Government scientists have predicted that the second Covid-19 wave could be even deadlier than the first with a "lower but longer peak."

Downing Street is supposedly working on the assumption that the death toll during the second wave this winter is going to be worse than that experienced by Britain in the spring.

The death rate is set to peak at a lower overall number than seen earlier in 2020.


However, deaths are set to stay at the same level for weeks or even months on end.

If the analysis of the second wave is correct, it will mean that the coronavirus death toll could stay steady for longer than it did in March and April.

And gloomy scientists say all of England will need to be under severe tier three Covid restrictions by mid-December.

It has dashed Boris Johnson's hopes of a Christmas reprieve from lockdown rules.

Meanwhile, a police chief has warned cops will be able to burst in on festive family gatherings if Covid rules are being broken.

Scotland's proposed hate crime bill will penalize anyone whipping up hatred against "protected groups." That includes people making "insulting" remarks within their own home, Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf has revealed.

Quizzed on the bill by the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee on Tuesday, Yousaf assured critics that the proposed legislation would protect the "right to be offensive." However, anyone "stirring up hatred" against others on the basis of religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, transgender identity or "variations in sexual characteristics" will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, he said.

That includes off-color dinner table conversations with friends and family. Asked whether people would be allowed to speak freely within their own homes, Yousaf said he disagreed "in terms of principle and policy" with the idea of keeping the law out of the living room.

An audio recording exclusively obtained by the National Pulse reveals Hunter Biden discussing business involvement with a "spy chief of China" and how his business partner Devon Archer named him and his father as witnesses in a Southern District of New York Criminal case.

Hunter Biden - in an audio file labelled "Most Genius Shit Ever" - appears to be referencing Patrick Ho, who was a former Secretary for Home Affairs in Hong Kong, as a "spy chief of China" while lamenting how his business partner Ye Jianming of CEFC China Energy had disappeared.

Ho was also involved in the CEFC venture, as originally reported by the New York Post and suppressed by the media and Big Tech firms.

So, according to the corporate media, this is it for Russian-backed Hitler. Game over. The walls are closing in. It's the last days of the Trumpian Reich. Get those vuvuzelas ready!

Yes, apparently, the American people, who were all a bunch of Putin-worshipping, white-supremacist neo-Nazis when they elected Trump in 2016, have come to their senses and are going to deliver a landslide victory to "Slappy" Joe Biden and bring down the curtain on this "Age of Darkness," or save the world from "racial Orwellianism" or the "bottomless pit of facsism," or whatever.

White supremacy will be defeated and globalization will rise from the ashes! Decency will be restored! Love will trump hate! Black lives will matter!

Slappy and Kamala will immediately fly down and liberate the concentration camps. Trump will face some sort of Nuremberg trial, where he will have to answer for mass-murdering six million people with the Coronavirus by taking off his mask on the White House balcony.

Hillary Clinton will be appointed ... something.

Biden family business partner-turned-whistleblower Tony Bobulinski told Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tuesday night that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is "compromised" by communist China.

"If Joe Biden is elected president, which could very well happen," Carlson said, "how does this constrain his ability to deal with China?"

"So I think Joe Biden and the Biden family is compromised," Bobulinski said. "I just don't see, given the history here and the facts, how Joe can't be influenced in some manner based on the history that they have here with CEFC," a Chinese energy company.

'I am not gonna be confined to Donald Trump's definition of who I or anybody else is,' Harris said

Sen. Kamala Harris D-Calif., laughed when asked during an interview Sunday if she would advocate for a "socialist or progressive perspective" if elected.

CBS News anchor Norah O'Donnell asked Harris the question during a "60 Minutes" interview with her and the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Citing a 2019 ranking from the nonpartisan organization GovTrack, O'Donnell told the vice-presidential hopeful that she is "considered the most liberal United States senator." She said that Harris has supported the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all and legalizing marijuana, all policies that Biden has yet to back.

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of violating a new humanitarian cease-fire to halt fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh shortly after it took effect on October 26.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said the cease-fire was violated twice by shelling from Azerbaijani forces.

"The regular ceasefire violation has been recorded at approximately 9.10 a.m.," Shushan Stepanian, press secretary of the Armenian Defense Ministry, said on Twitter. "Azerbaijani side targeted positions located in south-eastern direction, firing 5 artillery shells in that direction."

An earlier violation occurred at 8:45 a.m. when combat positions northeast of Artsakh were shelled, she said on Facebook.

"Every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I'd think I was having a hallucination." — Philip Roth, novelist

Things are falling apart.

How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in a constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed upon the nation.

We are witnessing the unraveling of the American dream one injustice at a time.

Day after day, the government's crimes against the citizenry grow more egregious, more treacherous and more tragic. And day after day, the American people wake up a little more to the grim realization that they have become captives in a prison of their own making.

No longer a free people, we are now pushed and prodded and watched over by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked armed guards who care little for the rights, humanity or well-being of those in their care.

The death toll is mounting.

The carnage is heartbreaking.

The public's faith in the government to do its job — which is to protect our freedoms — is deteriorating.

It doesn't take a weatherman to realize when a storm is brewing: clouds gather, the wind begins to blow, and an almost-palpable tension builds.

It's the same way with freedom.

The warning signs are everywhere.

"Things fall apart," wrote W.B. Yeats in his dark, forbidding poem "The Second Coming." "The centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned ... Surely some revelation is at hand."

In an explosive scoop, alternative news outlet Zero Hedge has laid bare how China's state apparatchik clandestinely baited the family members of the Obama-era vice president and secretary of state into joint business ventures in order to surreptitiously influence the trade and economic policies of the US government favoring China's geo-economic interests spanning the globe.

Here are a few relevant excerpts from the investigative report authored by Christopher Balding, Associate Professor at Peking University HSBC School of Business Shenzhen, China, and also a Bloomberg contributor:

"Hunter Biden partnered with the Chinese state. Entire investment partnership is Chinese state money from social security fund to China Development Bank. It is actually a subsidiary of the Bank of China. This is not remotely anything less than a Chinese state-funded play.

"Though the entire size of the fund cannot be reconstructed, the Taiwanese cofounder who is now detained in China, reports it to be NOT $1-1.5 billion but $6.5 billion. This would make Hunters stake worth at a minimum at least $50 million if he was to sell it.

"The believed Godfather arranging Hunter's business ventures is a gentleman named Yang Jiechi. He is currently the CCP Director of Foreign Affairs leading strategist for America, Politburo member, one of the most powerful men in China, and Chinese President Xi Jingpin's confidant.

"He met regularly with Joe Biden during his stint as Chinese ambassador the US when Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Later he was Minister of Foreign Affairs when the investment partnership was made official in 2013.

"Hunter Biden's 2013 Bohai Harvest Rosemont investment partnership was set-up by Ministry of Foreign Affairs institutions which are tasked with garnering influence with foreign leaders during Yang's tenure as Foreign Minister.

"Hunter's BHR stake (purchased for $400,000) is now likely be worth approx. $50 million (fees and capital appreciation based on BHR's $6.5 billion AUM as stated by Michael Lin).

"Joe Biden's foreign policy stance towards China (formerly hawkish), turned positive despite China's country's rising geopolitical assertiveness."

Former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, now exiled in the EU, called a nationwide strike Monday after long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko refused to step down following an ultimatum from the opposition.

The measure finally brings things to a head after months of protest and will be seen as a litmus test for the anti-Lukashenko coalition's attempt to force a transfer of power. Should the strike action fail to take hold, it will be seen as a victory for the incumbent, but if it gains momentum, then all bets are off.

On Monday morning, opposition-leaning media reported that multiple large businesses throughout the country had ceased working. This was denied by the government, which claimed that key enterprises are "operating normally" and "production has not been stopped."

On October 13, in what she called the 'People's Ultimatum', Tikhanovskaya demanded the president's resignation, as well as an end to violence against protesters, and the release of those considered to be political prisoners. Writing on her Telegram channel, Tikhanovskaya announced on Monday morning that the deadline had passed, and the general strike was to begin.

"Belarusians know that, on October 26, the main job is to show that no one will work for the regime. They are risking their personal freedom today so that we can achieve freedom for our country."