Even during the plague year, Ottawa cannot get off its carbon-emissions high horse.

A couple of days ago Premier Dwight Ball of Newfoundland and Labrador and a host of others pleaded in a conference call for urgent assistance to the devastated offshore oil industry. The industry is moving closer to the autopsy table by the hour. Then from Seamus O'Regan, Newfoundland's minister in the federal cabinet (wherever it is these days, and whatever it is doing), came an email which pointedly didn't say it was considering the urgent request — how could it not? — but did say that the "province's commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 is good for our environment and good for our economic competitiveness."

In what dreamland did that line emerge? O'Regan gets an emergency request asking for immediate aid from the premier on May 26, 2020, and he emails in response a fantasy projection 30 years into the unknowable future, 2050. Which, as chance would have it, is presumably around the time Parliament might reopen.

A head teacher says he is "sorry" if homework asking pupils to define types of hardcore pornography led them to undertake inappropriate web searches.

The work was given to children, aged 11 to 14, at Archbishop Sentamu Academy in Hull, the Hull Daily Mail reported.

Principal Chay Bell stressed the assignment did not require internet research as the answers were in the material the pupils were sent.

Leon Dagon was "flabbergasted" when he saw his 13-year-old sister's homework.

The work is part of pupils' Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) learning, the school said.

One of President Trump's legacies will be exposing the US media as political activists who have polarized the nation by peddling a narrative rather than evidence-based facts and truth.

When Trump tweeted that the media were the enemy of the American people, it caused fury around the world.

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

Journalists claimed the tweet had placed their lives at risk, and that all they had ever done was report the news. Is that accurate? No, not at all. Several groups analysed all the news stories broadcast about Donald Trump in 2017 and the results were shocking:

How Could People Not Trust The #Media And #SocialMedia ? Just Ask @realDonaldTrump@parscale Remember this? pic.twitter.com/MHljiT7ul3

— Planet Ponzi (@PlanetPonzi) May 29, 2020

The speed with which the mainstream media forgot all about coronavirus, 'social distancing' and masks to de facto promote a race war with coverage of riots and looting in the Twin Cities makes one wonder about their priorities.

Just days ago, the sanctimonious shills on cable channels were clutching their pearls in concern over Americans failing to maintain 'social distance' and going out in public without masks, while wringing their hands about the 100,000 deaths attributed to the pandemic in the country so far.

Then George Floyd died with a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on his neck. Within three days, protests turned to looting, then rioting, then arson. Minneapolis and St. Paul burned, as local authorities ordered police to stand down and let it happen.

I have this weird dream where I'm walking through the local high street about a year ago, and I come across some self-proclaimed seer, a modern-day wannabe Nostradamus who is warning the crowd of a coming tribulation. As I listen, he predicts that in 12 months, the shops, cafés and restaurants in the street and throughout the town will all be closed. So too will the churches. And the schools. And the theatre. And the cinema. In fact, according to him, much of the economic activity in the town and throughout the country shall simply cease for months; the movements of the entire population will be restricted; and breaches of the rules will bring the police down upon you like a ton of bricks. Why? Apparently, there will be a pandemic.

The crowd is interested, and so am I, but just when it seems that people are listening seriously, he kind of ruins the moment when he tells people how deadly the pandemic will be. On the basis of the monumental measures he has told us about, we're all expecting maybe 60% — like the Black Death in the 14th Century. Or maybe even 10-20% perhaps. But no. After pausing for dramatic effect, he continues:

At this time next year, when the virus has gone through the population for more than 6 months, it will have killed ... will have killed 0.056% of the population.

'0.056%?' say the crowd looking at each other in bemusement. Zero point zero five six? The Government is going to shut down the economy; close the churches, the pubs, the restaurants, the cafes' and a ton of other places; restrict movements; and quarantine healthy people for the first time ever for a virus that kills around 0.056% of the population?

This wasn't supposed to happen!

CNN whipped leftists into a frenzy all week over the horrible death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Now the leftists are outside CNN headquarters in Atlanta! Many are defacing or vandalizing the CNN headquarters!

They created this monster — they didn't expect it to turn on them!

The fog of war over the censorship of SouthFront on YouTube and Facebook has cleared away. As we wrote earlier, SouthFront was attacked because of our coverage of the developing COVID-19 crisis.

The US Department of Defense accused SouthFront of spreading "disinformation", "global mistrust and confusion".

"So the first — and I think the most pernicious disinformation that we have to contend with is the disinformation that is sowing global — global mistrust and confusion. These are messages that are endangering global health because they're undermining the efforts of governments, of health agencies, and of organizations that are in charge of disseminating accurate information about the virus to public, so I pulled just a few examples:

As recently as late March, which is pretty recently if you think about it, we found in Sputnik and in RT, we found articles claiming that hand-washing was ineffective. You know, we've seen in mid-March reporting from — there's a website called Southfront — which is actually a Russian-backed, English language, what they call alternative news source — and in this news source there was reporting that there actually was no pandemic and that some deaths in Italy might in fact have been from the common flu," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Laura Cooper said during the press briefing on April 9.

The St. Paul Police Department has categorically denied one of its officers escalated the Minneapolis riots by smashing the window of an auto parts store while undercover, after social media sleuths claimed to have identified him.

St. Paul Police Department attempted to squelch viral rumors fingering Officer Jacob Pederson as the agent provocateur who smashed the windows of a Minneapolis AutoZone earlier this week in footage widely circulated on social media. In a series of tweets posted on Thursday, they denied that the man in the footage was Pederson and attempted to shame people for spreading the rumor, insisting their officer had been "working hard, keeping people and property safe, and protecting the right to peacefully assemble."

An angry mob outraged at the death of George Floyd stormed CNN's world headquarters Friday night in Atlanta, vandalizing the building's facade, breaking windows, and tossing a firecracker or smoke bomb at officers blocking the entrance.

Video posted by CNN personalities and others showed demonstrators in a large, rowdy crowd jumping on police cars outside the CNN Center, which was defaced with graffiti, setting fires, and throwing rocks and bottles.

Police reacted by deploying tear gas and making some arrests, as shown on video.

The scientist who created Florida's COVID-19 data portal wasn't just removed from her position on May 5, she was fired on Monday by the Department of Health, she said, for refusing to manipulate data.

Rebekah Jones said in an email to FLORIDA TODAY that she single-handedly created two applications in two languages, four dashboards, six unique maps with layers of data functionality for 32 variables covering a half a million lines of data. Her objective was to create a way for Floridians and researchers to see what the COVID-19 situation was in real time.

Then, she was dismissed.

"I worked on it alone, sixteen hours a day for two months, most of which I was never paid for, and now that this has happened I'll probably never get paid for," she wrote in an email, confirming that she had not just been reassigned on May 5, but fired from her job as Geographic Information Systems manager for the Florida Department of Health.