Armored vehicles have rolled into Beirut as the Lebanese capital descended into chaos, with crowds led by Hezbollah and Amal groups demonstrating against Tarek Bitar, the lead judge of the port blast investigation.

Beirut resembled a warzone on Thursday as the army deployed armored vehicles to a divided area of the city where deadly skirmishes erupted following an attack on a protest. The army declared that the troops would fire at any armed individuals on the capital's streets.

The Lebanese army deployed a range of armored vehicles, including tanks and trucks with mounted machine guns. Sources on the ground suggest the troops have moved toward a building from which militants are allegedly based.

CNN's row with Joe Rogan over his use of Covid-19 treatments took a twist on Wednesday when the network's chief medical correspondent went on Rogan's podcast and was confronted about the network's 'lies'.

Popular American podcaster Joe Rogan is a Covid vaccine skeptic and used an unproven therapeutic regimen when he contracted Covid-19 in late August. Among other things, he took the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. CNN reported that he used "a horse dewormer," which he insists is a lie, since he took the version of the drug for human use after it was prescribed by a doctor.

On Wednesday, the podcast host had the opportunity to raise the issue with CNN' top medical reporter, Sanjay Gupta, who was not able to defend his network's 'horse dewormer' claims.

"They shouldn't have said it was horse dewormer," Gupta readily acknowledged, seemingly eager to change the topic. But Rogan persisted.

India is facing a looming power crisis, as stocks of coal in power plants have fallen to unprecedentedly low levels and states are warning of power blackouts.

States across India have issued panicked warnings that coal supplies to thermal power plants, which convert heat from coal to electricity, are running perilously low.

According to data from the Central Electricity Authority of India, nearly 80% of the country's coal-fired plants were in the critical, or "supercritical" stage, meaning their stocks could run out in less than five days.

Over the weekend, Delhi's chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, wrote to the prime minister, Narendra Modi, that the capital "could face a blackout" if power stations did not receive more coal.

States including Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Bihar have been experiencing power cuts lasting up to 14 hours.

Maharashtra shut down 13 thermal power plants and urged people to use electricity sparingly, and in Punjab three power plants halted production. Scheduled power cuts introduced in Punjab, lasting up to six hours at a time, have prompted protests.

However, experts have emphasised that the power issues are not due to a shortage of domestic coal production, as some have reported.

Over-the-counter aspirin could protect the lungs of COVID-19 patients and minimize the need for mechanical ventilation, according to new research at the George Washington University.

The team investigated more than 400 COVID patients from hospitals across the United States who take aspirin unrelated to their COVID disease, and found that the treatment reduced the risk of several parameters by almost half: reaching mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admissions by 43%, and overall in-hospital mortality by 47%.

"As we learned about the connection between blood clots and COVID-19, we knew that aspirin - used to prevent stroke and heart attack - could be important for COVID-19 patients," said Dr. Jonathan Chow of the study team. "Our research found an association between low-dose aspirin and decreased severity of COVID-19 and death."

Low-dose aspirin is a common treatment for anyone suffering from blood clotting issues or in danger of stroke, including most people who had a heart attack or a myocardial infarction. Although affecting the respiratory system, the coronavirus has been associated with small blood vessel clotting, causing tiny blockages in the pulmonary blood system, leading to ARDS - acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Taurid Meteor Stream pummels planet in human history; remains menace; Nobel Prize?

A comprehensive study of the Taurid meteor stream confirms a central understanding of astronomer Dr. Bill Napier and the Comet Research Group, one which was incorporated into the YDI hypothesis from the start.

From Discover Magazine this week:

The longest-studied comets in our solar system have inspired ancient myths, religious fervor and modern scientific controversies. Now, the discovery of 88 asteroids and meteoroids orbitally aligned with one of them, Comet Encke, suggests that they all formed from the relatively recent breakup of an even bigger, icy comet. The findings are welcomed by those who believe Comet Encke and the other products of this astronomical event are responsible for many of Earth's most violent and consequential impacts over the last 20,000 years.....

.....Such a dynamic, unpredictable and well-populated complex capable of frequently getting close to Earth stoked academic imaginations; astronomers began to rewind the clock and look for evidence of Earth's interactions with the Taurids in the archaeological record and beyond. Scientist Richard Firestone, now at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in 2007 invoked the Taurid complex to explain global climate cooling at the start of a near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas and the sudden demise of the Clovis culture, a prehistoric people thought to be the ancestors of most indigenous peoples in the Americas. And last year, a team including Napier claimed to have found their own evidence of impact during the Younger Dryas: meltglass and scorched earth deposits that appeared to mark the demise of an early hunter-gatherer community in modern-day Syria.

"I am concerned about the possibility that the new vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in a way that does not appear to be assessed in the safety trials." Dr J. Patrick Whelan

"We are dealing with evil. In case you hadn't noticed." Robert W Malone, MD, Twitter

Question- Why does everyone have to be vaccinated?

Answer- In order to save lives. Vaccines provide immunity which helps in the fight against disease.

Question- So the vaccines prevent infection?

Answer- Not exactly, but the vaccines do provide temporary immunity that typically lasts about 6 months.

Question- Then what?

Answer- Well, then the public health experts recommend that eligible people - particularly old and immune-compromised people- get a "booster".

Question- So, another injection?

Answer- Yes.

Question- Has the booster been adapted to the new "Delta" variant that's spread across the US and the world?

Answer- No, it hasn't. It's the same vaccine as before.

The long-awaited American financial crisis appears to be on its way. Inflation is increasing, energy prices are out of control, and debt levels are already unsustainable. Washington has few tools left, and an awful lot to lose.

An American financial and currency crisis seems to be building, ready to flood the world and result in dramatic shifts in the international distribution of power. However, Russia has been preparing for the coming tumult, with a strategy that can be summarized as simply getting out of the splash zone. Besides ensuring fiscal discipline, the strategic partnership with China has focused on decoupling from the US-led international financial system.

Kicking the can down the road

The benefits that come with being able to print the world's reserve currency are, sadly, also a curse. The US has been able to run massive deficits for years to have a living standard and an empire that was beyond its means, while politicians have been able to claim the imbalances were a sign of a healthy economy, evidenced by the willingness of the world to lend the US such vast amounts of money. The plague of printing the world's trade and reserve currency is that it erodes the need for fiscal discipline as problems can be kicked down the road.

I've seen some nauseating sights in my time - flyblown corpses, regurgitated kebab on student drinking nights, any show involving Piers Morgan - but rarely have I seen anything more emetic than delegates rising to applaud Prime Minister Boris Johnson's closing speech at the Conservative Party Conference.

Sure, if Bojo had just been addressing a meeting of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet or, worse, the Green Party, or, worst of all, the World Economic Forum I could understand the enthusiasm.

But a meeting of the supposed 'Conservative' party of the United Kingdom? Really?? I'd say there was more conservatism in Stalin's right testicle than there was in the farrago of eco-socialistic, globalist bilge spouted by the utterly useless Johnson.

Militant groups in northern Mali's Kidal region have been trained by French officers, Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga claimed in an interview with RIA Novosti, saying two-thirds of his country is "occupied by terrorists."

Mali has evidence that French forces present in its territory with a mission to counter terrorist groups have been instead "training" militants, the transitional government's prime minister told Russia's RIA news agency on Friday. According to the Malian official, France now controls an enclave in Kidal, with Mali having no access there.


"They have militant groups there, who have been trained by French officers. We have evidence of that. There is an expression in our language, saying that when you are looking for a needle in your room and someone, said to be helping you in the search, is standing on that needle, you will never find it. So this is the situation happening now in Mali, and we don't want to bear with it," Maiga said.

The Global Public-Private Partnership (GPPP) is a world-wide network of stakeholder capitalists and their partners. This collective of stakeholders (the capitalists and their partners) comprises of global corporations (including central banks), philanthropic foundations (multi-billionaire philanthropists), policy think-tanks, governments (and their agencies), non-governmental organisations, selected academic & scientific institutions, global charities, the labour unions and other chosen "thought leaders."

The GPPP controls global finance and the world's economy. It sets world, national and local policy (via global governance) and then promotes those policies using the mainstream media (MSM) corporations who are also "partners" within the GPPP.

Often those policies are devised by the think-tanks before being adopted by governments, who are also GPPP partners. Government is the process of transforming GPPP global governance into hard policy, legislation and law.

Under our current model of Westphalian national sovereignty, the government of one nation cannot make legislation or law in another. However, through global governance, the GPPP create policy initiatives at the global level which then cascade down to people in every nation. This typically occurs via an intermediary policy distributor, such as the IMF or IPCC, and national government then enact the recommended policies.

The policy trajectory is set internationally by the authorised definition of problems and their prescribed solutions. Once the GPPP enforce the consensus internationally, the policy framework is set. The GPPP stakeholder partners then collaborate to ensure the desired policies are developed, implemented and enforced. This is the oft quoted "international rules based system."

In this way the GPPP control many nations at once without having to resort to legislation. This has the added advantage of making any legal challenge to the decisions made by the most senior partners in the GPPP (it is an authoritarian hierarchy) extremely difficult.