(Crux) LEICESTER, United Kingdom – So-called “vaccine passports” could lead to an “unethical coercion” of citizens, according to the head of the UK’s leading Catholic bioethics center.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has floated the idea of a “COVID-status certification” to help reopen the British economy and reduce restrictions on social contact.
Nicknamed “vaccine passports,” the policy would require people prove they have received a vaccine in order to enter certain places of public accommodation, such as pubs and restaurants.
Over 30 million people in the UK have received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, with everyone over 50 being invited to be vaccinated. The government says everyone over 18 will be offered their first dose of the vaccine by mid-July. Only around 3 million people have received the second dose, since the UK is giving a 11–12-week gap between the two doses, as recommended for the vaccines approved in the country.
England has taken a cautious approach to lifting lockdown restrictions imposed in January. Stay-at-home instructions were only lifted on Monday, allowing for up to 6 people or 2 households to meet outdoors. Shops and outdoor eateries will be allowed to reopen on April 12. The government says all legal limits on social contact will be lifted on June 21, if things go according to plan.
After brief panic at the hands of a forced multibillion-dollar margin call, markets on Tuesday are back to focusing on rising Treasury yields that are unraveling the past year’s meteoric gains, with tech stocks once again underperforming, while buzzy meme stock GameStop continues its unlikely surge.
KEY FACTS
Shortly after the market open, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which closed at a record high Monday, is ticking down 47 points, or 0.1%, while the S&P 500 slips 0.4%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq falls 0.8%.
Fueling the weakness in tech stocks, yields on the 10-year Treasury are back on the rise, climbing four basis points Tuesday morning ahead of President Joe Biden’s Thursday infrastructure announcement, which is sure to shore up the economic recovery—and hike up government spending.
Big banks Credit Suisse and Nomura, which both warned of “significant” losses as a result of Friday’s block-trading mayhem, are dropping another 3% and 2%, bringing their total losses since Friday to a staggering 15% and 16%, respectively.
Oil prices, on the other hand, are continuing to fall on renewed demand concerns, with the price of U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate falling 1.4% and pushing oil stocks Occidental Petroleum and Schlumberger NV down about 2% each.
Meanwhile, recently booming GameStop announced another executive hire, appointing Amazon director Elliott Wilke to the newly created role of chief growth officer as the company bulks up its top ranks with tech veterans; shares are up 4% Tuesday and nearly 900% this year.
On the earnings front, McCormick & Co. shares are heading up gains in the S&P, climbing 4% after the food manufacturer posted better-than-expected first-quarter sales of nearly $1.5 billion, 22% more than one year earlier thanks to consumers cooking more at home during the pandemic.
Nike is suing MSCHF, a small Brooklyn-based company, over its sale of 666 pairs of altered Nike Air Max 97s as “Satan Shoes” in collaboration with the rapper Lil Nas X.
Some workplaces encourage employees to donate blood as an act of charity. But six workers at MSCHF, a quirky company based in Brooklyn that’s known for products like toaster-shaped bath bombs and rubber-chicken bongs, offered their blood for a new line of shoes.
“‘Sacrificed’ is just a cool word — it was just the MSCHF team that gave the blood,” one of MSCHF’s founders, Daniel Greenberg, said in an email on Sunday. (Asked who collected the blood, Mr. Greenberg replied, “Uhhhhhh yeah hahah not medical professionals we did it ourselves lol.”)
A drop of blood is mixed in with ink that fills an air bubble in the sneaker, a Nike Air Max 97, Mr. Greenberg said.
“Not much blood, actually” was collected, he said, adding, “About six of us on the team gave.”
MSCHF started selling 666 pairs of the shoes — each pair cost $1,018 — on Monday as a follow-up to a line of Jesus Shoes, which contained holy water. They sold out in less than a minute.
Mr. Greenberg noted that Nike was not involved in the process “in any capacity.”
In a statement on Sunday, Nike said: “We do not have a relationship with Little Nas X or MSCHF. Nike did not design or release these shoes, and we do not endorse them.”
And on Monday, Nike sued MSCHF in U.S. District Court over the shoes, alleging that MSCHF’s “unauthorized Satan Shoes are likely to cause confusion and dilution and create an erroneous association between MSCHF’s products and Nike.”
Federal authorities have charged Ghislaine Maxwell with sex trafficking of a 14-year-old girl.
At the time of this reporting, Maxwell has been jailed nearly nine months on allegations that she helped procure and groom underage victims for late accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
According to the New York Times, the new indictment accuses Maxwell of paying a purported Epstein victim.
Maxwell was charged Monday for the first time with sex trafficking of a minor, according to the report, as federal prosecutors accused her of grooming the 14-year-old girl to engage with sex acts with Epstein.
The teen, identified as Minor Victim-4, was paid “hundreds of dollars in cash” in exchange for the sexual favors.
The number of China-based companies that rushed into the U.S. stock market hit a 10-year high in 2020, even as several others were removed, according to a study by the University of Florida.
Political commentator Li Linyi said the Chinese regime wants to raise capital in the United States through these companies to support its technology and military.
Several big companies were delisted by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). More were removed by index providers including MSCI, FTSE Russell, and S&P Dow Jones Indices, in response to the ban on investment in Chinese regime military-owned or -controlled companies.
On March 9, the NYSE delisted China’s largest offshore oil producer, China National Offshore Oil Corporation. In January, it ended trading in shares of China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom.
However, the threat of shutdown has not dampened the appetite of Chinese companies to list on U.S. exchanges.
In 2020, 30 companies came to the United States to complete an initial public offering (IPO), the highest number since 2011, raising an estimated $12.1 billion, the highest amount since 2014.
As of March 18, 238 Chinese companies were listed on U.S. stock exchanges, with almost $1.9 trillion in market capitalization, based on data from StockMarketMBA.com.
More Chinese companies are lining up to go public in New York. One of the largest private equity firms, Hony Capital, is among them.
Hony Capital
The China-focused Hony Capital seeks to raise $300 million to apply for listing a special purpose acquisition company on the Nasdaq.
Researchers found 109 industrial chemicals in blood samples taken from Bay Area pregnant women — 55 of the chemicals have never before been seen in humans.
Forty-two “mystery chemicals” were found in the blood of 30 Bay Area pregnant women, according to a recent study conducted by scientists at University of California, San Francisco.
The researchers took blood samples from pregnant women and from the fetal umbilical cords and found 109 industrial chemicals. Fifty-five chemicals were never-before-seen in humans, and 42 could not be traced back to any definite sources.
The study builds on evidence that a lack of industry transparency is exposing people to a cocktail of chemicals — with unknown health consequences.
“It’s the role of the government to ensure that chemicals used in the marketplace are known,” Tracey Woodruff, a professor of Ob/Gyn and reproductive sciences at University of California, San Francisco, told Environmental Health News (EHN). “That’s obviously not the system we’re in right now.”
Toxics in mothers
Using high-resolution mass spectrometry, the team strayed away from normal biomonitoring practice, which typically looks to identify already known chemicals and their hazardous effects.
Instead, the focus was measuring the unknown.
The researchers took maternal blood samples during labor and delivery. Blood samples from umbilical cords were taken after delivery.
Of the chemicals that could be characterized in these samples, most came from common industrial products such as plasticizers, cosmetics and pesticides. Some were high production volume chemicals, meaning that they’re imported in the U.S. at one million-plus pounds annually.
The team did find chemicals in the mothers that have already been deemed harmful. For example, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are found in products such as stain- and water-resistant clothing, nonstick pots and pans, firefighting foam, carpets and furniture can cause numerous developmental and immunological health consequences. They also detected two PFAS compounds in which there is no information on their source or use.
Additionally, the researchers found organophosphate flame retardants, which can cause health problems like endocrine disruption and reproductive effects. These are frequently used in furniture, building insulation, carpets and electronics.
The 42 mystery chemicals added to the researchers’ concern.
Hazardous chemicals can travel across the placenta through the umbilical cord to fetuses, who are particularly vulnerable to chemical exposures. While the team has not done toxicity testing on the mystery chemicals, the unknown risks, especially for infants, raise questions for corporate and governmental bodies whose duties are to release this information.
In 2020, 47% of U.S. adults belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque
Down more than 20 points from turn of the century
Change primarily due to rise in Americans with no religious preference
(Gallup) WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.
U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century.
Gallup asks Americans a battery of questions on their religious attitudes and practices twice each year. The following analysis of declines in church membership relies on three-year aggregates from 1998-2000 (when church membership averaged 69%), 2008-2010 (62%), and 2018-2020 (49%). The aggregates allow for reliable estimates by subgroup, with each three-year period consisting of data from more than 6,000 U.S. adults.
In an interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola, Vandana Shiva says, “… if In the next decade, if we don’t protect what has to be protected … and take away the sainthood from this criminal, they will leave nothing much to be saved.”
Story at-a-glance:
Bill Gates is entering every field that has to do with sustaining life and, for over a decade, has undermined vitality in all its forms, in an effort to seize control over and profit from it.
By funding research and financing public institutions, Gates is able to force those institutions down a path where they can only use his patented intellectual property.
While pretending to save the world through philanthropy, Gates’ solutions perpetuate and worsen the world’s problems. They may even threaten the future of humanity, as they’re driving us closer to extinction.
Through his company, Gates Ag One, Gates is pushing for one type of agriculture for the whole world, organized top, down. This includes digital farming, in which farmers are surveilled and mined for their agricultural data, which is then repackaged and sold back to them.
The answer to the environmental problems we face is not more of the very things that created the problems in the first place, which is what Gates proposes. The answer is regenerative agriculture and real food.
In this interview, Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses the importance and benefits of regenerative agriculture and a future Regeneration International project that we’ll be collaborating on.
We’re currently facing enormously powerful technocrats who are hell-bent on ushering in the Great Reset, which will complete the ongoing transfer of wealth and resource ownership from the poor and middle classes to the ultra-rich. Perhaps the most well-known of the individuals pushing for this is Bill Gates who, like John Rockefeller a century before him, rehabilitated his sorely tarnished image by turning to philanthropy.
However, Gates’ brand of philanthropy, so far, has helped few and harmed many. While his PR machine has managed to turn public opinion about him such that many now view him as a global savior who donates his wealth for the good of the planet, nothing could be further from the truth.
A Republican congressman has introduced a bill that would withdraw federal funding from government agencies that try to ban books.
“Cancel culture is rapidly encroaching on American institutions—starting in our elementary schools,” Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) said in a press release on his proposed legislation dubbed the “Guarding Readers’ Independence and Choice Act,” or “GRINCH” Act.
Inspired by the fictional creature in the Dr. Seuss book series, the GRINCH Act would bar states and local government agencies from receiving funding under the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants program if they “prohibits the availability of books” that “contain offensive or outdated language or images” to students, teachers, or schools, with the exception of books containing obscene or pornographic texts or images.
“As we have seen time and time again, the ‘woke’ horde will target just about anyone, even Dr. Seuss,” Joyce said, adding that no American should be “forced to participate in this scheme against their will.”
Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company that manages the legacy of the celebrated children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel, announced earlier this month that it has decided to cease publication and licensing of six Dr. Seuss titles because of imagery that was accused of being racist and insensitive.
As the mass shooting in Colorado become the next story to be used in the Democrats’ playbook, the left wasted no time in politicizing the tragedy to do away with Second Amendment rights in the name of safety and “gun control.” There’s only one problem: Nothing that they are proposing will do anything to stop anyone from murdering other people, warned BlazeTV host Mark Levin.
“This is about getting rid of the Second Amendment,” Levin stated. “There are efforts underway by the Democrat Party and their surrogates now to unleash litigation against gun manufacturers in order to prevent them from creating the products that you and I want to buy under the Second Amendment. There have been efforts underway to limit the number of bullets you can buy. There are all kids of proposals out there that have as their purpose to destroy the Second Amendment.”
