Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been accused of being "addicted to secrecy" as the country's parliament debated a controversial proposed law that would exempt the workings of its National Cabinet from public scrutiny.

The cabinet, comprised of the PM, state premiers and territory leaders, was formed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The government claims that body's decisions should be afforded the same protections from disclosure requests as the federal cabinet.

The issue came to the fore when the government refused a Freedom of Information (FOI) application by South Australian Independent Senator Rex Patrick relating to a May 2020 National Cabinet meeting, arguing they were "an official record of the cabinet."

Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a newly released Canadian Forces report concludes.

The federal government never asked for the so-called information operations campaign, nor did cabinet authorize the initiative developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, then headed by Lt.-Gen. Mike Rouleau.

But military commanders believed they didn't need to get approval from higher authorities to develop and proceed with their plan, retired Maj.-Gen. Daniel Gosselin, who was brought in to investigate the scheme, concluded in his report.

The propaganda plan was developed and put in place in April 2020 even though the Canadian Forces had already acknowledged that "information operations and targeting policies and doctrines are aimed at adversaries and have a limited application in a domestic concept."

A copy of the Dec. 2, 2020, Gosselin investigation, as well as other related documents, was obtained by this newspaper using the Access to Information law.

The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for "shaping" and "exploiting" information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.

In accusing Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI, Special Counsel John Durham offers new evidence of the fabrications behind the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.

The indictment of Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann offers new evidence that the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that engulfed Trump's term in office was itself the product of fabrications involving Clinton's 2016 campaign.

Although Sussmann faces just one count on a false statement charge, the 27-page charging document offers an expansive window into how the Russiagate scam began, and how Democratic operatives, intelligence officials, and establishment media figures dishonestly fed it to the public.

Inventing a Trump-Russia "narrative" to "please" Democratic "VIPs"

Sussmann, until recently an attorney with Clinton campaign law firm Perkins Coie, is the second person to be charged by John Durham, the Special Counsel scrutinizing the Russia investigation.

Sussmann is accused of lying to the FBI during a September 2016 meeting in which he tried to raise alarm about "secret communications" between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank. Sussmann gave then-FBI attorney Jim Baker documents and data purporting to show that computer servers associated with Trump and Alfa Bank were in regular contact.

This was evidence, Sussmann argued, of a possible covert back channel. According to Durham, Sussmann told Baker that he was not working "for any client," and was simply passing on information that had been provided to him by "multiple cyber experts" who had come across the suspicious web traffic.

But according to the detailed indictment, Sussmann was in fact cooking up a politically motivated scam.

French President Macron was hit at the shoulder by an egg thrown at him by a man during an international food trade fair in the French city of Lyon

French President Emmanuel Macron was hit at the shoulder Monday by an egg thrown at him by a man during a visit to an international food trade fair in the French city of Lyon

A video of the incident, widely shared on the social media, shows Macron walking through the crowd when an egg bounced off him without breaking. Two bodyguards can be seen immediately getting closer to the president to protect his shoulders.

Britain is on the verge of joining the EU Covid vaccine passport scheme, sources in Brussels and Westminster have confirmed.

The EU Digital Covid Certificate should make travelling in Europe easier and cheaper for British tourists. More controversially, joining it would also enable the Government to quickly launch a domestic vaccine passport system should it be needed to help control Covid this winter.

Last week, when outlining his autumn and winter plan, Boris Johnson said domestic vaccine passports could be used as part of a "plan B" should Covid start to stretch NHS capacity again. The Telegraph has been told by the EU that integration of the UK's vaccine database into the EU system is at an advanced stage. A spokesman for the European Commission said:

"­­Significant progress was made on a technical front, namely when it comes to the connection to the gateway, with aim of going live [testing] soon. We have applied to link into the EU's Digital Covid Certificate scheme. Linking up to the EU's Digital Covid Certificate scheme will enable us to digitally verify each other's Covid certificates to make journeys easier."

The UK Foreign Office and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have joint responsibility for the project in the UK. They formally applied to join the EU scheme on July 28, and technical work has been carrying on behind the scenes ever since.

The EU Digital Covid Certificate has quickly become the biggest vaccine passport scheme in the world and covers more than 40 countries, including all 27 EU states and others as far afield as Israel and Panama. The system is effectively a giant digital platform or "gateway" through which different countries' vaccine certificates and test results can be scanned and verified as legitimate by others quickly and easily. It is is used on all external EU borders and also for domestic vaccine passports schemes operating in countries including France, Holland and Portugal.

The indictment of Michael Sussmann sheds new light on the outrageous pre-election activities of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, which have a familiar ring...

CNN Chief Media Reporter Brian Stelter hopped on the set of Reliable Sources last weekend, and offered his take on Special Counsel John Durham's recent indictment of former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussmann, calling Durham's probe a "total bust." This was in the context of accusing other networks like Fox and OAN of a pattern of "lie, rinse, repeat."

I was sick last week and didn't get around to reading the Sussmann case until Tuesday. I can't imagine Stelter has read it, since the whole thing is about complicity on his side of the media aisle in years of repeat errors and lies, including multiple editorial double-downs even after a major story was publicly exposed as factually incorrect. A long list of press figures — from Stelter's own CNN colleague and shameless intelligence community spokesclown Natasha Bertrand, to reporters from The New Yorker, Time, MSNBC, Fortune, the Financial Times, and especially Slate and The Atlantic — were witting or unwitting pawns in a scheme to sell the public on a transparently moronic hoax, i.e. that Donald Trump's campaign was communicating mysterious digital treason to Russia's Alfa Bank via a secret computer server.

International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists
September, 2021

We the physicians of the world, united and loyal to the Hippocratic Oath, recognizing the profession of medicine as we know it is at a crossroad, are compelled to declare the following:

WHEREAS, it is our utmost responsibility and duty to uphold and restore the dignity, integrity, art and science of medicine;

WHEREAS, there is an unprecedented assault on our ability to care for our patients;

WHEREAS, public policy makers have chosen to force a "one size fits all" treatment strategy, resulting in needless illness and death, rather than upholding fundamental concepts of the individualized, personalized approach to patient care which is proven to be safe and more effective;

WHEREAS, physicians and other health care providers working on the front lines, utilizing their knowledge of epidemiology, pathophysiology and pharmacology, are often first to identify new, potentially life saving treatments;

Russia and Belarus have both agreed to "take action" to secure the security of both countries if there were to be any expansion of NATO infrastructure into neighboring Ukraine, the Kremlin revealed on Monday.

At a meeting in Sochi as part of a personal visit by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the pair agreed that another move eastwards by the US-led alliance would be met with a strong response, according to the Russian president's spokesman.

Dmitry Peskov added that the two leaders discussed the subject of Ukraine's potential accession to the bloc on numerous occasions, and that any kind of move would cross one of Putin's "'red lines' that he has repeatedly spoken about before." Such an event would require some form of retaliatory action "that would ensure the security of our two allied states," the press secretary added.

The number of nuclear power units in Russia will be increased at most of the country's operational nuclear power plants, according to Director General of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom, Aleksey Likhachev.

Likhachev, who's heading the Russian delegation at the 65th IAEA General Conference in Vienna, Austria told reporters:

"We will be gradually decommissioning Soviet units built in the 1970s. They will be replaced with about 15 units by 2035. Our task is to build them on the existing sites, to expand the existing plants with new units. All of them will be generations 3+, with a capacity of 1,200 MW."

Rosatom's chief also talked about low-power nuclear power plants:

"A relevant decision has been made, and we switched to its practical implementation, namely the construction of a flotilla of small nuclear power plants based on RITM reactors that will be used in the development of the Baimskoye ore deposit, as well as the land-based version of the RITM-200 for the Kyuchus gold deposit in Yakutia. That means that we have already started implementing low-capacity projects both in Chukotka and Yakutia."

Russia is in negotiations with developers of foreign Covid-19 vaccines, a government epidemiologist has revealed, noting that the country is analyzing "all data available" to determine the safety and effectiveness of the jabs.

As things stand, just Russian-made vaccines are currently available, including the popular Sputnik V.

Speaking on Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, Tatyana Ruzhentsova revealed that Russians may soon be able to choose to be inoculated with jabs produced abroad. Ruzhentsova is deputy director for clinical work at the Gabrichevsky Moscow Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, run by the government health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor.