News Round-Up

• “Nicola Sturgeon branded a ‘convincing fraud’ after Covid Whatsapp messages were deleted” – Nicola Sturgeon has been branded a “fraud” by one of her own former MSPs after revealing to the Scottish Covid Inquiry that she had deleted all her pandemic WhatsApps, the Telegraph reports.
• “Mapping the PPE debris” – Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson assess the environmental impact of Covid PPE in Trust the Evidence.
• “Climate chiefs admitted Net Zero plan based on insufficient data, leading physicist says” – The Climate Change Committee has privately admitted it only looked at “a single year of data” when making controversial green energy claims, according to the Telegraph.
• “Port Talbot has been sacrificed to the altar of Net Zero – which is why Labour’s crocodile tears are hard to stomach” – Port Talbot is the latest victim of the Tory Government’s headlong rush towards Net Zero, says Andrew Neil in the Mail. Yet, “at every Tory turn of the Net Zero screw, Labour has urged the Government to go further and faster”. 
• “Why we need to talk about CO₂” – Tom Ed on Substack takes a look at the big picture on carbon dioxide.
• “The bossiness of veganuary” – Laura Dodsworth on the Free Mind wonders why the vegan evangelists “think that a month-long monk-like abstinence from steak and bacon will tempt us into following this miserable and unnatural diet for the rest of the year”.
• “Has this shock Tory victory exposed the costs of Labour’s trans extremism?” – The unexpected Conservative triumph in Hackney has lessons that go wider than just east London, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “Is DEI About to Die?” – Another victory against woke was won this week, says Nick Dixon on Substack, as ‘Big Four’ accounting firm PwC, which employs 46,000 people in the U.S., was forced to tone down (though not completely scrap) its racist ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ policies.
• “The curious case of Israeli ‘genocide’” – The performance at the Hague bodes ill for international law, says Yehudah Mirsky in UnHerd.
• “South African Lawfare at The Hague” – Norman J.W. Goda in Quillette argues that “motions before any court contain references to hard evidence and a careful reading of legal precedent, but the South African ICJ application has neither”.
• “Accusing Israel of genocide is a perverse moral inversion” – If there is a genocidal force in this war, it must be Hamas, argues Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis in the Telegraph.
• “Smug world elites have been exposed by a chainsaw-wielding libertarian” – New Argentinian President Javier Milei spent 40 minutes telling the assembled elites at Davos how, in theory and in practice, state intervention tends to make people poorer, says Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph. 
• “Humourless crybabies are making office life impossible” – Now that a bit of banter with colleagues can cost you your job, is it any wonder so many people choose to work from home, asks the Telegraph‘s Michael Deacon.
• “I would block UAE-backed bid to take over Telegraph, says Lord Heseltine” – The Conservative grandee is the third Cabinet minister from the Thatcher era to speak out against the proposed acquisition of the titles by a foreign state, the Telegraph reports.
• “Civil servants told they should ‘yield power to the marginalised’” – Civil servants in HMRC were told to “yield power” to the marginalised and that they “unknowingly benefit” from racism, according to the Telegraph.
• “FBI And Secret Service Are Covering Up Their Role In Alleged January 6th ‘Pipe Bomb’ Plot, New Evidence Suggests” – Public reports on the curious incident of the little known January 6th ‘pipe bomb’, as video footage shows multiple agencies may have lied about the alleged explosive devices and mishandled their investigations.
• “Crackdown on ‘activists’ in the Civil Service” – The Government will crack down on civil servants accused of wasting taxpayers’ money on diversity activism, the Telegraph reports.
• “Novak Djokovic is heckled by a spectator who shouts ‘Get vaccinated’ as he is about to serve for the match at the Australian Open” – His response? He serves an ace and wins the match. Watch the video, courtesy of James Melville on X.

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