Today's Must-Reads - 21 September 2023

A selection of the latest news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering together new information and interesting articles. I then pick one or two of the most interesting topics and write about them. However, that leaves a lot of missed out information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the latest articles and information that I’ve found. Today, this 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

• Al Gore leads international chorus of disapproval for Sunak’s climate U-turn. Decision by UK prime minister to water down key climate policies ‘really shocking to me’, says former US vice-president. Gore, now one of the world’s foremost advocates for swift action to avert the climate crisis, told CNN: “I find it shocking and really disappointing … I think he’s done the wrong thing. I’ve heard from many of my friends in the UK including a lot of Conservative party members who have used the phrase, ‘utter disgust’.

• Climate crisis has ‘opened the gates to hell’, UN chief tells summit. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday told world leaders humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels had “opened the gates to hell” as he kicked off a climate meeting.

Covid

• HHS bars Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving US funding for next 10 years. The Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday that it has officially barred the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) from receiving US funding for the next 10 years, as more evidence points to the COVID-19 pandemic leaking out of a Chinese lab. The Office of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter on Tuesday to WIV Director General Dr. Yanyi Wang informing her that the lab — which conducted risky gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses — will be denied US research grants until July 16, 2033.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Biden administration announces $600M to produce COVID tests and will reopen website to order them. The Department of Health and Human Services says orders can be placed at COVIDTests.gov starting Sept. 25, and that no-cost tests will be delivered for free by the United States Postal Service. O’Connell said the website will remain functional to receive orders through the holidays and “we reserve the right to keep it open even longer if we’re starting to see an increase in cases.”

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Fed Holds Rates Steady but Pencils In One More Hike This Year. Stronger growth prompts officials to project that rates will stay higher for longer in 2024. “The fact that we’ve come this far lets us really proceed carefully,” said Powell. He used those words—“proceed carefully”—six times during Wednesday’s news conference, a sign of heightened caution about lifting rates. “He didn’t sound to me like he was itching to hike again,” said Michael Feroli, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase, who thinks the Fed’s July rate rise will be its last for the current cycle.

• Brace for stocks to crash 25% - and a recession to strike by spring, top economist David Rosenberg warns. The Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates from nearly zero to north of 5% since last spring in an effort to curb historic inflation. Short-term Treasuries are also paying larger yields than long-term government bonds, signaling Wall Street expects an economic downturn to spur the Fed to cut rates in the coming years. The economy has never gone through a Fed tightening cycle where the yield curve was inverted and not suffered a recession, Rosenberg said.

• The US housing market is headed for the largest sales slowdown since 2011, Fannie Mae says. The government-sponsored mortgage finance company forecasted total home sales to slump to just 4.8 million this year, marking the slowest sales environment since 2011. That figure will only improve slightly in 2024, with total home sales expected to hit 4.9 million, Fannie Mae economists said. The slump in sales is partly being influenced by high mortgage rates,with the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rising to 7.18% over the last week, according to Freddie Mac data.

Health

• The US bucks the trend when it comes to health spending. Whilst it spends far more per capita, the average life expectancy has not risen at anywhere near the same rate as the rest of the West.

  

Politics

• The British public challenge ceding of sovereignty to World Health Organization. A Parliamentary hearing was held in the UK parliament in response to a petition demanding the UK Government not sign any WHO Pandemic Treaty unless approved by public referendum. The responses are clear that many have serious concerns about the World Health Organization (WHO) proposals.

• MPs ask if Elon Musk ‘personally intervened’ on Russell Brand’s status on X. Various social media platforms have been asked about Brand being able to monetise his content. Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairwoman Dame Caroline Dinenage has written to other video hosting sites and social media outlets on Wednesday to ask whether Brand can make “profit from his content” on their platforms.

• No One Apologizes for the Theft of Time. The point remains, though, that government deliberately steals time from people, perhaps at a higher rate than it steals money. The theft is without conscience or remorse. And, the theft has no constitutional safeguards. At least with money, we know that we can constitutionally blame the House of Representatives. Those are the people sending you flyers at two-year intervals asking for contributions to their reelection campaigns.

• Former NZ PM Ardern Urges United Nations To 'Crack Down On Free Speech As A Weapon Of War'. Jacinda Ardern may no longer be Prime Minister of New Zealand, but she was back at the United Nations continuing her call for international censorship. Ardern is now one of the leading anti-free speech figures in the world and continues to draw support from political and academic establishments.

Science

• Half-million-year-old wooden structure unearthed in Zambia. The discovery of ancient wooden logs in the banks of a river in Zambia has changed archaeologists' understanding of ancient human life. The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest stone-age people built what may have been shelters. "This find has changed how I think about our early ancestors," archaeologist Prof Larry Barham said.

Technology

• Elon Musk's brain chip firm given all-clear to recruit for human trials. Neuralink's trial will hope to achieve similar results to that of a research project in Switzerland, which also used a so-called brain computer interface to help a paralysed man walk again. That device was made up of two electronic implants, one in the brain and one in the spinal cord. The "digital bridge" operated wirelessly, and together the components repaired the broken connection between the man's brain and the region of the spinal cord that controls movement.

Ukraine

• In Ukraine, the number of people with disabilities increased by 300,000 during the war. At the beginning of August, the American publication The Wall Street Journal reported with reference to the assessment of the world’s largest manufacturer of prosthetics, the German company Ottobock, that in the seventeen months of the full-scale war, about 50 thousand Ukrainians became disabled, lost their arms and legs. The WSJ article stated that the actual number of disabled amputees may be higher, as prosthetics take time, and some victims wait weeks or even months for amputation after injury.

Vaccines

• The mistreatment of the vaccine injured – what the Covid Inquiry heard, Part 2. THIS is the second part of an edited version of the representation to Baroness Heather Hallett by barrister Anna Morris KC last Wednesday on behalf of those injured by Covid vaccinations – UK CV Family, the largest advocacy group, the Scottish Vaccine Injury Group (ScottishVIG), and the Vaccine Injured and Bereaved (VIBUK). This second section focuses on the total inadequacy of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, which insists on 60 per cent disability to qualify for the all-or-nothing payment of £120,000 and is there to block as many payments as possible. Anna Morris pulls no punches as her speech continues.

• Viral RNA Can Persist for 2 Years After COVID-19: Preprint Study. A study suggests why some develop new medical conditions after COVID-19, while not investigating the link between persistent viral RNA and vaccination status. Even in clinically mild cases of COVID-19, this phenomenon could explain the systemic changes observed in the immune system and in those with long COVID symptoms. However, most of the participants were vaccinated and the study didn't investigate the link between the existence of viral RNA and vaccination.

• They Suffered Myocarditis After COVID-19 Vaccination. Years Later, Some Still Haven't Recovered. Under pressure from the military and his mother, Jacob Cohen was feeling increasingly cornered. Mr. Cohen did not want to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. He knew the shots had not been available for long. He was worried about their safety. Mr. Cohen received his first shot, manufactured by Pfizer, on Sept. 22, 2021. He was 21. Two weeks later, he was awakened by a sharp pain at 3 a.m. "I felt like my heart was trying to get out of my chest," Mr. Cohen said.