With the boom in the construction industry, the demand for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) services is rising rapidly in the U.S. Because of the rapid urbanization, increasing population, and the soaring construction of various buildings and establishments, the construction industry is exhibiting rapid expansion in the U.S. For example, as per the U.S. Census Bureau, the country’s population is predicted to rise by nearly 7% from 2019 to 2029.

Furthermore, with the increasing implementation of government initiatives aimed at augmenting the home ownership rate, the construction of residential buildings is soaring rapidly in the country. For example, the U.S. government announced an increment of nearly 2% in its budget allocation for various construction projects. With the launch of several construction projects, the demand for HVAC equipment will explode, which will, in turn, propel the requirement for HVAC services in the country in the coming years.

Browse detailed report - U.S. HVAC Services Market Analysis and Demand Forecast Report

Besides the aforementioned factors, the rising focus on energy efficiency is also positively impacting the requirement for HVAC services in the country. Furthermore, the surging replacement rate of HVAC devices and equipment is augmenting the need for associated services in the country, which is, in turn, driving the expansion of the U.S. heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) services market. The valuation of the market is predicted to grow from $25,625.8 million in 2019 to $35,714.5 million by 2030.

Depending on type, the U.S. HVAC services market is divided into maintenance & repair, upgradation/replacement, and installation and consulting. Out of these, the upgradation/replacement category recorded the highest growth in the market in the past years. In the coming years, the consulting category is predicted to exhibit the highest CAGR in the market. Consulting services include visual inspection, which is usually carried out by HVAC technicians for identifying potential issues in the equipment before recommending it for maintenance.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday held an emergency meeting to discuss the outbreak of monkeypox after more than 100 cases were reported across 12 countries.

Days before the WHO convened, the Biden administration placed a $119 million order for monkeypox vaccines after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed six people in the U.S. were being monitored for the viral infection, and one person had tested positive.

Belgium on Sunday became the first country to introduce a compulsory 21-day quarantine for monkeypox patients after reporting four cases of the disease in the last week, Politico reported.

The 100 newly reported cases, or suspected cases, garnered attention because many of them do not appear to be linked to travel to Africa, where in some regions, monkeypox is endemic.

Cases were reported in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K. No deaths are reported as of yet.

The number of identified cases in Europe is a record, described by Germany’s armed forces medical services as “the largest and most widespread outbreak … ever seen in Europe,” while its spread in the U.K. was described as “unprecedented.”

U.K. public health officials warned more monkeypox cases are being detected “on a daily basis” and that there “could be really significant numbers over the next two or three weeks,” though they did not specify what “numbers” would be considered “really significant.”

The manner in which monkeypox may have spread — through sexual health services and sexual contact between men — also may have helped to heap attention on this new outbreak.

Many of the recent cases were traced to two “superspreader” events that involved situations in which men came into close physical contact, including 30 monkeypox cases in Spain traced to a single adult sauna in Madrid.

Monkeypox cases reported in Belgium appear to be connected to a recent gay “fetish festival.”

For some, these developments may bring to mind the early onset of HIV, which at the time was connected to sexual contact among males, and to remarks by Dr. Anthony Faucithat he visited gay saunas and bars during the early years of the HIV outbreak to understand how the virus was spreading.

WHO Europe regional director Hans Kluge last week expressed concerns about transmission at “mass gatherings, festivals, and parties.”

However, other public health professionals said there is a low risk to the public and a low likelihood that the epidemic will last long.

Meanwhile, questions are popping up about the similarity between a March 2021 tabletop “simulation” of a monkeypox outbreak and a similar simulation in 2019 — Event 201 — which correctly “predicted” the COVID-19pandemic

Monkeypox — what is it?

Monkeypox was first discovered in 1958 in monkeys, although they are not the source of the virus. It was first identified in humans in 1970.

The virus is particularly prevalent in Central and West Africa and is considered a rare zoonotic disease, which means that it is caused by germs that spread between animals and people.

Monkeypox typically is spread by wild animals, such as in instances when a human is bitten or comes into contact with animal blood or bodily fluids. However, human-to-human transmission, while rare, is possible.

The virus is known to enter the human body through broken skin, the respiratory tract, or the eyes, nose or mouth, for instance through large respiratory droplets or through contact — including sexual contact — with bodily fluids or lesions, or indirectly through contaminated clothing or linens.

However, “common household disinfectants can kill it.”

A prior outbreak — the first to occur outside of the African continent — occurred in the U.S. in 2003, linked to animals shipped to Texas from Ghana.

And in July 2021, monkeypox was confirmed in a Texas individual who had returned to Dallas from Nigeria, according to the CDC.

Symptoms of monkeypox infection tend to be mild, and include fever, rash and swollen lymph nodes, and occasionally intense headache, back pain, muscle aches, lack of energy and skin eruptions which can cause painful lesions, scabs or crusts.

There are two strains of monkeypox: the West African and Central African strains. The latter is known as the deadlier of the two, but the cases identified in the recent outbreak all appear to have been caused by the milder West African strain.

Did March 2021 ‘pandemic exercise’ predict monkeypox outbreak?

In October 2019, just weeks before the outbreak of COVID-19, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, along with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, organized “Event 201,” a “high-level pandemic exercise” that mirrored what later followed with COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), in conjunction with the Munich Security Conference, held a “tabletop exercise on reducing high-consequence biological threats.”

This “fictional exercise scenario” involved the simulation of “a deadly, global pandemic involving an unusual strain of monkeypox virus that first emerged in the fictional nation of Brinia and spread globally over 18 months.”

According to NTI, this exercise, which was “[d]eveloped in consultation with technical and policy experts,” brought together “19 senior leaders and experts from across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe with decades of combined experience in public health, biotechnology industry, international security, and philanthropy.”

The exercise culminated in a report, published November 2021, titled “Strengthening Global Systems to Prevent and Respond to High-Consequence Biological Threats: Results from the 2021 Tabletop Exercise Conducted in Partnership with the Munich Security Conference.”

This report contains key findings from the exercise, as well as “actionable recommendations for the international community.”

The outcome of this “exercise scenario” found the fictional pandemic, “caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight,” led to “more than three billion cases and 270 million fatalities worldwide.”

The fictional start date of the monkeypox pandemic in this exercise was May 15, 2022. The first European case of monkeypox was identified on May 7, 2022.

Key findings from the report included:

• The “need” for “a more robust, transparent detection, evaluation, and early warning system that can rapidly communicate actionable information about pandemic risks.”
• “Gaps in national-level preparedness,” which will require national governments to “improve preparedness by developing national-level pandemic response plans built upon a coherent system of ‘triggers’ that prompt anticipatory action, despite uncertainty and near-term costs,” described as a “no-regrets” policymaking basis.
• “Gaps in biological research governance” in order to “meet today’s security requirements” and be “ready for significantly expanded challenges in the future.”
• “Insufficient financing of international preparedness for pandemics,” and a lack of financing for countries to “make the essential national investments in pandemic preparedness.”

Key recommendations included:

• Bolstering international systems “for pandemic risk assessment, warning, and investigating outbreak origins,” calling upon the WHO to “establish a graded, transparent, international public health alert system” and the United Nations system to “establish a new mechanism for investigating high-consequence biological events of unknown origin.”
• The development and implementation of “national-level triggers for early, proactive pandemic response,” including the adaptation of the “no-regrets” approach to responding to pandemics via “anticipatory action” based on “triggers” that would automatically generate a response to “high-consequence biological events.”
• The establishment of “an international entity dedicated to reducing emerging biological risks associated with rapid technology advances,” that would “support interventions throughout the bioscience and biotechnology research and development life cycle — from funding, through execution, and on to publication or commercialization.”
• The development of “a catalytic global health security fund to accelerate pandemic preparedness capacity building in countries around the world,” which would include “[n]ational leaders, development banks, philanthropic donors, and the private sector” with the aim of establishing and funding “a new financing mechanism to bolster global health security and pandemic preparedness” and that would incentivize “national governments to invest in their own preparedness over the long term.”
• The establishment of “a robust international process to tackle the challenge of supply chain resilience,” based on a “high-level panel’ that would be convened by the UN secretary-general “to develop recommendations for critical measures to bolster global supply chain resilience for medical and public health supplies.”

The above recommendations were borne out in practice during the simulated monkeypox pandemic scenario.

As stated in the report:

“In national pandemic response plans, specific readiness measures would be ‘triggered’ based on factors related to the potential severity of the outbreak, expected delays in situational awareness, and the time it would take to implement response measures and see results.”

What would be “triggered” bears a remarkable similarity to the COVID-19-related measures of the past two-plus years.

The report states:

“Although triggered actions would vary depending upon the particular needs of the country, in most cases the goals are the same: slow the spread of disease to buy time and flatten the epidemiological curve, while using that time to scale up public health and medical systems to keep up with growing caseloads and save lives.

“NPIs [non-pharmaceutical interventions] such as mask mandates and ceasing mass gatherings were deemed to be critical for blocking chains of disease transmission.

“Participants generally did not endorse travel restrictions such as border closures, but travel health screening measures [i.e., vaccine passports] were viewed as valuable.”

According to the results of the simulated scenario, the fictional countries that “prioritized keeping their economies open, undertaking little-to-no NPIs, and downplaying the virus and its potential impacts … have experienced much worse outcomes in terms of illness and mortality” than those fictional countries that “promptly adopted aggressive measures to slow virus transmission,” such as “shutting down mass gatherings, imposing social-distancing measures, and implementing mask mandates,” in addition to establishing “large-scale testing and contact-tracing operations.”

Gates Foundation, pharma execs, WHO participated in monkeypox pandemic simulation

Who took part in the NTI’s monkeypox pandemic simulation?

Key participants included:

• Dr. Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, global head of Johnson & Johnson Global Public Health R&D and Janssen Research & Development.
• Dr. Chris Elias, president of the global development division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
• Dr. George Gao, director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (the Chinese CDC).
• Dr. Margaret (Peggy) A. Hamburg, interim vice president for global biological policy and programs at NTI, a member of the global health scientific advisory committee for the Gates Foundation and a member of the board of GAVI-The Vaccine Alliance.
• Sam Nunn, a former U.S. senator who is the founder and co-chair of NTI.
• Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program and a highly visible figure during COVID-19 times.
• Dr. Petra Wicklandt, head of corporate affairs for Merck.

Several of the participants listed above also “participated” in Event 201.

The authors of the report also stand out for their background.

For example, Dr. Jaime M. Yassif, vice president of NTI global biological policy and programs, holds a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of California-Berkeley and a master’s degree in science and security from the King’s College, London, war studies department.

Yassif previously led the initiative on biosecurity and pandemic preparedness at the Open Philanthropy Project, including the management of nearly $40 million in biosecurity grants, the “initiation of new biosecurity work in China and India,” and “establishment of the Global Health Security Index.”

She also previously advised the U.S. Department of Defense on science and technology policy and worked on the Global Health Security Agenda at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Co-author Chris Isaac, program officer for NTI’s Global Biological Policy and Programs team, “has been involved with synthetic biology through the Internationally Genetically Engineered Machines Competition since the start of his scientific career” and “is an alumnus of the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.”

The report is the product of a partnership between NTI, co-founded by Nunn and Ted Turner, and the Munich Security Conference.

Both NTI ($3.5 million, for “vaccine development”) and the Munich Security conference ($1.2 million) received fundingfrom the Gates Foundation.

The report itself was funded by the Open Philanthropy project, one of whose main funders is Dustin Moscovitz, co-founder of Facebook along with Mark Zuckerberg.

Open Philanthropy, over the past decade, has provided donations and grants to the following entities and for the following purposes:

• $166.9 million for “global health.”
• $90.2 million for “biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.”
• $18 million for “global catastrophic risks.”
• $40.2 to Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
• $17.9 to NTI.
• $2.2 to The Guardian.
• $1.6 to Rockefeller University.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at center of multiple tabletop exercises

NTI and the Munich Security Conference are not new to “tabletop exercises” — their reporthighlights previous simulations, including a 2019 report titled “A Spreading Plague,” and a 2020 report titled “Preventing Global Catastrophic Biological Risks.”

Other simulations in the recent past, in addition to Event 201, include:

• Operation Dark Winter (June 2001, less than three months before the 9/11 attacks and subsequent anthrax scare, “examining the national security, intergovernmental, and information challenges of a biological attack on the American homeland”).
• Operation Atlantic Storm (January 2005, “designed to mimic a summit of transatlantic leaders forced to respond to a bioterrorist attack”).
• The Clade X exercise (May 2018, “to illustrate high-level strategic decisions and policies that the United States and the world will need to pursue in order to prevent a pandemic or diminish its consequences should prevention fail”). Yassif helped develop the Clade X exercise.

The common denominator among all of these simulations? The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which published a documenttitled “The SPARS Pandemic 2025-2028,” comprising “a futuristic scenario that illustrates communication dilemmas concerning medical countermeasures (MCMs) that could plausibly emerge in the not-so-distant future.”

Predictions for the future don’t end there, however. For instance, in September 2017, NTI and the WEF organized a roundtable discussion on the current state of biological risks presented by technology advancement in light of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

And in January 2020, NTI and the WEF again joined forces, issuing a report titled “Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction: A Global Framework for Accessible, Safe and Secure DNA Synthesis.”

According to the report:

“Rapid advancements in commercially available DNA synthesis technologies — used for example to artificially create gene sequences for clinical diagnosis and treatment — pose growing risks, with the potential to cause a catastrophic biological security threat if accidentally or deliberately misused.”

Merck, whose head of corporate affairs participated in the monkeypox simulation, was the subject of an FBI and CDC investigation in November 2021 regarding 15 suspicious vials labeled “smallpox” at a Merck facility in Philadelphia.

Bill Gates no stranger to predicting the future

Bill Gates has himself been remarkably prescient with his predictions of future events.

Here are some of Gates’ predictions:

• In a November 2015 TED talk, he stated “[i]f anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes.”
• In a 2017 speech at that year’s Munich Security Conference, he said “the next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus,” arguing in favor of the merger of “health security” and “international security.”
• In May 2021, Gates said “[s]omebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus so that the cost, the chance of running into this is more than that of naturally-caused epidemics such as the current one … [t]he ways the humans interact with other species, these viruses are coming across the species barriers whether it’s bats or monkeys.”
• In November 2021, Gates publicly pondered, “[y]ou say, OK, what if a bioterrorist brought smallpox to 10 airports? You know, how would the world respond to that? There’s naturally-caused epidemics and bioterrorism-caused epidemics that could even be way worse than what we experienced today.”
• In February 2022, Gates warned that the next pandemic “… won’t necessarily be a coronavirus or even the flu. It is likely to be a respiratory virus. Because, with all the human travel we have now, that’s the one that can spread in such a rapid way,” emphasizing the significance of providing sufficient funds to the private sector and academia to build better vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.
• Earlier this month, Gates called for the development of a so-called “Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization” (GERM) initiative, stating that present WHO funding was “not at all serious about pandemics” and that $1 billion a year would be needed to operate this initiative.
• Also this month, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced “a new financial commitment of up to US$125 million to help end the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future pandemics,” with much of the money going toward “strengthening health systems in low-income countries, enhancing integrated disease monitoring, expanding access to pandemic tools, and helping countries manage COVID-19 alongside other pressing health needs.”
• In his new book, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic,” Gates argues that, despite COVID fatigue, the world must focus on preparing for future pandemics, regardless of whether a disease is circulating.

source: the defender children health defense news and views 

Saudi Arabia will maintain its extensive trade relations with both Ukraine and Russia, Economy and Planning Minister Faisal Al-Ibrahim said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Speaking to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper, the minister said Western sanctions against Russia are “unilateral” and will remain as such.

Al-Ibrahim also praised Moscow’s role in the OPEC+ format, which unites major oil exporters.

The minister explained that Riyadh does not plan to increase oil output in order to lower prices, explaining that his country is currently focused on supply stability rather than more volume. He argued that the situation on international energy markets would be “much worse” if not for OPEC’s efforts.

The US, the EU and their allies have slapped Moscow with unprecedented sanctions following Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine. The restrictions have targeted Russia’s financial and banking sectors as well as aviation and the space industry. Numerous government officials, public figures and businessmen have been slapped with personal sanctions.

The US and Canada have banned Russian oil imports, while the EU is still debating the issue. The measure, which was expected to be included in Brussels’ sixth round of sanctions since the start of the conflict, has faced resistance from Hungary.

On Tuesday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen argued that the bloc continues to buy Russian oil supposedly to prevent Moscow from taking it to the world market and profiting from soaring prices.

Other nations have been reluctant to join the Western sanctions push. China increased its energy imports from Russia in April. Purchases of oil, gas and coal soared by 75% last month, according to Bloomberg.

India has said it could invest in energy projects in Russia abandoned by Western companies such as Exxon and Shell. In Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has compared the sanctions with a nuclear bomb, arguing they could backfire and lead to food shortages and mass migration.

Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

source: rt.com

A state of emergency has been declared in New York City amid the ongoing nationwide baby formula shortage, potentially allowing officials to combat profiteering on the scarce products.

The move, which was announced by Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday, gives the city's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection the power to prevent price gouging by cracking down on retailers.

"This emergency executive order will help us to crack down on any retailer looking to capitalize on this crisis by jacking up prices on this essential good,” said Adams. “Our message to struggling mothers and families is simple: Our city will do everything in its power to assist you during this challenging period."

A press release by city officials also states that parents in New York City who feel they are being overcharged for infant formula can now file a complaint on the NYC official government website.

The US has been faced with a nationwide shortage of baby formula since February, after already existing supply chain issues stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic were exacerbated by a major product recall by one of the country’s main formula manufacturers, Abbott Laboratories, which was also forced to shut down its largest production facility in the country after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reportedly found evidence of bacterial contamination at the plant which allegedly contributed to four infants falling ill, two of which died.

Abbott has denied the allegations, and insists that no bacterial contamination has been found in its end products. The manufacturer has been working with the FDA to relaunch its production facility as soon as possible, but has noted that it could still be months before stock from the plant will reach store shelves.

Meanwhile, the White House has been attempting to ease the ongoing shortage, by invoking the Defense Production Act, which gives the US president the authority to force manufacturers to prioritize contracts deemed necessary for national defense, regardless of any losses incurred, and allows the government to designate materials prohibited from hoarding and price gouging.

The Pentagon has also announced a military operation to transport products from overseas to the US so long as they meet safety and nutritional guidelines set by the FDA, which has promised to streamline the review process to allow the baby formula to reach store shelves quicker.

source: rt.com

The US plans to invest billions on Arctic defense including modernizing its Thule Air Base in Greenland, Danish newspaper Berlingske reported on Monday, citing a US military report. Neither the Danish nor Greenlandic authorities have been informed of the plans, it claimed.

According to the outlet, the US has given the green light to “significant investments” into its northernmost base amid “increasingly aggressive” behavior from Russia. Citing a statement from the US Air Force, Berlingske wrote that the money would go to upgrading aging infrastructure at Thule. No further details on the matter have been provided and the American embassy in Copenhagen reportedly declined to elaborate.

The plans, Berlingske claimed, came as a surprise to the Danish parliament and the Greenlandic government, as the United States is supposed to “consult and inform” both nations regarding any significant changes to its military operations in Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

“This is our country, so we want to know when something is happening,” Pipaluk Lynge Rasmussen, a chairman of the foreign and security committee in the Greenlandic parliament was quoted as saying.

The news comes shortly after the US Navy and Marine Corps announced that they would be conducting more operations in the Arctic.

Earlier this month the commander of the US Northern Command and North American Aerospace, Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, said that in view of rising activity from Russia and China in the region, the Arctic now plays a central role in the US deterrence strategy.

Thule air base lies about 750 miles (1207 km) north of the Arctic Circle and 946 miles (1522 km) from the North Pole on the world’s largest island. Initially it was established to protect the Danish colonies on Greenland from Germany during the Second World War. In recent years it has been mainly used as an advanced-warning system to detect and track ballistic missiles.

source: rt.com

Europe should expect a wave of monkeypox cases in the coming months, according to Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization's top official on the continent.

“As we enter the summer season… with mass gatherings, festivals and parties, I am concerned that transmission [of monkeypox] could accelerate,” Kluge said on Friday.

The number of the infected could rise because “the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity,” and many don't recognize the symptoms, he added.

The current spread of the virus in Western Europe is “atypical” as it was previously confined mostly to central and west Africa, the WHO regional director for Europe added.

“All but one of the recent cases have no relevant travel history to areas where monkeypox is endemic,” Kluge said.

Dozens of cases of monkeypox – a disease that leaves distinctive pustules on skin but rarely results in fatalities – have been detected in the US, Canada and Australia as well as in the UK, France, Portugal, Sweden and other European countries.

The French, Belgian and German health authorities reported their first infections on Friday. In Belgium, the three confirmed cases of monkeypox were linked to a fetish festival in the city of Antwerp.

The rare virus was found in Israel on the same day, in a man who returned from the hotspot in Western Europe.

Most initial cases of monkeypox have been among gay or bisexual men who have had sex with other males.

Kluge's concerns were shared by UK Health Security Agency's chief medical adviser, Susan Hopkins, who said she expected “this increase to continue in the coming days and for more cases to be identified in the wider community.”

Britain had registered 20 monkeypox infections as of Friday, with Hopkins saying that a “notable proportion” of them were among gay and bisexual men. She urged people in that group to be cautious and remain on the lookout for symptoms.

Source: rt.com

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, without convening its vaccine advisory panel of independent experts to discuss Pfizer’s data on 5- to 11-year-olds — and based on a study subset of only 67 children, CNBC reported.

The FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the boosters despite data showing higher infection rates among fully vaccinated children in the 5 to 11 age group compared to unvaccinated children, no studies testing the efficacy of the vaccine against the current dominant BA.2 COVID-19 variant and two new studies showing that for vaccinated people who get Omicron, the infection provides better protection against future infections than a second booster dose.

The vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is scheduled to meet Thursday. The agency and its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, are expected to sign off on the boosters, The Washington Post reported.

Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said data increasingly show protection provided by two shots wanes over time, but the agency determined a third shot could help boost protection for children in the 5 to 11 age group and the “benefits outweigh the risks.”

The FDA authorized the third shot after analyzing data from an ongoing Pfizer clinical trial in which a small subset of only 67 children in the age group had higher antibody levels one month after receiving a booster dose.

As The Defender reported, antibody levels alone are not indicative of immune protection. When it comes to COVID-19, T cell and natural killer cell responses are the crucial part of immune protection.

Pfizer has not published its actual data, precluding experts from conducting this analysis.

A video of members of the nationalist Azov Battalion and Ukrainian troops surrendering to Russian forces after being holed up for weeks at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol has been released by the Russian Defense Ministry.

The clip, which was published on Tuesday, shows the Azov neo-Nazis and Ukrainian regular forces members being searched by the Russian servicemen and put on buses which were waiting for them outside the plant.

Many of those who laid down their arms appeared to be seriously wounded as they were carried out on stretchers. Some of the injured were filmed receiving medical assistance on site.

The government in Kiev gave the order to surrender to its fighters at Azovstal on Monday. Since then, 265 members of the nationalist Azov Battalion and Ukrainian troops have laid down their arms, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry, adding that 51 of them are seriously wounded. The injured were transported to a hospital in the town of Novoazovsk, controlled by the Donetsk People’s Republic.

source: rt.com

A video of members of the nationalist Azov Battalion and Ukrainian troops surrendering to Russian forces after being holed up for weeks at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol has been released by the Russian Defense Ministry.

The clip, which was published on Tuesday, shows the Azov neo-Nazis and Ukrainian regular forces members being searched by the Russian servicemen and put on buses which were waiting for them outside the plant.

Many of those who laid down their arms appeared to be seriously wounded as they were carried out on stretchers. Some of the injured were filmed receiving medical assistance on site.

The government in Kiev gave the order to surrender to its fighters at Azovstal on Monday. Since then, 265 members of the nationalist Azov Battalion and Ukrainian troops have laid down their arms, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry, adding that 51 of them are seriously wounded. The injured were transported to a hospital in the town of Novoazovsk, controlled by the Donetsk People’s Republic.

source: rt.com

Second and third doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19vaccine provide protection against the Omicron variant for only a few weeks, according to peer-reviewed researchpublished today in JAMA Network Open.

“Our study found a rapid decline in Omicron-specific serum neutralizing antibody titers only a few weeks after the second and third doses of [the Pfizer-BioNTech] BNT162b2,” the authors of the research letter wrote.

The authors said their findings “could support rolling out additional booster shots to vulnerable people as the variant drives an uptick in new cases across the country,” Forbes reported.

Danish researchers studied adults who received two or three doses of BNT162b2 between January 2021 and October 2021, or were previously infected prior to February 2021 and then vaccinated.

They found that after an initial increase in Omicron-specific antibodies after the second Pfizer shot, levels dropped rapidly, from 76.2% at week 4, to 53.3% at weeks 8 to 10, and 18.9% at weeks 12 to 14.

After the third shot, neutralizing antibodies against Omicron fell 5.4-fold between week 3 and week 8.

A preprint study released in February showed Pfizer’s two-dose regimen of its COVID-19 vaccine for children was only 12% effectiveagainst Omicron in children ages 9 to 11, and the effectiveness of the vaccine “declined rapidly” for children 5-11.

Researchers at the New York State Department of Health and the University at Albany School of Public Health examined the effectiveness of the vaccine in children 5 to 11 and adolescents 12 to 17 from Dec. 13, 2021 to Jan. 30, 2022.

The authors of the New York study wrote:

“In the Omicron era, the effectiveness against cases of BNT162b2 declined rapidly for children, particularly those 5-11 years. However, vaccination of children 5-11 years was protective against severe disease and is recommended.”

FDA admits boosters ineffective at preventing infection, but continues to support strategy

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory panel met April 6 — a week after authorizing a second booster dose for people over age 50 and the immunocompromised — to discuss the FDA’s booster strategy amid reports of waning effectiveness.

After nine-and-a-half hours, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) failed to reach a consensus.

Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s vaccine division, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, admitted during the meeting that the fourth booster dose approved March 29 was a “stopgap measure” — in other words, a temporary measure to be implemented until a proper solution may be found in the future.

The FDA’s lead scientist for the strategy session, Doran Fink, admitted COVID-19 vaccine efficacy is waning for severe outcomes.

A Jan. 19 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed natural immunity against COVID-19 was at least three times as effective as vaccination alone at preventing people from becoming infected with the Delta variant.

Overall, the CDC study showed natural immunity outperformed vaccine immunity when it came to preventing infection and hospitalization from Delta. The agency late last month said almost 60% of Americans have had COVID-19.

A batch of Pfizer documents released April 1 confirmed Pfizer knew natural immunity was as effective as the company’s COVID-19 vaccine at preventing severe illness, The Defender reported last month.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials earlier this month suggested annual vaccinesagainst COVID-19 may be necessary in the future.

Source: the defender children health defense news and views 

Outer space isn’t what most people would think of as an ecosystem. Its barren and frigid void isn’t exactly akin to the verdant canopies of a rainforest or to the iridescent shoals that swim among coral cities.

But if we are to become better stewards of the increasingly frenzied band of orbital space above our atmosphere, a shift to thinking of it as an ecosystem — as part of an interconnected system of living things interacting with their physical environment — may be just what we need.

Last month, in the journal Nature Astronomy, a collective of 11 astrophysicists and space scientists proposed we do just that, citing the proliferation of anthropogenic space objects.

Thousands of satellites currently orbit the Earth, with commercial internet providers such as SpaceX’s Starlink launching new ones at a dizzying pace.

Based on proposals for projects in the future, the authors note, the number could reach more than a hundred thousand within the decade.

Artificial satellites, long a vital part of the space ecosystem, have arguably become an invasive species.

The band of orbital space just above our atmosphere is becoming so densely populated with satellites that it may threaten the practice of astronomy. Whereas the main source of light interference used to be the cities below, it is now increasingly the satellites above.

These artificial stars can be a billion times brighter than the objects astronomers hope to study, and they emit radio waves that can interfere with telescopes.

By some estimates, around one in twenty images from the Hubble Telescope are affected by the streaks of passing satellites. By 2030, the authors say, a third of Hubble’s images could be impacted.

Yet the choice by the authors of the Nature Astronomy paper to call the orbital space around Earth an ecosystem reflects the fact that it’s not just astronomers who are affected by the recent infiltration of the night sky.

Rather, the cluttering of orbital space is impacting the well-being of creatures both above the skies and below.

To begin with, there are the handful of astronauts at any given moment who call low-Earth orbit home — and the plants, worms, and tardigrades that have been their playthings on the International Space Station.

Space junk created by the rare but inevitable collisions between satellites — which can travel faster than bullet speed — is becoming a threat to that life. Last year, a 5-millimeter hole was punctured in the International Space Station’s robotic arm by the debris of unknown origin.

But clutter in low-Earth orbit also threatens ways of life for entire communities of people here on the ground. The traditions and cosmologies of many Indigenous peoples, for example, are rooted in the movements of the stars. Polynesian sailors’ feats of navigation by starlight are unparalleled.

The Palikur people of the Amazon see constellations as boats driven by shamans that bring rain and seasonal fish. The recent deluge of light pollution in our night skies is more than a headache to these and other Indigenous peoples, whose cosmologies may wither if the numbers of satellites aren’t kept in check.

New artificial mega-constellations could mask those that have been relied on for millennia. (This issue may provide rare common ground between Indigenous peoples and professional astronomers, the latter of whom have historically been aligned with colonialism and courted controversy with the construction of new telescopes on sacred Indigenous lands.)

For many non-human animals, evidence suggests that a clear night sky might be a basic survival need.

The hazy stripe of the Milky Way is used by dung beetles to navigate back to their burrows. Migratory birds, harbor seals, and some species of moths all use the movement of the stars as a compass too. Who knows how many other creatures might depend on a clear view of the night sky?

To protect the space ecosystem, we should treat it the way many aspire to treat our atmosphere and our oceans: as a global commons, a resource that lies beyond national, corporate, or individual ownership.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty took steps toward this ideal by recognizing that all nations have an equal interest in the exploration and use of outer space.

Yet even that treaty establishes space as a resource humans can use for our own benefit. That’s like defining an ecosystem in terms of the natural capital it offers to humans, rather than recognizing the protection of habitats and biodiversity as an intrinsic good.

More apt would be to emphasize not the potential benefits that space provides to humans but rather the potential threats that humans pose to orbital space.

In this view, overuse of the global commons by any one actor imposes a shared expense on us all. In our management of Antarctica, for example, preservation goes hand in hand with human activity on the continent.

In this light, we shouldn’t see low Earth orbit as the next frontier of capitalist extraction, but rather as an ecosystem to be protected — one that, like other ecosystems, has limits and tipping points beyond which there is no return.

Some groups have started to open up conversations and build initiatives to this effect. The authors of the Nature Astronomy paper, for example, propose a “space traffic footprint” akin to a carbon footprint.

And in February, the International Astronomical Union launched the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference.

The center, which will be co-hosted by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab and the Square Kilometer Array Observatory, aims to act as a hub of information and advocacy, bringing together stakeholders such as astronomers, ecologists, and Indigenous peoples alike.

While much remains to be done, the issue is one of perspective as much as policy. It will take a shared commitment to the value of a clear night sky, and collaboration across diverse communities, to preserve orbital space for generations to come.

Unlike other ecosystems, the near-barrenness of the band of space just beyond our atmosphere is precisely what makes it unique and valuable. Preserving this transparent window grants us all access to what lies beyond.

source: the defender children health defense news and views 

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban in a speech to lawmakers has accused Brussels of power abuse and has also pledged to resist the EU’s agenda of “gender madness and a liberal Europe.”

On Monday, Orban took his oath of office after being elected in April for a fourth consecutive term. In his usual manner, the premier did not spare harsh statements when addressing parliament.

“Brussels is abusing its power every day, and it wants to force on us things we don’t want,” the prime minister said.

In Orban’s opinion, the EU leadership is seeking to reduce the sovereignty of member states and to build “the United States of Europe.”

“Cultural alienation is growing between western and eastern Europe,” Orban claimed.

However, he argued that it’s in Hungary’s interests to remain in the European Union, as long as it can remain “an independent and free country.”

“We are not members of the European Union because it is as it is, but as it could be,” he explained.

Predicting that the current decade would be an “age of danger,” full of insecurity, with wars, epidemics and increased immigration potentially laying ahead, Orban pledged to resist any attempts by the West to engage Hungary in what he called “suicide waves.”

“The picture of the decade of war ahead of us also includes the suicide waves of the Western world,” Orban said. As examples of such “suicide waves” he cited a replenishment of the insufficient number of Christian babies through the influx of migrants, as well as the “agenda of gender madness and a liberal Europe.”

“In this situation, the route for Hungary must be set,” the prime minister said, before expressing certainty that his compatriots will be able to resist attacks on their national identity and traditions, as these are “carved out of hardwood.”

Commenting on the sixth package of sanctions which the EU is now preparing in response to Russia’s military attack on Ukraine and which includes a gradual ban on Russian hydrocarbons, Orban reassured parliament that his country would not stand in the way of imposing new restrictions against Moscow, as long as these do not threaten Hungary’s energy security. Stressing that Budapest should maintain an independent policy within the European Union, Orban argued that the same applies to NATO membership.

“NATO is a firm supporter, but it will not defend Hungary for us… The most urgent task is to strengthen the Hungarian army and make it a real army,” the prime minister stressed.

source: rt.com

UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has died, according to an official announcement by UAE news agency WAM on Friday, May 13.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who was also the ruler of Abu Dhabi, was elected as the new president of the UAE in 2004. 

His role had been largely ceremonial  since 2014 after he suffered a stroke.

He was seen as one of the most powerful people in the region, with TIME magazine having ranked him as “one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2019”. The New York Times in 2019 similarly dubbed him the most powerful Arab ruler, as well as one of the most powerful men on Earth.

Since 2004, the emir of Abu Dhabi was named “supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces,” and was seen as one of the most influential individuals in both his own country, and the region as a whole as a key figure in global oil dealings.

Biography

He succeeded his father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who served as UAEPresident from 1971 to 2004 and is seen as one of the founders of the United Arab Emirates.

Born in the inland oasis-city of Al Ain in 1948, Khalifa was a strong supporter of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

He believed that the success and achievements of the GCC “reflect the depth of understanding reached amongst its leaders,” according to the UAE embassy.

Khalifa is the eldest son of Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. He graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Berkshire, Great Britain.

Sheikh Khalifa served as the 16th emir for the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Khalifa was known for his several initiatives seeking to improve and reform political and economical conditions in the country.

Khalifa was also the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a financial company. worth billions of dollars.

Source: Morocco World News.

Republican Representative Paul Gosar (Arizona) has condemned the push from both parties in Washington to send billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine. “Crippling debt, inflation and immigration problems,” he declared, are not “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s fault.”

Gosar, an immigration hardliner and anti-interventionist, was one of 57 GOP lawmakers to vote against a $40 billion economic and military aid bill for Ukraine on Tuesday. While a number of Republicans have been vocal in their opposition to fueling a “proxy war” in Ukraine, the GOP establishment has shouted down these critics, with conservative talk show host Mark Levin on Wednesday referring to the anti-war contingent of the party as “Putin a**-kissers.”

“Calling us names is not a logical position,”Gosar shot back, stating: “I have no principle to follow but the path of peace and non-intervention. My grown children have known nothing except American war and intervention for naught.”

“Ukraine is not our ally,” he continued. “Russia is not our enemy. We need to address our crippling debt, inflation and immigration problems. None of this is Putin's fault.”

Americans are currently grappling with record gas prices, inflation at a four-decade high, and shortages of vital food products, including baby formula. Furthermore, the expiration of a Trump-era immigration restriction this month will result in up to 18,000 migrants entering the US from Mexico daily, according to estimatesfrom the Department of Homeland Security.

Since the beginning of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in February, Biden has sent nearly $4 billion worth of weapons and ammunition to Kiev, and revived a World War II-era act allowing a limitless supply of arms to be shipped to Ukraine on credit.

Meanwhile, at home the White House has banned Russian oil and gas imports, and although industry leaders are warning of an imminent diesel shortage, Biden, on Wednesday, canceled the sale of drilling leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the opposition of Gosar and his allies, the $40 billion funding bill passed by 368 votes to 57. It is expected to pass the Senate by next week at the latest, with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) saying the upper chamber “will move swiftly” to get it to Biden’s desk.
source: rt.com 

A US plan to provide nearly $40 billion in additional military and economic aid to Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia has hit a speed bump, with Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) blocking a quick vote to approve the funding bill and likely delaying passage to at least next week.

Paul stood in the way on Thursday by objecting to a request by Senate leaders to approve “unanimous consent,” a provision that allows bills with strong bipartisan support to be fast-tracked without debate. The former presidential candidate said he would only allow for a quick vote if the bill was revised to include the appointment of a special inspector general to monitor how the massive aid package is spent – a demand that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) refused to meet.

Schumer claimed that Washington had a “moral obligation” to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “immoral war.” He said Paul’s oversight provision was strongly opposed by Democrats and Republicans alike.

“There is now only one thing holding us back: The junior senator from Kentucky is preventing swift passage of Ukraine aid because he wants to add, at the last minute, his own changes directly into the bill,” the majority leader said. He added, “All he will accomplish is to singlehandedly delay desperately needed Ukraine aid.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) also pressed for an immediate vote on the bill, which passed overwhelmingly in the House on Wednesday. He called for Paul’s revision to be voted on as an amendment, which would likely fail, clearing the way for passage of the aid package.

Paul insisted that his proposal be added to the bill, which would require that the revised legislation go back to the House for another vote after Senate approval. He noted that the latest package would bring total US aid to Ukraine to $60 billion since the conflict began in February, nearly as much as Russia earmarks annually for its entire defense budget.

The senator argued that the US would be funding Ukraine’s war effort with borrowed money, adding to America’s $30 trillion debt and worsening its inflation crisis. “Americans are feeling the pain, and Congress seems intent on only adding to that pain by shoving more money out the door as fast as they can,”Paul said.

My oath of office is to the US Constitution, not to any foreign nation, and no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America. We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.

The aid bill passed the House with support from all Democrats and all but 57 Republicans. The package would be more than double the total amount sent to the 10 largest recipients of US foreign aid in 2021. Those who opposed the legislation, such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), were accused of spreading “Putin’s propaganda.”

Paul said the US is still trying to recover financially from the $1.6 trillion spent on Middle East wars and the $5 trillion borrowed to fund the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We should not forget that the Soviet Union collapsed in large part not because it was defeated militarily, but because it ran out of money,” he said. “In an attempt to save Ukraine, will we doom the US to such a future?”

source: rt.com

The surging adoption of mobile communication technologies, such as 5G and 4G, burgeoning demand for mobile devices, and rising adoption of the internet of things (IoT) technology will propel the radiofrequency (RF) transceiver market at a CAGR of 0.8% during the forecast period (2020–2030). The market was valued at $3,892.1 million in 2019 and it is projected to reach $3,384.5 million revenue by 2030, on account of the decline in the prices of RF transceivers. In recent years, the escalating demand for wideband transceivers has become a prominent market trend.

One of the key growth drivers for the market is the escalating usage of mobile phones across the world. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Telecommunication Database, in 2019, 7.98 billion people across the world were using mobile phones. In recent years, these devices have rapidly penetrated the developing countries, such as India and China, due to their prospering economies, escalating disposable income of people, and growing public awareness of connected devices and new technologies.

Browse detailed - RF Transceiver Market Revenue Estimation and Growth Forecast Report

Currently, the RT transceiver market is highly consolidated and competitive, with the presence of several global players. Some of the key players in the market are Skyworks Solutions Inc., Fujitsu Ltd., Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, ZTE Corporation, Qualcomm Incorporated, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Broadcom Inc., Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Qorvo Inc., Nokia Corporation, STMicroelectronics N.V., NXP Semiconductors N.V., Analog Devices Inc., ON Semiconductor Corporation, Texas Instruments Incorporated, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Infineon Technologies AG.

Categories under the application segment of the RF transceiver market are mobile devices, embedded modules, add-on cards, routers, and others, such as gaming and customized devices. Under this segment, the mobile devices category generated the highest revenue in 2019, due to the burgeoning reliance of people on wireless communication networks. Moreover, the rapid adoption of mobile phones in Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries, such as Japan, India, and China, is also facilitating the growth of this category.

As Elon Musk prepares to finalize his purchase of Twitter, government officials in the U.S., the U.K., the European Union (EU) and elsewhere are introducing new legislation aimed at combating “disinformation” online — particularly on social media platforms.

In the U.S., these proposals include a government “disinformation board” and a bill pending before Congress, the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act.

Overseas measures include the EU’s recently passed Digital Services Act and the U.K.’s proposed Online Safety Bill, in addition to similar existing legislation in Germany and other countries.

Shortly after Musk moved to buy Twitter, several dozen countries and entities — including the U.S. and EU — announced the ratification of the “Declaration for the Future of the Internet,” which, among other things, aims to “bolster resilience to disinformation and misinformation, and increase participation in democratic processes.”

These and other policies purport to hold tech companies, and in particular major social media platforms ranging from Twitter to Facebook to TikTok, responsible for hate speech and “disinformation” posted by users on their platforms, while opening up the tech giants’ algorithms and moderation practices to the public eye.

However, questions also arise as to what effect these regulations — including those originating from outside the U.S. — would have on the operation of tech platforms in the U.S. and globally.

Biden administration targets online ‘disinformation’

Two days after Elon Musk announced he was purchasing Twitter, the Biden administration announced the formation of a “Disinformation Governance Board.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the announcement in testimony delivered April 27 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee.

“The goal is to bring the resources of [DHS] together to address this threat,” Mayorkas said, adding that the department is focused on the spread of disinformation in minority communities.

The “focus” of this new board will be “Russia and irregular migration.”

However, it is unclear what constitutes “disinformation” in the views of Mayorkas, the DHS or the Biden administration, or why it appears to be a particular problem in vaguely defined “minority communities.”

Michael Rectenwald, author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom” and former New York University (NYU) professor who sued NYU in 2016 as a result of “cancel culture and settled with the university in 2019,” told The Defender:

“The Biden Politburo’s disinformation board will likely institute regulations that mirror the EU’s DSA by imposing similar if not identical restrictions on information and opinion.

“Musk will … likely face legislative threats from Democratic lawmakers, and other forms of coercion from the national and international establishment, including especially … from the EU’s [Digital Services Act]and the new U.S. disinformation board.”

Rectenwald said if “Musk is to have his way,” Twitter “would no longer discriminate against content based on wokeness, political beliefs or the adherence to official state narratives and dictates.”

This could include the restoration of banned accounts on request by users and dramatic changes to Twitter’s discriminatory, leftist algorithms.

“However, pressure to conform to woke dictates will come from the Big Tech ‘woke’ cartel, including threats to remove the Twitter app from the Apple Store for failure to censor ‘hate speech,’ and the flight of ‘woke’ advertisers,” Rectenwald said.

Will ‘disinformation’ be categorized as ‘terrorism’?

Former President George W. Bush establishedthe DHS in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, with a view toward protecting the U.S. against terrorism — suggesting the federal government may now be equating “disinformation” with terrorism.

Nina Jankowicz will be executive director of the new board. As reported by Politico, Jankowicz previously served as a “disinformation fellow” at the Wilson Center for Public Policy, advised the Ukrainian foreign ministry, and oversaw “Russia and Belarus programs” at the National Democratic Institute.

As previously reported by The Defender, the Ukrainian government has leveraged its close ties with “Big Tech” — including for the development of vaccine passports — to use social media and digital technologies as a “wartime tool.”

Jankowicz announced her new appointment on Twitter, stating she is “honored” to be helping the Biden administration’s “counter-disinformation efforts.”

Jankowicz previously shared concerns about “lies” spread on Twitter related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and about the legitimacy of news regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, which she referred to as a “Trump campaign product.”

She also is on record saying that setting up free speech in opposition to censorship is “a false dichotomy.”

Jankowicz made waves — and raised some eyebrows — with videos of her singing, “Who do I f*ck to be famous and powerful?” and talking about “solving the mystery between Harry Potter’s legs.”

Musk: disinformation board ‘discomforting’

Musk in a tweet characterized the establishment of Biden’s disinformation board as “discomforting” and as a development akin to the practices of Nazi Germany.

Musk described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and announced his intention to turn Twitter into a “digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

He also indicated there likely will be changes to Twitter’s moderation policies and the manner in which it handles account bans.

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk said.

He later later clarified in a tweet his definition of free speech, stating:

“By ‘free speech’ I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

“If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits government censorship of information, making the implications of a government “disinformation board” or other similar measures unclear.

For instance, in addition to the new “disinformation board,” there is legislation currently pending in the U.S. House, the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act, that would require more transparency and reporting from Big Tech platforms regarding how they moderate content.

However, this proposed law, as well as the disinformation board, also appear to run afoul of established U.S. law, namely, Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, which prevents Big Tech platforms from being held liable for the content posted by their users.

Such companies have used Section 230 to argue they are not “publishers” of content —  which would bring with it other legal obligations.

However, the platforms do actively engage in content moderation, including the removal of posts and the suspension of user accounts for posting certain content, including alleged “disinformation.”

World Health Organization wary of Musk’s Twitter takeover

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter elicited a public reaction from the World Health Organization (WHO).

During an April 26 virtual WHO conference, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said Musk will have a “huge influence” over the curbing and potential spreading of vaccine misinformation on Twitter.

However, Ryan added it’s not just Twitter but all social media platforms that need to address misinformation.

Notably, the WHO has itself been closely linked with social media fact-checkers, particularly in response to alleged COVID-19-related “disinformation,” as previously reported by The Defender.

Specifically, the WHO closely collaborates with NewsGuard, a fact-checking firm that is also closely tied to several Big Pharma drugmakers.

NewsGuard, in turn, partners with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), whose board members recently expressed several concerns regarding Musk’s Twitter purchase.

Damian Collins, a member of the British parliament with the Labour Party who led a parliamentary committee that developed the Online Safety Bill, is a CCDH board member.

Responding to Musk’s Twitter buyout, Collins said if Musk truly wishes to make Twitter a free-speech haven, “he will need to clean up the digital town square,” adding that up until now, Twitter users would frequently be drowned out by “bot” accounts spreading “disinformation,” resulting in users refraining from expressing themselves “because of the hate and abuse they will receive.”

Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s chief executive and former investment banker with Merrill Lynch —  who also maintains close ties to the U.K. Labour Party — expressed similar sentiments, stating “[T]he U.K. and the EU are going to have tools to deal with this. Twitter is going to find it very difficult to operate in the U.K. if it tries to operate on a completely free-speech, zero-rules basis.”

Dr. Joseph Mercola previously described CCDH as “a progressive cancel-culture leader” with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled questioning the COVID-19 injection as ‘threats to national security.’”

Specifically regarding COVID-19 vaccines, for instance, CCDH has warned the “anti-vaccine movement could undermine the roll-out of any future vaccine against COVID-19.”

CCDH has added that the pandemic “will only be overcome by the most ambitious vaccination programme in human history” and that those who question this program have fringe and extremist views.

source: the defender children health defense news and views 

Wayne Rohde knows what it’s like to have a child injured by a vaccine — his son was diagnosed with an encephalitic brain injury at 13 months old, after getting the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

Rohde also has personal experience navigating the process of trying to get financial compensation for a child’s vaccine injury.

The author of “The Vaccine Court 2.0: Revised and Updated: The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program” (2021) sat down with The Defender to discuss how the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has evolved — or devolved — in the last two decades to protect government agencies and corporations rather than the health of vaccinated children.

The revised and updated edition of “The Vaccine Court,” first published in 2014, includes a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman of Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

The VICP, which came to be known as “the vaccine court,” was established in 1988 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to compensate individuals and families of individuals injured by covered childhood vaccines.

It has drawn fire for its highly adversarial process and its decisions regarding what injuries it would compensate, including its refusal to recognize autism as a potential vaccine injury.

Rohde, a co-founder of Vaccine Safety Council of Minnesota and the Autism Advocacy Coalition of Minnesota, became involved in vaccine safety and compensation issues because of a vaccine injury to his son Nicholas in 1998.

Nick and his fraternal twin brother, Austin, were born in October 1997, 10 days apart. Rohde said of their birth:

“They were a little bit premature, so we had to keep them in what they call the NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] for a month or so, and then we brought them home. But they quickly progressed, reaching all their developmental milestones at the age of 12 months — size, weight, actions, speech, everything — at 12 months they were there.”

In the boys’ 13th month, Rohde and his wife, Robyne, took them to the pediatrician for their first set of vaccinations, having chosen not to do any newborn vaccinations while the twins were in the NICU.

Rohde described what happened next:

“Nick had a severe reaction to the MMR vaccine and we went through a period of about two weeks of solid crying, screaming, vomiting, diarrhea, high temperatures and everything … then he began to settle down from that.

“We also noticed that he arched his back quite a bit from the reaction so we know that he was having a severe reaction.”

Then Nick was diagnosed with an encephalitic brain injury, Rohde said.

“Over a period of probably two years from then,” said Rohde, “he began the slow regressive journey of losing his speech, his ability to communicate or play socially with his brother and wanting to be isolated and do his own thing.”

“My wife suspected that there were some issues with the vaccination,” Rohde added. “But the pediatrician told us, ‘No — Einstein didn’t speak until he was 5 years old.’ But Nick had already been speaking when he suffered the injury.”

It took years of consulting doctors and specialists before Nick in 2003 was diagnosed by a Columbia University-trained psychiatrist in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with regressive autism.

Rohde said:

“We were afraid going in that this would be the diagnosis,” Rohde said. “The doctor then handed us two pages, Xeroxed out of a textbook, on autism, and a prescription for Ritalin and said, ‘This is all I know what to do.’”

Robyne began researching vaccine injuries and discovered the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) — a group co-founded by Barbara Loe Fisher, one of the parents who first lobbied Congress to pass the VICP in 1986.

Through the NVIC, the Rohdes made contact with attorney Clifford Shoemaker, who specialized in vaccine injury.

Shoemaker, a frequent advocate for the vaccine-injured before the VICP, reviewed the three banker’s boxes of medical records Rohde had accumulated and said, “Man, you guys got a great case for encephalopathy and vaccine injury, except you have one problem.”

“What’s that?” asked Rohde.

“Statute of limitations,” Shoemaker told Rohde.

“You only have three years from the onset of symptoms to file,” said Rohde, “and we were already [at] three years, nine months — we were past it, so that was really frustrating for us, so we said, ‘Well, what do we do?’”

Fighting for coverage for children with autism

Rohde became involved with compensation and coverage issues for children with autism.

“We were paying $3,000-$3,500 a month out of pocket for treatment for Nick — none of it was covered,” said Rohde. “So we started to advocate for changes to the law regarding insurance.”

“When the autism insurance coverage fight started in Oklahoma, I knew it was going to be a very difficult process,” Rohde told The Defender. “Oklahoma being very conservative, having the government require a business to do something was not a welcomed thought.”

“But we showed the cost of ignoring the problem and how the taxpayers were going to be on the hook,” he wrote.

Rohde lined up the conservative Democratic Sen. Jay Paul Gumm to help with the fight.

“The legislation quickly was nicknamed ‘Nick’s Law’ and it radiated across the state and by 2008, it was recognized across the country,” he said.

According to Rohde:

“A statewide poll was conducted by a highly credible polling service and the results told us the following: Nearly 80% of people thought autism should have insurance coverage. It [crossed] the political spectrum. That showed the public that the state Chamber of Commerce and the insurance lobby was against Nick’s Law. And that Nick’s Law had the support of the people of Oklahoma.

“We had loosely organized groups and organizations fighting together. We welcomed so many. Lots of people wrote letters telling me that they sold the farm to help pay for treatments for their son. Sisters cashing in college funds so their brother can get treatments. Third-generation ranchers selling their ranch so their granddaughter could get the help she needs.”

While the law, killed in committee, did not pass in Oklahoma while Rohde was a resident, a version of Nick’s Law passed in Texas in 2009, and similar legislation cleared the Michigan legislature in October 2012.

Illustrating the patchwork of state insurance coverage laws that characterize the healthcare system in the U.S., Rohde and his family eventually had to move to Minnesota, where Robyne got a job with private insurance that covered much of Nick’s treatment.

In 2012, Oklahoma passed a bill similar to Nick’s Law, joining a number of other states, including Arizona, South Carolina, Texas and Illinois.

According to Rohde, most states and federal employers now offer coverage for autism treatment due to the nationwide movement sparked in Oklahoma.

Questioning the ‘Vaccine Court’

“But the statute of limitations issue in the VICP kept bothering me,” Rohde said.

In 2010, Rohde contacted attorney Mary Holland, a vaccine injury advocate and current president of CHD — and other vaccine injury advocates including Robert Krakow, Louis Conte and Lisa Colin, who were then writing a scholarly legal paper, “Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.”

Published in 2011, the paper reviewed the decisions of the VICP in regard to autism injury cases.

The authors analyzed the decisions of the VICP in its unprecedented “omnibus” review in 2002 of more than 5,000 petitions filed by families claiming vaccines caused their children’s autism.

Holland and her co-authors wrote, “The VICP dismissed all the ‘test case’ claims of vaccine-induced autism, and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld all the decisions on review.”

In essence, this decision established the legal precedent that vaccines do not cause autism.

But Rohde agreed with the paper’s conclusion that “despite apparent judicial clarity and finality in these decisions, significant questions remain.

According to the paper:

“Are the cases of ‘autism’ that the VICP rejected in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding really different from the cases of ‘encephalopathy’ and ‘residual seizure disorder’ that the VICP has compensated before and since? Is it possible the VICP rejected cases of ‘autism’ because of the hot-button label and not because of real differences in injuries or evidence?

“This preliminary study suggests that the VICP has been compensating cases of vaccine-induced encephalopathy and residual seizure disorder associated with autism since the inception of the program.

“Through this preliminary study, the authors have found eighty-three cases of autism among those compensated for vaccine-induced brain damage. This finding raises fundamental questions about the integrity, transparency, and fairness of this forum.”

Rohde asked Holland what he could do to support efforts to obtain justice for the families of the vaccine-injured.

“Talk to the families,” she told him.

Rohde said, “I spent the next three years interviewing over 285 families about their experiences with the VICP, and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to put this together in a book, because people need to know about this,’ and so by 2014, I published the first book about the VICP, ‘The Vaccine Court: The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.’”

The book included interviews with families who sometimes spent years navigating the court to obtain compensation for their children.

In researching the original and the revised edition, Rohde discovered that successive secretaries of HHS were in violation of the law by failing to publicize the program to make parents aware of their options if they believed their child was injured by a vaccine.

“All the secretaries of HHS going all the way back to 1988 refused to publicize it,” he said. “They would not out of fear … if the public knew this was there, people wouldn’t vaccinate their children.”

Rohde also followed the money — and found that a lot of it wasn’t going to compensation.

The money meant to compensate victims is housed in a federal trust fund under the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

“The federal government’s putting their hand into the kitty, so to speak,” Rohde said, “and taking part of it off the top, so the federal government is motivated to keep the program the way it is because they’re receiving lots of money from it.”

Rohde said that, by law, the government can take 25% of funds received under the program to administer the VICP.

So the fund should deliver to victims 75 cents on every dollar, Rohde said, “but since many vaccine injuries involve multiple antigens delivered by one shot, the government is able to do the accounting so that it works out to more like 59 cents on the dollar.”

“The program is skewed to benefit the federal government and the pharmaceutical industry, naturally,” he said.

Rohde believes the program became even more favorable to the pharmaceutical industry in 2011, when the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 (Justice Elena Kagan recused herself) inBruesewitz v Wyeth LLC that vaccine manufacturers could not be held liable for design-defect claims against them brought by plaintiffs seeking compensation for injury or death caused by a vaccine’s side effects.

This decision stripped away a provision of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that allowed vaccine-injured plaintiffs to take their case to civil court if they were unsatisfied with the decision of the VICP.

One could say the VICP, once an administrative review of first resort, became — thanks to the Bruesewitz ruling — the “vaccine court” of first, last and only resort.

“If you want to know what this ruling did, read Justice Sotomayor’s dissent,” said Rohde. “She lays out what this is all about, what the program [VICP] is all about, and the problems we have faced since 2011 as we’re no longer able to sue the pharmaceutical industry.”

“Yes, that Sotomayor,” Rohde added. “The one who spoke in oral arguments so ignorantly about kids hospitalized with COVID-19 last year. Vaccine politics can make for strange bedfellows.”

‘The vaccine court no longer protects children’

Rohde pointed out that with the failure to cover autism injuries, the VICP began to move away from compensating injuries to children and began to compensate adult vaccine injuries instead.

“It’s funny,” Rohde said. “93% to 96% of all compensated cases [presented to] the VICP are now adults.”

Most of the cases now compensated, according to Rohde, involve adults who had an adverse reaction to the flu shot or DTP vaccine — in either the form of shoulder injuries due to improper administration of the vaccine, or Guillain-Barré syndrome in the wake of vaccination.

The shoulder injuries, which often involve surgery or extensive physical therapy to address, are mostly a result of people getting vaccinated by pharmacy technicians at “Walmart and CVS,” according to Rohde.

“The shot is supposed to be delivered at a 90-degree angle,” said Rohde, “and not too high up the shoulder, but these jab jockeys wouldn’t know or wouldn’t follow procedure and so a lot of people got a shoulder injury related to vaccine administration.”

“It’s almost like 80% of all petitions filed were for shoulder injuries and Guillain-Barré syndrome, and last year, 96% of all compensated cases were for adults. So children are being forced out of the program.”

Rohde said the main reason for this is that the VICP’s “special masters” (essentially the “judges” of the vaccine court) raised the bar on compensation for childhood vaccine injuries such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

“They started introducing junk science, including small studies with ambiguous results, to take things like SIDS and epileptic reactions in children to the DTP out of contention,” Rohde said.

“The special masters told attorneys you’re not going to be able to bring a case of SIDS; if you do you’re not going to be compensated for your time and your efforts, not going to be reimbursed, so basically what they’ve done is made it at such a high, extraordinary burden of proof, no one’s going to bring a SIDS case.”

source: the defender children health defense news and views 

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski has said that the pro-Ukraine protesters who threw red liquid at Sergey Andreyev, Russia’s ambassador to the country, in Warsaw had legitimate reasons to be angry at him. 

Andreyev was attacked as he was about to lay flowers in honor of fallen Red Army soldiers on Monday, when Russia celebrated its victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe. 

“The gathering of opponents of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, where genocidal crimes are committed every day, was legal,”Kaminski wrote on Twitter. “The emotions of Ukrainian women, who took part in the protest and whose husbands are bravely fighting to defend their homeland, are understandable.”  

The minister confirmed that Polish authorities had warned Russian diplomats not to partake in the traditional wreath-laying ceremony on Victory Day. 

Ambassador Sergey Andreyev was attacked by protesters opposing Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. He later said that the liquid was syrup and that he was unharmed. Moscow strongly condemned the incident, demanding that Poland arrange a new wreath-laying ceremony and guarantee security there. 

Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, meanwhile, told reporters that the attack was “by all means regrettable” and “an incident that should not have happened.” 

“Diplomats enjoy special protection regardless of the policies pursued by the governments they represent,” Rau said.

source: rt.com

President Joe Biden on Monday signed the Lend-Lease Act of 2022 into law. The Act, previously used to arm the Allies of World War II, will expedite American arms shipments to Ukraine, and has been warmly welcomed in Kiev.

Speaking as he signed the act at the White House, Biden vowed to continue arming the Ukrainians “in their fight to defend their country and their democracy.” He added that “the cost of the fight is not cheap but caving to aggression is even more costly.”

The act, which passed Congress last month with 417-10 votes in the House and no dissent in the Senate, suspends limitations on the quantity of weapons and other military supplies Biden can send to Ukraine or “other Eastern European countries,” although it stipulates that Kiev must subsequently pay for whatever it receives.

Weapons sent under this act are separate from the nearly $4 billion in military aid that the US has already sent to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s military operation in February, and from the $33 billion worth of military aid that the president recently asked Congress to approve.

The original lend-lease was enacted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in March 1941 – nine months before the US entered WWII – and amounted to $50.1 billion (980 billion in 2022 dollars) by September 1945. Although the Allies, including the Soviet Union, were supposed to pay for this aid, the US also accepted the lease of bases for its military instead.

Kiev’s ability to repay the US is currently questionable, considering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently asked the US and EU for $7 billion per month just to keep his country afloat.

That Biden chose May 9 to sign the WWII-era act was likely deliberate, considering that this date is celebrated as ‘Victory Day’ annually in Russia and a number of former Soviet countries, commemorating the defeat of fascism at the end of the Second World War.

Biden referred to the defeat of Nazi Germany during the signing ceremony on Monday, but did not mention Victory Day. Instead he noted that the European Coal and Steel Community, which would expand into the European Union, was formed on May 9, 1950.

The signing of the act was welcomed by Kiev, with Zelensky declaring it a “historic step” that will help Ukraine and the US “win together again … like 77 years ago.” Although Zelensky referenced WWII in his statement, the modern country’s history books often refer to it as a ‘German-Soviet war’, and Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera are now national heroesin Ukraine.

Earlier on Monday, Zelensky marked Victory Day by posting a photo of a Ukrainian soldier wearing Waffen SS insignia to his social media accounts, before deleting the image.

source: rt.com

The European Commission (EC) has proposed to stop property deals with Russian citizens, residents and entities, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing official documents. The measure is part of the EU’s sixth package of anti-Russia sanctions.

It would reportedly prohibit the sale or transfer, directly or indirectly, of “ownership rights in immovable property located within the territory of the Union or units in collective investment undertakings providing exposure to such immovable property.”

The prohibition applies to Russians who are not EU citizens and lack a residency permit in EU member states, the report says. It doesn’t apply to those who carry citizenship or residency in the European Economic Area or Switzerland.

The EU, the US and some other countries have slapped several rounds of unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow over its ongoing military operation in Ukraine. Thousands of Russian individuals in those countries have since been sanctioned, with their property and money seized or frozen.

source:rt.com

Elon Musk is expected to serve as Twitter’s interim chief executive officer for a few months after he completes his $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant, CNBC reported on Thursday.

According to an SEC filing, also released on Thursday, Musk secured approximately $7.14 billion in equity commitments from friends and other investors to buy Twitter.

CNBC sources said the businessman handpicked the investors, ranging from $1 billion from Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to $5 million from Honeycomb Asset Management, which invested in SpaceX. Sources added that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey may back the takeover, and Musk was discussing with him the possibility of contributing shares immediately or prior to closing the merger.

Media reported earlier that Musk had lined up a new CEO for Twitter who will replace current chief executive Parag Agrawal. Musk repeatedly criticized Twitter’s content moderation practices and a top executive responsible for setting speech and safety policies. Agrawal, who only led the company for a few months, after taking over the helm from Dorsey last November, is expected to remain in his role until the sale of the company to Musk is completed.

Musk reportedly told investors that he felt Twitter’s EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) margin was too low and the company has “too many engineers not doing enough.” He also pledged to make the company a “magnet for talent,”the sources said.

Musk, who is ranked by Forbes as the world’s richest man, struck a deal with Twitter executives to buy the platform on April 25, and is now in the process of raising funding.

source: rt.com