News Round-Up

• “Covid hospital admissions plunge below 1,000 for first time since before Christmas as Britain’s wave continues to fizzle out naturally and health bosses start to wind down daily stats updates” – There were 798 new admissions reported in Britain on Saturday, the latest date Government dashboard data are available for – down by a third on the previous week’s figure, the Mail reports.
• “School face mask rules in Wales set to be lifted from next Monday” – The Welsh Government wrote to schools on Tuesday to inform them that they no longer need to use Covid measures based on local circumstance, according to the Mail. Better late than never.
• “Chinese officials bolt residents into their homes to stop Covid spread” – Watch in the Telegraph: in the province of Hebei, those who refuse to hand over their keys so they can be locked in from the outside are being bolted in.
• “Risky ‘gain-of-function’ studies need stricter guidance, say U.S. researchers” – Nature reports that after a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. biosecurity board revisits policies governing risky pathogen experiments.
• “Why are Standards So Lax on Covid Drug Approvals?” – Many scientists made a career fighting for better regulatory standards, but strangely, when it comes to the regulatory policy around COVID-19, they are dead quiet, writes Dr. Vinay Prasad at the Brownstone Institute.
• “Partygate means all Covid fines should be overturned, lawyer argues” – A lawyer calls for penalties to be scrapped in light of Boris Johnson’s defence of his breaches, as 23 are already struck down, the Guardian reports.
• “Keir Starmer changes curry night story” – A former chief constable yesterday said Durham police should “reconsider” its initial dismissal of the case in the light of “new information”, the Mail reports.
• “Government will not appeal court’s care home ruling after 40,000 died” – The Government will not appeal a High Court judgment which found its care home policy early on in the pandemic was unlawful, according to the Mail.
• “Work-shy Britain is sleepwalking into a doom-spiral of decline” – The country is in denial about the calamity of zero growth, a broken NHS and a culture of entitlement, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “Regional Italian Court Raises Constitutional Concerns about COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates Citing Troubling Adverse Event Data” – TrialSite News reports that a regional court’s judge raised the constitutionality of the mandatory vaccine law in Italy. Reviewing vaccine safety data from EudraVigilance, he was shocked by the sheer number of adverse reactions and deaths associated with the vaccines and sent the case to the Italian Constitutional Court for review.
• “Uttar Pradesh Officials Set the Record Straight: Ivermectin Used Successfully to Combat COVID-19 in the Northern Indian State” – Health officials have gone public to declare the importance of the ivermectin-doxycycline-based regimen for prophylactic and early treatment during the Delta variant-driven surge, reports TrialSite News.
• “The New Pause Grows by Another Month to 7 Years 7 Months” – There has been no global warming – none at all – for seven years and seven months, writes Christopher Monckton in Watts Up With That?
• “Voters Will Not Pay Extra to Achieve Boris’s Net Zero Targets – Poll” – While polls show overwhelming support for Net Zero, it appears that very few actually want to pay for it, writes Paul Homewood in Watts Up With That?
• “’We’re going to disrupt’: A year inside GB News” – Faced with a new rival, can the channel survive? Staffers past and present share the story of a tumultuous 12 months in the New Statesman.
• “Elon Musk says Twitter will stay free for casual users” – After telling investors he plans to take Twitter public again within three years, Elon Musk assured his followers that the social media site will remain free for most users, the Mail reports.
• “Elon Musk Calls for Investigation Into Far-Left Groups Trying to Pressure Advertisers” – Elon Musk called for an investigation into left-wing organisations that are pressuring companies to boycott Twitter if Musk changes the social media firm’s content moderation policies, the Epoch Times reports.
• “Elon Musk Invited to Give Evidence to U.K. Parliament on Twitter Takeover” – The Epoch Times reports that Elon Musk has been invited to give evidence to a U.K. parliamentary committee that wishes to “learn more about how Mr. Musk will balance his clear commitment to free speech with new obligations to protect Twitter’s users from online harms”.
• “British influencer Oli London who claims to be Korean and insists you ‘have the right to choose race’ clashes with Black woman who argues it’s ‘very harmful’ to suggest you can ‘switch’ ethnicity” – The Mail reports that in a new YouTube video from Channel 4 documentaries titled “Would You Rather?” Oli London clashed with an unnamed woman over if it was possible to be transracial.
• “Rail conductor sues after he was sacked for questioning ‘black privilege’” – A former West Midlands Trains employee who left his microphone on after Zoom diversity training was overheard criticising the session, the Telegraph reports.
• “You can’t be born in the wrong body” – The science behind gender ideology is dubious at best, writes Ellen Pasternack in UnHerd.
• “Overthrowing the kritarchy” – The overturning of Roe v. Wade would be a victory for democracy as it returned the contested question of abortion from unaccountable judges to the people and their representatives, writes Stephen Daisley in the Critic.
• “The EU wants to crush internet freedom” – The Digital Services Act will be the envy of autocrats the world over, says Andrew Tettenborn in Spiked.
• “Homeland Security’s ‘Disinformation Board’ is Even More Pernicious Than it Seems” – The power to decree what is ‘disinformation’ now determines what can and cannot be discussed on the internet, writes Glenn Greenwald.
• “U.K.’s new attack on free speech as TCW fights censorship” – The Conservative Woman has been blocked by the Internet Service Provider Three on the grounds that it believed the site contained ‘adult’ content. The Free Speech Union has tweeted support and encouraged others to do so as well to try to get answers.

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