News Round-Up

• “Huw Edwards will now be remembered in a very different way” – The newsreader who told the world of Queen Elizabeth II’s death will forever be remembered as the presenter at the heart of the latest BBC scandal, says Gordon Rayner in the Telegraph.
• “How the mob turned on Huw Edwards” – The media frenzy surrounding Huw Edwards exposes our society’s obsession with the downfall of the mighty, at the expense of more important issues, argues Giles Fraser in UnHerd.
• “The shameless hypocrisy of Huw Edwards’ defenders” – Those who would cancel you for an off-colour joke think it’s outrageous to expose Edwards’ alleged misdeeds, says Tom Slater in Spiked.
• “If Labour seizes on the Huw Edwards story to regulate the press, we all lose” – Attempts to gag free and fearless newspapers would do serious harm to the functioning of democracy, warns Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph.
• “The Left is using Huw Edwards story to attack free speech” – “But be in no doubt,” says Richard Littlejohn in the Mail, “The real battle here isn’t about the future of a BBC newsreader, it’s about the very survival of our free press.”
• “The BBC is self-destructing” – The BBC’s handling of recent allegations reveals a “familiar pattern of denial, evasion and disregard for public concerns”, leaving Rod Liddle unimpressed in the Spectator.
• “In praise of Milan Kundera” – The Czech-born author Milan Kundera, who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has died in Paris at the age of 94. His powerful insights into political correctness, censorship and totalitarianism remain alarmingly relevant today, says Toby in the Spectator.
• “Milan Kundera’s last joke” – Milan Kundera’s genius has become a victim of history, says David Samuels in UnHerd.
• “Milan Kundera: The Nobel Prize for Literature winner we never had” – Few writers in our time were more committed to the novel or had more idealism about the heights the form could scale than Milan Kundera, says Robin Ashenden in Quillette.
• “I expected more from Caitlin Moran” – Toby reflects on his once-positive relationship with Caitlin Moran in the Spectator, now marred by her Twitter attacks and hypocrisy.
• “Boris Johnson ‘can’t remember passcode’ to phone with Covid WhatsApp messages” – Concerns have arisen over the attempt to unlock Boris’s old iPhone, potentially erasing crucial messages, says the Independent.
• “Germany on track to bin 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses” – Germany has thrown out 83 million doses of Covid vaccines at a rough cost of €1.6 billion and has 120 million more doses sitting unused in stock, reports Politico.
• “Wuhan officials tried to suppress Covid info when pandemic began” – Dr. Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet, told the Covid Inquiry that Beijing failed to inform international health bodies of the rapidly rising virus threat, reports the Mail.
• “Journalist notices that ‘post-vac syndrome’ hardly exists outside Germany” – Germany, with just 1% of the world’s population, reports half of all post-vac syndrome cases. Eugyppius asks whether this is a reporting quirk or if health officials are hiding their own malfeasance.
• “Study finds Covid measures delayed the development of Japanese five year-olds by 4.4 months” – A shocking study reveals that children exposed to the pandemic in Japan experienced notable developmental delays, says Guy Gin.
• “Quality Australian vaccine data” – Dr. John Campbell talks about the Western Australian Vaccine Safety Surveillance Annual Report 2021, describing the shockingly high adverse events reported following Covid vaccinations in 2021.
• “How Beijing made its way into the heart of British academia” – British academics are being offered bribes to ensure that they do not criticise the Chinese regime, MPs heard, as part of an inquiry which exposed Beijing’s growing influence in U.K. universities, reports the Telegraph.
• “Hydrogen won’t replace natural gas to heat homes, says Grant Shapps” – Energy Secretary Grant Shapps admits ripping out standard boilers would cause upheaval and slow down the U.K.’s pursuit of Net Zero, says the Telegraph.
• “Sadiq Khan draws up plans to charge motorists with pay-per-mile scheme” – Sadiq Khan is looking at introducing a pay-per-mile charging scheme to cover the future fall in Ulez revenue when more cars become compliant, reports the Mail.
• “Major automakers criticise EPA’s ‘extreme’ electric vehicle push” – Carmakers Stellantis and Toyota have criticised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “overly optimistic” plans to promote EVs, warning that they are unrealistic and require an increase in mining, reports the Epoch Times.
• “VW electric car sales ‘fall to zero’ as Tesla and China EV makers win price war” – Executives at some Volkswagen plants say demand for particular battery-electric models has fallen “to zero”, with car dealers blaming the decline on subsidy cuts, high inflation and high prices, reports the Driven.
• “Limitless ‘white’ hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions” – There’s a real possibility that vast reserves of natural hydrogen can be extracted at competitive costs, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph.
• “What’s causing Europe’s heatwave? Scientists reveal” – A deadly heatwave dubbed Cerberus is sweeping across Europe, reports the Mail. But what is causing this heatwave across the continent, and why isn’t the U.K. experiencing the same high temperatures? Informative article if you ignore the climate change pseudo-science.
• “Inside Elon Musk’s plan to turn Britain into a ‘virtual power grid’” – Billionaire Elon Musk is eyeing Britain’s retail energy market, despite criticism that his attention is already spread too thin, says the Telegraph.
• “Starmer should beware a Left-wing insurgency” – A socialist-populist party could still outflank Labour, warns John Oxley in UnHerd.
• “Trans activist who told crowd to ‘punch TERFs in the face’ is arrested” – Trans activist Sarah Jane Baker, who spent 30 years in jail for kidnap and attempted murder, has been arrested for urging a cheering crowd at a Trans Pride rally to ‘punch TERFs in the face’.
• “The cruelty of a trans beauty queen” – 22 year-old trans Rikkie Valerie Kolle may have won the Miss Netherlands beauty pageant, but it is women who are the losers, says Julie Burchill in the Spectator.
• “The ideological subversion of biology” – Progressive ideology is infiltrating all fields of science, say Jerry A. Coyne and Luana S. Maroja in the Skeptical Inquirer. Unless scientists reclaim their voice, it is doubtful that we will recognise it as science at all.
• “New U.K. law proposals would legally curb algorithms that promote Andrew Tate” – Changes under the U.K.’s new Online Safety Bill would tighten the grip on tech companies, risking freedom of expression and stifling user experience, says Reclaim The Net.
• “Who’s afraid of Moms for Liberty?” – A growing cadre of angry mothers is taking over school boards and winning influence as GOP kingmakers. Why are they being called a ‘hate group’, asks Robert Pondiscio in the Free Press.
• “Is the FTC the latest agency to be weaponised against free speech?” – Critics say the Federal Trade Commission is unfairly targeting Musk’s Twitter, according to Reclaim The Net.
• “A crusading clerisy” – Helen Dale and Lorenzo Warby explore how ‘wokery’ performs religious functions and inhibits open discussion.
• “Meta pushes back on Australia’s plan to criminalise harmful ‘disinformation’” – Australia is planning a majorly authoritarian speech law, warns Cindy Harper in Reclaim The Net, but Meta is putting up a fight.
• “Where is everyone? Disney World ‘just about empty’” – Sky-high prices and a ‘woke’ backlash may have contributed to one of the slowest periods at Walt Disney World in Orlando on July 4th in a decade, reports ZeroHedge.
• “The transgender empire” – In a new short film, Christopher F. Rufo explains how the trans movement gained power and connects the dots between its key intellectuals, a billionaire benefactor and large-scale medical experiments in a Detroit ghetto.

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