Today's Must-Reads - 6 May 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 will be for paid subscribers only a lot of the time in the future.

Please consider taking out a paid subscription because it enables me to spend longer reporting on the news that isn’t, but should be reported.

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Climate Change

• The ScientifTIK (Tok) consesus - TikTok marked Earth Day by beginning to censor climate change “misinformation.” The platform says it will begin deleting content that contradicts “scientific consensus.” “On April 21, we will begin to ramp up enforcement of a new climate change misinformation policy which removes climate change misinformation that undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as content denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it,” the company said in a statement.

Covid

• The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that Covid-19 no longer represents a "global health emergency". "Yesterday, the Emergency Committee met for the 15th time and recommended to me that I declare an end to the public health emergency of international concern. I've accepted that advice. It is therefore with great hope that I declare Covid-19 over as a global health emergency," Dr Tedros said.

• Why doctors fear Covid could be causing diabetes in otherwise healthy patients. Doctors have long reported a link between the two diseases, which is now being backed up by large-scale observational studies

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Lives saver, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, is leaving the CDC, leaving it as a “stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans”.

  

• YouTube’s policies still won’t let you post anything saying the Covid vaccines don’t reduce transmission.

  

• 15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days. On Monday, the White House announced its Covid-19 vaccine requirements for federal employees, federal contractors, and international air travelers will expire on May 11, coinciding with the end of the Covid public health emergency. The 15 Days to Flatten the Curve that began on March 16, 2020, stretched to 1,141 days.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• As stores and restaurants attempt to go cashless, they're installing "reverse ATMs" that dispense stored-value cards in exchange for greenbacks. Get rid of your cash, get rid of your freedom.

• About Half in U.S. Worry About Their Money's Safety in Banks. Amid turbulence in the U.S. banking system, nearly half of Americans are anxious about the safety of the money they have in accounts at banks or other financial institutions. A total of 48% of U.S. adults say they are concerned about their money, including 19% who are “very” and 29% who are “moderately” worried. At the same time, 30% are “not too worried” and 20% are “not worried at all.”

Health

• Canada gives green light to gene-edited crops. Canada has approved the use of gene-editing technology to grow crops for commercial use, just months after similar regulation was passed in England. Agriculture minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has announced that Canada will officially move ahead with legislation to allow the cultivation of gene-edited crops in the country.

• New Studies Link Fluoride to Reduced IQ and ADHD in Children. The Epoch Times explores the contentious findings surrounding fluoridation of the U.S. public water supply and answers the question of whether water fluoridation poses a risk and what we should do about it.

Politics

• China slams US arms sales to Taiwan. US military support for Taiwan is turning the island into a “powder keg” and risks igniting a regional conflict, China has warned, urging Washington to cease weapon sales to Taipei, while warning of “consequences” for countries that interfere in its internal affairs.

• US Sets $500 Million for Taiwan Arms on Ukraine-Style Fast Track. The Biden administration is pulling together a $500 million weapons package for Taiwan, using for the first time a fast-track authority that it has relied on to speed arms to Ukraine, people familiar with the matter said. The package will involve sending existing stockpiles of US weapons or support equipment to Taiwan under what’s known as a Presidential Drawdown Authority, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. The equipment to be in the package wasn’t immediately known.

• The New Conservative says Russell Brand’s journey of enlightenment is not political – it’s more important than that. Brand is therefore reflective of the animating spirit of 1960s radicalism that was fiercely independent, anti-authoritarian and relentlessly suspicious of self-serving political and business elites. It is the political tradition that spans a raft of erudite thinkers from C. Wright Mills in the 1950s, Noam Chomsky in the 1960s and 1970s, to Richard Rorty and Christopher Lasch in the 1980s and 1990s. It may be said to live on in the work of journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Lee Fang and Thomas Fazi in the present.

• The European Commission in Brussels has backed a scheme by the globalist government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the Netherlands that would see thousands of farms shut down in order to comply with EU climate goals. The plan, which would offer farmers 120 per cent of the value of their farm, could see some 3,000 so-called “peak” emitters of nitrogen shut down.

Science

• Star swallows planet in first glimpse of Earth’s likely end. Astronomers had previously seen the before-and-after effects of this process, but had never before caught a planet in the act of being consumed.

• Ancient bacterial DNA from the teeth of Neanderthals has been recreated by scientists for the first time and used to bring back Stone Age molecules. Experts reconstructed the genome of a previously unknown Chlorobium bacteria dating from the Pleistocene, which was found in the dental plaque of Neanderthals, and seven Palaeolithic humans dating from up to 100,000 years ago.

Ukraine

• Discord Leaks Created Tension, Frustration Between US & Ukraine. Kiev appears frustrated with the White House over the leaks of highly classified documents. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he learned of the leak through the media and has not yet spoken with President Joe Biden regarding the trove of documents.

Vaccines

• A study in JAMA Network evaluated the waning of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-induced immunity. The estimated vaccine effectiveness against both laboratory-confirmed Omicron infection and symptomatic disease was lower than 20% at 6 months from the administration of the primary vaccination cycle and less than 30% at 9 months from the administration of a booster dose.

• The BMJ looks at the association between SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and healthcare contacts for menstrual disturbance and bleeding in women before and after menopause. Risk of postmenopausal bleeding suggested a 23-33% increased risk after 8-90 days with BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 after the third dose, but the association with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 was less clear.