This Week's Must Reads - 29 April - 5 May 2024 - Non Pay-Walled Free Read

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

May 05, 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

Study says El Nino, not climate change, was key driver of low rainfall that snarled Panama Canal. A team of international scientists found that El Niño—a natural warming of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide—doubled the likelihood of the low precipitation Panama received during last year's rainy season. That dryness reduced water levels at the reservoir that feeds freshwater to the Panama Canal and provides drinking water for more than half of the Central American country. Human-caused climate change was not a primary driver of the Central American country's unusually dry monsoon season.
Why climate change ISN'T going to end the world and why we need to stop obsessing about net-zero, according to Cambridge University professor. Young people are terrified that climate change will destroy Earth by the time they grow up, but the world is not actually ending, argues Cambridge professor Mike Hulme. Humanity is not teetering on a cliff's edge, he says, at risk of imminent catastrophe if we don't reach net-zero carbon emissions by a certain date. And he has made it his mission to call out the people who claim we are. In his most recent book, Climate Change Isn't Everything, Hulme argued that belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology.

Covid

Scientists tried to give people COVID — and failed. Researchers deliberately infect participants with SARS-CoV-2 in ‘challenge’ trials — but high levels of immunity complicate efforts to test vaccines and treatments. The study’s results, published on 1 May in Lancet Microbe1, raise questions about the usefulness of COVID-19 challenge trials for testing vaccines, drugs and other therapeutics. “If you can’t get people infected, then you can’t test those things,” says Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London. Viral strains used in challenge trials take many months to produce, making it impossible to match emerging circulating variants that can overcome high levels of existing immunity in populations.
Ralph Baric, Whose Virology Techniques Were Used in Wuhan, Testified That Lab Leak Was Possible. The UNC coronavirologist who has collaborated on gain-of-function research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli, told congressional investigators that he has long worried about biosafety protocols inside China. Though he thinks it’s far more likely COVID-19 originated in nature, he said of a possible laboratory escape, “You can’t rule that out.” In order to test the ability of different viruses to infect humans, Baric had engineered mice with lungs that contained a human gene. He said he shared these mice with the WIV under a contractual agreement that they only be used there. Then, during the pandemic, he said he discovered that his mice were being offered for sale by a commercial company.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

The terrible cost of the school shutdowns. We already know that there are tens of thousands of children who have been repeatedly absent or who have never returned to school after the easing of Covid restrictions in 2021. Indeed, in September 2022, it was reported that 93,000 kids had ‘simply vanished and fallen off school registers’ since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Now it’s becoming clear that the school shutdowns have affected the behaviour of many of the children who did return to school. It seems that there’s a large number of pupils who now resent being in the classroom so much that they’re taking it out on their teachers and fellow pupils. This has led to a rise in exclusions and suspensions.
WHO Dialed Back Its Pandemic Powers - But Not Enough! The World Health Organisation was late in producing the Pandemic Agreement (formerly known as the WHO Treaty and Pandemic Accord). The WHO was supposed to produce this final draft at least four months in advance yet only published it in mid April leaving little time for government’s to examine the draft. The Agreement is supposed to be voted on next month at the World Health Assembly and will be open for signature from July 2024. While it’s true that major changes have been made in line with some of the feedback and recommendations from the International Health Regulations, there are still areas of concern in this latest power grab from the United Nations WHO.

Economy/Energy/Finance

WEF president: ‘We haven’t seen this kind of debt since the Napoleonic Wars’. Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum, gave a stark outlook for the global economy saying the world faces a decade of low growth if the right economic measures are not applied. Speaking Sunday at WEF’s “Special Meeting on Global Collaboration, Growth and Energy for Development” in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he warned that global debt ratios are close to levels not seen since the 1820s and there was a “stagflation” risk for advanced economies. Brende said Sunday that the biggest risk for the global economy is now “the geopolitical recession that we are faced with,” highlighting recent Iran-Israel tensions.
The government’s plans for unlimited surveillance on benefit claimants’ bank accounts should worry us all. The UK government is taking statutory powers for unlimited snooping on bank and building society accounts connected with receipt of social security benefits and the state pension, even when there is no suspicion of fraud. Millions of individuals, landlords, charities, clubs, voluntary organisations and companies will become subject to 24/7 surveillance. No court order is needed and you won’t be told anything about the information extracted and how it is used or abused. There is no right of appeal.
Major European Banks Paying Russia More in Taxes Than Before Ukraine Invasion. Major European banks that continue to do business in Russia paid the government four times more in taxes in 2023 than in the year before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times reported. The seven lenders — Austria’s Raiffeisen, Italy’s UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, the Netherlands’ ING, Germany’s Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, as well as Hungary’s OTP — reportedly paid around 800 million euros ($857 million) in taxes to the Russian state last year. In 2021, those same banks paid 200 million euros in taxes, according to FT.
‘Russian fertiliser is the new gas’ for Europe, top producer warns. Europe is “sleep walking” into becoming dependent on Russian fertiliser, just as it did with gas, says one of the largest producers of crop nutrients. Nitrogen fertilisers, which are important to plant growth, are made using natural gas and Russia is exporting more of it to Europe, replacing some of the gas banned by the EU, said Svein Tore Holsether, chief executive of Yara International, one of the world’s largest producers of nitrogen-based mineral fertilisers. “Fertiliser is the new gas,” Holsether said. “It is a paradox that the aim is to reduce Europe’s dependency on Russia, and then now we are sleepwalking into handing over critical food and fertilising power to Russia.”
Japanese government spent $35bn to prop up yen, BoJ figures suggest. Traders and economists said the data, released on Tuesday evening, all but confirmed that the Japanese authorities had stepped into the markets on Monday shortly after the yen hit a 34-year low of just under ¥160 against the US dollar. The BoJ figures arrived a few hours before the yen began falling sharply again against the dollar during London-hours trading, prompting brokers to predict that the Japanese authorities might step in again.
Labour warning of ‘pension black hole’ after Rishi Sunak fails to rule out raising retirement age to 75. Fears have been raised over how the Tories plan to fill a ‘£46 billion ‘pension black hole’ with plans to abolish National Insurance after Rishi Sunak failed to rule out raising the retirement age. Mr Sunak was challenged about the proposal put forward by former Tory Brexit minister Lord Frost during firy exhanges with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in Prime Minister’s questions (PMQs).
An Absolutely Enormous Economic Shift Of Historic Proportions Is Now Taking Place Right In Front Of Our Eyes. “Can you feel it too? Over the past few weeks, I have heard from so many readers that are deeply troubled about economic conditions where they live. In some cases, sales are way down. In other cases, it seems almost impossible to find a decent job. It is almost as if a tremendous chill descended upon the U.S. economy as the second quarter of 2024 began. Yes, economic conditions have certainly not been good for a few years, but it appears that an absolutely enormous economic shift of historic proportions is now taking place right in front of our eyes. Other than the early stages of the pandemic, we haven’t seen anything like this since 2008 and 2009.”
Money Is a Monopoly Government Will Never Surrender. No question that the next great monetary reform will be to globalize a central bank digital currency with track-and-trace capability and the power to turn money on and off on political whim. In order to make this possible, government now needs to eliminate all the competition, just as they did in 1813. None of this mucking around with the money is in the public interest. It is in the government’s interest and also its industrial partners in banking and finance. A full denationalization of money is the fix for the whole problem but getting there from here will require dislodging the government of its penchant for controlling the economic forces of the whole realm. It’s an age-old problem and perhaps the greatest challenge of all ages.
Watch Biden’s Head of Economic Advisors Try to Explain Government Borrowing. Jared Bernstein was asked about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT says government is different. It owes the money to itself and the debt can be canceled at will. In MMT theory, a benevolent government would spend the money wisely, cancel all the debt or pay interest to itself, and everyone will essentially live happily ever after. The notion is really amusing. But it was more amusing watching Bernstein try to address a question on it.
Wall Street’s Megabanks Have Trillions of Dollars Off-Balance Sheet, in a Replay of Accounting Hubris that Led to the 2008 Wall Street Collapse. According to financial data at the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), as of December 31, 2023, JPMorgan Chase held $3.227 trillion off-balance sheet, of which $528.5 billion is undefined and marked as “other.” To put that in perspective, $528.5 billion is the size of the assets of the seventh largest bank in the United States and yet the public has no idea what the $528.5 billion off-balance sheet at JPMorgan Chase is made up of or what kind of risks it presents.

Health

Concerning Levels of Uranium And Lead Found in The Urine of Teens Who Frequently Vape. A new study led by researchers from the University of Nebraska has found that regular vapers between the ages of 13 and 17, who report using an e-cigarette at least eight times a day, have 30 percent more lead and twice as much uranium in their urine compared to their peers who only occasionally vape. Among teens who preferred sweet vape flavors, as opposed to menthol or mint ones, biomarkers of uranium were especially high.
Why writing by hand is better for remembering things - Keyboards still have a place, but if you want to retain information, grab a pen. At least that’s what a paper published in Frontiers in Psychology suggests, concluding that “whenever handwriting movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated, resulting in the formation of more complex neural network connectivity.”
Father's gut microbiome may affect infant health. Decreasing the diversity and abundance of gut microbes in male mice increases their offspring’s risk of low birth weight, stunted growth and premature death. This suggests that a father’s gut microbiome may impact infant health. Plenty of research has established a link between microbes in mothers and infants, yet little is known about the impact of paternal gut health. Pups from mice with impaired gut microbiomes had a variety of health issues not found in those whose fathers had not taken antibiotics or stopped the medication weeks before conception.

Middle East

Netanyahu tells Biden he's worried about possible ICC arrest warrants. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked President Biden Sunday to help prevent the International Criminal Court from issuing arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials in connection with the war in Gaza, two Israeli officials told Axios. Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned over the last two weeks that the ICC is preparing to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Herzi Halevi.
US and Saudis Near Defense Pact Meant to Reshape Middle East. The agreement faces plenty of obstacles but would amount to a new version of a framework that was scuttled when Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel triggered the conflict in Gaza. Negotiations between Washington and Riyadh have sped up in recent weeks, and many officials are optimistic that they could reach a deal within weeks, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. Such an agreement would potentially reshape the Middle East. Beyond bolstering Israel and Saudi Arabia’s security, it would strengthen the US’s position in the region at the expense of Iran and even China.
Iran’s “Dark Fleet” of Oil Tankers Continues to Thrive Despite Sanctions. Iran is one of the most sanctioned countries in the world. But restrictions imposed by the United States have largely failed to stymie Iran's oil exports, the backbone of its flailing economy. U.S. sanctions have cut off Iran from most of its traditional customers, forcing Tehran to find new buyers and sell its oil at discounted prices. But China’s willingness to buy record amounts of Iranian oil, Tehran's mastery of sanctions-evading tactics, and Washington's reluctance to strictly enforce sanctions have made U.S. measures against Iran’s energy exports ineffective, analysts say.

Politics

It’s a dangerous myth that mass migration is good for the economy. There is no clearer example of the broken Westminster consensus than the last three decades of immigration policy. But as offensive and dangerous as illegal migration is, the bigger scandal is the story of legal migration because the numbers involved are so much greater. Last year, there were about 30,000 illegal small boat arrivals, but this was dwarfed by the 1.2 million people who arrived here perfectly legally. The numbers we have experienced are jaw-dropping. In the 25 years up to Tony Blair’s election, cumulative net migration was 68,000; in the next 25 years to 2022, it was 5.9 million – almost 100 times the previous 25 years.
Speaker Mike Johnson Received a $95,000 Payment From Lobby Group Shortly After Passage of $14.5B Military Aid Package Late Last Year. According to analysis conducted by The Intercept based on Federal Election Commission records, a foreign lobby group, particularly known for its pro-foreign policy stance donated approximately $95,000 to Johnson’s campaign in November of last year. The timing of these donations is notable, as they coincided with Johnson’s pivotal role in advancing a high-value aid package through Congress. Johnson’s efforts to expedite this funding drew attention from critics, especially given the significant financial support he received from the lobby group.
The Axis of Upheaval - How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order. Too many Western observers have been quick to dismiss the implications of coordination among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The four countries have their differences, to be sure, and a history of distrust and contemporary fissures may limit how close their relationships will grow. Yet their shared aim of weakening the United States and its leadership role provides a strong adhesive. In places across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, the ambitions of axis members have already proved to be destabilizing.
Too Big to win. It is painfully apparent to anyone of sound mind and judgment that there’s something gravely wrong with America’s current military capacity and our ability to project power in the world. The WWII-era fighting force composed of fourteen million GIs with a muscular industrial base backing them up is almost unimaginable today. In the last three years, five different US embassies have been hastily evacuated: Sudan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Niger. Americans are held hostage in Gaza; commercial shipping traffic is blockaded and our ground and naval forces are shot at daily with impunity. How did America go from winning the Cold War and becoming the sole global superpower in the 90s to the state of disarray that we find ourselves in now?
Government Imposes Blackout On All Information About Israeli Military Planes in Britain. Amidst speculation that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is set to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers, the new blackout could be intended to protect British ministers from possible prosecution for complicity in war crimes, including defence secretary Grant Shapps. Kenny MacAskill, Alba MP for East Lothian, told Declassified that the MoD had also now imposed a block on parliamentarians even asking questions about Israeli military operations involving UK territory.
Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems has died. Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems and one of the first whistleblowers to allege Spirit leadership had ignored manufacturing defects on the 737 MAX, died Tuesday morning after a struggle with a sudden, fast-spreading infection. Known as Josh, Dean lived in Wichita, Kan., where Spirit is based. He was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a healthy lifestyle. By the end, doctors were considering amputating both hands and both feet. “It was brutal what he went through,” his aunt Carol Parsons said.
Not in Our Name - Politicians are using the rise in antisemitism as an excuse to curtail free speech and expand their own power. Jews must not let them. Free speech is not a divisible concept. Either everyone is free to say what they want, no matter how noxious others find it, in order to create and sustain the free market of ideas—or else speech isn’t free. The freedom and successes that Jews have enjoyed in America have been due to the protections afforded by our Constitution, and the respect for individual rights that became part of our culture. The most legitimate tax we owe—to each other, to our fellow citizens, and to those who fought for our right as Americans to say whatever the fuck we want—is the work we are asked to put in, day in and day out, to protect that freedom.
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Science

'Strongest Statistical Evidence Yet' For Planet Nine Has Been Found, Scientist Says. That claim was made to Andrew Griffin at The Independent by astronomer Konstantin Bogytin from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Bogytin has been responsible for many of the previous studies trying to prove the existence of the ninth planet. In this latest piece of research, Bogytin and his colleagues tracked the movement of Trans-Neptunian Objects or TNOs: variously sized celestial bodies beyond Neptune's orbit, which include dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris.
Lab mice are getting their own back by deliberately messing up experiments. The humble lab mouse has been used in tests for hundreds of years, but it seems like the small rodents have been carrying out their own experiments, as they do not always perform as expected. Now it seems this isn’t just scientific anomaly, but a concerted effort by the mice to mess things up. The researchers believed the mice knew what they were doing the whole time, and were purposefully giving up the reward to explore their environment by doing experiments of their own.

Technology

The Dangerous Rise of GPS Attacks. The disruption to GPS services started getting worse on Christmas Day. Planes and ships moving around southern Sweden and Poland lost connectivity as their radio signals were interfered with. Since then, the region around the Baltic Sea—including neighboring Germany, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—has faced persistent attacks against GPS systems. Tens of thousands of planes flying in the region have reported problems with their navigation systems in recent months amid widespread jamming attacks, which can make GPS inoperable.
US official urges China, Russia to declare only humans, not AI, control nuclear weapons. State Department arms control official Paul Dean told an online briefing that Washington had made a "clear and strong commitment" that humans had total control over nuclear weapons, adding that France and Britain had done the same. Dean's remarks come as the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden tries to deepen separate discussions with China over both nuclear weapons policy and the growth of artificial intelligence.

Ukraine

Zelensky announces that the US will support Ukraine for 10 years. “Also, our teams, Ukraine and the United States, are currently working on a bilateral security agreement, and we are already working on a specific text. Our goal is to make this agreement the strongest of all. We are discussing the specific foundations of our security and cooperation. We are also working on fixing specific levels of support for this year and for the next ten years, including armed support, financial, political, and joint arms production. The agreement should be truly exemplary and reflect the strength of American leadership. I am grateful to both our team and the team of the American side for the progress in drafting the agreement.”
Ukraine expands martial law in a bid to boost defences near occupied areas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree confirming the parliament's decision to expand the country's martial law as Kyiv prepares for a renewed push by Moscow's forces in the east and south. Earlier in April, Ukraine notified the Council of Europe of the partial suspension of some clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights and Freedoms in connection to recent changes in its martial law. According to the application, Ukraine will stop observing such provisions of the convention as inviolability of housing, confidentiality of correspondences, non-interference in personal and family life, freedom of movement and free choice of residence, and to use and dispose of one's property.

Vaccines

AstraZeneca admits for first time in court documents its Covid vaccine can cause rare side effect. The pharmaceutical giant is being sued in a class action over claims that its vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford, caused death and serious injury in dozens of cases. Lawyers argue the vaccine produced a side effect which has had a devastating effect on a small number of families. The first case was lodged last year by Jamie Scott, a father of two, who was left with a permanent brain injury after developing a blood clot and a bleed on the brain that has prevented him from working after he received the vaccine in April 2021.
Japanese professor: Fraudulent use of gene therapy in healthy people is an extreme violation of human rights. Masayasu Inoue, professor emeritus at Osaka City University Medical School, has warned of "a dangerous, new governmental development" in a message delivered from Japan during the recent World Council for Health conference. Because it was a completely new and misconceived method that had never been applied before in human history, it was impossible for most doctors to give proper informed consent.
Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening? “I feel bad for those people,” said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.’s acting commissioner in January 2021 as the vaccines were rolling out. “I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously.” “I’m disappointed in myself,” she added. “I did a lot of things I feel very good about, but this is one of the few things I feel I just didn’t bring it home.”