or injection.

Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics said early results showed patients who received the drug, called molnupiravir, within five days of COVID-19 symptoms had about half the rate of hospitalization and death as patients who received a dummy pill. The study tracked 775 adults with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who were considered higher risk for severe disease due to health problems such as obesity, diabetes or heart disease.

Among patients taking molnupiravir, 7.3% were either hospitalized or died at the end of 30 days, compared with 14.1% of those getting the dummy pill. There were no deaths in the drug group after that time period compared with eight deaths in the placebo group, according to Merck. The results were released by the company and have not been peer reviewed. Merck said it plans to present them at a future medical meeting.

An independent group of medical experts monitoring the trial recommended stopping it early because the interim results were so strong. Company executives said they are in discussions with the Food and Drug Administration and plan submit the data for review in coming days.

"It exceeded what I thought the drug might be able to do in this clinical trial," said Dr. Dean Li, vice president of Merck research. "When you see a 50% reduction in hospitalization or death that's a substantial clinical impact."

Side effects were reported by both groups in the Merck trial, but they were slightly more common among the group that received a dummy pill. The company did not specify the problems.

Earlier study results showed the drug did not benefit patients who were already hospitalized with severe disease.

The U.S. has approved one antiviral drug, remdesivir, specifically for COVID-19, and allowed emergency use of three antibody therapies that help the immune system fight the virus. But all the drugs have to be given by IV or injection at hospitals or medical clinics, and supplies have been stretched by the latest surge of the delta variant.

Health experts including the top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci have long called for a convenient pill that patients could take when COVID-19 symptoms first appear, much the way the decades-old flu medication Tamiflu helps fight influenza. Such medications are seen as key to controlling future waves of infection and reducing the impact of the pandemic.

Merck's pill works by interfering with an enzyme the coronavirus uses to copy its genetic code and reproduce itself. It has shown similar activity against other viruses.

The U.S. government has committed to purchase 1.7 million doses of the drug if it is authorized by the FDA. Merck has said it can produce 10 million doses by the end of the year and has contracts with governments worldwide. The company has not announced prices.

Several other companies, including Pfizer and Roche, are studying similar drugs that could report results in the coming weeks and months.

Merck had planned to enroll more than 1,500 patients in its late-stage trial before the independent board stopped it early. The results reported Friday included patients enrolled across Latin America, Europe and Africa. Executives estimated about 10% of patients studied were from the U.S.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 19:47

Media inquiries can be emailed to: communications@abog.org

September 27, 2021The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) fully supports the statement published by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) that asserts that providing misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine contradicts physicians' ethical and professional responsibilities, and therefore may subject a physician to disciplinary actions, including suspension or revocation of their medical license. Additionally, ABOG supports a recent American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) statement, which expresses concern regarding the serious public health effects of the persistent spread of misinformation regarding the COVID-19 virus.

Patients rely on physicians to practice evidence-based medicine based on facts and scientific data. The FSMB and ABMS statements align with the ABOG standards and policies for certification and maintenance of certification that involve medical professionalism and professional standing. These standards include:

acting in your patients' best interests

behaving professionally with patients, families, and colleagues across health professions

taking appropriate care of yourself

representing your Board certification and MOC status in a professional manner

Providing intentional misinformation that may harm patients or public health does not meet these standards and may be grounds for adverse action on OB GYN certification status. In addition, ABOG is alerted if an OB GYN is investigated for practice or professionalism violations by a state medical board. ABOG acts based on its certification policies as described in the current MOC Bulletins and the Revocation of Diploma or Certificate Policy.

A recent article highlights the risks posed to pregnant people by COVID-19 and the reports of increasing numbers of unvaccinated pregnant individuals in ICUs in several states with severe infection. The CDC has reported that the deaths in August are the highest number of deaths reported in any month since the start of the pandemic, citing that about 97% of pregnant people treated in the hospital for COVID-19 have been unvaccinated. The ACOG, SMFM, and CDC recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for all people over the age of 12, including pregnant people. ABOG supports these recommendations and has incorporated this information in our Maintenance of Certification (MOC) learning and self-assessment offerings to help diplomates provide evidence-based care to the people and families that we serve.

###

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 19:44

The Biden administration is covering up its final crime in Afghanistan.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

After Biden evacuated tens of thousands of Afghan ''translators'', refugee resettlement groups are desperately looking for translators to translate to the translators.

Why do Afghan translators, who were supposed to be able to translate from English to their native language, need help from translators?

It's because they're not translators.

In the last two years, Front Page Magazine ran multiple articles like How the 'Interpreter' Scam Brought 75,000 Iraqis and Afghans to America and 'Saving Afghan Interpreters' is a Scam That Would Bring 100,000 Afghans to U.S. exposing the ''translator'' scam. Now tens of thousands of Afghans are arriving in this country and they need translators because they don't speak English.

As I previously pointed out, there were more Afghan ''translators'' applying for visas than there were American soldiers for them to translate for. But the vast majority of SIV visa applicants were never translators. The number of actual translators, Afghans embedded with U.S. forces who risked their lives by working in the field, was miniscule and was its own special category.

But by the end, almost any Afghan who worked for any U.S. organization could apply for a visa.

Biden's disastrous Afghanistan retreat made that existing scam so much worse because he didn't evacuate the approved SIV visa holders who might have actually worked for the U.S.

State Department sources have said that the majority of SIVs were actually left behind.

The Biden administration claims to have evacuated 124,000 people, of them only 5,500 Americans, from Afghanistan. 60,000 have been brought into the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that only 1,800 are SIV holders, another 8,000 are citizens or have green cards.

That leaves over 50,000 Afghans who were just brought here with no legal basis.

And there are tens of thousands of ''evacuated'' Afghans who might still be brought here.

According to Mayorkas, the "balance of that population are individuals whose applications have not yet been processed for approval who may qualify as SIVs and have not yet applied, who qualify or would qualify'--I should say'--as P-1 or P-2 refugees who have been employed by the United States government in Afghanistan and are otherwise vulnerable Afghan nationals, such as journalists, human rights advocates, etc.''

Mayorkas describes bringing a whole lot of people who ''might'' qualify as SIVs, if they were to apply for them, who ''would'' qualify for P-1 and P-2 visas: categories that took the existing translator scam and turned it into a free-for-all and allowed virtually anyone to qualify.

The Biden administration evacuated all these planeloads of ''journalists'' and ''human rights advocates'' who immediately began sexually assaulting some of the girls they were trafficking.

Two Afghan refugees at Fort McCoy have already been charged, one for sexually assaulting two minors, and another for beating his wife who alleged that he ''beat me many times in Afghanistan to the point I lost vision in both eyes.''

The wife also told a translator ''that nine women have been killed since getting to Fort McCoy and that she would be the tenth.'' There's been no confirmation of this, but even well before these two criminal cases, anonymous officials at Fort McCoy were warning that "older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as 'brides' or otherwise sexually abused."

That's strange behavior for ''human rights activists''.

The human rights activists that the United States funded in Kabul were largely middle-aged women who didn't wear burkas. We've seen and heard almost nothing from any of them at Fort McCoy or anywhere else in the resettlement system. Some have remained in Afghanistan and are risking their lives by courageously organizing protests against the Taliban.

They're not raping children in Wisconsin.

The Afghan evacuees lean heavily toward ''military age males'' and older men with young girls. The women in those families that have come through tend to wear burkas and appear fearful.

Whoever the hell these people are, they're not ''human rights activists'' and ''journalists''.

Nor are they translators since most of them need translators and few have SIV visas.

The question no one asked Mayorkas is why the vast majority of SIV visa holders never got on board those planes, but people who he thinks ''might'' qualify did.

What process could have possibly resulted in such a strange outcome?

The answer comes in two damning parts.

Kabul embassy personnel had tainted the pool of applicants by sending out "electronic credentials". State Department officials claimed that the passes were widely distributed by the applicants and that soon everyone had them and was demanding access to the airport.

"Within an hour, everyone in the crowd had that pass," a senior official claimed.

He noted that, ''every credential we tried to provide electronically was immediately disseminated to the widest possible pool,''

And while that might explain why a lot of people showed up who weren't qualified, but were waving credentials, it doesn't explain why so few of those who were actually qualified made it into the airport and onto a plane. The only explanation is that they were deliberately kept out.

The Biden administration outsourced security to the Taliban, which passed it along to checkpoints manned by the Haqqani Network which is allied with Al Qaeda. Biden officials provided the Taliban and Haqqanis with lists of qualified people they were supposed to admit.

And yet the Taliban repeatedly prevented some Afghans from getting to the airport while allowing others to make it through. They did so regardless of the official credentials.

The media reported on this behavior but treated it as random sadism or malice. It's not.

The Taliban were experts at cashing in on the American presence in Afghanistan. At one point the Jihadis were making more money from ''taxing'' contractors working for us than they did from opium. There was no chance that the Taliban would leave all the money to be made from providing access to the evacuation flights on the table. And there's no reason to think they did.

An Australian Financial Review columnist reported that, "Taliban fighters are allowing people to pass through if they pay thousands of dollars in bribes."

That was likely only the tip of the iceberg.

The distribution of electronic credentials was deliberately tainted in the pipeline and the Taliban controlled access to the Kabul airport to keep out legitimate SIV visa holders while allowing the tens of thousands of Afghans who were illegitimately evacuated to bribe their way in.

This wasn't an evacuation: it was a massive Taliban human trafficking scheme.

The Taliban didn't just cash in on all the reconstruction projects and the weapons left behind, they undoubtedly made a fortune from every seat in Biden's Kabul airlift.

Now that tens of thousands of Afghans are here, they won't be leaving. They can't be deported and whether or not the ''parolees'' qualify for an SIV or P-2 visa is a mere technicality.

The truly explosive question is whether the Taliban just cashed in on the usual corruption in Afghanistan, or if they got any Al Qaeda or ISIS terrorists into the evacuation pipeline?

Did any of the Taliban grab the chance to get their own family members into the airport?

Probably.

Sources have said that 0.5% of Afghan evacuees have been flagged for terror ties. That's a high percentage for ''translators'' and ''human rights activists''. Some of the flags were reportedly triggered by terrorist family ties. In a tribal and clan society, Taliban and Al Qaeda family members are extremely unlikely to be working as translators or human rights activists.

Beyond just getting family members into the evacuation pipeline, did the Taliban get actual terrorists into the United States. Probably. But it'll take us years and bodies to find out.

Biden and his administration have treated the Kabul airlift as a massive triumph, when it was actually the final act of a disaster that has brought rapists and terrorists to America.

The ''translators'' need translators, children are being sexually assaulted and women are being beaten before the refugees have even left Fort McCoy. Afterward things will get much worse.

Untold billions in taxpayer money will be squandered on resettling the beneficiaries of the Taliban's human trafficking scheme. The Afghans will be signed up for every possible welfare program and a fortune will be spent just on translating for the ''translators'' at resettlement agencies, government agencies, schools, hospitals, and the local police.

More money will be spent on dealing with their abuses through the criminal justice system.

The SIV holders and their families who were left behind in Afghanistan, but who manage to eventually make it over here, will also have to be resettled, doubling our refugee load.

And then the terrorist plots will begin.

The Kabul airlift wasn't heroic: it was a bleak farce in which the Biden administration allowed the Taliban to select who got on the planes. And then it's shocked that the Afghans whom the Taliban chose are not the SIV visa recipients that were on the list, but a whole other crowd.

It will take us decades to discover exactly who are the Afghans that Biden brought to America.

The Biden administration will cling to the myth of its heroic airlift by retroactively legitimizing the tens of thousands of Afghans to cover up the final installment of its humiliating disaster. And the Taliban, once again, will have the last laugh as their human trafficking scheme pays off.

Human trafficking isn't only for Mexican cartels, the Taliban likely made a fortune trafficking rapists and terrorists, and anyone who could pay, to Kabul airport. The old men raping young girls, the military age men scowling at the camera, and all the best of Afghanistan is here now.

And the Biden administration will cover up its final crime in Afghanistan.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 19:35

Merck plans to request emergency approval for an experimental oral COVID-19 antiviral drug, molnupiravir, after a late-stage trial indicated an approximate 50% risk reduction for hospitalization or death among patients with mild to moderate COVID-19.

An interim analysis, stemming from the Phase 3 MOVe-OUT trial, indicated 7.3% of patients who received molnupiravir were hospitalized or had died about a month later, compared with 14.1% of patients receiving a placebo. The company also reported no deaths in the treatment group, versus eight deaths in the placebo group.

"Merck plans to submit an application for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to the U.S. FDA as soon as possible based on these findings and plans to submit marketing applications to other regulatory bodies worldwide," the company said Friday.

The company also noted that recruitment for the study was halted early given the positive findings, with over 90% of the targeted sample size already reached, and after consultation with the FDA and an independent data monitoring committee.

Molnupiravir works by targeting the enzyme needed for the virus to make copies of itself and introduces errors into the virus's genetic code. This curtails the patient's viral load, shortening the duration of the illness and mitigating serious symptoms.

COVID DELTA VARIANT REVERSING RECOVERY IN RESTAURANT INDUSTRY, SURVEY SAYS

"More tools and treatments are urgently needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has become a leading cause of death and continues to profoundly affect patients, families, and societies and strain health care systems all around the world," Robert M. Davis, Merck CEO and president, said in the release, adding in part, "With these compelling results, we are optimistic that molnupiravir can become an important medicine as part of the global effort to fight the pandemic."

According to Timothy Sheahan, a virologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who helped pioneer these therapies, "Oral antivirals have the potential to not only curtail the duration of one's COVID-19 syndrome but also have the potential to limit transmission to people in your household if you are sick."

Wendy Holman, CEO of Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, noted a critical need for at-home antiviral treatments to keep COVID-infected individuals out of the hospital, and anticipated molnupiravir's potential to have "profound impact in controlling the pandemic," should the drug become authorized for use.

Molnupiravir would be used after diagnosis and is thus not a replacement for vaccination, but it can help reduce transmission.

COVID-19 VACCINE BOOSTERS COULD MEAN BILLIONS FOR DRUGMAKERS

At last week's annual meeting of infectious disease organizations, Merck presented an analysis of its findings on molnupiravir.

In a trial earlier this year, the company enrolled nonhospitalized, COVID-19 patients who have had symptoms for more than five days and were at risk for COVID-19 complications. When treated with molnupiravir, none of the patients tested positive after five days, while 24% of placebo patients did.

Merck aims to produce 10 million courses of treatment by the end of the year, with more supply expected in 2022. Upon emergency authorization or approval, the company will supply the U.S. government with 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir, and is in talks with other governments as well, a company announcement reads.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

Pfizer is working on its own oral antiviral, as is Roche and Atea Pharmaceuticals.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 19:32

New South Wales's anti-corruption body looking into corruption allegation against a disgraced state legislator who was in a secret relationship with state premier.

Gladys Berejiklian, the premier of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), has abruptly resigned after the state's corruption watchdog said it was investigating whether she was involved in conduct that ''constituted or involved a breach of public trust''.

''I love my job '... but I have been given no option,'' Berejiklian said at a news conference on Friday adding that the issues being investigated were ''historical matters''.

''I state categorically I have always acted with the highest level of integrity,'' she said.

The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said in a statement on its website that it will hold further public hearings as part of its ongoing investigation, Operation Keppel, on October 18.

That investigation has already heard Berejiklian was in a secret relationship with a state legislator who is the focus of its corruption investigation.

The ICAC statement said the scope of the commission's investigation had widened and includes ''whether, between 2012 and 2018, the Hon Gladys Berejiklian MP engaged in conduct that constituted or involved a breach of public trust by exercising public functions in circumstances where she was in a position of conflict between her public duties and her private interest as a person who was in a personal relationship with the then NSW Member of Parliament, Mr Daryl Maguire''.

The potential breach involved grant funding promised to community organisations in Maguire's electorate of Wagga Wagga.

Maguire told an inquiry last year he had received envelopes containing thousands of dollars in cash at his parliament office as part of a scheme for Chinese nationals to fraudulently acquire visas.

Berejiklian had also told the anti-corruption body last year that she was in a ''close personal relationship'' with Maguire from ''around the 2015 state election''.

She said that she had kept the relationship a secret because she was a ''very private person''.

''My resignation as premier could not happen at a worse time, but the timing is completely outside of my control as the ICAC has chosen to take this action during the most challenging weeks of the most challenging times in the history of NSW,'' she said on Friday.

Following her announcement, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison praised Berejiklian, adding that she was a dear friend who had ''displayed heroic qualities'' in her job.

''I know how much she is trusted and respected by the people of NSW,'' he added.

Berejiklian became New South Wales premier in January 2017 following the resignation of Mike Baird.

She has been in the state parliament since 2003 representing northern Sydney and has previously served as the state's treasurer, and as transport minister.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:59

For those trying to follow the science and the law, it's been impossible to ascertain a modicum of consistency in the government's COVID response. However, when you follow the money, everything officials are doing (as well as what they are not doing) makes perfect sense.

The same government that has the power to use COVID to shut down our lives and our breathing also has the power to determine to which pharmaceutical company it will send billions of taxpayer dollars, a decision that is governed 100% by money and politics, not by sound medicine. We already understand why the vaccine companies have been funding a war against cheap, effective therapeutics such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, but many have wondered why Merck would oppose a drug that the company itself has made for many years.

On Feb. 4, Merck came out with a shocking statement warning against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID. The statement claimed there was "no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies" and that there was "a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies."

This was quite a bizarre assertion given that 59 studies, including 30 randomized controlled trials, have shown the drug to be extremely effective at all stages of the virus. The statement regarding safety concerns was even more ludicrous given that nearly 4 billion doses of this drug have been dispensed for parasitic ailments, it won the Nobel prize, and it is listed among the WHO's most essential drugs. There is no logical reason why someone would somehow begin experiencing dangerous side effects if he happens to use ivermectin for COVID instead of for scabies or river blindness.

Nonetheless, Merck's statement served as a strong blow to the use of ivermectin, because Merck was a large dispenser of this drug. After all, why would the company dump on its own drug?

Well, now we have an answer. On June 9, Merck announced that it had entered into a procurement agreement. Merck will receive approximately $1.2 billion to supply approximately 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir to the United States government. Molnupiravir is a new drug Merck is currently evaluating in a Phase 3 clinical trials to serve as the wonder drug to treat COVID. The estimated cost of the drug per treatment is $700!

So now we can understand why the company would swap out its own drug that has already been proven safe and effective for something new and experimental. Without the government sending a penny to Merck, I can buy a lifesaving dose of ivermectin for just $26 through GoodRX.

Well, that's if the pharmacy would actually dispense it to me and a doctor would prescribe it to me. We can now understand why Big Pharma has colluded with big government to pressure doctors and pharmacists away from prescribing and dispensing ivermectin. This historic business deal would be moot.

Also, let us not forget that expedited approval of experimental new drugs runs into the same problem as the experimental vaccines. Approval for "Emergency Use Authorization" can be granted by the FDA only if there is "no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product for diagnosing, preventing or treating" a disease. That's why already-approved drugs like ivermectin have to vanish from discussion. Can you imagine how much ivermectin the feds could have dispensed for a fraction of the cost of expensive experimental drugs and mRNA shots?

What is particularly disturbing is that it appears that molnupiravir contains some of the same molecular qualities as ivermectin, which makes you wonder if Merck knows that ivermectin is effective and just sought a more expensive drug that could be marketed as exclusive and new for COVID, thereby justifying another budget blowout by Washington policymakers.

One of several antiviral qualities to ivermectin is that it disrupts viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) enzymes. Two Italian doctors in a study published in Nature described the process as follows:

The RdRP residing in nsp12 is the centerpiece of the coronavirus replication and transcription complex and has been suggested as a promising drug target as it is a crucial enzyme in the virus life cycle both for replication of the viral genome but also for transcription of subgenomic mRNAs (sgRNAs) [34]. Ivermectin binds to the viral rdrp and disrupts it. The highly efficient binding of ivermectin to nsp14 confirms its role in inhibiting viral replication and assembly. It is well known that nsp14 is essential in transcription and replication.Dr. Pierre Kory, the president ofFrontline Covid19 Critical Care Alliance and one of the most prominent advocates of ivermectin, believes that the new drug developed by Merck acts in a similar way.

Dr. Syed Mobeen, who hosts a daily medical show and often hosts Dr. Kory for discussions about COVID treatment, told me that "it seems that molnupiravir is a copy of one of Ivermectin's mechanisms."

"This mechanism is to disrupt the SARS-COV-2 virus' RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) enzyme," said Dr. Mobeen, who runs a medical education center. "Copying this mechanism will give Merck a way to earn from an existing cheap drug's action by relabeling it; however, I believe that molnupiravir will continue to be less effective as studies show that ivermectin has more mechanisms to disrupt the SARS-COV-2 replication and spread. Hence, ivermectin will continue to be a superior choice over molnupirivir or other RdRp disrupters."

Aside from disrupting the viral RdRp, ivermectin supporters believe the cheap drug inhibits the spike protein from binding to the ACE2 enzyme and disrupts the importin alpha and beta.

Merck has yet to explain why its new drug would be more cost effective and score better in a risk-benefit analysis than ivermectin. Just over the weekend, a Cochrane-standard (the highest level review) meta-analysis of ivermectin against COVID-19 by Bryant-Lawrie, which has been published in the American Journal of Therapeutics, concluded that the "apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally."

Thus, with a non-invasive, cheap, and safe drug that doesn't require one to lock down or wear a mask, we could largely solve the problem. Why would the medical establishment not take yes for an answer? As the study concludes:

Ivermectin is not a new and experimental drug with an unknown safety profile. It is a WHO "Essential Medicine" already used in several different indications, in colossal cumulative volumes. Corticosteroids have become an accepted standard of care in COVID-19, based on a single RCT of dexamethasone.1 If a single RCT is sufficient for the adoption of dexamethasone, then a fortiori the evidence of 2 dozen RCTs supports the adoption of ivermectin. Now we know, in the case of Merck, there are 1.2 billion reasons why not. For some of the larger special interests, that number is exponentially higher and is all backed by the Fed's printing press and guaranteed by the media they have paid and influenced. Welcome to science and medicine.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:49

This is just getting beyond ridiculous now. Ochsner Health [Website Here] is a healthcare provider/system that delivers healthcare services to the people of Louisiana, Mississippi and the Gulf South. Ochsner Health is now requiring the spouses or domestic partners of all employees be vaccinated, or the employee will pay a $100 per pay period penalty. (Source Link)

Hopefully some employee of Ochsner Health will file a lawsuit fast. The basis for the lawsuit could likely be framed around punitive employee punishment based on ''marital status'', a clear violation of existing civil rights law. Why stop at spouses? Why not kids or other dependents? What about all other vaccines before COVID? Why now?

By current federal and most state statutes, no employer is legally permitted to discriminate against any employee based on marital status. A penalty against a spouse for non compliance with an employer vaccine mandate is a punitive action only against married persons. Find a court that will look at this as a violation of the discrimination clause, because it only targets married employees. Let's see what happens.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 06:07

There was a moment in Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the withdrawal from Afghanistan when it became clear why President Joe Biden decided to get the troops out of there as quickly as possible.

It came when Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained why he and the other chiefs—the top officers of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines—all agreed that we needed to pull out by Aug. 31. The Doha agreement, which President Donald Trump had signed with the Taliban in early 2020 (with no participation by the Afghan government), required a total withdrawal of foreign forces. If U.S. troops had stayed beyond August, Milley said, the Taliban would have resumed the fighting, and, in order to stave off the attacks, “we would have needed 30,000 troops” and would have suffered “many casualties.”

And yet, as Milley also testified on Tuesday, he, the chiefs, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and other military officers advised Biden to keep 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the Aug. 31 deadline. The difference is that those troops wouldn’t be attached to any “military mission.” Instead, they would “transition” to a “diplomatic mission.”

However, it is extremely unlikely that the Taliban would have observed the semantic distinction. In their eyes, 2,500 U.S. troops would be seen as 2,500 U.S. troops, regardless of whether their mission was officially said to be “military” or “diplomatic.” Therefore, the Taliban would resume fighting, as Milley said they would, and Biden would then have been faced with a horrendous choice—to pull out while under attack or send in another 30,000 troops.

Some historical-psychological perspective is worth noting. In the first nine months of Barack Obama’s presidency, the generals were pushing for a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan—an increase of 40,000 troops—and a shift to a counterinsurgency (aka “nation-building”) strategy. Biden, who was then vice president, was alone in suggesting an increase of just 10,000 troops, to be used solely for training the Afghan army and for fighting terrorists along the Afghan-Pakistani border. As Obama recalls in his memoir, Biden urged the new and relatively inexperienced president not to be “boxed in” by the generals. Give them 40,000 troops now, and in 18 months, they’ll say they need another 40,000 to win the war. As Obama later acknowledged, Biden was right.

And so, as Milley was advising Biden to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, even while acknowledging that another 30,000 might be needed if the Taliban resumed fighting, it’s easy to imagine Biden thinking, “They’re trying to box me in, just like they did before, just like they’ve always done since the Vietnam War,” which was raging when Biden first entered the Senate in 1973 and has shaped his views on war and peace ever since.

Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, both acknowledged at the hearing that the U.S. military was flying blind through much of its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. The officers of the day tried to mold the Afghan army in their own image, making them too dependent on U.S. technology and support, so that once we withdrew, collapse was inevitable. Milley also noted that he and the other officers paid too little attention to Afghan culture and to the corrosive effects of the Afghan government’s corruption and lack of popular legitimacy. So, Biden might well have been thinking, why should he pay attention to anything these guys had to say on the war in Afghanistan, which they’ve been wrong about from the very beginning?

Biden made several missteps, some of them disastrous, in the pace and sequence of the withdrawal. Most of all, he should have pulled out all the spies, contractors, U.S. citizens, and Afghan helpers before pulling out all the troops. But on the big picture, he was right, and the generals, as they now grudgingly admit, were wrong.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 04:47

An elite team of scientists advising the State Department concluded in 2018 that the 'Havana Syndrome' afflicting spies and diplomats could not have been due to a microwave weapon, but their report has just now been declassified.

The report compiled by the JASON advisory group in November 2018 said that the sounds reported in eight of the original 21 incidents of the 'Havana Syndrome' were ''most likely'' caused by crickets, and that it was ''highly unlikely'' the reported symptoms were caused by microwaves or ultrasound beams.

While ''the suffering reported by the affected individuals is real,'' the group concluded ''psychogenic effects may serve to explain important components of the reported injuries.''

A secret document shows that the US government basically knows that "Havana Syndrome" is a mass psychogenic illness. Some of the reported symptoms are likely crickets chirping https://t.co/M2jlfTEoKm

'-- Ben Walsh (@BenDWalsh) September 30, 2021The redacted and declassified version of the JASON report was published on Thursday by BuzzFeed. It was originally classified as ''Secret,'' and was not shared with the National Academies of Sciences panel whose report on the 'Havana Syndrome' was commissioned by Foggy Bottom last year.

The NAS panel concluded microwaves were the ''most plausible'' cause of the symptoms, which purportedly include headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, hearing and vision impairment, nosebleeds, vertigo and memory loss, among others.

According to JASON, however, ''No plausible single source of energy (neither radio/microwaves nor sonic) can produce both the recorded audio/video signals and the reported medical effects.'' The recorded noise was either mechanical or biological in origin, rather than electronic, and the ''most likely'' source was Anurogryllis celerinictus, the ''Indies short-tailed cricket.''

Also on rt.com Cue the crickets: Berkeley researcher finds Cuba 'sonic attack' sound is actually insects chirping This exact species was identified by University of California Berkeley researchers in January 2019 as the source of the mysterious noise, based on a recording released by AP.

JASON experts ruled out pulsed microwaves and ultrasound, in part because electronics and Wi-Fi networks in the house where the noises were first recorded suffered no disruptions during the incident. They concluded the noises did not correspond to microwave or ultrasound frequencies by calculating the power that would be required.

The Trump administration used the 'Havana syndrome' as a pretext to scale back the recently re-established diplomatic presence in Cuba. It gained a life of its own in the CIA and the US media later on, with over 200 spies now reportedly claiming they had been affected '' and rampant speculation that China or Russia may be using some kind of science-fiction superweapon to do this.

Also on rt.com Congress passes bill to aid victims of 'Havana Syndrome,' after reports CIA director's entourage was targeted in India Just last week, the US House of Representatives voted 427-0 to pass the Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks (HAVANA) Act, giving the CIA millions of dollars to compensate the personnel affected.

In mid-September, a team of Cuban scientists announced that claims of secret sonic weapons were not ''scientifically acceptable,'' and there was ''no scientific evidence of attacks.'' Unaware of the JASON report, they attributed the symptoms to some kind of mass psychosis on part of the US spies.

Named after a hero from Greek mythology,JASON is an independent group of scientists that has advised the US government since the heyday of the Cold War.

''This is a high powered group of expert scientists,'' former Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist Cheryl Rofer told BuzzFeed, adding that the declassified report ''appears to be a very thorough scientific analysis, the kind which wasn't done in the National Academies of Sciences report.''

''What is available in the report is pretty dubious about directed energy weapons, and pretty positive about crickets,'' Rofer added.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

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Thu, 30 Sep 2021 22:15

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The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled Wednesday that Philip Morris International and Altria must stop the sales and imports of their Iqos tobacco device.The import and sales ban will take effect in two months after an administrative review.Philip Morris said it plans to appeal the trade agency's decision.Philip Morris International shows an iQOS electronic cigarette, which heats tobacco sticks but does not burn them.

Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images

The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled Wednesday that Philip Morris International and Altria must stop the sale and import of the Iqos tobacco device.

The decision is the result of a patent case filed by rival R.J. Reynolds. The trade agency found that the cigarette alternative infringed on two of Reynolds' patents.

The import and sales ban will take effect in two months after an administrative review that requires President Joe Biden's signature. Philip Morris said it plans to appeal the trade agency's decision, and an Altria spokesperson said the two companies are working together on contingency plans.

"We continue to believe RJR's patents are invalid and that IQOS does not infringe those patents," an Altria spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC.

Altria launched the Iqos device in the United States two years ago, but it began development of the product more than a decade ago before Philip Morris International was spun off from the company. The device heats tobacco without burning it, which is meant to give users the same rush of nicotine without as many toxins as smoking a cigarette.

Philip Morris sells the device in dozens of international markets and has granted Altria a license to sell it in the U.S. While Iqos doesn't represent a large portion of Altria's U.S. business, it's part of the company's shift away from traditional tobacco products, which have seen falling demand.

"Infringement of our intellectual property undermines our ability to invest and innovate and thereby reduce the health impact of our business," Reynolds American spokesperson Kaelan Hollon said in a statement. "We will therefore defend our IP robustly across the globe."

British American Tobacco, the parent company of Reynolds American, has already pursued similar legal action against Philip Morris in a handful of international markets. However, courts in the United Kingdom and Greece have sided with Philip Morris in those disputes. Bank of America Securities analyst Lisa Lewandowski wrote in a note to clients that she doesn't expect Philip Morris or Altria to settle with British American Tobacco, given Philip Morris' previous success against the claims.

Shares of the three tobacco companies were down 1% or less in premarket trading Thursday.

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Sun, 03 Oct 2021 15:06

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Sun, 03 Oct 2021 12:00

BBC air News Report conditioning the public into believing it's normal for teens to drop dead due to ''undiagnosed heart conditions'' Sun 9:56 am +00:00, 3 Oct 2021 posted by Weaver

The BBC aired a news report on October 2nd 2021 which attempted to normalise teens and young adults suddenly dropping dead due to ''undiagnosed heart conditions''. The report was called ''Running could cause sudden death for people like me''. Is it just a coincidence that they chose to air it just as children over the age of 12 are being given the Covid-19 vaccine?

It is now known that younger adults, teenagers, and children (especially males) are much more likely to suffer myocarditis due to the Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 injections. Both jabs have had warnings added to the safety labels by the UK Medicine Regulator due to a suspicion they are causing myocarditis and pericarditis in younger adults.

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle, whereas pericarditis is inflammation of the protective sacs surrounding the heart. Both are extremely serious conditions due to the vital role the heart plays in keeping a person alive, and the fact that the heart muscle cannot regenerate. Serious myocarditis can lead to cardiac arrest and knock years off a persons life.

Couple the above with the fact that Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for the United Kingdom, overruled the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation by writing to the Government to tell them that they should offer the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to all healthy children over the age of 12, then you may see the following report from the BBC in a rather more disturbing light.

''Every week in the UK, twelve young people die from an undiagnosed heart condition like mine. This has something a charity wants to change by screening every young person across the country for potential heart conditions''.

Is the BBC conditioning the public to believe young teens suddenly dropping dead is normal, because they know it's happening and will continue to happen due to the Covid-19 vaccine?

All we know is that since March 2020 we seem to have been living in the 'Age of Coincidences', and this is just another coincidence too far.

Read and Share '' 'Safe & Effective? '' 78% Covid deaths among Vaccinated, 47% rise in Teen Deaths since they had the jab, 999 calls for Cardiac Arrest at an all time high'

BBC air News Report conditioning the public into believing it's normal for teens to drop dead due to ''undiagnosed heart conditions''

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Sun, 03 Oct 2021 11:48

Italy

By Euronews with AFP, ANSA • Updated: 17/09/2021

olice officers check passenger's documents at the entrance of Porta Garibaldi train station, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021 -

Copyright

Credit: APItaly has become the first European country to make COVID-19 health passes mandatory for all workers.

The Italian government approved a new measure on Thursday that makes digital vaccine certificates compulsory for both public and private sectors.

The obligation is set to begin from October 15 and remain in force until the end of the year.

"We are extending the obligation of the green pass to the entire world of work, public and private, and we are doing so for two essential reasons: to make these places safer and to make our vaccination campaign even stronger," health minister Roberto Speranza told the press.

The move aims to improve vaccine uptake and reduce the infection rate amid a potential surge in COVID-19 cases this winter.

All employees will be required to prove that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, are recovering from the infection, or have recently tested negative for the virus.

Only pensioners and unemployed citizens will reportedly be exempt from carrying a "green pass".

Any worker who fails to present a valid COVID-19 health certificate will be suspended without pay after five days, but cannot be sacked. Those non-vaccinated could also be fined up to '‚¬1,500.

The Italian Senate overwhelmingly voted in favour of the measure, with 189 in support, 32 against and just 2 abstentions.

While other European countries have made so-called "green passes" mandatory for healthcare workers, Italy is the first to extend the measure to all employees.

"The government is ready to speed up the introduction of the health pass," Regional Affairs Minister Mariastella Gelmini told Radio Rai on Wednesday.

"We are moving towards making the health pass compulsory not only in the public sector but also in the private sector."

Several other European countries have also made COVID-19 health passes mandatory in public venues such as restaurants, bars, museums, cinemas, and theatres. This week, Greece also began testing unvaccinated workers in both public and private sectors.

A number of protests have been organised in recent weeks against the "green pass," with critics arguing that the measure tramples on freedoms.

Others have argued that COVID-19 should be given freely to workers who refuse to be vaccinated, to allow them to remain at work.

Ministers asked Italy to also extend the validity of COVID-19 tests from 48 hours to 72 hours.

Italy already made the 'green pass' mandatory for teachers and other public sector workers this month, while healthcare workers have required a vaccine since April.

Currently, almost 75% of Italy's population over the age of 12 have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

"The vaccine is the only weapon we have against Covid and we can only contain infections by vaccinating the large majority of the population," said Gelmini.

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Sun, 03 Oct 2021 11:45

Europe is battling a record-breaking surge in energy prices that threatens to derail the post-pandemic economic recovery, strain household incomes and even tarnish the nascent green transition.

A series of market, geographic and political factors have coalesced into a perfect storm that shows no signs of abetting as the continent enters the autumn season, temperatures gradually decrease and heating becomes indispensable.

Analysts are already warning the crisis, which is exacerbated by a mixture of temporary and structural problems, will be prolonged and the worst may yet to come.

Prices of natural gas are skyrocketing: at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility, Europe's leading benchmark, prices have risen from '‚¬16 megawatt per hour in early January to '‚¬75 by mid-September, a hike of more than 360% in less than one year.

Although the European Union is gradually cutting down on its long-time dependency on fossil fuels '' renewables became the bloc's main source of electricity for the first time in 2020 '' the shift has not been fast and widespread enough to contain the fallout from the crunch.

Together, natural gas and coal still supply more than 35% of the EU's total production, with gas representing over a fifth. The energy mix is vastly different across the bloc: fossil fuels have a marginal share in Sweden, France and Luxembourg, but take up more than 60% of total production in the Netherlands, Poland, Malta and Cyprus.

As coal, the most polluting fuel, is progressively phased out, many countries resort to natural gas as a transitional resource to act as a bridge before green alternatives, like wind turbines and solar panels, are rolled out. Moreover, gas is also used for residential heating and cooking, making the price surge even more noticeable in the final expenses of consumers.

Citizens in countries like Spain, Italy, France and Poland are now facing all-time-high energy bills that add to the economic woes caused by the pandemic. The popular discontent has put governments on high alert, with ministers scrambling to come up with emergency measures, even if they're short-term and only partially effective to cushion the impact.

In Italy, Roberto Cingolani, minister for the ecological transitions, has already warned Italians to expect a 40% increase in their bills over the next months. France said it will send one-off '‚¬100 payments to over 5.8 million low-income households. In Spain, the government has promised to bring prices down to 2018 levels. Madrid also sent a letter to Brussels asking for EU-wide action. "We urgently need a European policy menu pre-designed to react immediately to dramatic price surges," the letter said.

But as the crisis spills over the bloc and citizens express increasing concern, it's unclear how much power the European Union can exert to rein in the excesses of a liberalised energy market whose primary source comes from outside its own borders.

Why are Europe's energy prices soaring?"This is about a surge in demand for energy as we come out of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, combined with a reduced supply of gas on the global market," Tim Gore, head of the Low Carbon and Circular Economy programme at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), told Euronews

"Then there are other factors exacerbating the problem, particularly in Europe. We have succeeded in getting coal off the grid, and that happens to coincide with a period recently where wind power has been lower because of the weather."

Trouble began brewing in the winter when colder-than-expected temperatures led to a higher-than-usual power demand to warm up buildings. This, in turn, induced a marked decrease in gas reserves, which reached a worrisome 30% by March. In spring, as the vaccination campaign gained traction around the continent, business activity began to intensify rapidly, with offices, restaurants and other venues reopening their doors and consumers pouring in, eager to spend their lockdown savings.

The economic recovery prompted a new wave of energy demand, which further increased during the summer when sweltering temperatures pushed people to use air conditioning and cooling systems. East Asian countries then joined Europe in the quest for energy to kick start their COVID-ravaged economies. However, the growing demand was not met with a growing offer.

"The pipeline supplies we get from countries like Russia, Norway and Algeria, despite this higher price, have not actually supplied more gas to Europe. They have kept their suppliers quite at the regular volumes. And that's a bit strange because normally if the price goes up and you're a supplier and you have spare capacity, you could use this opportunity to sell more gas at a higher price. That hasn't happened yet," Dennis Hesseling, head of infrastructure, retail and gas at the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER), told Euronews.

With companies from all around the world trying to get their hands on energy sources, prices began steadily rising. By August, they were breaking records. Traditionally, gas is cheaper during summertime and companies seize the moment to store it in large volumes to be well prepared before winter arrives. But the ongoing price crisis disrupted the custom and current reserves are historically low for this time of the year, an ominous sign for the coming months.

"If we get a particularly cold winter again this year, that's going to be a tough period and prices will continue to rise as a result," added Gore.

"Governments should be preparing now and putting in place the measures to respond and help households through the period. There is still time."

Is there a link between Europe's energy crisis and the new Russia-Germany gas pipeline?The surprising lack of new supplies from Russia, which is the EU's leading gas exporter, is raising fears that Moscow wants to capitalise on the crisis to make the case in favour of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The 1,230-kilometre conduct running under the Baltic Sea and directly linking Russia and Germany is now complete but hasn't begun operations due to bureaucratic hurdles. The project has been heavily criticised inside and outside the EU for perpetuating the bloc's dependence on fossil fuels and extending President Putin's geopolitical influence.

Gazprom, the pipeline's main backer, and the Russian government have denied any involvement in the energy crunch but insist the pipeline should be put to work "as soon as possible". Critics, however, think the timing of the crisis seems too favourable for the Kremlin's agenda.

"Having carried the authorisation for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, a bilateral Russian-German vision which is not part of a shared vision of Europe and doesn't respect the Ukrainian territory, has weakened Europe's position as a guarantor of the common good in favour of mercantilism of some strong countries like Germany," said Carlo Andrea Bollino, a professor at the University of Perugia.

"This can be attributed to Brussels. The EU didn't have the courage to say no to Germany."

A group of more than 40 Members of the European Parliament have sent a letter to the European Commission asking "to urgently open an investigation into possible deliberate market manipulation by Gazprom and potential violation of EU competition rules".

The suspicions about the Kremlin's deliberate interference have reached Washington, one of the most vocal critics against Nord Stream 2.

"We want to all have our eye on the issue of any manipulation of gas prices by hoarding or the failure to produce adequate supply," US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said during a visit to Warsaw.

Europe's energy crisis brings the EU's green transition under fresh scrutinyThe surge in energy prices has inevitably brought the EU's climate policy under renewed scrutiny.

Power companies are obliged to take part in the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS), the world's largest carbon market. Based on a "cap and trade" principle, the ETS currently covers over 10,000 powers plants and industrial installations across the bloc.

On the one hand, the EU sets a cap on the maximum amount of greenhouse gases that the installations can release. On the other hand, it creates permits for each unit of emitted carbon. Companies can buy these permits and trade them among each other to fulfil their annual needs. The cap is tightened over time and permit prices gradually increase. This trend creates an incentive for the energy sector to ditch fossil fuels and embrace sustainable alternatives.

But since the green transition is still in its early stages, companies under the ETS are bound to keep buying and trading carbon permits. The booming recovery and energy crunch have pushed the carbon price by about 80%, from '‚¬34 in mid-January to more than '‚¬60 in September. Consumers risk becoming the final recipients of that additional cost, particularly in coal-dependent countries.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently said the energy price crisis was to blame on the EU climate policy. The European Commission, which is fiercely protective of the ETS, is trying to counter these attacks, arguing the dominant factors behind the price crisis are the global economic recovery and the strong demand from Asian countries. Brussels estimates permits under the ETS are contributing only to a small percentage (over 20%) of the overall surge.

"The irony is if we had had the green deal five years earlier we would not be in this position because then we would have less dependency on fossil fuel natural gas," Frans Timmermans, the Commission's Vice-President in charge of the European Green Deal, told the European Parliament.

A similar line was echoed by Kadri Simson, the European Commissioner for energy, after an informal meeting of transport and energy ministers in Slovenia. The main topic on the agenda: soaring prices.

"Electricity prices have increased across the EU. This is due to a combination of factors, but mostly high natural gas prices and the increasing post-crisis demand. This is a global development, with most countries affected, regardless of their location or market arrangements," she said after the meeting.

Simson suggested the EU should have a "more structured toolbox" to tackle the situation at the national level but underlined domestic action should respect the EU's overarching climate objectives.

"The solution to today's conundrum is clear: we need more renewables and we need to improve our energy efficiency," she added.

Gore, from the IEEP, said: "We're sort of halfway in the energy transition, and this is kind of like growing pains from that low carbon transition. We're having to grapple with the fact we've taken some of the coal out of the system, we've still got too much gas, renewables are coming onstream but not sufficiently yet to dampen that demand."

As part of the Green Deal, Brussels is urging EU countries to step up renovation of buildings so they can be better prepared for extreme weather, such as cold snaps and heatwaves, and therefore lessen the intensive use of heating and cooling systems.

The energy crisis arrives at a delicate moment for the Commission: in July, the executive unveiled a far-reaching set of legislative proposals to cut down the EU's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% before the end of the decade. Among the draft laws is the creation of a new, standalone Emissions Trade System to cover the polluting fuel used for heating buildings and road transport.

The idea received a mixed response, with some legislators immediately coming forward to reject it for its potential damage to the middle class. The Commission, which continues to underline that all carbon must be taxed no matter the source or reason behind it, is now preparing to enter negotiations on the legislative files with the European Parliament and the EU Council, a debate that is already being influenced by the worsening price crisis.

For Dimitri Vergne, a sustainability policy officer at the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), the energy crunch doesn't undermine the EU's green push but actually reinforces its whole point.

"It's a clear call for us to accelerate the shift to a more renewables-based energy system. It's actually our dependence on fossil fuels, like petrol and natural gas, which makes our energy bills much more expensive," he told Euronews.

"If you look at the figures, wind and solar-based electricity, the prices have remained stable. The problem [is the] peaks of natural gas and petrol. This is where the increase in electricity prices come from. And there is a simple or technical reason for this: in times of high demand for electricity, coal and gas power plants need to be switched on to feed into the system. And gas and coal come at a much higher price than renewables to produce electricity."

Volatility and vulnerabilityThe EU's exposure to volatile energy prices is poised to remain a risk in the coming years before the green shift brings the anticipated stability to the market. In the meantime, governments will have to come up with interim solutions, such as lowering the tax rates and extra levies applied to energy bills, which in some countries can make up half of the final price. The Spanish government has temporarily cut the special electricity tax from 5.1% to 0.5% '' the minimum under EU law.

Other measures can include social programmes to protect vulnerable households and small businesses, alleviate energy poverty and prevent families from having their electricity supplies cut off. In 2018, about 34 million Europeans said they were unable to keep their homes adequately warm.

Governments can also offer direct injections of cash, like France's "ch¨que (C)nergie", to offer immediate relief for those struggling to pay the bills, although such an instrument could quickly run over budget if the prices continue to swell, as they are forecast to do.

Renegotiating the contract with electricity providers can give consumers a lifeline. Fixed-price contracts help ensure a consistent and predictable price, even if the price doesn't fully reflect the market's reality or the client's actual consumption.

Consumers that have a variable-price contract are much more exposed to fluctuations: when energy prices go down -- as happened last year when the coronavirus outbreak brought the whole economy to a standstill -- their bills turn considerably cheaper, but when the prices go up, as they presently do, consumers lose control over their expenses.

"You can choose a contract with more risk or with less risk. If you don't want to run the risk, you sign a contract with a fixed price, which is normally a bit more expensive, at least in the beginning," Dennis Hesseling says.

"If we look at the forward prices, the prices that the traders are paying for delivery in the next month for gas, it is expected to remain high for the next half-year or so."

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Sun, 03 Oct 2021 11:22

On September 9th, Joe Biden made the announcement that all employers with more than 100 workers would be required to enforce a national worker vaccine mandate. The White House stated that OSHA would, ''develop a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated.''

However, following the announcement we noted OSHA was not taking any steps needed to engage with business interests to trigger the first-step in the organization of a process to initiate a rule-making process.

I'm only talking about the basic guidance aspect. The labor discussions with internal and external customers of the DoL, OSHA, etc. to set a calendar for how to implement ''guidance'', just that part. There was nothing, and there is nothing.

Finally today, three weeks later, a stenographer for the regime asked the question. Pay close attention to the White House response: [ 13:45 Prompted ] WATCH:

.

As noted in the obtuse response, the White House has no idea what the current plan is for OSHA to create this rule that will require a national mandate for private sector workers. The emphasis is on voluntary compliance as an outcome of the decree that a mandate would be forthcoming.

Folks, this looks like a complete con job, pushed by the Biden administration to provide cover for corporations to create a mandate on their own. Meaning the intent of the announcement was to create momentum for increased vaccinations, while the Biden regime never did or does intend to use OSHA as a national enforcement mechanism.

There are three elements: (1) Federal worker mandate; (2) Federal contractor mandate; and the big controversial one, (3) a national worker mandate for companies with over 100 employees.

Focusing on #3, the big one. The only material from the White House on the BIG CONTROVERSIAL national worker mandate is a small paragraph on the WH COVID PLAN section:

(link)

That's it folks. Three weeks later, and that's the sum total of everything about the biggest economic and workforce disruption in the history of the nation. That one paragraph posted on September 10th.

Why is this important?

Well, the U.S. Department of Labor website has ZERO mentions of this national mandate. ZERO, nothing'... nada, zilch. [SEE HERE]

Looking at the OSHA COVID information portal, used by employers and legal execs, will show you the exact same result. Nothing. [SEE HERE]

Notice there's no date for DoL or OSHA delivery of any employer guidance or details. Nothing.

Think about this. This is the largest nationwide change to employment eligibility requirement in U.S. history. Nothing else is even close'... and yet, if you didn't watch the Biden announcement or read the media discussion about the Biden announcement, you wouldn't be able to find a single detail about it '' anywhere.

This is not normal; not even close to normal'... even for the federal government.

If there was a federal intent to actually force American workers to get forcibly vaccinated as a condition of employment, there would be daily updates from a massive inter-agency network of compliance offices, regulatory agencies and private sector business interests giving updates and briefings. And yes, that pertains only to the anticipated guidance part, not to the actual setting of a deadline and working through the implementation phase of the national mandate.

I'm only talking about the basic guidance aspect. The labor discussions with internal and external customers of the DoL, OSHA, etc. to set a calendar for how to implement ''guidance'', just that part. There's nothing.

The absence of even a scintilla of material to indicate the White House or any federal agency is organizing an action plan of how to structure the guidance itself is telling. The silence of the machine tells us it is not turned on. The bureaucracy has not been triggered. The machinery of the federal government has not been instructed to begin any process to execute on the instruction that OSHA will, ''develop a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated.'' Nothing.

The silence is deafening.

It appears the Department of Labor has no intention of ever even triggering the process to get OSHA to begin evaluating how they could even begin to pull this off'.... and again, for emphasis, I'm only talking about the tiny step of delivering initial guidance to employers that would indicate to them that OSHA was developing a rule.

There's no deadline for OSHA to generate the guidance '' and there's certainly no deadline for the OSHA rule itself, which will come as an outcome of that initial guidance part.

Some have speculated that Joe Biden's big White House announcement was nothing more than a distraction. There's no way for them to ever get over the hurdles that would come from immediate employer backlash on the federal mandate; and they have no intent on even trying. Meaning, it was all a big distraction -never intended execute- and always intended to clear the national conversation of all Biden-centric controversies and reset the administration.

That speculation looks exactly correct.

If 80 million Americans are unvaxxed, and even if only a quarter of those are Main Street employed, the entire social and economic system would grind to a halt if 20 million heavily productive people quit working for 100+ employee companies and went to work much smaller operations. Remember, this is the workforce that was called ''essential workers'' last year. They were essential for a reason.

A grocery chain cannot lose 20 essential people per store, + warehouse and distribution, and still function. A WalMart cannot lose 50 essential workers per store, + warehouse and distribution, and still function. A hospital or hotel cannot lose 20 to 50 essential workers per operation and still function.

Ford? GM? Auto-workers in general? Labor Unions? AFSCME? SEIU? Police, Fire, Emergency First Responders? I cannot see a reasonable scenario where the national worker vaccination mandate is even feasible with an eligible 80+ million unvaccinated holding out.

A week after the announcement CTH said, ''I would not be surprised to see nothing more ever said about this ''National Employment Vaccine Mandate'''', and indeed, until today nothing was ever said about it. When questioned today, the White House says that private companies are already moving forward ''on their own'' without federal rules in place for enforcement.

That now looks like it was the intended plan all along.

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Sun, 03 Oct 2021 11:16

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A curious scene unfolded on Saturday after the NASCAR Xfinity Series Race at Talladega concluded. An NBC reporter interviewed the winner of the race, Brandon Brown, about his victory.

As Brown spoke about his victory, thanking those who helped with his win, the crowd can be heard in the background chanting "f*ck Joe Biden."

The NBC reporter said that the crowd was chanting however, claims that the crowd is in fact chanting "Let's go Brandon."

"Brandon, you also told me," she said, "as you can hear the chants from the crown 'Let's go Brandon.' Brandon you me you were going to kind of hang back those first two stages, and just watch and learn. What did you learn that helped you there in those closing laps?" She asked.

Brown answered, but the crowd's chanting their clear and present opposition to the president is what is most audible in the clip.

NASCAR posted a video of the interview but later deleted that tweet. Fox News reported on the incident, and reached out to NASCAR to find out why they took down the post. An answer from NASCAR has not been immediately forthcoming.

NASCAR officials called the race with five laps remaining in the scheduled 113-lap race at the 2.66-mile speedway due to poor visibility. Brown was declared the race leader as a final caution flag flew with 11 laps remaining. Brown defeated playoff driver Brandon Jones in the last scoring loop.

Large crowds at various sports events have been engaging in anti-Joe Biden chants for many weeks now as Americans continue to voice their disapproval for the 46th president and his policies.

Stadiums full of college football fans have been heard to chant "f*ck Joe Biden," and crowds at a boxing match greeted former President Trump with cheers while chanting "f*ck Joe Biden." Dr. Anthony Fauci tried to shame the fans for not masking.

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Sat, 02 Oct 2021 16:01

Boris Johnson has sparked outrage on the eve of the Conservative Party conference after saying ''never mind'' about cancer death rates and the recent fall in life expectancy.

Grilled about his plans for Britain's recovery from the Covid crisis, the prime minister chose to emphasis economic growth over health measures.

Pointing to the recent growth in wages, Mr Johnson told the BBC: ''I've given you the most important metric '' never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes '' look at wage growth.''

Opposition parties pounced the prime minister's remarks, with Labour accusing him of showing an ''outrageous'' disregard for the health of British citizens.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told The Independent: ''Boris Johnson starts his conference with the most chilling words ever spoken from a prime minister dismissing the importance of cancer outcomes.''

The Labour MP added: ''If cancer incidence and survival rates across the poorest matched the wealthier there would be 19,000 fewer deaths per year. Life expectancy has stalled for those in the poorest areas.

''There is no levelling up without levelling up health. It's now clearer than ever that all Boris Johnson offers is just glib words and no action.''

The SNP's Ian Blackford also shared the clip of Mr Johnson's comments in an interview with BBC Northern Ireland. ''Every citizen should see this insight into the thinking of our PM,'' said the party's Westminster leader.

Mr Blackford claimed the prime minister was ''literally prepared to sacrifice our health''.

Dr Clive Peedle, a consultant clinical oncologist and NHS campaigner, said: ''As a cancer doctor in the North East of England, I find Boris Johnson's comments abhorrent.''

The NHS cancer specialist added: ''Wage growth is only beneficial if wealth inequality is addressed, but his government has no intention of tackling this.''

Macmillan Cancer Support also responded to Mr Johnson's remarks. ''People facing the fear and trauma caused by disruption to their cancer treatment and care need to know that they are at the top of the government's priority list and cannot be forgotten,'' said Steven McIntosh, an executive director at the charity.

He added: ''Any measure of 'levelling up' for our country must focus on urgent progress for people facing delayed cancer care, poorer cancer experience or outcomes.''

Among the many Labour MPs sharing the clip of Mr Johnson's BBC interview, left-wing stalwart Ian Lavery tweeted: ''Ghastly appalling disregard for our people.''

Labour frontbencher Wes Streeting '' the shadow secretary for child poverty '' said millions of people do mind about cancer outcomes. ''This is stomach-turning, insightful and outrageous,'' he tweeted on Mr Johnson's remarks.

Life expectancy for men has fallen for the first time since records began, government figures revealed in September '' as the higher-than-usual deaths caused by the pandemic begin to make an impact.

More than half a million cancer patients are missing out on vital healthcare support due to severe staff shortages across the NHS, new research from Macmillan Cancer Support revealed last month.

One in four of people who were diagnosed with cancer in the last two years have gone without proper support from a specialist nurse during that time, equating to roughly 630,000 patients, the charity said.

The row over health measures comes as Mr Johnson drafts in a former senior military commander to carry out a far-ranging overhaul of leadership in the NHS and social care sector.

The government said General Sir Gordon Messenger, an ex-vice chief of the defence staff, would conduct the most far-reaching review the sector in England has seen in 40 years.

Elsewhere in his interview with BBC Northern Ireland, Mr Johnson said the Northern Ireland Protocol ''could in principle work'' but it will be a case of ''fixing it or ditching it''.

The prime minister did not rule out triggering Article 16 to suspend the crucial part of his Brexit deal with the EU. Asked if he planned to trigger Article 16 during the Conservative Party conference next week, Mr Johnson replied: ''That depends on the response from the EU.''

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Sat, 02 Oct 2021 13:21

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Sat, 02 Oct 2021 13:18

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Sat, 02 Oct 2021 12:46

On Thursday and Friday, CBS Evening News and NBC's Today show both hyped an outrageous demand from the left-wing National School Boards Association (NSBA) that the Biden administration treat parents protesting at school board meetings across the country as acts of ''domestic terrorism.'' Rather than call out the extreme overreaction, the networks eagerly touted the wild attempt to get the federal government to go after concerned citizens.

''Cry for help. A shocking turn in the fight over vaccine and mask mandates in school,'' co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed at the top of NBC's Today show Friday morning. She then parroted the incendiary rhetoric coming from the NSBA, a group loaded with Democratic Party donors: ''School boards across the country calling on the White House to send federal agents to protect them from angry parents, saying their protests should be treated as domestic terrorism.''

Minutes later, fellow co-host Hoda Kotb declared: ''There are some very shocking images of parents and protesters pushing back and now school boards from coast to coast are demanding help.'' The footage that ran on screen showed one individual getting into a scuffle with another man at a school board meeting, the rest of the supposedly ''shocking images'' were of protesters peacefully holding up signs or chanting.

Referring to the NSBA, Kotb noted: ''They want the White House to take urgent action.'' Turning to correspondent Gabe Gutierrez, she fretted: ''Cannot believe those images, Gabe.'' The reporter explained:

Across the country, schools are facing increased violence and threats, stemming in part from people frustrated by mask and vaccine mandates. This morning, the National School Boards Association is calling for federal action, describing the attacks against staff and students as a new form of ''domestic terrorism.'' The group calling on the Biden administration to provide federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies to monitor and prevent future threats.

Opening Thursday's CBS Evening News, anchor Norah O'Donnell sounded the alarm: ''Threats to school boards. Tonight the stunning request asking for help from the FBI to crack down on unruly behavior from parents because of COVID rules.'' While introducing the later report, she hailed: ''Well, tonight, the National School Board[s] Association is taking extraordinary action, sending an SOS to the White House and law enforcement.''

Correspondent Jeff Pegues detailed the effort to treat parents of school children like terrorists:

Writing to President Biden, the National School Boards Association asked for help investigating the violent incidents and suggested the FBI monitor threats to board members, likening these ''heinous actions'' to ''domestic terrorism''....Obviously, local police are still going to have a presence at these very contentious, sometimes violent school board meetings, but what school officials nationwide want is for the feds to provide some level of intel that will give them some sense of what kind of threats are heading their way.

These are same networks that repeatedly assured viewers that Black Lives Matter protests that often devolved into destructive riots were ''mostly peaceful'' and scoffed at the notion of left-wing mob violence throughout 2020.

NBC's decision to help label parents ''terrorists'' for speaking out was brought to viewers by Ford, CBS's similar effort was brought to viewers by Gillette. You can fight back by letting these advertisers know what you think of them sponsoring such content.

Here is a transcript of the October 1 Today show coverage:

7:00 AM ET TEASE:

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Cry for help. A shocking turn in the fight over vaccine and mask mandates in school. School boards across the country calling on the White House to send federal agents to protect them from angry parents, saying their protests should be treated as domestic terrorism.

7:06 AM ET SEGMENT:

HODA KOTB: Now let's move to the battle against COVID and the fight over vaccine and mask mandates. There are some very shocking images of parents and protesters pushing back and now school boards from coast to coast are demanding help. They want the White House to take urgent action. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez has more. Cannot believe those images, Gabe.

GABE GUTIERREZ: Yeah, that's right, Hoda. But first, some breaking details, Merck is out with new data this morning for a new antiviral pill that you take once you start to show symptoms. The company's data shows a 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths. Merck says it plans to file for emergency use authorization as soon as possible. But all this as the battle over vaccine mandates across the country intensifies.

Across the country, schools are facing increased violence and threats, stemming in part from people frustrated by mask and vaccine mandates. This morning, the National School Boards Association is calling for federal action, describing the attacks against staff and students as a new form of ''domestic terrorism.'' The group calling on the Biden administration to provide federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies to monitor and prevent future threats.

(...)

Here is a transcript of the September 30 CBS Evening News coverage:

6:30 PM ET TEASE:

NORAH O'DONNELL: Threats to school boards. Tonight the stunning request asking for help from the FBI to crack down on unruly behavior from parents because of COVID rules.

6:36 PM ET SEGMENT:

O'DONNELL: Well, tonight, the National School Board Association is taking extraordinary action, sending an SOS to the White House and law enforcement. Members have been berated at meetings and threatened online over COVID safety protocols. Here's CBS's Jeff Pegues.

PROTESTERS: No more masks! No more masks!

JEFF PEGUES: School board officials are calling for help tonight.

PROTESTER: You [bleep] cowards! PEGUES: Following increasingly violent incidents like this in Minnesota, a man complimenting school board members during a debate over masks who is then charged by an unmasked man.

Writing to President Biden, the National School Boards Association asked for help investigating the violent incidents and suggested the FBI monitor threats to board members, likening these ''heinous actions'' to ''domestic terrorism.''

CHIP SLAVEN [NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARDS ASSOCIATION]: The impact of the pandemic on public schools is creating all this heightened rhetoric around the nation and unfortunately, in some places, it's leading to threats and actual incidents of violence.

PEGUES: Former Nevada school board member Kurt Thigpen said that he resigned after the constant harassment over email, phone, and social media made him think about suicide. He cited the January 6th insurrection as a trigger for the unruly behavior.

KURT THIGPEN [FORMER WASHOE COUNTY, NV SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER]: They were coming after me and my colleagues consistently every day, through multiple mediums. They saw me as a target for their hate.

PEGUES: The White House responding today to the school board letter, saying that they are looking at what more the administration can do.

JEN PSAKI: And Obviously these threats to school board members is horrible. They're doing their jobs.

PEGUES: Obviously, local police are still going to have a presence at these very contentious, sometimes violent school board meetings, but what school officials nationwide want is for the feds to provide some level of intel that will give them some sense of what kind of threats are heading their way. Norah?

O'DONNELL: Jeff Pegues, thank you.

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Sat, 02 Oct 2021 03:27

City installs more than 400 kits to help gunshot victimsThe city of Chicago is taking a more hands-on approach to treat gunshot victims.

CHICAGO - The city of Chicago is taking a more hands-on approach to treat gunshot victims.

The Office of Emergency Management is installing more than 400 wall-mounted "bleeding control" kits in buildings across the city.

The emergency medical kit locations include City Hall, public libraries, medical clinics and more.

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Each kit has enough supplies to treat eight victims.

Ten people were killed and 58 others were wounded in Chicago shootings over the weekend.

Chicago crime reporting website HeyJackass.com says 608 people have been killed in Chicago shootings so far this year with nearly 3,000 others who were shot and wounded.

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Fri, 01 Oct 2021 19:45

October 1, 2021 2021-10-01T11:04:53-04:00 https://images.c-span.org/Files/041/20211001110453011_hd.jpg During the White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing, members continued to stress the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, saying it's the path out of the pandemic. They said approximately 185 million people are fully vaccinated and cases and hospitalizations have decreased since August. They also shared that a vaccine for children under age 12 is on the horizon.During the White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing, members continued to stress the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, saying it's'... read more

During the White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing, members continued to stress the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, saying it's the path out of the pandemic. They said approximately 185 million people are fully vaccinated and cases and hospitalizations have decreased since August. They also shared that a vaccine for children under age 12 is on the horizon. close

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