New Zealand prime minister's face shows full range of emotions after being asked about Auckland patient's liaison that health chief called a 'high-risk activity'.

New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern may have kept her cool through a global pandemic, but a question about a patient and a visitor having sex at an Auckland hospital had the typically unflappable leader struggling to contain her expressions.

Ardern and the director general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield were giving their daily Covid-19 press conference, when a reporter asked them whether an allegation involving a patient and visitor who had "sexual relations" at Auckland hospital was considered a "high-risk activity, in the current climate".

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is being criticized for her use of the term "menstruating persons" as she lashed out at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over his new six-week abortion ban.

The far-left New York congresswoman called Abbott "deeply ignorant" on Tuesday over the Lone Star State's new law that prohibits almost all abortions after the six-week mark — including pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest.

"I don't know if he is familiar with a menstruating person's body. In fact, I do know that he's not familiar with a female or menstruating person's body because if he did, he would know that you don't have six weeks," Ocasio-Cortez told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

America's biggest media outlets refused to cover the news this week that the US funded bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology years before the Covid-19 pandemic - a fact Dr. Anthony Fauci has denied.

More than 900 documents were obtained by The Intercept, following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) that revealed the NIH gave millions of dollars in grants to the US NGO EcoHealth Alliance. Nearly $600,000 was used at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at least partially "to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans."

"Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments," The Intercept reported, publishing quotes from several people concerned about the relation between the research and the health crisis affecting the world today.

The grant used to research bat coronaviruses was active between 2014 and 2019. Former president Donald Trump shut down a decision to renew the funding in 2020, after Covid-19 became a global pandemic.

The Global Times called on People's Liberation Army Navy warships to travel to "U.S. military bases in the Asia-Pacific and the U.S. allies' coastlines to conduct close-in reconnaissance operations and declare freedom of navigation." The editorial added that "the U.S. will definitely see the PLA show up at its doorstep in the not-too-distant future."

This isn't simple ranting. The Global Times operates under Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Yang Jiechi. Its words represent a credible threat.


Why is China so furious?

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a joint venture between Russia's Gazprom and five European partners, aims to carry Russian natural gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea.The construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has come to an end, Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Friday.

"At a morning operational meeting [...], the chairman of Gazprom's Management Board, Alexey Miller, said that this morning at 08.45 Moscow time [05:45 GMT] construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline had been fully completed," Gazprom announced on its Telegram channel.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova emphasised that stopping Nord Stream 2 is "impossible", warning against placing obstacles in front of the project. According to her, the terms of how Nord Stream 2 begins to conduct business will depend on the German regulator commercial supplies will depend on a German regulator's position.

The US and its allies have withdrawn from Afghanistan but now the whole international community has to deal with the possible consequences from the ensuing fallout, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday afternoon.

Speaking to a video conference of the BRICS economic international group, Putin said the crisis in Afghanistan results from an attempt to impose foreign ideas in a country where they won't be accepted.

"I have said many times that the current crisis in Afghanistan is a direct consequence of irresponsible attempts to impose alien values from outside and the desire to build so-called democratic structures by political engineering, which takes into account neither historical nor national characteristics of other nations," Putin said, accusing the US and its allies of "ignoring the traditions that other countries live by."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) surprised even many of its harshest critics this week when it strongly defended coercive programs and other mandates from the state in the name of fighting COVID.

"Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties," its Twitter account announced, adding that "vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public."

If you were surprised to see the ACLU heralding the civil liberties imperatives of "vaccine mandates" and "vaccine requirements" — whereby the government coerces adults to inject medicine into their own bodies that they do not want — the New York Times op-ed which the group promoted, written by two of its senior lawyers, was even more extreme. The article begins with this rhetorical question: "Do vaccine mandates violate civil liberties?" Noting that "some who have refused vaccination claim as much," the ACLU lawyers say: "we disagree." The op-ed then examines various civil liberties objections to mandates and state coercion — little things like, you know, bodily autonomy and freedom to choose — and the ACLU officials then invoke one authoritarian cliche after the next ("these rights are not absolute") to sweep aside such civil liberties concerns:

[W]hen it comes to Covid-19, all considerations point in the same direction. . . . In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. . . . .

[Many claim that] vaccines are a justifiable intrusion on autonomy and bodily integrity. That may sound ominous, because we all have the fundamental right to bodily integrity and to make our own health care decisions. But these rights are not absolute. They do not include the right to inflict harm on others. . . . While vaccine mandates are not always permissible, they rarely run afoul of civil liberties when they involve highly infectious and devastating diseases like Covid-19. . . .

While limited exceptions are necessary, most people can be required to be vaccinated. . . . . Where a vaccine is not medically contraindicated, however, avoiding a deadly threat to the public health typically outweighs personal autonomy and individual freedom.

The Biden administration on Wednesday told 11 officials appointed by former President Trump to military service academy boards of visitors that they must either resign or be fired by the end of the day.

Some of the appointees include former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former senior counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, and former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, CNN reported.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday that

"The President's objective is what any president's objective is -- to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with your values. And so yes, that was an ask that was made.

"I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified, or not political, to serve on these boards, but the President's qualification requirements are not your party registration, they are whether you're qualified to serve and whether you're aligned with the values of this administration."

The news media have disgraced themselves. Again.

Rolling Stone magazine published, and then heavily amended, a viral report this weekend alleging gunshot victims in Oklahoma have been put on the back burner as "horse dewormer overdoses" have "overwhelmed" hospitals in rural areas.

The story is complete nonsense, of course, but this apparently doesn't matter to the broader press, especially insofar as the coronavirus pandemic is concerned. The facts aren't the point. It's all about the narrative. Point and laugh at Rolling Stone all you want, but its failure this weekend is indicative of a far greater, systemic sickness in the news business.

Tales of overrun Oklahoma hospitals appeared first in the pages of the Tulsa World. Oklahoma City-based NBC affiliate KFOR then pushed a similar story. The network affiliate ran the following on-air headline during its report, reading, "PATIENTS OVERDOSING ON IVERMECTIN BACKING UP HOSPITALS, AMBULANCES."

Israeli authorities have grown increasingly frustrated, embarrassed and perplexed in the days since six Palestinians escaped from one of Israel's most fortified prisons. Amid speculation that the men might be hiding out in the West Bank, or could have crossed the border to Jordan, Palestinians are praying for their safety and hailing them as heroes.

Their escape is a huge morale boost for Palestinians, as it once again shatters Israel's image of strength and invincibility in the face of an occupied people struggling for its freedom. The seemingly impossible feat has generated comparisons to The Great Escape - the movie retelling the epic story of Allied prisoners of war who tunneled out of a heavily guarded Nazi POW camp during World War II.

From the bathroom of their cell in Gilboa prison in northern Israel, the jailed Palestinians dug a 20-meter underground tunnel that emerged just outside the prison walls under a watchtower. The men likely spent months digging the tunnel.