World News
8,000 foreign tourists are allowed into UK every DAY
Daily Mail – Thousands of tourists are still being let into the UK every day even though Britons have been banned from overseas trips – with recent arrivals including a holidaymaker from Peru who wrote on a visa form that he ‘wanted to visit Big Ben’.
Of the around 20,000 people arriving in the country every day, some 40 percent – or 8,000 – are tourists, figures compiled by Border Force staff revealed.
This rises to 80 or 90% at Gatwick and Eurostar terminals, while at Heathrow the proportion is around 20 to 30%, according to data gathered by whistle-blowers.
U.S. News, Politics & Government
Baseball signs deal with Chinese company engaged in ‘cancel’ campaign
WND – Major League Baseball renewed a licensing contract earlier this week with a Chinese media company that has targeted an NBA executive over his support human rights and democracy activists in Hong Kong.
The deal, which MLB signed with Tencent on Wednesday, has taken on new significance after the league’s decision Friday to pull its All Star game out of Atlanta over a Georgia state voting law opposed by Democrats.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the move was being made because the league “fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”
Defenders of the Georgia law, which was signed last week, have denied allegations that it will restrict voting access. The New York Times reported Saturday that the law is “unlikely” to affect turnout or hurt Democrats. It may “plausibly even increase turnout,” according to the newspaper.
But MLB has ignored the anti-democratic bent of its media partner, Tencent.
In October 2019, Tencent temporarily stopped airing all NBA games after Daryl Morley, the then-general manager of the Houston Rockets, expressed support for Hong Kong protesters who opposed a law backed by Beijing that they feared would lead to a crackdown on dissidents.
Tencent resumed airing most NBA league games, but has continued boycotting Rockets’ games, and those of Morley’s new team, the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Guardian reported on Dec. 30, 2020, that Tencent refuses to air the two teams’ games.
Tencent’s crackdown on Morley and its apparent opposition to Hong Kong’s activists has not deterred Major League Baseball.
MLB and Tencent announced Wednesday that they were expanding a partnership that allows the Chinese conglomerate to air baseball games in several new Asian markets, according to The Global Times.
Tencent has broadcast MLB games since 2018, when the two sides signed an exclusive licensing deal.
The new deal extends MLB’s contract with Tencent through 2023 and will allow access to the league’s All Star game and playoffs.
Viewers in the Asian markets will no longer see the All Star game in Atlanta, where it was initially to be held.
MLB’s decision followed after President Joe Biden said in an interview that he supported the idea of the league pulling the annual game out of Georgia because of the voting law.
Biden has falsely claimed that the bill will cut hours at polling locations in Georgia. He has referred to it as “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” a reference to the notorious segregation laws that once dominated the South.
Multiple corporations, including Delta, Coca-Cola and Apple, have publicly condemned the law.
Defenders of the law include Gabriel Sterling, a Georgia elections official who fought against Republican efforts to overturn the presidential election.
Sterling said Friday that Biden’s support for an All Star boycott was “economic blackmail” based on “a lie.” He called Biden’s remarks “morally reprehensible and disgusting.”
MLB’s press office did not respond to a detailed list of questions about its partnership with Tencent and the company’s boycott of Morley.
Gateway Pundit – The far-left group White Lies Matter stole a statue out of an Alabama cemetery this weekend. They then sent out a ransom note to the Daughters of the Confederacy. These criminals believe their cause is just and so their violence is just.
Gateway Pundit – The FBI is now in the pandemic business. They were part of illegal activities in the Russian sham. They ignored massive corruption in the 2020 election, but now find their purpose pushing vaccinations cards to Americans.
A couple of days ago, the FBI in Minneapolis tweeted out the following warning:
We’ve all seen friends posting their #COVID19 vaccination cards on social media. If you make or buy a fake one to misrepresent your vaccination status, you endanger other people and may also be breaking the law. Learn more: https://ic3.gov/Media/Y2021/PSA210330…
Economy & Business
Georgia Governor Vows a Fight After MLB Yanks All-Star Game
Breitbart – News of Major League Baseball’s decision to pull this summer’s All-Star Game from Georgia over its sweeping new voting law reverberated among fans Saturday, while Gov. Brian Kemp vowed to defend the measure, saying “free and fair elections” are worth any threats, boycotts or lawsuits.
The Republican governor said at a news conference that MLB “caved to fear and lies from liberal activists” when it yanked the July 13 game from Atlanta’s Truist Park. He added the decision will hurt working people in the state and have long-term consequences on the economy.
“I want to be clear: I will not be backing down from this fight. We will not be intimidated, and we will also not be silenced,” Kemp said.
“Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola and Delta may be scared of Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden and the left, but I am not,” he said, referring to companies that have also criticized the new law.
Three groups already have filed a lawsuit over the measure, which adds greater legislative control over how elections are run and includes strict identification requirements for voting absentee by mail. It also limits the use of ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to hand out food or water to voters waiting in line, among other provisions.
Critics say the law will disproportionately affect communities of color.
Georgia Republicans say the changes were needed to maintain voter confidence in the election system, and the governor insists opponents have mischaracterized what the law does. Yet GOP lawmakers made the revisions largely in response to false claims of fraud in the 2020 elections made by former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Abrams, who has championed voting rights since narrowly losing to Kemp in the 2018 election, is among those who have spoken out against the law. The Democrat is being closely watched to see if she seeks a 2022 rematch.
Science & Technology
Supreme Court wipes away ruling that said Trump violated Constitution by blocking Twitter followers
CNN – The Supreme Court on Monday wiped away a lower court opinion holding that then-President Donald Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked followers from his Twitter account.
The high court dismissed the case because Trump is not in office so there is no longer a live case or controversy.
Trump established his Twitter account in 2009, and in May and June of 2017, while serving as President, he blocked seven individuals who had expressed displeasure with him.
Lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sued on behalf of the individuals, arguing Trump’s action violated their First Amendment rights.
In court papers, they said the President’s account, @realDonaldTrump, “functions as an official source of news and information about the government, and as a forum for speech by, to, and about the President.”
A district court said the then-President’s action of blocking followers violated the individuals’ First Amendment rights because it excluded them from a public forum based on their viewpoints — a decision an appeals court later affirmed.
Then-Solicitor General Jeff Wall asked the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that Trump’s account is personal, even if it is sometimes run by his assistant Dan Scavino.
“By ignoring the critical distinction between the President’s (sometimes) official statements on Twitter and his always personal decision to block respondents from his own account,” Wall argued, the lower court opinion “blurs the line between state action and private conduct — notwithstanding this Court’s repeated and recent exhortations to heed that line carefully in applying the First Amendment.”
But after the election and after Twitter banned Trump from the platform for violating its policies related to the US Capitol insurrection, Wall asked the Court to dismiss the case and wipe away the lower court opinion.
Health
US seeing ‘fourth wave’ of coronavirus infections due to variants
Fox – Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm believes the U.S. is seeing a “fourth wave” of infections due to coronavirus variants that have arisen over the past few months.
Osterholm, who served as a member of President Biden’s COVID-19 transition advisory board, said the variants pose a significant problem despite underscoring that existing vaccines appear to be effective against them.
“I believe that, in some ways, we’re almost in a new pandemic,” Osterholm told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “The only good news is that the current vaccines are effective against this particular variant B.1.1.7.”
B.1.1.7 is also known as the “British variant.”
Scientists were concerned that the variant, which proved to spread far easier than the original coronavirus, might also render recently developed vaccines useless.
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