News Round-Up

• “Brexit helped U.K. prepare for the pandemic, Government will argue in COVID-19 Inquiry” – The DHSC is preparing evidence to the Covid Inquiry which argues that, thanks to preparations for Brexit, crisis response teams were already place when the virus arrived in the U.K., the Telegraph reports.
• “Three things to watch as U.S. intelligence prepares for Covid ‘lab leak’ reveal” – The Telegraph gets ready for the imminent release of all the secret information the U.S. holds on the origins of Covid.
• “‘Case Zeroes’ in world did not come from WIV” – Compelling “evidence of ‘early spread’ strongly suggests the three Wuhan scientists could not have been ‘case zeroes‘,” argues Bill Rice Jr.
• “Cannabis dealer used Covid as excuse for £10,000 stash” – Josef Dawod told the police that the 1.5kg of cannabis found in his car was all for his personal use, Surrey Live says. He was stocking up due to Covid, he explained.
• “FDA asks drug makers to update Covid boosters to target XBB.1.5 for the fall” – NBC reports that the Food and Drug Administration is advising drug makers to update the booster shots to target XBB.1.5., the strain which is currently dominant in the U.S.
• “Kennedy, DeSantis and a Covid Reckoning Election” – Ramesh Thakur for the Brownstone Institute sets out how the 2024 U.S. elections could become a “referendum on Covid”. Here’s hoping.
• “Coal is a four-letter word” – Coal is a word that “can’t be used in polite company”, says Spectator Australia. “Thank goodness it can still be exported and its royalties used to fill the Treasury.“
• “The climate scaremongers: Warning! It’s summer!” – If the Government is so concerned about the elderly, then why, asks Paul Homewood in TCW Defending Freedom, “don’t they issue alerts every week in spring or autumn, when death rates are much higher?”
• “The silence should be deafening” – Jean Hatchet in the Critic celebrates Professor Arif Ahmad’s new job as the Office for Students First Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom.
• “Starbucks ordered to pay $26 million to manager fired ‘for being white’” – Starbucks manager Shannon Phillips was fired in the aftermath of a furore that followed the arrest of two black customers, the Telegraph says. But she has now been awarded a substantial damages payment.
• “Eat, Pray, Get Cancelled” – Writing in UnHerd, Kathleen Stock says that Elizabeth Gilbert’s decisions not to publish The Snow Forest because it‘s set in Russia is a gift to the mob.
• “Thurrock council hid losses as it gambled millions on risky investments” – According to the Guardian, an official report has found that bankrupt Thurrock council gambled millions on risky investments and covered up evidence of its losses.
• “Harry and Meghan’s last surviving media deal is their £81 million Netflix one” – Spotify has ended Meghan Markle’s podcast after only one season, the Mail reports. That means the Sussexes are down to just one multi-million dollar media deal.
• “Boris Johnson unveiled as new Daily Mail columnist” – The Mail makes a splash about its latest hire. You can read his first column – on the wonders of a Ozempic – here.
• “Boris Johnson failed to inform watchdog over new Daily Mail column” – Boris was supposed to apply to appointments committee before taking up his new job, but according to the Telegraph he didn’t. 
• “It’s a shame what Pride has become” – The interests of the new ‘LGBTQIA+’ regime could not “be in greater conflict with the interests of the gay and lesbian activists who came before it”, says Ben Appel in the Washington Examiner.
• “Church of England appoints Rachel Mann as first transgender Archdeacon” – The novelist Racheal Mann has been appointed the Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, the Telegraph reports, and is now believed to be the most senior trans member of the clergy. 
• “Boris seat Labour candidate backed trans flag road crossing” – Danny Beale, the Labour candidate poised to take Boris’s commons seat, is a supporter of a controversial Transgender awareness road crossing, according to the Mail.
• “The myth of the bad old days” – An evisceration of the idea that we are more enlightened than our ancestors by Patrick West in Spiked.
• “Boris, Trump and the revenge of the technocrats” – Matthew Goodwin joins the crew of the Spiked podcast to discuss the elites’ war on populism and the scandal in the SNP.
•  “Christian school worker ‘wrongly sacked for her transgender beliefs’” – Kristie Higgs was dismissed for gross misconduct after she shared Facebook posts criticising plans to teach primary school children about LGBT+ relationships. But now, according to the Telegraph, she has won her appeal.
• “Covid Retrospective Series, Vol. 5” – Tom Elliott looks back on some of the most memorable instances of Covid hypocrisy.

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