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A bird flu pandemic could be '100 times worse than Covid' and kill up to half of everyone it infects, experts have warned — as the White House says it is 'monitoring' the situation. Speaking at a briefing, virus researchers said the H5N1 strain of bird flu may now be getting 'dangerously close' to triggering a pandemic. Multiple cases of the infection in a variety of mammals, including cows, cats and, more recently, humans, are all raising the risk of the virus mutating to become more transmissible, they said. But others attending the briefing said it was too early to...

A video purportedly showing a congressional staffer having sex in a Senate hearing room has rocked Washington. An element of cruelty permeates these media feeding-frenzies, in which an inopportune moment from a person’s life suddenly rockets through global headlines. The staffer allegedly shown in the video has now left the Senate and is now a character in the Beltway drama factory infamous for cycling through the young and ambitious. For many observers, this latest controversy only underlines how politics has not yet returned to normal under Joe Biden. “Decency is on the ballot,” Jill Biden proclaimed during the 2020 election....

The Biden administration proposal to hike fuel economy standards through 2032 is not feasible and could cost automakers a total of more than $14 billion in fines, an automotive group said Friday. ...The record-setting penalties include $235.5 million for Stellantis for the 2018 and 2019 model years and $128.2 million for GM covering 2016 and 2017.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo harshly criticized COVID-19 mask mandates and lockdowns, and urged people to consider "refusing to participate." "What do you call re-imposing mask policies that have been proven ineffective or restarting lockdowns that are known to cause harm? You don't call it sanity," Dr. Ladapo posted last week on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "These terrible policies only work with your cooperation. How about refusing to participate…" Some schools and companies are implementing mask mandates amid a rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations, even though some peer-reviewed research has suggested that face coverings may cause...

Former deputy national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, K. T. McFarland, joined Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street on Friday to discuss the Durham Report and others.In a stunning allegation, McFarland said that the FBI, Justice Department, and CIA are planning to rig the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election.According to McFarland, these intelligence agencies, having succeeded in rigging the 2016 and 2020 elections, aim to prevent Donald Trump from winning.“We now have black-and-white evidence that the FBI interfered in the 2016 election. When they failed to elect Hillary Clinton, they set out to destroy the Trump administration,” said McFarland. ......

For the first time, the world is seeing two simultaneous outbreaks of the Marburg virus – one in Equatorial Guinea, the other in Tanzania. The Marburg virus is just as deadly as Ebola, to which it is closely related, but it has been extremely rare until now. The situation with the Marburg virus entered uncharted territory on March 21, when Tanzania announced an outbreak of the disease in addition to the one in Equatorial Guinea, on the other side of the African continent. Five people have died out of eight confirmed cases as of April 6, according to the US...

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Local media in China’s capital of Beijing report that with only two weeks to go before the Winter Olympics begin, city health authorities have resumed a controversial practice from early in the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic: using anal swabs to check for infections. Insider on Wednesday translated a report from the state-owned Beijing News that described at least 27 residents of an apartment building in the Haidian district getting the anal swab test last week. The Beijing News article mentioned the curious practice in passing. There was only a single reference to the swabs piled up among the equipment carried by...

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) predicted Tuesday that a long-sought Democratic agreement on President Biden's domestic policy agenda is imminent, saying a deal could be announced as soon as Tuesday afternoon. "The president's working very hard on this, and the Speaker's been working very hard on it," Hoyer said during a press call. "And so there's a lot of work that's been done and I think it could come together relatively quickly in the next few hours." Such a timeline appears highly optimistic — some lawmakers said improbable — given the number of sticking points remaining as Democratic leaders...

Perhaps it's no surprise, but when it comes time to vote, Canadians are very good about doing it politely, and in queues. While Americans are still embroiled in a bitter feud over voting rights and the outcome of the 2020 election, their neighbours to the north are hardly breaking a sweat as they head to the polls to vote in their country's general election on 20 September. Things like widespread advanced voting, mail-in ballots, and federally-run elections seem to make it easier for Canadians to show up at the polls - voter turnout in Canada was higher (62%) than in...

The End of the Long MarchThe army and the police have not capitulated to Wokeism—yet. Remember those halcyon days when our biggest concerns were Howard Zinn textbooks and mainstream media bias? The left is long past that. Victory begets victory, and they feel no pressing need to shore up their wins. Now they’re gunning to control the guns—and not necessarily in the way you think.There are only two institutions left for the left to conquer—institutions filled with the backward, white supremacist, irredeemable troglodytes that liberal arts undergraduates must be psychologically and emotionally strengthened to confront when they go home every...

The administration is literally out of gas. None of their monetary policy (print it out of thing air by the bucket loads) has worked. People noticed. None of their immigration policy (tell everyone to come, travel to neighboring nations & give US tax dollars away, beg & plead for their help) has worked. People noticed. None of their anti-crime policy (threaten lawful gun owners with confiscation) has worked. People noticed. None of their foreign policy (embolden Iran, play footsie with China, ask the UN to investigate Americans, take the side of the Cuban regime, undermine the Abraham accords) has worked....

(CNN)Poll of the week: A new Gallup poll finds that 59.2% of Americans say they're thriving. Additionally, 73% of Americans said they experienced enjoyment for a lot of the previous day.The former is the highest rating Gallup has ever recorded on the measure dating back to when it was first taken more than 13 years ago. The latter is the highest since the coronavirus pandemic began early last year. What's the point: The last year has been tough for a lot of Americans. Among other issues, the coronavirus dominated our lives, and there was a very contentious presidential election. But...

Price Hikes The maker of Huggies diapers and Scott paper products said the percentage increases would be in the mid- to high-single digits and take effect in late June. They will apply to the company’s baby- and child-care, adult-care and Scott bathroom-tissue businesses. Cheerios maker General Mills Inc. (GIS) said it will raise prices to partly offset higher freight and manufacturing costs, in addition to rising commodity prices. “Our competitors and retailers are facing the same thing we are,” General Mills Chief Executive Jeff Harmening said. Hormel Foods Corp. (HRL)said in February it raised prices of its turkey products, such...

China has made anal COVID-19 swabs mandatory for all foreign travelers arriving in the country, a report said Wednesday. The government has claimed that such tests provides a higher degree of accuracy than other screening methods for the virus, the Times UK reported... Li Tongzeng, a respiratory disease medic, said that the anal swabs are better because virus traces stay longer in fecal samples than they do in the nose or throat, state media reported... “Some Japanese reported to our embassy in China that they received anal swab tests, which caused a great psychological pain,” Katsunobu Kato, Japan’s chief cabinet...

From the deepening health and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to a growing number of geopolitical challenges, the United States, with a new presidential administration, faces a number of threats to its standing in the world at the start of 2021. This Leadership Panel will consider how the United States' foreign policy challenges can be jointly addressed by leaders in the House and Senate. Speakers: Børge Brende, Ted Deutch, Stephanie Murphy, Adam Kinzinger, Kirsten E. Gillibrand The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of...

HAHAHA! Right now, somewhere in China, some chineese guy is saying to his buddies, "And then I told those stupid American journalists that we're now using, highly accurate, ANAL SWABs....BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" And his buddies are doubling over everything they see that headline in the American press. It's exactly like the scene in the Holy Grail. King Arthur "We seek the Holy Grail". French Kneggit, "Oh yes, we already have one. Its's vrry niis." Turns to his buddies and says, "I told them we already have one, snickers......"

Former United Nations ambassador Susan Rice, slated to become the Domestic Policy Council chief if Joe Biden assumes the White House next month, is warning that COVID-19 outbreak “is not the big one” and that a future pandemic could be worse. “In the Obama administration, as I said, we had the 2009 swine flu; we had the Ebola epidemic that could have been a global pandemic; we had the Zika virus, as you'll remember, so we were very prime to this risk. We knew that we hadn't had the big one,” Rice said during a virtual event organized by Stevenson...

Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of the office involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine, formally filed an extensive whistleblower complaint Tuesday alleging his early warnings about the coronavirus were ignored and that his caution at a treatment favored by President Donald Trump led to his removal.

President Trump, speaking at the White House coronavirus briefing on Thursday, unloaded on Democrats who have created a new House committee with subpoena authority to investigate the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Also during the press conference, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced that the first round of stimulus checks will be directly deposited into Americans’ bank accounts in the next two weeks. And, Trump revealed he had again tested negative for coronavirus. "We have seen Americans unite with incredible selflessness and compassion," Trump began. "I want to remind everyone here in our nation's capital, especially in Congress, that this...