WORLD NEWS
Ukraine Unlikely to Take Back Crimea–Donbass Corridor Through Military Means: Zelenskyy
Ukraine is unlikely to resort to military means to take back Donbass and Crimea in the short term, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday.
“Russia has its own vision of Donbass, and Ukraine has its own. So I had a simple suggestion. I believe that we will not be able to agree on all points at once. This is impossible, even if we have negotiations,” he said during an interview with Ukrainian media.
Ukrainian armed forces could lose thousands of soldiers if they’re ordered to take back Donbass and Crimea, which he called “temporarily occupied territories.”
It will also endanger the general security of his country as the group who is fighting in Donbass are the elite segment of the Ukrainian militaries.
“Our state needs a strong army. And if we want to lose the most powerful, most experienced people because ‘I want it now,’ we must understand that [Russian armed forces] will return to us, and not in two or three years, but in the same month. All the military know and think about it,” he elaborated. “This is a very serious story.”
Taking back control of the city of Mariupol, which was taken by Russia after the invasion started on Feb. 24, is also very difficult, he said.
U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
Florida Lawmaker Says Disney ‘Stepped in Quicksand and Made a Drastic Unforced Error’
As the battle between Florida and Disney escalates following Gov. Ron DeSantis signing the “Parental Rights in Education” bill into law, one Sunshine State lawmaker says Disney “stepped in quicksand and made a drastic unforced error.”
As The Epoch Times reported April 1, DeSantis floated the possibility at a March 31 press conference in Ponte Vedra Beach that lawmakers in the Sunshine State might repeal the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act in response to Disney’s ongoing opposition to the recently signed “Parental Rights in Education” law, dubbed by liberal opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. State Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican, revealed through social media that lawmakers had already met twice to discuss the idea, saying “if Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County.”
The announcement came as part of the ongoing feud between Disney and the state of Florida since the governor signed the bill into law. Previously silent about the bill until he faced backlash from a minority of Disney’s LGBT employees, Disney CEO Bob Chapek issued a statement on March 11, apologizing to them for not being a “stronger ally.” In a show of action, Chapek also announced Disney would put an immediate stop to all political donations in Florida. In a subsequent demonstration of solidarity, Disney Corporation issued a statement vowing that its new goal was to have “this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts” and to support organizations working to make that happen. DeSantis quickly reminded Disney that Florida “is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida—it is not based on the demands of California corporate executives.”
Recent polling shows the overwhelming majority of Florida’s primary voters, including a significant majority of Democrats, strongly support this legislation. Breitbart reported that “a flood of families are canceling Disney memberships” to their amusement parks and the Disney+ streaming service. The hashtag, “BoycottDisney” trended on social media and one of the largest mothers’ advocacy organizations in the United States, Moms for Liberty, has warned Disney of the pushback it will face if it does not stop interfering with Florida’s laws.
“CEO Bob Chapek needs to be removed,” Roach asserted on social media April 3. “A man obsessed with sexualizing 4-year-olds should not run a company that built its brand on preserving the innocence & magic of childhood.”
“I think Disney leadership is well aware they have stepped in quicksand and made a drastic unforced error,” Roach told The Epoch Times. “I think they are aware of how badly they’ve messed up here and the only way they can get to détente on this is Bob Chapek is going to have to go. I think his days are numbered and he’s going to be out as CEO in very short order. Whoever comes in is going to have to publicly acknowledge to some extent that Disney is not going to be held hostage by a small number of employees who think they can dictate Disney’s political stance and if some employees don’t like that they are going to have to leave.”
Federal Judge Orders Pennsylvania to Produce Records for Foreigners Registered to Vote
At the urging of an election integrity group, a federal judge ordered Pennsylvania to hand over records showing the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had allowed foreign nationals to register to vote for decades.
The order came the month after a federal court ruled that Illinois violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, when it refused to provide the same group access to the state’s voter roll, as The Epoch Times reported. NVRA provides that election officials must allow inspection of all records related to the maintenance of the voter rolls.
Judge Christopher C. Conner of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania wrote in the court’s decision that “transparency in how states determine voter eligibility—the vital bedrock of our electoral system—is generally paramount.”
The 26-page order in the case, Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Chapman, court file 1:19-cv-622, was issued March 31 by Conner, who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush.
Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Leigh M. Chapman, and her colleague, Jonathan M. Marks, deputy secretary for elections and commissions, were named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Key Player in Ex-Clinton Lawyer’s Trial Intends to Plead the Fifth
A former technology executive who helped spy on the White House intends to invoke his right against self-incrimination if he is called to testify during the upcoming trial of a lawyer who represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 election, according to court documents.
Michael Sussman, the lawyer, is set to go on trial for allegedly lying to the FBI.
Sussman was representing Rodney Joffe, a tech executive, when he went to the FBI and handed over three white papers that contained unsubstantiated allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump, Clinton’s rival in the presidential race, according to U.S. prosecutors.
Sussman says he gave the information to the FBI as a concerned citizen and the parties he was representing at the time are not relevant.
If Joffe were to testify during the trial, he would “offer critical exculpatory testimony,” Sussman’s lawyers said in one of the new filings. Among the angles would be that “Mr. Sussmann and Mr. Joffe agreed that information should be conveyed to the FBI and to Agency-2,” believed to be the CIA, “to help the government, not to benefit Mr. Joffe.”
But Joffe plans on invoking his rights under the Fifth Amendment if called to testify because prosecutors say he remains the subject of an investigation.
Steven Tyrell, representing Joffe, said in a letter just made public that he spoke with Andrew DeFilippis, a prosecutor on Special Counsel John Durham’s team, on March 31 after receiving a subpoena for Joffe to testify.
After receiving confirmation Joffe remains under investigation, Tyrell asked for more details.
“Rather than provide any additional information to aid in our assessment of the risk of prosecution, Mr. DeFilippis stated that in his view, Mr. Joffe’s status in the investigation was sufficient to establish a good faith basis to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination. Mr. DeFilippis further stated that OSC did not want to get into any more detail, and presumed that Latham would understand if Mr. Joffe decided to invoke,” Tyrell said in the letter, which was sent to Sussman’s lawyers at Latham & Watkins.
Citing Racial Discrimination, Black Leaders Target Roe v. Wade
An Alabama lawsuit on behalf of unborn black babies that’s making its way through the state’s courts is alleging that the abortion industry is deliberately targeting black Americans and other minorities.
If successful, the attorneys and activists behind the case told The Epoch Times that it might ultimately lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court opinion that struck down state laws against abortion.
Even if the case doesn’t succeed in court, legal analysts and experts in the field say the implications in the court of public opinion are hard to overstate.
The lawsuit was filed by pro-life leader Amie Beth Shaver, named Miss Alabama in 1994, on behalf of “Baby Q,” an African American baby in Alabama who was unborn when the case began. Baby Q represents all other similar black babies in the womb across the state.
According to the complaint, Baby Q and other members of the “class” are being unlawfully discriminated against and targeted for abortion by the industry. Abortion giant Planned Parenthood acknowledges its roots in the eugenics movement, although it says it’s working to rectify that legacy.
“About 80 members of Baby Q’s class, which is African American babies in the womb, lose their lives in abortion every week in Alabama,” Sam McLure, the lead lawyer representing the babies, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. “Enough is enough. This has to stop.”
Several leaders involved in the case told The Epoch Times that Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry more broadly have a long history of racism and support for eugenics, the highly controversial idea that humanity should be “improved” by weeding out allegedly inferior genes from the population.
Trump Moves to Disqualify Clinton-Appointed Judge in Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton, DNC
The federal judge assigned to the case brought by former President Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton and others allegedly involved with creating the Trump–Russia dossier should be disqualified, Trump said through his lawyers on April 4.
U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks shouldn’t oversee the case because he was appointed in 1997 by then-President Bill Clinton, Trump said in a motion to disqualify the judge.
Bill Clinton has been married to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the 2016 presidential election, since 1975.
“Due to the fact that the defendant, Hillary Clinton, is being sued by her former opponent for the United States presidency, an election that she lost, regarding serious allegations on her part, as well as her allies, of engaging in fraudulent and unlawful activities against the plaintiff, and because her husband nominated Judge Middlebrooks to the federal bench, there exists a reasonable basis that Judge Middlebrooks’ impartiality will be questioned,” the six-page motion states.
Federal law states that judges shall disqualify themselves in any proceedings in which their impartiality might “reasonably be questioned.”
Judge Jackson’s SCOTUS Nomination Advances to Senate Floor
The Senate cleared the way for a final floor vote to confirm Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson with a procedural vote late on April 4 after weeks of tough scrutiny and a deadlocked committee vote along party lines earlier in the day.
If confirmed, Jackson will be the first black woman to serve on the high court.
The 53–47 procedural vote included support from all 50 Democrats and Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah. Earlier on April 4, the Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked on a party-line vote of 11 to 11, forcing the extra procedural step.
The committee vote came later than expected for Democrats after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was held up by a delayed flight, forcing the vote to later in the day to guarantee its success in the equally divided Judiciary Committee.
Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden to succeed Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring, has been accused of a “soft-on-crime” attitude by Republicans who have cited her lenient sentencing decisions for those in possession of child pornography, as well as her apparent lack of a unified judicial philosophy.
On April 4, those conflicts were reopened as Republicans made a final attempt to derail Jackson’s nomination.
Africans Face Steepest Decline in Immigrant Visas under Biden
The State Department has slowly reopened most consulates under President Biden, and it is now cumulatively issuing about as many immigrant visas for prospective legal permanent residents across all consulates as it was issuing before the pandemic. Nonetheless, the reopening has not happened equally across the world. Immigrants from North America and South America are issuing enough visas to reduce their backlogs of applicants, while immigrants from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania are still seeing large declines in immigrant visa issuances. Africans have seen the largest decline.
While President Joe Biden continues imposing Chinese coronavirus mandates on American citizens, illegal aliens are exempt from those restrictions, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton exclusively tells Breitbart News.
Late last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that Biden would end Title 42 on May 23. The broad public health authority, which serves as a border control measure, allows federal immigration officials to quickly return border crossers and illegal aliens to their native countries.
Former President Trump invoked Title 42 in 2020, the first time in American history that the order was used at the border to ensure that American citizens were protected from viral infections, diseases, and illnesses that border crossers and illegal aliens could be carrying, specifically the Chinese coronavirus.
Biden officials admit that lifting Title 42 is likely to bring a massive influx of border crossers and illegal aliens to the border, with potentially 500,000 arriving at the border every month — a more than doubling of current illegal immigration levels.
During an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily, Paxton said the Biden administration continues to treat coronavirus as “a real threat” for Americans, but when it comes to hundreds of thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens showing up at the United States-Mexico border, coronavirus “is irrelevant.”
Mayorkas Pushes ‘Backlog Amnesty’ for over 1 Million Illegals Facing Deportation
President Joe Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, is planning a no-deportation amnesty for many of the 1.7 million illegal migrants waiting in the courtroom backlogs, even as officials are preparing to welcome many hundreds of thousands more job-seeking migrants.
“This is the equivalent of nullifying our immigration laws,” said Rob Law at the Center for Immigration Studies, who is a former appointee at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The backlog amnesty will be quickly used as an excuse by officials to justify the award of work permits and green cards to the illegal migrants, he said:
This is how this will be teed up. They’ll say, “As you know, these people were being subjected to these draconian [deportation] rules of the past that don’t reflect our current equity and compassion … but now it’s not right for them to not have the opportunity to have a livelihood.” That’s what the messaging will be for next giving them mass parole or some [status] that allows a work permit … They’re laundering illegal migration behavior through a multi-staged approach.
The backlog amnesty is being marketed as a cost-saving measure for the government’s prosecutors and judges before the planned inflow of myriad more economic migrants once the Title 42 barrier is removed in late May.
But the government’s cost-saving will impose huge pocketbook costs on the millions of Americans who are struggling to earn decent wages or to pay their inflating rents in an economy
flooded with illegal migrants. Those pocketbook problems are undermining Democrats’ chances in the 2022 election, according to a survey of loyal Democrats reported on April 4 by Politico.
Smiley Martin, the second of three suspects arrested in connection with Sunday’s Sacramento, CA, shooting, was released early from prison in February despite District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert opposing the release.
The Sacramento Bee reports that Martin is charged with “assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.”
The Los Angeles Times points out Martin’s gun had allegedly been stolen and was converted into a fully automatic weapon, and he will face charges for those things as well.
Martin was convicted in 2018 and received a ten-year sentence but was released early from prison, despite DA Schubert’s opposition to the early release.
DA Schubert wrote a letter to the parole board urging them not to release Smiley: “Inmate Martin has, for his entire adult life, displayed a pattern of criminal behavior. While the current case on review may not be ‘violent’ under the Penal Code, Inmate Martin’s criminal conduct is violent and lengthy.”
She also noted, “Inmate Martin has committed several felony violations and clearly has little regard for human life and the law, which can be shown by his conduct in his prior felony convictions of robbery, possession of a firearm and prior misdemeanor conviction of providing false information to a peace officer.”
Google is fighting back against a Brazilian court order to turn over data on all users who searched for specific terms, including the name of a well-known elected official and a busy downtown thoroughfare. (Brief in Portuguese / English*) While we applaud Google for challenging this digital dragnet search in Brazil, it must also stand up for the rights of its users against similar searches in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Background: Keyword Search Warrants
Keyword search warrants like the one in Brazil are far broader than traditional search warrants described in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Fourth Amendment requires police to establish probable cause to search a particular place or seize a particular person or thing before the court authorizes the warrant. But keyword search warrants don’t start with a suspect person or device. Instead, they require Google to comb through the search histories of all of its users, including users who are not logged into a Google account when they search.
Keyword warrants allow the police to learn anyone and everyone who may have searched for particular terms on the off-chance one of those people could have been involved with the crime. Like better-known geofence warrants, keyword warrants allow police to conduct a fishing expedition and sweep up data on innocent people, turning them into criminal suspects. Police are using both types of expansive, suspicionless searches with increasing frequency.
Google Takes a Stand Against Keyword Search Warrants—in Brazil
The Brazilian case arises out of the assassination of Rio de Janeiro City Councilor Marielle Franco. Franco was murdered, along with her driver, Anderson Gomes, near Rio de Janeiro in 2018. It was a terrible crime that stirred up public outcry.
As part of the investigation into the assassination, police ordered Google to trawl through its users’ search histories, scanning for searches of certain terms—including the name of a heavily trafficked street in Rio de Janeiro (“Rua dos Inválidos”), Franco’s name, and the name of a nonprofit cultural space intended to support Black women (Casa das Pretas), where Franco had participated in an event earlier on the day she was killed. The order required Google to turn over identifying data about all users who searched for these and other related terms over the course of four days.
Google has challenged this order, eventually appealing it all the way to Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, arguing that this kind of indiscriminate search violates the Brazilian constitution. (Google’s brief in Portuguese / English*) As Google rightly explains, the warrant is wildly overbroad. The search terms would all have been popular and common queries, and many people are likely to have used them—including citizens and journalists interested in the activities of a city councilor, or people interested in collaborating with or receiving support from the nonprofit cultural center Casa das Pretas.
This particular keyword search warrant is particularly egregious, given the sheer number of people likely caught in its dragnet, but even a more narrow warrant should trigger human rights concerns. These types of warrants inevitably sweep in users whom police have no reason to believe were involved in the crime, and they give police unbridled discretion to determine which of these people to target for further investigation. In the Fourth Amendment framework, the unbridled discretion inherent in keyword search warrants, like geofence warrants, makes them an unconstitutional “general warrant.”
As Google emphasized in its brief, this case in Brazil has far-reaching implications. This method of investigating transforms a platform intended to provide access to information into a tool for the government to collect highly revealing private data from innocent people. And Google receives thousands of law enforcement orders to provide user data in Brazil each year, affecting tens of thousands of users. If Brazil’s Supreme Court signs off on dragnet keyword searches, the number of impacted users could skyrocket.
Google Fails to Challenge Keyword Search Warrants in the U.S.
Keyword search orders are becoming increasingly common in the U.S.—but Google seemingly hasn’t fought nearly as hard to protect the privacy of its U.S. users. We aren’t aware of any cases in which Google has pushed back against keyword search warrants in the U.S. In fact, we have no idea how many keyword warrants Google receives or how it responds to them at all, because Google has kept that information entirely secret. That secrecy surrounding keyword warrants contrasts with Google’s recent reporting on geofence warrants; Google has now shared the number of geofence warrants it receives and the three-step process it uses to respond to them.
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Farmers Struggling With Increased Food Demands, Supply Chain Disruptions
Talk of food shortages and empty shelves has been at the forefront of agricultural discussions around the globe for more than two years as production demands have increased and farmers are scrambling to match the pace.
Aggravating the economic aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain recovery efforts was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. That dealt another significant blow to global agriculture, as the conflict involves two of the world’s top wheat producers.
Further impeding global farmers are the limited availability and inflated price of fertilizer.
Russia is one of the world’s largest producers of fertilizer, which was a part of the U.S. sanctions list until March 24, when the Department of the Treasury removed key agricultural items from the embargo because of critical shortages.
However, the move may prove ineffective as Russia’s deputy secretary of the country’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev, announced on April 1 that Moscow wouldn’t sell agricultural products to countries it deemed as “enemies,” effectively weaponizing key commodities.
Prior to the Russia–Ukraine conflict or even the pandemic, it became apparent that there were weak links in the global food chain.
In 2007, food prices skyrocketed because of rising oil costs, explosive demand for corn-based fuels, transportation, financial market speculation, and low grain reserves. At the time, the director-general of the World Food Programme called the combination a “perfect storm.”
Farmers are now facing a sharp rise in demand for food commodities, which could increase by 98 percent by the year 2050. Combined with the pandemic aftermath and war-related sanctions, global agriculture is riding out a new type of storm.
VIDEO: The World Government Forum Says They Will Abandon The Dollar! 2120 views
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Led by a scientist dubbed “the Russian Indiana Jones,” a team of divers has discovered a wondrous marine organism that changes itself from clear to a kaleidoscope of color.
One of the mysteries of the seas, jelly creature Cestum veneris has a sophisticated mechanism for keeping safe from predators, wrapping itself in layers around a delicate center. That still doesn’t explain exactly why it changes from transparent to glowing colored in a couple of minutes. Could it just be for show? Team Aquitilis, from Russia, say even they can’t be sure.
The spectacular effect created by Cestum veneris has garnered thousands of views and likes on Instagram, the team’s favorite way of showcasing their deep-ocean finds. Categorizing the find as a Venus girdle ctenophore, the adventurous group, led by Alexander Semenov, came upon it during a dive in the Mediterranean.
Basing themselves at the White Sea Biological Station, the marine biologists were continuing their in-depth study of gelatinous plankton. Winter conditions were dark and cold, but ice had not yet formed when they began the dive.
Semenov, a highly skilled underwater photographer, captured the striking images. According to him, the iridescent ctenophore, or “comb jelly,” can grow more than 2 1/2 meters. It is ribbon shaped, appearing like a neon tube.
Posing the question, “If you were a piece of gentle jelly, how would you protect yourself from predators?” Semenov went on to explain what happens:
“When Cestum veneris is disturbed, it tries to swim away from the potential threat with its undulating powers, but if it doesn’t work, the creature at some point stops and curls up into a double helix, surrounding the ‘flight control center’ with several layers of jelly wings.”
The vital nerves and stomach lie in the center, resembling a small light spindle. Like other comb jellies, Cestum is equipped with many tiny hair-like cilia. Unlike other varieties, though, Venus girdle doesn’t use them for propulsion. Rather, it propels itself forward with undulating body movements.
Fascinating as the twisting scenes are, the most peculiar trait of Venus girdle has to be its vibrant color-changing.
“They somehow change the structure of the body’s surface, and the light begins to reflect rather than pass through. It looks fantastic!” said Semenov, confessing the team were unable to find a clear explanation for the optical mechanism.
HEALTH
Microplastics Found in Human Blood for the First Time
Researchers in The Netherlands analyzed blood samples from 22 healthy volunteers; plastic particles were found in 17 — a rate of 77%
The mean concentration of plastic particles in the blood was 1.6 µg/ml, showing a first measurement of the concentration of the polymeric component of plastic in human blood
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, which is used to make plastic water and soda bottles, was detected most often; some of the blood samples contained up to three different types of plastic
It’s “scientifically plausible” that the plastic particles are being transported by the bloodstream to organs and could even be carried by immune cells, possibly raising the predisposition to diseases with an immunological base
This Nighttime Mistake Can Make Your Bones Age Faster
According to research, lack of sleep can impact your bone density and risk of osteoporosis (brittle bone), a condition that affects an estimated 10.3% of U.S. adults over the age of 50
Women who slept five hours or less per night had, on average, 0.012 to 0.018 g/cm2 lower bone mineral density than those who slept seven hours or more — the equivalence of about one year of bone aging
Women who slept five hours or less were also 22% more likely to have osteoporosis of the hip, and 28% more likely to have osteoporosis of the spine than those who slept seven hours or more each night
Bisphosphonate drugs prescribed for osteoporosis have been shown to weaken bones and cause microcracks that heighten your risk for atypical bone fractures
Nutrients that are important for healthy bone growth and strength include vitamin D, vitamins K1 and K2, calcium, magnesium and collagen
Most load-bearing exercises fail to produce sufficient osteogenic load to trigger bone growth. Blood flow restriction training is an alternative that appears to have a beneficial effect on bone health and can be done by the elderly and those who cannot lift heavy weights
WARNING: Study shows exposure to household cleaning products may be as harmful as car exhaust
Inherent in the phrase “cleaning product” is the idea that, upon using it, your space will become free of dirt, grime, and toxins. Unfortunately, in the latter case, that may not always be true. With COVID-19 bringing what we might call the “age of cleaning” into our homes, workplaces, and schools, we now coexist with a bunch of unwanted chemicals.
Ironically, given that COVID is a respiratory disease, all this cleaning might actually be worse for our airways than doing nothing. A recent study found that commercial disinfectants can decrease indoor air quality and increase pollutants in both gas and aerosol form.
Scientists find most cleaning products may do more harm than good
Anyone who has ever stepped into a commercial building after the cleaning staff finished their work is then left with no doubt: that chemical smell is a very unhealthy feeling. With the use of strong disinfectants, that sharp smell is quite intense and, in many cases, sickening. Make no mistake about it: those synthetic scents are meant to cover up the cancer-causing chemicals within those products.
The study’s authors carefully mimicked the indoor conditions of cleaners while taking measurements in real-time. What they discovered should shock all of us!
Household cleaning aerosols may emit more harmful VOCs than cars, according to new study
Researchers discovered that commercial cleaning agents were detected in the air within minutes of their application to a surface. This was also noted to be in well-ventilated areas that convincingly duplicated those of a large office building. They measured a variety of pollutants, including oxidants, radicals, and aerosols, among others. In some cases, chemical concentrations were more than double that of normal outdoor amounts – without the same room to disperse.
Why does that matter? In the study, researchers found that all those chemicals got sucked into human lungs. In fact, they deposited at rates comparable to or worse than that of aerosols inhaled from cars.
Who is at risk of developing adverse health effects from exposure to cleaning products?
The short answer is that everyone is at risk with ubiquitous chemicals such as these. The longer answer is that we should be most concerned about people working with them routinely – cleaning staff, for example. Some of them spend all day, every day, using chemicals to disinfect common touchpoints throughout the office. They may also spend extra time disinfecting bathrooms and eating areas.
In addition, let’s remember that due to the persistent COVID fear-mongering campaign, millions developed cleaning paranoia over the past two years – despite learning early in the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 spreads by aerosolized droplets, not by touching surface areas.
This means that attacking every office space as though COVID or other diseases are lurking on its surfaces may actually be counterproductive to our wellbeing.
Redefine “clean” by saying NO to toxic chemicals
That’s not to say cleaning is bad. We all intuitively understand the benefits of a clean home or workspace for mental health, and it turns out to be good for your immune system. But, be advised, take time to read product labels and opt for safer alternatives when purchasing cleaning products to be used in your home.
We also need to follow science’s cues about which cleaning methods do and do not matter. Hopefully, this can be our wake-up call that adding toxic chemicals to indoor spaces won’t help fight a disease whose transmission isn’t affected by the use of these chemicals at all.
—>Check out safe & effective household cleaning products from The Power Mall!
COVID RELATED NEWS
FDA Floats Moving COVID-19 Vaccines to Flu-Like Model
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials have proposed a future model for developing new COVID-19 vaccines that would be built on the approach to creating influenza vaccines.
Accumulating data suggest the current COVID-19 vaccines, based on a virus strain that is now generations old, “may need to be updated at some point to ensure the high level of efficacy demonstrated in the early vaccine clinical trials,” the FDA said.
One concern is how new strains of SARS-CoV-2 keep emerging, some of which bypass protection bestowed by the vaccines better than others. SARS-CoV-2, also known as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, causes COVID-19.
The vaccines provide virtually no protection against infection from Omicron, the strain that is dominant in the United States at present, though they have held up better against severe disease.
U.S. regulators say an orderly and transparent process should be outlined for changing the composition of the COVID-19 vaccines, with the process ideally being adopted by countries around the world in addition to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The model in place for annually updating influenza vaccines can inform the process, officials say.
“The strain selection process for determining the composition of seasonal influenza vaccines may provide a general outline for the approach needed for updating the composition of COVID-19 vaccines to address current and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants,” the FDA said.
The influenza vaccine model is based on predicting which variants will be circulating in the future. WHO leads the effort, voting on the composition of the vaccines to be deployed in the northern hemisphere five to six months later and the southern hemisphere three to four months in the future.
U.S. authorities often adopt the WHO’s recommended composition, though the FDA, in consultation with its expert advisory panel on vaccines, occasionally diverge from the advice.
While the flu model could be used as a foundation for future COVID-19 vaccines, there are unique issues for COVID-19 that will need to be addressed, FDA officials say, including how the seasonal pattern for SARS-CoV-2 surges has yet to be identified; how the COVID-19 vaccines are built across different platforms, such as messenger RNA; and how the experience with those vaccines to date wouldn’t be sufficient to get authorization or approval without clinical trial data.
Further, even the best-matched flu vaccines end up being around 60 percent effective, a figure some vaccine manufacturers have described as poor.
The proposed shift to a flu-like model contains “a lot of assumptions,” John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine, told The Epoch Times.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Announces Sweeping Review of Agency
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) head Rochelle Walensky announced a sweeping review of her agency.
“At the conclusion of this collective effort, we will develop new systems and processes to deliver our science and program to the American people, along with a plan for how CDC should be structured to facilitate the public health work we do,” Walensky wrote in an email sent to agency staff on Monday.
Jim Macrae, the associate administrator for primary health care at the Health Resources and Services Administration, will be overseeing a one-month review of the agency, which has been under mounting public scrutiny over how it has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Starting on April 11, Macrae will begin evaluating the agency’s COVID-19 politics and will provide her with “insight on how the delivery of our science and program can be further strengthened during this critical time of transition,” Walensky also said.
In a statement to news outlets, the CDC said Monday that it has “worked to speed up data reporting and scientific processes throughout its pandemic response” in the past year, while it added that efforts are “needed to institutionalize and formalize these approaches and to find new ways to adapt the agency’s structure to the changing environment.”
Since she took over the agency in January 2021, Walensky has faced criticism for her public comments and messaging around the pandemic as critics have accused the agency of making politically motivated decisions on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. During an interview with the Wall Street Journal in mid-2021, the CDC chief admitted that she is struggling with communicating with the public about the pandemic.
Walensky said in a separate statement to CNN on Monday that “never in its 75 years history has CDC had to make decisions so quickly, based on often limited, real-time, and evolving science.”
The CDC, she added, “is working to strategically position and modernize the agency to facilitate and support the future of public health. As we’ve challenged our state and local partners, we know that now is the time for CDC to integrate the lessons learned into a strategy for the future.”
“This work will allow CDC to develop new systems and processes to deliver science and program activities to the American people, with a keen focus on the agency’s core capabilities–public health workforce, data modernization, laboratory capacity, health equity, rapid response to disease outbreaks, and preparedness within the U.S. and around the world,” her statement continued.
CANCEL CULTURE
Conservative Comic Trio Wants to Win America Back—One Joke at a Time
Three conservative comedians with three different styles of humor are all bound by a common belief that to be an American means never having to say you’re sorry for speaking out.
Together Brad Stine, Kevin Jackson, and Tim Wilkins make up the Unapologetically American Comedy Tour of 2022, taking no leftist prisoners as they fight to win America back through laughter.
And on March 31, the stand-up comics delivered their message of raucous patriotic revival before a large, conservative audience at Venue8600 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The show was billed on HappeningNext as an “intervention for crazed Americans who are high on nonsense or political correctness: it’s time for a detox!”
“Sorry, no cry closets or safe words allowed.”
Whether the topic was race, Joe Biden’s economic policies, COVID-19 restrictions, LGBTQ antics, or the “woke” cancel culture assault on American values, everything was fair game for these comics.
Their mission, since they chose to accept it: “Make America Laugh Again.”
Cancel Culture Targets Civil Rights and Biblical Values Activist
Arthur Goldberg has spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of others and promoting biblical morality.
Now, at the age of 81, Goldberg, a devout Orthodox Jew and president of his local synagogue, is engaged in the moral and legal fight of his life.
His offense: insisting that Jewish men and others have the right to obtain counseling and therapy to overcome unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA) and founding a nonprofit organization to refer them to places of help.
“For promoting those rights, providing seekers with that information, and referring them for gender affirmation therapy, I have been canceled,” Goldberg told The Epoch Times.
“Where is the person’s right to determine his or her own therapeutic goals? Where is the freedom to choose? What happened to a person’s right to voluntarily choose to change his or her sexual orientation?
“Men and women desiring help with SSA are being denied the right to information about the availability and effectiveness of gender-affirming methods and therapies.”
According to Goldberg, gender affirmation therapy is the empowerment of willing individuals combating unwanted same-sex attraction to affirm the gender of their birth.
When Goldberg, a retired investment banker, saw the painful struggles of some acquaintances dealing with SSA, he was moved to co-found a nonprofit organization called Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) to offer them hope and assistance.
JONAH’s mission was to refer primarily Jewish men struggling with SSA to professional and religious counseling.
The goal was to help them fulfill their desire to live a life consistent with the tenets of their Jewish religion as declared in the Torah (the five books of Moses), which holds to heterosexuality, the marriage of a man to a woman, and the bringing forth of children within its confines.
OTHER
Man Who Woke From 19-Year Coma Dies at Age 57: Obituary
A man who survived a deadly car crash and awoke from a 19-year coma nearly 20 years ago has died, according to an obituary last week.
Terry Wayne Wallis, 57, died last week in Searcy, Arkansas, the obituary confirmed.
It noted that Wallis “was in an automobile accident in 1984, just six weeks after the birth of his daughter, Amber,” which left him comatose for 19 years. But Wallis, in the summer of 2003, woke and started to speak, drawing international attention.
“His mother and all of his family cared for him relentlessly during his coma and afterwards. His family would bring him home on alternate weekends for years. Doctors believe that this stimulation contributed to his awakening period,” the obituary said.
When Wallis woke up, reports at the time claimed that he asked for a Pepsi.
“He started out with ‘Mom,’ and then it was ‘Pepsi,’ and then it was ‘milk,’” said Alesha Badgley of the Stone County Rehabilitation Center, told the New York Post in 2003. “Now, it’s anything he wants to say.”
His mother, Angilee Wallis, said that her son’s recovery was miraculous.
“I couldn’t tell you my first thought, I just fell over on the floor,” she said of the day when he awoke, according to reports at the time.
When he woke up 19 years ago, according to the Post, Terry Wallis had believed that Ronald Reagan was still president and spoke to his grandmother, who died several years before he emerged from his coma.
A Mayo Clinic editorial noted that doctors had told his family that Wallis “would probably never emerge,” and doctors also ignored his mother’s assertion that “Terry is in there, he just can’t communicate.”
“They did not believe it, they just [said he is] in a coma and that is what he is going to be,” she added in a 2005 documentary on his case, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The article further noted: “Some of these ‘miracle’ patients (like Wallis) may not have been in a coma but in a variant of a locked-in syndrome. Some of the news coverage of these cases highlights that communication was possible through eye blinking even before speech returned.”
Big Pharma Advertising Dollars Are at an All-Time High
The drug industry influences and manipulates media through advertising dollars. In 2021, drug companies spent an aggregate $6.88 BILLION on direct-to-consumer advertising (DCTA), up slightly from $6.86 billion in 2020
The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that permit DCTA, making media in these countries more likely to have pro-pharma bias
The Will Smith-Chris Rock drama during the Oscars may have been nothing more than a subliminal publicity stunt for Pfizer’s upcoming alopecia drug
Over the past year, the U.S. government spent $1 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money to advertise the COVID jab, which is the most dangerous and least proven drug ever marketed, while simultaneously calling for the censorship of anyone who dared to address the risks of this novel treatment
By law, drug ads must not be false or misleading, must present a “fair balance” of information describing both the risks and benefits of a drug, must include facts that are “material” to the product’s advertised uses, and must include a “brief summary” that mentions every risk described in the product’s labeling. Few if any ads for the COVID jab have fulfilled these requirements
More Stories
Today’s News: April 26, 2024
Today’s News: April 25, 2024
Today’s News: April 24, 2024