Germany Heads Back Into Second COVID Lockdown

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The German government has announced that the country will head back into a second lockdown in response to a recent spike in the coronavirus cases. The second lockdown is set to begin on Monday and will last for at least four weeks.

Germany initially had some of the strictest lockdown measures in Europe, but recently gradually eased those restrictions. Schools, bars, and restaurants had been allowed to reopen in phases in recent weeks.

However, in response to the news that the country saw a record total of 14,964 cases on Tuesday, the government has decided to once again severely restrict its citizens’ movements. According to NBC News, the second lockdown will require all bars, restaurants, cinemas, and other leisure activities to close for in-person activities. Restaurants will still be permitted to prepare food for take-out purposes.

Additionally, German citizens are being asked to stay home, restrict travel, and avoid even in-home gatherings that involve more than two households. Retail stores will remain open, but hotels will not be allowed to accommodate tourists.

Notably, even though Germany is locking down most of their country, schools will remain open, even though they are being required to undertake additional sanitation measures. (Read more from “Germany Heads Back Into Second COVID Lockdown” HERE)

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The Chinese Communist Party’s ‘Hostage Diplomacy’ Has Backfired

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The Wall Street Journal recently disclosed that Chinese government officials have repeatedly warned their U.S. government counterparts: “The U.S. should drop prosecutions of the Chinese scholars in American courts, or Americans in China might find themselves in violation of Chinese law.” No other foreign government has ever made such blunt threats against U.S. citizens in such a fashion. . .

While our country should never cave to the Chinese Communist Party’s blackmail, since the CCP has either threatened or imposed similar “hostage diplomacy” on America’s allies such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, any Americans in China should take the CCP’s threat seriously. . .

Beijing’s hostage diplomacy has, thus far, failed to intimidate any country into submission. The Australian government stands firmly behind its call for an independent inquiry into the origin and spread of the coronavirus. Its proposal won the support from more than 120 countries and was officially adopted by WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly said he could not and would not intervene in the Meng case because “Canada has a strong and an independent justice system.” After Beijing imposed the new national security law on Hong Kong, Trudeau said his country would stand up for Hong Kong. He suspended Canada’s extradition treaty with Hong Kong immediately and vowed not to export sensitive military equipment to the city. He also directed his government to offer additional immigration pathways for Hongkongers.

In the United Kingdom, the Johnson administration not only reaffirmed its commitment to offer a path to citizenship for Hong Kong BNO holders but also barred Chinese telecom giant Huawei from the U.K.’s 5G network, a big blow to Beijing’s global ambition. (Read more from “The Chinese Communist Party’s ‘Hostage Diplomacy’ Has Backfired” HERE)

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Expert’s Stunning Conclusion: China’s Killing Americans ‘Deliberately’

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Well-known China expert Gordon Chang has concluded that China is killing Americans “deliberately” with its export of fentanyl.

Writing for the Gatestone Institute, he quotes Fox News host Tucker Carlson stating it’s a fact that “fentanyl and Covid both came from China, China’s our main rival, they’re benefiting from the deaths of many thousands of Americans.”

Chang writes that China has been pushing fentanyl into the U.S. for years, and last year fatal drug overdoses hit a record 70,980, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . .

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution has called it the “deadliest” drug epidemic in American history. . .

“In short, China’s regime is killing Americans with fentanyl. It is doing so deliberately. Carlson was right to suggest intentionality.” (Read more from “Expert’s Stunning Conclusion: China’s Killing Americans ‘Deliberately'” HERE)

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Fears Mount as South Korea Probes Cause Behind 36 People’s Deaths After Flu Vaccination

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Public concern over the safety of flu shots has grown in South Korea as the authorities reported 36 cases of deaths after vaccination as at 1pm on Friday (Oct 23), putting strain on their efforts to curb a potential “twindemic” of winter flu and the coronavirus.

The country is still grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic, reporting 155 Covid-19 cases on Friday – the highest since Sept 11 and the second day in a row that the number hit triple figures. This brings the total to 25,698.

Health authorities now also have to tackle a deepening fear of the state-administered free flu vaccine programme after two batches of vaccine were found faulty since last month.

South Korea hopes to inoculate some 19 million people for free, especially vulnerable groups such as young children and the elderly, ahead of the annual flu season starting in November when temperatures drop.

No causal link has been found yet between the flu shots and the fatalities so far, and investigations are underway to determine the exact cause of the deaths. (Read more from “Fears Mount as South Korea Probes Cause Behind 36 People’s Deaths After Flu Vaccination” HERE)

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Sudan, Israel Agree To Normalize Ties in U.S.-Brokered Deal

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Israel and Sudan have agreed to normalize relations, the third such U.S.-brokered agreement in the Middle East in recent weeks, the Trump administration announced Friday.

President Donald Trump announced the deal during a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok he hosted in the presence of reporters in the Oval Office.

“This is an incredible deal for Israel and Sudan,” Trump said during the call. “For decades Sudan has been at a state of war with Israel — they have been in a state of war and boycotted Israeli goods. There was no relationship whatsoever.

“Today’s peace agreement will enhance your security and end Sudan’s long isolation from the world.

“It’s peace in the Middle East without bloodshed,” Trump added. (Read more from “Sudan, Israel Agree To Normalize Ties in U.S.-Brokered Deal” HERE)

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China’s Warning: We Will Take U.S. Hostages If DOJ Charges Not Dropped against Researchers

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Beijing is threatening to take Americans in China hostage if the Department of Justice doesn’t drop its prosecution of several Chinese research scientists arrested on U.S. soil this year, according to a report on Saturday.

Chinese government officials have repeatedly warned their U.S. counterparts that Americans in China face being detained if its demands are not met, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The drastic action — dubbed “hostage diplomacy” — would be in retaliation for the arrests of at least five Chinese military-affiliated scholars visiting American universities to conduct research.

The scientists were charged with visa fraud for allegedly lying to U.S. immigration authorities about their active duty statuses with China’s People’s Liberation Army.

The nation first began issuing the warnings over the summer, after Chinese research scientist Juan Tang, who worked at the University of California, Davis, was questioned by the FBI and took up residence for a month in China’s San Francisco consulate. (Read more from “China’s Warning: We Will Take U.S. Hostages If DOJ Charges Not Dropped against Researchers” HERE)

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12-Year-Old Boy Makes ‘Significant’ Dinosaur Discovery

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A 12-year-old boy in Canada has found fossils that paleontologists have hailed as a “significant” dinosaur discovery.

The discovery was made at Horseshoe Canyon in the Alberta Prairies, according to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

“In July, 12-year-old aspiring paleontologist Nathan Hrushkin and his father, Dion, discovered the partially exposed bones while hiking on the conservation site,” said the Nature Conservancy, in a statement last week. “They sent photos of their find to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, who identified that the bones belonged to a young hadrosaur, commonly known as a duck-billed dinosaur.”

The Royal Tyrrell Museum sent a team of experts to the conservation site, who uncovered between 30 and 50 bones from the canyon’s wall.

“All of the bones collected belong to a single specimen, a juvenile hadrosaur approximately three or four years old,” the Nature Conservancy said, in the statement. “While hadrosaurs are the most common fossils found in Alberta’s Badlands, this particular specimen is noteworthy because few juvenile skeletons have been recovered and also because of its location in the strata, or the rock formation.” (Read more from “12-Year-Old Boy Makes ‘Significant’ Dinosaur Discovery” HERE)

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U.S. Says ‘Within International Law’ to Sail Near Taiwan Amid China Warning

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The Pentagon is defending its recent operation near Taiwan as compliant with international law in the face of Chinese protests that the U.S. deliberately was aggravating the geopolitically sensitive situation in the disputed waterway.

Senior Colonel Zhang Chunhui, spokesperson for China’s People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command, said Thursday that warships and warplanes were dispatched Thursday to monitor U.S. Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Barry as it sailed near the Taiwan Strait, where Zhang accused the Navy of “seriously undermining the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.”

Zhang said his forces were “always on high alert” and accused the U.S. of “sending the wrong messages” to those in Taiwan who would seek to officially separate the self-ruling island from the mainland that claims it. . .

Challenging Chinese claims to the Taiwan Strait, the spokesperson said all U.S. operations “were within international waters, within international law.” (Read more from “U.S. Says ‘Within International Law’ to Sail Near Taiwan Amid China Warning” HERE)

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U.S. Sanctions Damaging Iran, Spokesman Says

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Referring to Washington’s new, additional sanctions on Tehran, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said on Monday that “these decisions and sanctions have caused serious monetary and financial damages to Iran.”

At his weekly press conference on Monday, Khatibzadeh announced, “We have been working for months to stop such shocks.”

However, he warned that “the United States must make up for all the damage it has done to Iran. Iranian people should not doubt that we will cash compensation for all damages cent by cent.”

“The damage incurred on Iran is filed in the bill submitted to the International Court of Justice,” he added

Following its “maximum pressure” policy on Iran, the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted 18 Iranian banks that were previously exempt from some Washington restrictions. (Read more from “U.S. Sanctions Damaging Iran, Spokesman Says” HERE)

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Countries That Kill Journalists, Keep Concentration Camps Elected to U.N. Human Rights Council

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China, Russia, and Cuba were each awarded seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council Tuesday despite their gross abuses of the very rights the council pledges to uphold.

The council, which the United States withdrew from in protest of its condemnation of Israel while bolstering Venezuela and Saudi Arabia two years ago, features a mission statement that its inclusion of rights-violating nations directly contradicts. It reads:

The mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is to work for the protection of all human rights for all people; to help empower people to realize their rights; and to assist those responsible for upholding such rights in ensuring that they are implemented.

China is carrying out a genocidal campaign against the nation’s Uighur Muslims. The campaign is the largest mass internment of any ethnic-minority religious group in nearly a century since the Holocaust.

Human Rights Watch, a New York City-based international non-governmental organization, has similarly faulted Cuba and Russia for their human rights abuses. In Cuba, the group wrote, “the government continues to use other repressive tactics against critics, including beatings, public shaming, travel restrictions, and termination of employment.”

(Read more from “Countries That Kill Journalists, Keep Concentration Camps Elected to U.N. Human Rights Council” HERE)

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