Today's News: October 05, 2021

US trade deficit reaches record $73.3bn amid ongoing spat with China

The US trade imbalance in August rose to an all-time high, having widened by another $3 billion, or 4.2%, as relatively insignificant gains in exports were swamped by a much larger growth in imports.

Facebook down: Zuckerberg apologises for six-hour outage

Billions of users were affected by the outage – which also took down Whatsapp, Messenger and Instagram.

Facebook’s Apps Went Down. The World Saw How Much It Runs on Them.

The outage disrupted the digital lives of small-business owners, politicians, aid workers and others. But for some, it was a welcome reprieve.

Facebook Whistleblower to Say Former Employer an ‘Urgent Threat’ to US

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will appear before the U.S. Congress Tuesday, where she is set to sharply criticize her former employer as “one of the most urgent threats” facing the country, and to demand transparency about its operations in order to better regulate it.

Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, says the social media giant keeps its algorithms and operations a secret.

“The core of the issue is that no one can understand Facebook’s destructive choices better than Facebook, because only Facebook gets to look under the hood,” she said in written testimony prepared for the hearing. “A critical starting point for effective regulation is transparency,” she said in testimony to be delivered to a Senate Commerce subcommittee.

Exclusive: Govt Will Brand Climate Change as a ‘Public Health Issue’ to Expand Their Power, Says Baroness Fox

The United Kingdom and governments throughout the world will try to brand climate change as a public health issue in order to expand their powers, as they did during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Baroness Claire Fox warned.

Speaking with Breitbart London during the Reform UK party conference in Manchester, Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley said that while she is the “opposite of a conspiratorial thinker”, she believes that governments will try to retain the powers they have acquired during the pandemic by raising fears over a range of other issues, including climate change.

California Now Bans State-funded Travel to One-third of America

California’s Democrats have now banned state-funded travel to so many states in protest at their legislation on social issues that the bans now cover one-third of the United States by population, after a new ban on Ohio was introduced last month.

‘Pandora Papers’ expose tax evasion by billionaires and world leaders

More than 330 politicians were identified as holding wealth in secret accounts, including Jordan’s King Abdullah II and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Leak stopped, but major oil spill closes Southern California beaches

One of the largest oil spills in recent Southern California history fouled Huntington Beach and other popular beaches. The leak came from an offshore pipeline.

Johnson & Johnson asks FDA to authorize Covid-19 vaccine booster shots

Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday it has asked the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize booster shots for its coronavirus vaccine, but has left it up to the FDA and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to decide just who should get their boosters and when.

New York calling in National Guard to fill hospital staffing shortages due to vaccine mandates

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has said that she is considering using the National Guard to fill hospital staffing shortages that are expected as tens of thousands of workers potentially lose their jobs for failing to meet a COVID-19 vaccine mandate deadline.

According to the governor’s office, around 16 percent of New York’s 450,000 hospital staff have not yet been fully vaccinated. This amounts to around 72,000 workers.

China ridicules new report claiming Wuhan Covid outbreak started earlier than reported

An Australia-based firm wants the Five Eyes to look into its suspicions that a surge in the procurement of PCR testing equipment in Wuhan, China means the Covid-19 pandemic started earlier than officially reported.

War on ivermectin rages as feds buy Big Pharma’s expensive copy

The unrelenting opposition to using ivermectin to treat and prevent COVID-19 is stronger than ever. This has resulted from a gigantic increase in demand for IVM by much of the public. Despite big media tirades against the medication, the truth about its effectiveness (together with failure of COVID vaccines) has reached the public through many articles on alternative news websites and truth-tellers on countless podcasts. Ivermectin’s success has forced Big Pharma to create expensive copies of it.

Merck, a maker of IVM, is getting much positive press coverage for its forthcoming prescription oral antiviral (molnupiravir). It is designed to replace IVM, since they cannot make big money from ivermectin. The FDA will soon give molnupiravir emergency use authorization.