New Variant ‘Could Already be in the UK’ Amid Fears Vaccines Are 40% Less Effective

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The new COVID variant, that could weaken vaccine protection by 40 per cent, could potentially already be in the UK.

UK health chiefs say the new strain, centered in south African countries, is the “most worrying and complex” seen yet.

It is the most evolved so far with 50 mutations, 32 of which are of particular concern, and could be worse than Delta, experts have warned.

The variant has only been found in four countries so far – but its power has sparked a sudden ban on flights from six nations to the UK.

The variant, scientifically called B.1.1.529, has not yet been confirmed in the UK as of yet. (Read more from “New Variant ‘Could Already by in the UK’ Amid Fears Vaccines Are 40% Less Effective” HERE)

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In Case With Global Implications, Finland Puts Christians on Trial for Their Faith

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Juhana Pohjola wouldn’t be cast to play his own part if Hollywood made a movie about a bishop put on trial for his faith. The Finnish pastor has inherited a place in the church of Martin Luther, but it appears none of Luther’s pugnacity or vitriol.

In person, Pohjola, 49, is forthright but unassuming, and gentle. Stereotypically, the Finn is thin and tall. He often pauses while speaking to carefully consider his next words. He listens attentively to others with far less impressive resumes.

n more than two decades as a pastor, Pohjola has ministered to congregations as small as 30. He has spent his life building a network of faithful churches across Finland, many of which started with a few people gathered for prayer, Bible study, hymn-singing—and communion, if they can get a pastor. In an in-person interview with The Federalist, Pohjola urged fellow Christian leaders to be willing to seek out “one lost sheep” instead of crowds and acclaim.

This is the man who appears to be the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years. Also charged in the case that goes to trial on January 24 is Pohjola’s fellow Lutheran and a Finnish member of Parliament, Paivi Rasanen.

Rasanen’s alleged crimes in a country that claims to guarantee freedom of speech and religion include tweeting a picture of a Bible verse. Potential penalties if they are convicted include fines and up to two years in prison. (Read more from “In Case With Global Implications, Finland Puts Christians on Trial for Their Faith” HERE)

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Journalist Arrested After Reporting on Attacks Against Christians

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A Nigerian Christian journalist has been imprisoned following his reporting of attacks on Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt and his criticism of the government’s response, the Barnabas Fund reported Monday.

Officials of Kaduna State arrested Epoch Times journalist Luka Binniyat November 4 and charged him with transmitting electronic information known “to be false” under the nation’s Cybercrimes Act.

The charge is a federal offence carrying a penalty of three years in prison and Binniyat has not been offered bail and must be tried in a higher court.

A local source told the Barnabas Fund that Binniyat’s arrest “is aimed at silencing any dissenting voice and intimidating both Luka and the southern Kaduna communities.”

As Breitbart News reported, last July unidentified gunmen kidnapped some 140 Christian students from the Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna State. (Read more from “Journalist Arrested After Reporting on Attacks Against Christians” HERE)

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Violence Erupts as COVID Protests Expand Across Europe

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Violence erupted at demonstrations in Belgium and the Netherlands over the weekend as tougher Covid-19 restrictions to curb the resurgent pandemic led to angry protests in several European countries.

Ten of thousands of people marched through central Brussels on Sunday to protest against reinforced restrictions imposed by the Belgian government to counter the latest rise in coronavirus cases. The march, which police estimated involved 35,000 people, began peacefully but descended into violence as several hundred people started pelting officers, smashing cars and setting rubbish bins on fire. Police responded with teargas and water cannon.

“We have injuries but we cannot yet say how many,” said Ilse Vande Keere, a police spokesperson. It was also unclear how many people had been detained.

Demonstrators had earlier gathered to protest against the government’s advice to get vaccinated and any possible moves to impose mandatory shots. Shouting “freedom, freedom, freedom!” and singing the anti-fascist song Bella Ciao, protesters lined up behind a huge banner saying “together for freedom” and marched to the EU headquarters. Signs among the crowd varied from far-right insignia to the rainbow flags of the LGBT community.

It followed a second night of violence in the Netherlands on Saturday, when five police officers were injured and at least 40 people arrested. Dutch authorities deployed water cannon, dogs and mounted police to dispel crowds of rioting youths who lit fires and lobbed fireworks in The Hague and elsewhere, after more than 50 people were arrested in Rotterdam on Friday. (Read more from “Violence Erupts as COVID Protests Expand Across Europe” HERE)

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Chinese Media Release Video, Photos of Missing Tennis Star

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Chinese state media have posted pictures of missing tennis star Peng Shuai wishing fans a “happy weekend”, while a video claiming to show the 35-year-old at a restaurant was also released.

The former Wimbledon and French Open doubles champion hasn’t been seen since November 3 after accusing a former top Chinese government official of sexual abuse.

Two-time Grand Slam champ Peng claimed that ex-vice premier Zhang Gaoli, 75, forced her to have sex with him three years ago.

Earlier this week, Chinese state media released an email they said was from Peng, where she insisted that she is “safe” and her sexual abuse allegations were not true. However, the tennis world didn’t believe the email was actually sent by her.

And now Chinese state TV reporter Shen Shiwei has tweeted pictures of Peng from her WeChat account, showing her with cuddly toys, The Sun reports. (Read more from “Chinese Media Release Video, Photos of Missing Tennis Star” HERE)

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COVID Lab Leak Theory Blows Wide Open: Leaked Documents Show Samples Were Sent to Wuhan

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The leaked documents add more weight to the theory that the deadly pathogen leaked from Wuhan’s Institute of Virology. Campaigners say Wuhan scientists were studying viral samples of high-risk bat species living in Laos. This has drawn a link between a pathogen that is a close relative to COVID-19 that was found in Laos and the research performed at the Wuhan laboratory.

The documents suggest that in September scientists discovered a viral strain called Banal-52 in Laos. . .

Leaked emails between scientific research foundation EcoHealth Alliance and US government funders show viral samples were being actively collected from bats in Laos.

These samples were then taken back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for study.

The emails between EcoHealth Alliance and the US government funders suggest that viral DNA from “bats and other high-risk species” were sent to Wuhan between June 2017 to May 2019. (Read more from “COVID Lab Leak Theory Blows Wide Open: Leaked Documents Show Samples Were Sent to Wuhan” HERE)

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Scientists Are Dumbfounded That COVID-19 Barely Exists in Africa

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COVID-19 has faded into the background of daily life in Africa, and scientists are unable to figure out exactly why.

With a population of 1.3 billion people, Africa is the world’s second most-populous continent, trailing only Asia, and it’s also the world’s poorest. But despite the gap in resources — Africa has much less access to vaccines than places like the Americas and Western Europe — the continent has experienced the second-lowest number of deaths from the virus of any of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) six designated regions.

Nearly 152,000 Africans have died of COVID-19 since the global pandemic began, according to the WHO. The Western Pacific region has seen just 136,267 deaths, but otherwise Africa has had the best pandemic outcome in the world. In the Americas, more than 2.3 million people have died from the virus, and in Europe, the number is nearly 1.5 million.

Scientists acknowledge that sparse reporting systems and poor data collections play some part in the low numbers, according to The Associated Press. But the astronomical gap between the region and the rest of the world is too substantial to simply chalk up to poor record-keeping, they say. (Read more from “Scientists Are Dumbfounded That COVID-19 Barely Exists in Africa” HERE)

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Google Is Now Censoring American Journalists on Behalf of Communist China

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YouTube and its parent company Google targeted a video about the suspicious disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai by journalists Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball on Thursday, in a continuation of the tech company’s running interference for communist China.

In a 10-minute “Breaking Points” video titled “Chinese Tennis Star VANISHES After Rape Accusation,” Enjeti and Ball discuss Shuai’s allegations that China’s former Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli sexually assaulted her. “After she posted that, overnight, she was disappeared from the Chinese social media,” Enjeti says in the video.

Enjeti also noted that a Chinese state media outlet had released a statement purported to be from Shuai, denying the allegations and insisting, “I’m not missing” and “everything is fine.”

“I hope to promote Chinese tennis with you all if I have a chance in the future,” the statement continued. Enjeti said the statement only increased concerns of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) about Shuai’s statements.

“Reports are that if you even post about her or about this official or even say things like ‘tennis’ on … their version of Twitter, then that will be censored and blocked,” Ball added, noting that Shuai’s original post alleging the assault was taken down by Chinese censors within 30 minutes.

(Read more from “Google Is Now Censoring American Journalists on Behalf of Communist China” HERE)

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Iran-Backed Militants Storm US Embassy in Yemen

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The State Department is working to secure the release of several kidnapped hostages taken by Iran-backed terrorists just a day after the militant group stormed the U.S. embassy facility in Sana’a, Yemen, U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon early Thursday.

A group of Houthi rebels reportedly stormed the U.S. compound on Wednesday seeking “large quantities of equipment and materials,” according to regional reports translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. The raid comes just five days after the Houthis kidnapped Yemeni nationals who work for the U.S. embassy. “The alleged raid comes after the Houthis kidnapped three Yemeni nationals affiliated with the U.S. Embassy from one of the employee’s private residences in Sana’a on November 5,” according to MEMRI. At least 22 other Yemenis were kidnapped by the Houthis in recent weeks, “most of whom worked on the security staff guarding the embassy grounds,” according to MEMRI.

The State Department confirmed to the Free Beacon that the Yemeni staffers are being detained without explanation and that the Iran-backed militants stole property after breaching the American facility in Sana’a, which housed U.S. embassy staff prior to the suspension of operations there in 2015.

“The United States has been unceasing in its diplomatic efforts to secure their release,” a State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon. “The majority of the detained have been released, but the Houthis continue to detain additional Yemeni employees of the embassy.” (Read more from “Iran-Backed Militants Storm US Embassy in Yemen” HERE)

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New Evidence for Lab-Leak Hypothesis of COVID’s Origins

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The origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 remains unclear, but recent revelations reinforce the likelihood that the true source was a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

A letter from Lawrence Tabak, the National Institutes of Health’s principal deputy director, to Kentucky congressman James Comer confirms that the NIH funded research at the WIV during 2018–2019 that manipulated a bat coronavirus called WIV1. Researchers at the institute grafted spike proteins from other coronaviruses onto WIV1 to see if the modified virus was capable of binding in a mouse that possessed the ACE2 receptors found in humans—the same receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 binds. The modified virus reproduced more rapidly and made infected humanized mice sicker than the unmodified virus.

Starting in 2014, the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Anthony Fauci, funded the New York-based research nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance with annual grants through 2020 for “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” Total funding was $3,748,715. More than $600,000 of that went to the WIV. Three other Chinese institutions received funding as well. The principal investigator was EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak, who, from the onset of the pandemic, has consistently campaigned in public and behind the scenes to convince people that SARS-CoV-2 did not come from the WIV but evolved naturally from animal-to-human transmission.

Tabak’s letter asserts that the modified virus’s becoming more virulent “was an unexpected result” and not “something that the researchers set out to do”—an odd claim, considering that the whole point of manipulating the virus was to investigate things that could make it more virulent. The 2018 research mentioned in Tabak’s letter is similar to earlier WIV research, funded in part by the NIH, that modified viruses related to SARS to see if they could infect human cells. Publications of these studies in 2017 and 2016 were the subject of a contentious Senate hearing in which Senator Rand Paul pressed Fauci to admit that they constituted gain-of-function research, prompting Fauci’s denial and a statement that “NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Many, but not all, virologists believe that the WIV experimentation qualifies as gain-of-function research. Such research was originally defined as “any modification of a biological agent that confers new or enhanced activity.” The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity proposed that only a narrower category, gain-of-function research of concern—research that could make a pathogen likely to spread and cause disease in humans—needs extra regulatory oversight. (Read more from “New Evidence for Lab-Leak Hypothesis of COVID’s Origins” HERE)

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