The agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee met on Friday and heard arguments from scientists and Pfizer representatives in favor of authorizing a third dose of the US drugmaker’s Covid-19 vaccine for the general public. After several hours of deliberation, the panel voted 16-3 against approving the boosters. …
Read More »‘A mistake’: US admits Kabul drone strike killed 10 civilians, incl. 7 children, and NO ISIS-K terrorists; no one will be punished
Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, head of CENTCOM, on Friday announced that the Hellfire missile fired at a home in Kabul just before the US airlift ended did not in fact kill a facilitator of Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) terrorist group. The drone strike in Kabul “was a mistake,” McKenzie said, acknowledging …
Read More »France RECALLS ambassadors from US and Australia citing ‘exceptional gravity’ of AUKUS submarine deal
“At the request of the President of the Republic [Emmanuel Macron], I decided to immediately recall to Paris for consultations our two ambassadors in the United States and in Australia,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Friday. Le Drian said the decision was justified by the “exceptional gravity” …
Read More »Conservative activist Laura Loomer tests positive for Covid, calls vaccines ‘unsafe’ as critics celebrate ‘karma’ getting her
In a post on the pro-Trump platform Gettr, Loomer announced to her followers that she had begun feeling ill on Wednesday, prompting her to get a Covid-19 test, which came up positive. “I had a fever, chills, a runny nose, sore throat, nausea and severe body aches that made my …
Read More »The Covid era’s politicization of expertise means we now have medics lecturing us on climate change
When 200 medical journal editors publish an apocalyptic and misleading joint editorial about the dangers of temperature rises, which the Wall Street Journal’s editorial team correctly noted “could have been ghost written by Greta Thunberg,” it reveals that the politicization of expertise we have seen during the Covid pandemic is now …
Read More »Blinken calls for more ‘normalization’ of ties with Israel as he celebrates Trump-brokered Abraham Accords
Speaking at a virtual meeting on Friday with his counterparts from Israel, Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Blinken promised that Washington would help foster the fledgling diplomatic relationship between these countries, and called for more normalization of Arab-Israeli relations. “We will encourage more countries to follow the …
Read More »Inquiry launched into European Commission chief’s refusal to hand over text messages she exchanged with Pfizer CEO
European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, the EU’s top accountability and governance officer, launched an inquiry into the European Commission’s refusal to hand over the contents of communications between von der Leyen and a CEO of an unnamed pharmaceutical company about a Covid-19 vaccine contract. As a first step, O’Reilly asked the …
Read More »As a furious France plots its revenge for America’s treachery on its subs deal, will it take the nuclear option of quitting NATO?
“A stab in the back,” is how French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described US President Joe Biden’s announcement of a new club of three – the US, Great Britain and Australia – under the guise of countering China in the Indo-pacific region. The defense minister, Florence Parly, was also …
Read More »America’s evacuation of troops from Afghanistan looked more like a ‘downright escape’ than a ‘hasty withdrawal,’ Putin says
Putin was speaking at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a group of eight countries, including China and India. “The urgent task facing our organization is to pursue a single and coordinated policy based on the assessment of serious risks related to the mounting tensions in Afghanistan following …
Read More »Occupy Wall Street had the potential 10 years ago to take activism to the next level. Instead, it may have crippled it forever
When activists began setting up tents in lower Manhattan 10 years ago, inspired in part by the Arab Spring and in part by the sheer rapacious greed of banks that had gambled with Americans’ money, lost it, and demanded to be made whole, the narrative managers fell into two camps. …
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