News Round-Up

• “Lionsgate reinstates mask mandate in parts of Santa Monica office following Covid outbreak” – Amid rising Covid cases in Los Angeles, Lionsgate has brought back mask mandates for nearly half of the company’s employees at its flagship office in Santa Monica, reports Deadline.
• “Atlanta college reinstates masks mandates, social distancing, quarantine, contact tracing despite no reported COVID-19 cases” – Morris Brown College, a private institution in Atlanta, has announced that it will require students and employees to wear face masks on campus once again, says the Gateway Pundit.
• “NHS obsession with staff ‘well-being’ has left us all vulnerable” – The Letby case and the slowness in investigating the number of babies dying under her watch shows what is wrong with the NHS, writes Isabel Oakeshott in the Telegraph.
• “The U.S. National Institutes of Health is due for an overhaul after Covid exposed lies and abuses” – With the recent appointment of new NIH and NIAID directors, the time is now for Congress to enact structural reforms, argue Profs Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff in the Federalist.
• “Christian charity claims it was ‘debanked’ by Bank of America” – A ‘debanking’ row has broken out after a conservative Christian charity which helps Ugandan orphans had its account shut down by Bank of America, reports the Mail.
• “Labour and the Tories are becoming a uniparty” – Policy differences between Labour and the Conservatives are becoming increasingly blurred, says Aaron Bastani in UnHerd.
• “China is on the verge of economic and social implosion” – Xi Jinping’s backward priorities and strategic overreach are undermining Beijing’s legitimacy, argues Matthew Henderson in the Telegraph.
• “Sky-high airfares on the radar to meet emission targets” – Travellers might need to brace for sky-high ticket prices as airlines attempt to cut their emissions at the same time as demand for travel soars, says the Mail.
• “Blue badge holders hit with Ulez charges despite exemptions for the disabled” – Drivers with mobility issues face a £12.50 emissions charge as the Ulez scheme is expanded, reports the Telegraph.
• “The 20mph speed limit is not safer or better for the planet” – Due to the overrepresentation of cyclists and anti-car types in local and national government, the rest of us are being subjected to the tyranny of the irrational bicycling oligarchy, writes Philip Pilkington in UnHerd.
• “Ignore the eco-doomsters – babies are good for the planet” – Why do so many environmentally-minded people hate humanity, asks Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “Germany set to miss Net Zero by 2045 target as climate efforts falter” – Germany’s goals to cut greenhouse emissions by 65% by 2030 are likely to be missed, meaning its 2045 Net Zero target is also in doubt, reports Reuters.
• “Fourteen U.S. cities sign WEF treaty to ban meat, dairy, private cars by 2030” – Fourteen American cities have signed a World Economic Forum treaty that legally compels them to ban meat, dairy produces and private car ownership by the year 2030, claims the People’s Voice.
• “Climate change litigation” – In the U.S. and Australia, courts are grappling with the supposed legal responsibility of governments to consider the environmental impact of their decisions, writes Binoy Kampmark on Substack.
• “San Francisco’s robotaxi experiment is getting out of hand” – San Francisco’s bumpy experiment with self-driving taxis is spreading nationwide, according to Vox.
• “The religion of climate alarmism” – Our approach to environmentalism and clean energy must be unbiased and scientific, not emotional, argues Alex Starling in Reaction.
• “The A-level results expose the myth of ‘white privilege’” – Ethnic-minority pupils continue to outperform their white-British peers, writes Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
• “No, Lucy Letby was not enabled by ‘whiteness’” – Now the woke set are exploiting murdered babies to push their racial agenda. This is low, even by their standards, writes Tom Slater in Spiked.
• “Anti-white bigotry is the inevitable consequence of Sadiq Khan’s toxic identitarianism” – Sadiq Khan has now cemented his position as Labour’s identitarian-in-chief by embroiling himself in a race row, says Rakib Ehsan in CapX.
• “William Gladstone’s family should stop self-flagellating” – The House of Gladstone should not allow the memory of their far greater and more famous ancestor to be lost amidst their self-flagellation, argues Samuel Rubinstein in UnHerd.
• “Wandsworth Council’s troubling trans case” – How have we created a system where a vulnerable young person, unable to live independently, can give consent to life-changing surgery in the name of ‘gender identity’, asks Steerpike in the Spectator.
• “Madness: American satirist C.J. Hopkins sentenced in German speech case” – According to Racket, the American playwright C.J. Hopkins has been given a ‘punishment order’ by Germany authorities, and a choice: 60 days in jail or €3,600 for two tweets and a book cover.
• “The rise of corporate authoritarianism” – Spiked’s Sohrab Ahmari explains how employers use wokeness to rob workers of their power.
• “Stealing is wrong – but in Left-wing U.S. cities, it’s not a crime” – Without a law and order crackdown, the West will slouch towards authoritarianism, warns Anthony Daniels, aka Theodore Dalrymple, in the Telegraph.
• “Law lecturer sacked after questioning gender theory curriculum” – A law lecturer has been sacked by the Open University after she raised concerns about teaching gender identity theory, according to Sky News. Donate to her crowdfunder here.
• “Menstruation is not a men’s issue” – The Liberal Democrats have succumbed to trans mania, says Jo Bartosch in Spiked.
• “‘Trans bigots trying to shut down free speech’” – Campaigners say demands by transgender activists to halt dissent are a major threat to free speech, reports the Express.
• “The Supreme Court’s transgender revolution is warping the law” – A federal court of appeals covering Idaho, California and other western states declared Idaho’s 2020 Fairness in Womens’ Sports Act, which barred biological males from participating in women’s sports, unconstitutional on the grounds of equality, says Adrian Vermeule in the Telegraph.
• “Transgender coach changes in locker room with shocked Pennsylvania high school students” – A Pennsylvania school board is divided over renewing the contract of transgender tennis coach Sasha Yates after he used the girls’ locker room, says the Epoch Times.
• “Catholic school students in Massachusetts must act according to ’biological sex‘” – A Catholic school district in Massachusetts has ruled that its students must use the names and pronouns they used at birth, in the latest clash between the church and radical gender ideology, according to the Mail.
• “Abortion, transgender services, communion and the ‘transition’ of Catholic church leadership” – Faith leaders are concerned that Church leadership is aligning with pro-abortion and transgender groups through partnerships and liberalised communion policies, reports the Epoch Times.
• “Judge blocks Georgia’s ban on cross-sex hormones in transgender procedures for kids” – A federal judge in Atlanta has put a temporary freeze on the application of a Georgia law that prohibits the use of cross-sex hormones to treat minors who identify as trans, according to the Epoch Times.
• “Is this really the funniest joke at the Edinburgh Fringe?” – This year’s winning pun at the Edinburgh Fringe does not work on any level, says Simon Evans in Spiked.
• “The fake news about fake news” – In Foolproof, psychologist Sander van der Linden compares misinformation to viral infection – and claims to have a vaccine. But the claim that we’re suffering from a pandemic of misinformation is itself fake news, argues Daniel Williams in the Boston Review.
• “American Right sends Oliver Anthony’s blue-collar anthem to number one” – Oliver Anthony’s chart success is the latest example of a populist campaign fuelling mainstream success for a product deemed right-wing, writes Keiran Southern in the Times.
• “Oliver Anthony trolled with pro-union song Rich Men Earning North of a Million” – English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg has released his own pro-union song in response to Oliver Anthony’s hit Rich Men North of Richmond, says Fox News.
• “It was never science. It was totalitarianism. And it’s a moral obligation to disobey.” – It’s an absolute human tragedy that governments and institutions continue to entertain mask mandates, social distancing, test and trace and other Covid theatre as legitimate policy in 2023, says author Michael P. Senger.

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