News Round-Up

• “Expert warns that Covid-caused smell-loss is returning with BA.5” – The number of people losing their smell because of a COVID-19 infection is starting to rise again, reports the Mail.
• “Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market” – BBC News credulously reports on two new studies from the original lab leak cover-up crew which claim to show the virus came from the wet market, despite no viral reservoir being found, no allowance made for who was being tested in Wuhan, and no account taken of evidence of earlier international spread.
• “Jacinda’s duplicity as pupils are told to mask up again or be punished” – Guy Hatchard in TCW Defending Freedom writes that last week the New Zealand Government called for mask wearing to be enforced in schools – and many schools have apparently decided to punish students who do not comply.
• “A Pandemic of the Triple Vaccinated” – Public health officials can pretend to possess sophistication in understanding the current state of the disease, but they cannot spin their way out of the hard data, writes Ramesh Thakur at Brownstone.
• “The PANDA WHO Review” – Dr. Robert Malone commends and summarises PANDA’s new review of the role and guidance of the World Health Organisation in recent global health ’emergencies’.
• “Fact Checking the Fact Checkers” – The Naked Emperor takes a closer look at the ONS data on deaths by vaccination status and the attempts to ‘fact check’ presentations of them.
• “LinkedIn Censorship Getting Worse.” – Thorsteinn Siglaugsson reports that his LinkedIn profile, which he’s nurtured for 15 years with 5,000 connections, was taken down: no explanation given, no appeal possible.
• “The Day Anthony Fauci Wrecked American Freedom” – Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone asks if we are really supposed to believe that it was an accident that the text with the devastating material was so small as to be barely visible whereas the large text featured mostly common hygiene tips?
• “Boris Johnson tipped to become next Secretary General of NATO” – Ukrainian and Tory MPs support the idea of the PM being a possible candidate, though sceptics suggest he would likely be greeted with a French veto, reports the Telegraph.
• “EU split over standing up to Putin: Bloc agrees ‘voluntary’ 15% cut in fuel use to tackle Russian gas squeeze… but with loopholes for most countries, including Germany” – Loopholes will ease the pain for many countries and industries, including prime offender Germany, as some EU governments had resisted the original proposal to impose binding cuts on every country, the Mail reports.
• “Germany’s gas crisis goes from bad to worse” – Gazprom will cut volumes through Nord Stream 1 in half, from 40% capacity to 20% from tomorrow onwards, pushing Germany into further danger ahead of winter, and rationing could be on the horizon, writes Jack Smith in the Spectator.
• “Sri Lanka Realities and Global Alarmism” – Omar Khan says he had been at pains to point out to international observers that if former President Gota resigned, and Sri Lanka followed a Constitutional path to electing a President, then that would be an achievement of the ‘restoration of order’ everyone was clamouring for – and indeed, that came to pass.
• “Boston Globe Admits Global Warming has Saved Lives” – Cold is a far greater threat to the health of we hairless tropical apes than warmth, but journalists who admit this obvious truth are few and far between, writes Eric Worrall in WUWT.
• “Why The West Is Destroying Itself” – Read Michael Shellenberger’s informative interview with Swiss monthly magazine Schweizer Monat.
• “Heat pump roll out in doubt as only a tiny proportion apply for grants” – Critics warn the cost of living crisis risks is deterring even more households from replacing boilers, reports the Telegraph.
• “Will the police finally see sense on ‘non-crime hate incidents’?” – Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator says we need a basic rule: speech on its own, reasonable or unreasonable, in public, in private or online, must be excluded lock stock and barrel from the NCHI regime.
• “Study: Big Tech Heavily Engaged in Censoring Conservatives” – Newsmax reports that Big Tech is discriminating against conservatives and independent thinkers by censoring them online, according to a report released Wednesday by the Media Research Centre Free Speech America.
• “Understanding Wokeness as a Make-Work Strategy for the Privileged Class” – Listen to the Quillette podcast: host Jonathan Kay speaks with Swedish Marxist Malcom Kyeyune, who argues that nominally progressive theories of race and gender are actually aimed at securing influence, employment and prestige for underemployed university graduates.
• “Gender Ideology Comes to Germany” – Uwe Steinhoff in Quillette says that an article he wrote last month describing the reality of biological sex has provoked sustained controversy.
• “France, Farmers, and the Failing ‘Extreme Centre’” – Renaud Beauchard writes for the Upheaval on the recent trucker and farmer protests, the French elections, European politics, populism, technocracy and more.
• “Women’s rights campaigner says U.K. police visited her for ‘being untoward about pedophiles’ in YouTube video” – Reclaim the Net with a shocking story of speech policing.
• “There’s More Than One Way to Ban a Book” – A serious strain of self-censorship has taken root within the Left-leaning publishing industry, writes Pamela Paul in the New York Times.
• “Does the Associated Press expect journalists to lie?” – Jo Bartosch writes in Spiked that the new AP style guide on trans issues elevates gender ideology over the truth.
• “Britain must follow America’s example and cut back the woke Blob” – Steven Edgington sets out a proposal for a fightback in the Telegraph.
• “Biden administration officials are subpoenaed over Big Tech censorship collusion” – Reclaim the Net says it’s time to hand over the documents.
• “Is ‘systemic police racism’ a conspiracy theory?” – Noah Carl on why belief in systemic racism in the U.S. police force meets the definition of a conspiracy theory.
• “Protesters storm first drag queen storytime for primary school children” – The Telegraph reports that mothers infiltrated the library event, saying: “We’re here to protect children.”
• “BBC hit with ‘racism’ complaints over comments on England’s all-white Lionesses” – Eilidh Barbour’s highlighting of a lack of ethnic diversity in the women’s game leads to a backlash from viewers who say “colour has nothing to do with it”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Another great lesson from the pandemic was how politicians viewed economics, the economy” – They believed it could be easily turned off and on at will, but Jeffrey A. Tucker explains that economics is “human action, life itself”.

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