This Week's Must Reads - 19-25 February 2024

A summary of this week's most interesting news, studies, reports and articles

Feb 25, 2024

I spend a lot of time each day gathering new information and interesting articles. I then pick the most fascinating topic and write about it but that leaves a lot of information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the best articles and information from this week. This weekly summary is a slimmed down version for all subscribers but more comprehensive daily summaries will be for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

Dutch Climate Expert emeritus professor Guus Berkhout: “There is No Climate Emergency; it is a Hoax”. Has climate madness reached its peak? More genuine climate experts dare to speak up against the discourse of fear spread by politicians, movements, and the colored mainstream media. Climate Intelligence (Clintel), a global climate change and policy foundation, takes the lead with honest climate science and assures no climate emergency. “We tell a truthful story, not just one side,” said Clintel founder emeritus professor Guus Berkhout.
Net zero will be far more expensive than public thinks, Lords warned. Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund said there was a “substantial fiscal cost to achieve anything close to net-zero”. Mr Blanchard, who is now a senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC, said the exact cost of the transition was unknown. However, he told the Lords committee: “The public does not believe, or has not been made to understand, that is going to be costly for them. It is going to be costly and that message has to be sent out.”
New Study: Climate Models Get Water Vapor Wildly Wrong – A ‘Major Gap In Our Understanding’. A new study published in PNAS has demonstrated, once again, that climate models fail to simulate what happens in the real world with regard to fundamental climate change variables like water vapor. This is a devastating finding, as water vapor is the most significant greenhouse gas due to its alleged “feedback” capacity, accelerating warming well beyond what CO2 is said to be capable of alone.

Covid

US is collaborating with Chinese scientists to make bird flu strains more infectious and deadly as part of $1m project - despite fears similar tests unleashed Covid. The research involves infecting ducks and geese with different strains of viruses to make them more infectious, and study the viruses' potential to 'jump into mammalian hosts,' according to research documents. It is being funded through the US Department of Agriculture and collaborating studies will take place at sites in Georgia, Beijing and Edinburgh in Scotland.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

Skin cancer diagnosis delays caused by lockdowns led to 12,000 years of life lost. University College London (UCL) analysed records from more than 50,000 patients across Europe, including the UK, and calculated how many people’s cancer would have progressed from one stage owing to delays in beginning or continuing treatment. The team who worked with the University of Basel, in Switzerland, estimated that around 17 per cent of people progressed to a higher stage of cancer in 2020-2021, owing to delays in diagnosis or treatment of two to three months or longer. It equates to more than 12,000 years of life lost in Britain and to more than 100,000 years of life lost across Europe.
The devastating impact Covid and austerity had on children in England. A wide-ranging national plan for childhood is needed in England to address the profound impacts on young people of austerity, poverty and the legacy of the pandemic, says the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. About 4.2 million children are in relative poverty in the UK, while the number of young people experiencing destitution or extreme poverty – meaning their families cannot afford to clothe them, clean them or keep them warm – has tripled over the past three years.
67 US colleges still have Covid vaccine mandates in place.
Pro-lockdown MPs can’t deny the huge costs of their actions. When MPs were voting for lockdowns and repeated restrictions for the best part of two years, what did they expect the consequences to be? Whether or not they thought lockdowns were an understandable response to the virus, did MPs voting for the restrictions believe they would lead to a rosier economic picture? Did they think all the money that was going to support individuals and businesses would never have to be repaid? Really? Every MP who backed the restrictions should have known there would be consequences. And if they didn’t, they weren’t doing their jobs properly.

Economy/Energy/Finance

Liquidators for China’s Evergrande prepare to sue PwC over audits. Evergrande’s liquidators are preparing for a potential lawsuit against PwC, which audited the now-collapsed Chinese property group for over a decade, in a move that could lead to the Big Four accounting firm facing a high-profile negligence claim. Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property developer with more than $300bn in liabilities, defaulted in 2021, triggering a broader cash crunch across China’s property sector. Several attempts to agree a restructuring plan failed.
US Mortgage Applications are at levels last seen in 1995.
German central bank warns of recession, citing strikes. The German central bank, the Bundesbank, on Monday warned that a technical recession was possible by the end of the first quarter of 2024, particularly given recent strikes and their impact on infrastructure like public transport and airports. Germany's gross domestic product contracted by 0.3% year-on-year in the last quarter of 2023, as well as shrinking over the entire year combined.
Jeff Bezos unloads around $2.4 billion in Amazon stock, bringing recent sales to 50 million shares. Bezos sold about 12 million Amazon shares, worth approximately $2.03 billion, last week, in addition to another tranche of 12 million shares just days before. He unloaded another 12 million shares the week before that. Bezos’ stock sales have accelerated since he announced last November he would leave Seattle and move to Miami, allowing him to be closer to fiancée Lauren Sanchez and his parents, as well as Blue Origin’s operations.
The Kremlin has never been richer – thanks to a US strategic partner. Russia is entering its third year of war in Ukraine with an unprecedented amount of cash in government coffers, bolstered by a record $37 billion of crude oil sales to India last year, according to new analysis, which concludes that some of the crude was refined by India and then exported to the United States as oil products worth more than $1 billion. This flow of payments, ultimately to Moscow’s benefit, comes from India increasing its purchases of Russian crude by over 13 times its pre-war amounts.
HSBC: Bank's pre-tax profits soar fuelled by high interest rates. Europe's biggest bank, HSBC, has posted an almost 80% jump in its pre-tax profit which rose to $30.3bn (£24bn) in 2023, fuelled by high interest rates. It comes after central banks around the world raised interest rates in last 18 months to help curb rising prices. Last week, rival lender NatWest revealed its highest yearly profit since the financial crisis in 2007. "They've had quite a sizable increase in what we call net interest margin which is the difference between the amount they charged borrowers and the amount they pay to depositors," banking analyst Frances Coppola told the BBC.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 has now surpassed its record high in 1989.
Nvidia Tops Meta Record With $277 Billion Surge in Value. Nvidia Corp.’s surge to an all-time high is the biggest single-session increase in market value in history, besting Meta Platforms Inc.’s historic gain just three weeks ago. Shares of the chipmaker jumped 16% Thursday, adding about $277 billion in market capitalization and bringing its total market value near $2 trillion. The addition eclipsed the $197 billion gain made by Facebook-parent Meta at the start of the month.
The top 10% of stocks by size versus the entire US market has only been this high once before.
HSBC plans to hike mortgage rates in huge 'hammer blow' to UK homeowners. Brokers have described the move as "another nail in the coffin" for consumer confidence. The uprating follows similar moves by other lenders this week, including Santander, Coventry, and TSB. The bank is yet to confirm how much rates will rise, however, it's understood that it will affect existing and new residential customers across all primary loan-to-value and fixed-term categories. These increases are seemingly driven by the recent upward trend in swap rates, which determine the costs for lenders to provide mortgages.
UK homeowners remortgaging this year are facing much higher costs.
Food supplier warns Americans are buying less at the grocery store every purchase due to inflation. The typical U.S. household needed to pay $213 more a month in January to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation, according to new calculations from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. Americans are paying on average $605 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,019 more compared with three years ago, before the inflation crisis began.
US consumers are spending 11.2% of their disposable income on food, the highest level since 1991. This graph only goes up to 2022 so is likely much higher now.

Health

Soya beans made more meat-like by adding genes for pig proteins. A UK-based company called Moolec says it has created genetically modified soya plants that produce beans in which a quarter of the soluble proteins are pig proteins. It has named its plant “Piggy Sooy”. Moolec is also creating pea plants that contain beef proteins. It claims its products will be able to provide similar taste, texture and nutritional value as meat, but without the high costs associated with cultured meat.
Why full-fat milk and dairy was better for us all along. Milk from grass-fed cows is indeed rich in omega-3 fatty acids, as well as other vitamins – but, being fat soluble, these are removed when the fat is skimmed off. “When manufacturers remove the fat, many healthy compounds like omega-3 and some vitamins may be removed at the same time,” says Telegraph columnist and professor of epidemiology Tim Spector. “Studies have failed to show any good evidence that low-fat dairy is better than full-fat dairy.”
Record long-term sickness bodes ill for UK economic growth. Britain has a sick economy and it is getting sicker. The clear message from last week’s raft of economic data is that the UK is being held back by the growing number of people not able to work because of long-term illness. The number of people saying they are inactive due to long-term sickness is now 2.8 million – an increase of more than 200,000 in the past year and of 700,000 since the pandemic started in 2020.
A calamity of lost youth. High numbers of deaths among young people are being ignored by the media and politicians. Ever since the World Health Organisation declared the Covid-19 pandemic over in May last year, the world has moved on. Yet people continue to die in much higher numbers than before 2020. And while covid mortality mainly impacted older people, it is younger people who are now dying disproportionately.

Middle East

Iran cautioned Hezbollah not to spark full-scale war with Israel. Iranian officials, who met with their Hezbollah counterparts in Lebanon earlier this month, praised the terror group’s ongoing attacks on northern Israel, but warned against escalating to all-out war. “Netanyahu is squeezed in the corner now. Don’t give him a way out. Let us not give him the benefit of launching a wider war because this would make him a winner,” the Iranian representatives told Hezbollah officials.
Gaza war hits Israeli economy with 19.4% Q4 drop. Israelis sharply curtailed spending, travelling and investing at the end of 2023 as Israel's all-out war on Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza exacted a heavy toll on the economy, data released on Monday showed. The war had stopped economic growth in its tracks, especially with a massive call-up of reserves and tens of thousands displaced from border towns near Gaza and Lebanon due to constant rocket attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Iran Sends Russia Hundreds of Ballistic Missiles. Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, six sources told Reuters, deepening the military cooperation between the two U.S.-sanctioned countries. Iran's provision of around 400 missiles includes many from the Fateh-110 family of short-range ballistic weapons, such as the Zolfaghar, three Iranian sources said. This road-mobile missile is capable of striking targets at a distance of between 300 and 700 km (186 and 435 miles), experts say.

Politics

Sue Gray announces citizen juries that will bypass Whitehall. Labour is drawing up plans to bypass Whitehall by using “citizens’ assemblies” to make key decisions, Sue Gray, the chief of staff to Sir Keir Starmer, has announced. Gray, who is in charge of the party’s preparations for government, said in her first interview in the role that plans were being worked on to involve the public directly in deciding contentious issues such as constitutional reform, devolution and where new houses should be built.
Russia adds Republican senator Lindsey Graham to ‘terrorists and extremists’ list. Tass, the state-run news agency, first reported the move by Rosfinmonitoring, which allows authorities to freeze Russian bank accounts, though in Graham’s case is likely to be chiefly symbolic. The Rosfinmonitoring list includes more than 12,000 individuals and more than 400 companies. Graham, a South Carolina senator and foreign policy hawk who has long advocated arming Ukraine against Russian invaders, has also been subject to a Russian arrest warrant, for making “Russophobic statements” during a visit to Kyiv.
Lukashenko: Western special services are preparing provocation in Poland. "We publicize, as best as we can, all the information obtained by our intelligence about various kinds of provocations, extremist actions with the involvement of militants from Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania. Now we will continue this tradition. Here’s one more piece of operational information. I quote verbatim (this is important for the Poles): "Polish and U.S. intelligence are preparing a large-scale provocation against the Polish civilian population, which they will blame on Russia and Belarus," Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
Bologna will confer honorary citizenship on Julian Assange. “Giving citizenship to Julian Assange is giving citizenship to freedom of the press, the right to information and the truth – writes the group leader of the Civic Coalition and first signatory of the proposal Detjon Begaj in a statement -. In the era of fake news, the right to free and independent information, the right to know documents and facts relevant to the defense of democracy, such as war crimes, which some powers want to hide from public opinion, is fundamental".
X complies with Indian order to suppress accounts, posts. X announced Wednesday it’s withholding certain accounts and posts after the Indian government ordered it to do so. According to X’s Global Government Affairs department, the Indian government issued an executive order to the social media company to restrict certain accounts and posts inside India. The company said if it failed to comply, it would be subject to “potential penalties, including significant fines and imprisonment.”
To Understand The Globalists We Must Understand Their Psychopathic Religion. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the western world experienced a sudden burst of open occultism among the ultra-rich elites. The rise of “Theosophy” was underway, becoming a kind of fashion trend that would ultimately set the stage for what would later be called “new age” spiritualism. Luciferians openly admit that the goal of their ideology is to pursue knowledge until human beings become gods. This infatuation with godhood is what leads to great evil; it is a delusion that poisons the mind and encourages morally relative behavior, not to mention a pervasive thirst for power.
Our democracy is endangered when politicians give in to threats. There are important questions about MPs’ safety and security that need to be addressed, but the most important issue is not succumbing to the worst forms of intimidation. That’s why, in bending the rules to navigate through a tight spot, Hoyle has ended up in far bigger trouble. Concern about him runs deeper. Some MPs believe he is worried about being kicked out of the Speaker’s chair and so he has started to be biased towards Labour – in the hope that their MPs will re-elect him after the general election.
Rubio warns Chinese cyberattack 'will be 100 times worse' than AT&T outage. "I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage," the Florida Republican posted on X on Thursday. "But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion. "And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank." Rubio's warning came as tens of thousands of AT&T customers reported outages on Thursday morning for their home phone, internet and mobile phone services, according to Downdetector.
Military says high-altitude balloon detected over Western U.S. doesn't pose a threat. The U.S. is tracking a small, high-altitude balloon that is drifting across the country but poses no threat to national security, U.S. officials and the military said Friday. NORAD, the military command responsible for air defense over the U.S. and Canada, later confirmed it had detected the object and said it was floating between 43,000 and 45,000 feet. Its presence prompted enough concern that the command sent aircraft to investigate.
State Department defends Blinken memo urging staffers to avoid 'problematic' language like 'manpower'. Blinken sent a memo titled "Modeling DEIA: Gender Identity Best Practices," that aimed to "increase understanding of gender identity and provide guidance on gender identity language and best practices that support an inclusive work environment." The guidance runs through a list of gendered phrases and words that should be avoided, including: "manpower," "you guys," "ladies and gentlemen," "mother/father," "son/daughter" and "husband/wife." Instead, the memo urged staff to use "labor force," "everyone," "folks," "you all," "parent," "child," "spouse" or partner," according to the report.
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Science

Brains Are Not Required When It Comes to Thinking and Solving Problems—Simple Cells Can Do It. Tiny clumps of cells show basic cognitive abilities, and some animals can remember things after losing their head. It turns out that regular cells—not just highly specialized brain cells such as neurons—have the ability to store information and act on it. Now Michael Levin has shown that the cells do so by using subtle changes in electric fields as a type of memory.
Dark Matter May be a Deformed Mirror Universe, Scientists Say. You know dark matter, the mysterious stuff that most physicists now believe makes up the bulk of the universe — even though it remains completely undetectable, except for its gravitational effects on regular matter? New research builds off a pair of intriguing coincidences.
Potassium depletion in soil threatens global crop yields. Potassium deficiency in agricultural soils is a largely unrecognized but potentially significant threat to global food security if left unaddressed, finds new research involving researchers at UCL, University of Edinburgh and the UK Center for Ecology & Hydrology. The study, published in Nature Food, found that more potassium is being removed from agricultural soils than is being added, throughout many regions of the world. Potassium is a vital nutrient for plant growth that helps with photosynthesis and respiration, the lack of which can inhibit plant growth and reduce crop yields.

Technology

German space commander warns Russian nuclear weapon could destroy 'global commons': 'Nobody would survive'. Speaking at an event Friday night on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Traut said he was left with "more questions than answers" regarding U.S. intelligence reportedly indicating that Russia is developing an anti-satellite weapon in space with a nuclear component. Traut spelled out the consequences of a worst-case scenario. "If somebody dares to explode a nuclear weapon in high atmosphere or even space, this would be more or less the end of the usability of that global commons [of orbit]," Traut said.
British nuclear sub missile launch FAILS as Trident dramatically misfires and ‘plops’ into ocean just yards away. The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test. The Ministry of Defence confirmed an “anomaly occurred” during the January 30 exercise off Florida, but the nuclear deterrent remains “effective".

Ukraine

Denmark sending its 'entire artillery' to Ukraine. Denmark is sending its "entire artillery" to Ukraine, the Danish prime minister has said. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Mette Frederiksen appealed to other European nations to do more. "They are asking us for ammunition now. Artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery,' she said. It's as Russia said it has taken full control of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, its biggest gain since capturing Bakhmut last May, after a retreat by Ukrainian troops.
The war in Ukraine cost Germany over 200 billion euros. This is what was declared by the president of the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin (Diw), Marcel Fratzscher, during an interview he gave to the “Rheinische Post” newspaper. According to the economist, “especially the high energy costs” linked to the conflict have reduced growth in Germany by 2,5 percentage points or by 100 billion euros in 2022 and by a similar amount in 2023 to date”.
Kyiv has right to strike Russian targets ‘outside Ukraine’, says Nato chief. Jens Stoltenberg earlier this week acknowledged that the use of western-supplied arms to strike targets in Russia had long been a point of contention among Kyiv’s allies, due to fears of escalating the conflict. The comments represent a step up in rhetoric from Stoltenberg, who has previously referred to Kyiv’s rights under international law without explicitly mentioning attacks on Russian territory. The debate over using western weapons to strike Russia is likely to intensify as some Nato allies begin to ship F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

Vaccines

Wyoming Legislator Wants All COVID-Vaccinated Blood Labeled. Rep. Sarah Penn, R-Fort Washakie, has sponsored a bill for the upcoming legislative session that would require all blood donated from a person who has received a COVID-19 vaccine to be specifically labeled. That would allow blood recipients who object to the COVID vaccine to reject the blood in non-emergency situations.
Largest Covid vaccine study ever finds shots are linked to small increased risk of neurological, blood and heart disorders. An international coalition of vaccine experts looked for 13 medical conditions among 99 million vaccine recipients across eight countries in order to identify higher rates of those conditions after receiving the shots. They confirmed that the shots made by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are linked to significantly higher risk of five medical conditions - including a nerve-wasting condition that leaves people struggling to walk or think.
US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Has 10-Year Backlog of Claims. U.S. health officials responded to questions on America’s failing vaccine injury compensation system in a hearing that left the vaccine-injured feeling like addressing the system’s shortcomings is not a priority on Capitol Hill. As of Jan. 1, there were 12,854 claims filed for injuries caused by COVID-19 countermeasures with the government’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), including 9,600 related to injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines. Of the 12,854 claims, 2,214 have been processed, but only 40 claims have been found eligible for compensation.
UK Medicines Regulator a "Serious Risk" to Patient Safety. The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on pandemic response and recovery has raised "serious patient safety concerns" about the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), along with other aspects of a system that, "far from protecting patients, continues to put them at serious risk". Medscape News UK has reported increasing concern worldwide about the degree to which medicines regulators are captured by the drug industry.