- “Shanghai to impose new Covid lockdown and mass testing on 2.7m residents” – The city only eased restrictions last week after confining most of its 25 million inhabitants to their homes since March, but has now imposed stay-at-home orders on a district for an unstated period while it tests them all, the Telegraph reports.
- “Senior NHS managers to be paid more to move to the seaside” – They already earn six-figure salaries, but a leadership review has called for more perks to entice top talent to areas facing more problems, reports the Telegraph.
- “China still withholding data on Covid origins, WHO panel suggests” – The report called for “further investigation” of the lab leak theory, amid concerns it is getting harder to trace how the pandemic began, the Telegraph reports.
- “Neanderthal gene probably caused up to a million Covid deaths” – The LZTFL1 gene, found in one in six Britons, has been shown to double a person’s risk of severe disease and death, reports the Telegraph.
- “SARS-2 surges only in the winter, goes endemic after two waves, is impervious to vaccination, and has become harmless with Omicron” – Eugyppius with an overview of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe from the perspective of excess mortality.
- “Drop the dead monkeypox” – Roger Watson in TCW Defending Freedom says monkeypox stubbornly refuses to get its act together, spread like wildfire and strike down a few folks in the prime of life – so he declares an end to the outbreak and issues a request that we all just get on with life as if it had never happened.
- “Twitter made a huge mistake. I was right about prion diseases. They were wrong. Surprised?” – Twitter banned Steve Kirsch for life for saying the Covid vaccines cause prion diseases, but a new study suggests he was right.
- “Is the Deadly Neurological Condition Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Linked to COVID-19 Vaccination?” – TrialSite News writes up the study showing the link between the Covid vaccines and prion disease, the final work of AIDS discoverer and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier.
- “The WHO, Pandemic Preparedness, and the Importance of False Messaging” – Dr. David Bell writes for PANDA that the WHO has used simple and uniform messaging to maintain support for its COVID-19 response.
- “Ukraine’s soldiers face 200 daily casualties with desertion on the rise” – Shortage of long-range missiles means depleted Ukrainian forces at risk of being fully encircled by Russian offensive in Donbas, reports the Telegraph.
- “The real reason Africa can’t feed itself” – Claims that Vladimir Putin is stoking famine in Africa is a compelling red herring, which also exposes inconvenient truths about why people are going hungry in the world’s poorest continent yet again, argues Aidan Hartley in the Spectator. “Hunger in Africa has little to do with Putin and everything to do with misrule, domestic wars and wrongheaded Western policies.”
- “New Zealand Introduces a Climate Change Meat Tax” – In the face of last month’s UN warning that 49 million people in 43 countries face severe risk of starvation, the New Zealand Government has chosen now to introduce a new climate change food tax, writes Eric Worrall at Watts Up With That?
- “Does advertising matter?” – Lionel Shriver in the Spectator highlights the recent research by the Pull Agency showing that the public are heartily sick of woke adverts and find them off-putting.
- “As the Tories descend into chaos, The Blob is taking back control” – Michael Gove’s school reforms were a triumph, but little by little they have been undone by Whitehall, says Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph, who is concerned at what civil servants are trying to slip past distracted ministers.
- “Mohammed film protest backer is government’s Islamophobia adviser” – Imam Qari Asim says The Lady of Heaven is “derogatory” and backs those who are protesting for screenings to be cancelled, the Telegraph reports.
- “A win for the film critics of Bradford” – As a general rule, you should never talk about a film you haven’t seen, says Douglas Murray in the Spectator. But The Lady of Heaven is proving a tricky film to catch.
- “Religious mobs are a threat to British democracy” – The silencing of artists by fundamentalist protesters undermines our social cohesion, writes Sara Khan in the Telegraph.
- “‘Top Gun’ Tells The Whole Story of China and Hollywood” – The blockbuster is about taking out a uranium plant in some unnamed country. Really, it’s about taking on the Communist Party, says Erich Schwartzel in Common Sense.
- “Laughter is a fascist hate crime” – Titania McGrath writes for the Critic that at a recent ‘comedy’ show in Los Angeles, a brave audience member peacefully attacked comedian Dave Chappelle in self-defence against his violent jokes. The fact that Chappelle — a black man — was assaulted on stage is irrefutable proof that his comedy incites violence against minority groups, she says.
- “Joe Biden and the poison of identity politics” – The most powerful man in the West is resuscitating racial thinking, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “New Yorker claims ‘racism’ dominated jubilee” – The Spectator reports that New Yorker magazine this week printed a bizarre take on the jubilee celebrations, claiming that “racism brought some of its most iconic looks to the Platinum Jubilee, effectively stealing the show” on the spurious grounds that Harry and Meghan were not invited onto the Buckingham Palace balcony on Thursday.
- “I’ve just been told by Sajid Javid that the job advert has been pulled. Yipee!” – MP Sir Desmond Swayne reports that the alarming job advert for a “Deputy Director, Delivery Lead – Covid Pass” that he raised with the Health Secretary in the Commons this week has been pulled.
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