News Round-Up

• “First bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccine approved by U.K. medicines regulator” – The MHRA announces that it has approved Moderna’s new Covid vaccine which targets both the original strain and the omicron variant
• “U.K. authorises ‘next generation’ omicron booster vaccine in world first” – Britain’s autumn Covid vaccination campaign will use the new jab by default, the Telegraph says, with 26 million set to be offered a dose from September onwards
• “How Covid Policy Tore Israel Apart” – Writing for the Brownstone Institute, Gilad Haran and Shahar Gavish call for Israeli equality laws to be expanded to include “an explicit prohibition against discrimination based on medical history and medical choices”
• “Shanghai Covid: Ikea shoppers flee attempt to lock down store” – There were chaotic scenes at an Ikea store in Shanghai on Saturday, the BBC reports, as shoppers fought to escape authorities trying to quarantine them
• “Climate change is not making children obese” – UnHerd’s Mary Harrington factchecks “an especially egregious example of how even supposedly respectable media can’t be relied on to read even the abstract of a research paper, before editorialising on it”
• “Climate virtuoso Europe destroys Oder river” – “It is pollution – not carbon emissions – that poses the greatest threat to our ecosystems,” says Spectator Australia’s Flat White as it looks into a climate disaster in the Oder river
• “NHS accused of ‘endorsing magic’ in reiki healer row” – The NHS has been criticised for recruiting a reiki practitioner despite saying that there is “no scientific evidence” that the energy-funnelling Japanese technique is effective, according to the Telegraph
• “Lawyers could have chips implanted in their brain in bid to cut legal costs” – A report published by the Law Society suggests that lawyers of the future could bill their clients by ‘units of attention’ monitored by a brain implant, according to the Evening Standard
• “Did Sweden’s controversial Covid strategy pay off? In many ways it did – but it let the elderly down” – Emma Frans in the Conversation reluctantly acknowledges that Sweden got it right in 2020
• “The value of free speech and the hypocrisy of the Mainstream Media” – “If the mainstream media believed in and exercised free speech,” writes Roger Watson on the Unity News Network, “it would have given space to a wider spectrum of views on Covid, lockdowns and vaccines”
• “Bing is censoring search results for Alex Berenson’s ‘Unreported Truths’ Substack” – According to Reclaim the Net, search engines Bing and DuckDuckGo are censoring search results for Alex Berenson’s Substack page
• “They finally came for Jerry Sadowitz” – ”Sadowitz has devoted himself unswervingly for the past 30-odd years to the most relentlessly challenging material imaginable, says Simon Evans in Spiked. “Could his audience really have not known what to expect?”
• “The great academic circle-jerk” – “If academia wants to survive, it needs to stop being so elitist, inward-looking and narrow-minded,” writes Dr Lisa McKenzie in Spiked
• “Pubs and restaurants warn of winter closures as energy bills soar 300%” – The Telegraph reports that pub, restaurant, and hotel chiefs have warned the Government that the industry could face mass closures this winter unless it receives urgent support
• “Knee-jerk nationalisers have no idea how the water industry actually works” – Robert Colville mounts a defence of the water companies in CAPX, pointing out that leakage rates have been falling
• “White working-class boys likely to slip further in race for university” – White working-class boys are likely to fall further behind in A-level results and lose out in the stampede for university places this year, according to the Times
• “Salman Rushdie’s alleged attacker had ‘contact with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’” – Hadi Matar’s mother has revealed that her son turned into a religious zealot after a month-long trip to Lebanon in 2018, the Telegraph reports
• “Cowardice of Leftists who fail to defend free speech” – Writing for the Daily Mail, Professor Frank Furedi takes aim at the leftists who were unable to admit the obvious as they responded to the attack on Sir Salman Rushdie
• “The left belittles J.K. Rowling death threats at its peril” – Dan Wootton calls on the literary world to make a stand for free speech in MailOnline
• “To defend our freedoms, we must be honest about the dangers we face” – “The attack on Sir Salman Rushdie is further evidence that we are conceding to violence and fear,” says Nick Timothy in the Telegraph
• “The Salman Rushdie fatwa is reflected in every banned book and no-platforming” – Banning books and no-platforming speakers is much easier than defending the right to freedom of expression, Archbishop Cranmer reflects
• “They do not have a right to go through life without being offended” – Benjamin Jones of the Free Speech Union points out that the attack on Sir Salman Rushdie is just one incident among many in which freedom of expression has come under attack from Islamist fundamentalists

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