U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that schools should keep mask mandates, even if children are vaccinated.

Walensky, speaking at a White House COVID-19 team briefing, urged that even as cases decline following a surge of the highly transmissible delta variant, Americans must not become complacent ahead of the winter months.

"First, we're really encouraged as we watch the COVID-19 cases come down from this delta surge, in this very moment," Walensky said. "But, we all know that respiratory viruses ... tend to thrive in winter months and colder weather. So, right now is not the time, as cases are coming down, to become complacent because we do know colder weather is ahead of us and we need to do all that we can - including vaccinating those 66 million people who have not yet been vaccinated - all we can in our prevention measures and our vaccination efforts to make sure that we don't become complacent during this period of time."

Barack Obama has accused Republicans of trying to 'rig' elections by passing state voter ID laws - an ironic claim for an ex-president who blasted successor Donald Trump for suggesting the 2016 White House race could be gamed.

On Saturday, while campaigning for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, Obama asked:

"You have to ask yourself: Why is it that Republicans don't want you to vote? What is it that they're so afraid of? You know, I would assume, if they think they've got better ideas, why don't they just go make the case?"

A former Saudi intelligence official turned regime critic claims that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to kill him due to secrets in his possession, describing the ruler as a "psychopath with no empathy" on CBS.

Saad Aljabri, a former Saudi minister of state and close aide of ex-crown prince and intelligence boss Mohammed bin Nayef, has been in exile since 2017. He has repeatedly alleged that Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is plotting to kill him. Aljabri fled Saudi Arabia for Canada after MBS ousted bin Nayef from his position.

Now, in a particularly explosive interview with CBS' 60 Minutes show with interviewer Scott Pelley, Aljabri stepped up his claims against the Saudi kingdom's de facto ruler. The show introduces Aljabri as having once been

"among the best friends America had against terrorism. I am here to sound the alarm about a psychopath, killer, in the Middle East with infinite resources, who poses a threat to his people, to the Americans and to the planet.

MBS is "a psychopath with no empathy, doesn't feel emotion, never learned from his experience. And we have witnessed atrocities and crimes committed by this killer."

The crown prince is allegedly holding two of the former high-ranking spy's children and his son-in-law in captivity, trying to use them as a bargaining chip to make him return to Riyadh.

Calls for confrontation with Russia made by the German defense minister were careless and inflammatory, the head of one of the country's governing coalition parties has said, after Berlin told NATO to brazenly threaten Moscow.

On Monday, the parliamentary chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SDP), Rolf Mützenich, accused Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is in charge of the country's military forces, of making provocative comments. According to him, NATO threatening Russia with its nuclear forces would fan the flames of the worsening international relations between Moscow and the US-led bloc. He said:

"The Defense Minister's recent conclusions about the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict with Russia are irresponsible. Mrs. Kramp-Karrenbauer['s comments are] no different from the equally unfounded threats from the Russian side."

Mützenich added that such statements contributed to the "spiral of escalation."

Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki has warned the EU against acting "with a gun to our heads," claiming Warsaw would defend itself by any means available if the EU launched a "third World War" by holding back Covid-19 recovery funding.

The strongly worded statement came after the European Commission threatened to leave Poland without billions in grants and loans as a response to a controversial decision by the country's Constitutional Tribunal, which prioritized national laws over those of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Morawiecki, when asked by the Financial Times if Poland could now veto important legislation such as the EU's landmark climate package, said:

"What will happen if the European Commission starts a third World War? ... We are going to defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal. We feel this is already discriminatory and a diktat type of approach [by Brussels]. But if it's going to get even worse, we'll have to think through our strategy."

The prime minister described the European Commission's withholding of the €36-billion grant for post-pandemic rebuilding as a "breach of the rule of law," and said Poles would not "surrender." In order to find a compromise, he added, the EU should reverse its recent decision to fine Warsaw daily until it implemented ECJ decisions regarding its judicial reform. He further claimed:

"This would be the wisest thing they can do because then we are not talking to each other with a gun to our head. This very situation creates a relative lack of our appetite for any further actions."

Morawiecki nonetheless summed up his recent talks with EU leaders - including outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen - as "very satisfying," and stated that, despite the aforementioned disagreement, there was no risk of "Polexit."

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that his country wants to see relations with Russia improve despite recent tensions over alleged poisonings on British soil, as part of diplomatic outreach to bolster environmental efforts.

On Monday, in his first two-way call with his Russian counterpart President Vladimir Putin in a year and a half, Johnson said that two nations have a responsibility to work together. A statement from Downing Street released after the conversation said that the British prime minister "was clear that the UK's current relationship with Russia is not the one we want."

However, at the same time, "significant bilateral difficulties remain, including the poisonings in Salisbury in 2018," Downing Street said. "The Prime Minister also underscored the importance of Ukrainian sovereignty."

"You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they're people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong." — They Live

We are living in an age of mayhem, madness and monsters.

Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.

What we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.

Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

We have let the government's evil-doing and abuses go on for too long.

We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.

We're being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

We're living in two worlds: the world we see (or are made to see) and the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America — privileged, progressive and free — is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing; pandemic lockdowns (both mental and physical), real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation; and "freedom," such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers, disease, etc.).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other's throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates.

In the space of just two generations, we have transitioned from a world where most people subscribed to newspapers and adjusted the bunny ears on their TV sets to receive their nightly news broadcast to a world where most people browse social media posts from around the world and stream the latest news reports directly to their phone. You don't have to go out on a limb to suggest that the "online revolution" that has taken place in the 21st century is at least as dramatic (if not more so) than the Gutenberg printing press revolution itself.

But those of us who have been pondering the nature of this online revolution might be premature in making any final pronouncements on its ultimate significance. As it turns out, the real revolution might still be in the works . . . and this revolution threatens to alter society so drastically that it could transform humanity itself.

If you've got your eyes peeled for such things, you'll have already noticed the PR propaganda roll-out pimping this coming transformation.

Case in point: Facebook's name change. In case you hadn't heard, as of next week, Facebook will no longer be known as Facebook. At least, that's what The Verge is reporting, telling us that "Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter."

So what is the "metaverse?" And what does the hype surrounding this next digital revolution tell us about the kind of world that's coming into view?

Let's start our exploration by looking at the history of the online revolution so far and how it has already altered the course of our civilization.

Joe Biden has achieved at least one groundbreaking result - though likely not the sort that he had in mind - as polling indicates that he has lost the most ground in voter approval of any new US president in more than 75 years.

With only 42% of voters approving of Biden's job performance in October, his average rating in the third quarter of his presidency was 44.7%, down from 56% during his first three months in the White House, a new Gallup poll showed. His rating decline of 11.3 percentage points from the honeymoon period to the nine-month mark is the biggest drop since fellow Democrat Harry Truman was trying to fill the shoes of his deceased predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, in 1945.

A former Israeli general on Sunday said the Israel Defense Forces' bombing of a tower that housed The Associated Press in the Gaza Strip during May's conflict amounted to an "own goal," causing more damage to Israel's image than it provided operational benefit.

"Bringing down the tower with the AP offices was equivalent to a self-inflicted 'public relations terror attack' and an own goal, in our view," said Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, the former head of IDF Operations.

Alon, who led the military's investigation into the public relations-related issues connected to the recent conflict, was referring to a May 15 strike on the 12-story Al-Jalaa tower in Gaza City, which sparked immediate criticism from around the world, including from American lawmakers who have long been staunch advocates for Israel.