Reports of the plan come after the United Kingdom became the first country in Europe to confirm over 30,000 deaths caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic that has plunged most of the world into lockdown.


The British government has drafted a 50-page statement detailing a five-stage plan to lift the lockdown in the UK by October, The Mirror reported, citing unnamed sources in the government.

The plan is reportedly set to be announced on Sunday, come into force on Monday and last until the middle of autumn, despite officials fearing a second wave of coronavirus or an outbreak that could "blow their plan off course".


"It's a bit of a shambles. Nobody can quite agree what to do and when to do it. Somebody comes up with a bright idea, but the practicalities get in the way", the governmental source noted, cited by Mirror.


The anonymous official also noted that "we're not South Korea", apparently comparing the British response to the pandemic to that of South Korea's.

Technology developed by the Pentagon's controversial research branch is getting a huge boost amid the current coronavirus crisis, with little attention going to the agency's ulterior motives for developing said technologies, their potential for weaponization or their unintended consequences.

In January, well before the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis would result in lockdowns, quarantines and economic devastation in the United States and beyond, the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon were working with the National Security Council to create still-classified plans to respond to an imminent pandemic. It has since been alleged that the intelligence and military intelligence communities knew about a likely pandemic in the United States as early as last November, and potentially even before then.

Given this foreknowledge and the numerous simulations conducted in the United States last year regarding global viral pandemic outbreaks, at least six of varying scope and size, it has often been asked - Why did the government not act or prepare if an imminent global pandemic and the shortcomings of any response to such an event were known? Though the answer to this question has frequently been written off as mere "incompetence" in mainstream media circles, it is worth entertaining the possibility that a crisis was allowed to unfold.

Why would the intelligence community or another faction of the U.S. government knowingly allow a crisis such as this to occur? The answer is clear if one looks at history, as times of crisis have often been used by the U.S. government to implement policies that would normally be rejected by the American public, ranging from censorship of the press to mass surveillance networks. Though the government response to the September 11 attacks, like the Patriot Act, may be the most accessible example to many Americans, U.S. government efforts to limit the flow of "dangerous" journalism and surveil the population go back to as early as the First World War. Many of these policies, whether the Patriot Act after 9/11 or WWI-era civilian "spy" networks, did little if anything to protect the homeland, but instead led to increased surveillance and control that persisted long after the crisis that spurred them had ended.

President Trump said Wednesday the coronavirus "attack" is "worse" than the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks.

"We went through the worst attack we've ever had in our country. This is really the worst attack we've ever had. This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center," Trump said while signing a proclamation in the Oval Office in honor of National Nurses Day.

The U.S. has reported 71,064 coronavirus-related deaths, while 2,403 people died at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and 2,977 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The former CEO of Google claims he can improve the US military's integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its operations. But is AI the panacea Schmidt claims? And if so, is he the person best suited to lead the way?

In a culture known for complex problems and inherent inefficiencies, the US military would seem ideally suited for the kind of cutting-edge solutions offered by the emergence of computer-driven artificial intelligence (AI).

The US military - like its counterparts in China, Russia, India and elsewhere - has, over the course of the past decade, invested heavily in research and development projects designed to bring AI to the battlefield in support of intelligence collection and analysis, logistical support, autonomous warfighting capabilities, healthcare, and cybersecurity. Indeed, in this computer-driven age, there isn't an aspect of military operations where AI hasn't been investigated as a potential enhancement.

While the US military hasn't ignored AI and its utility, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, believes it has done so in a highly inefficient manner. And he is convinced he is the man who can best help the US military solve its AI challenges.

Iraq's Badr organization, which is part of the country's Popular Mobilization Forces or Hashd al-Sha'abi, says the US and Saudi Arabia are seeking to reactivate Daesh, adding that recent attacks by the Takfiri terrorist group serve that aim.

Speaking to Arabic-language al-Maalomah news agency, Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati, a senior leader in the Badr Organization, revealed fresh attempts by Washington and Riyadh to facilitate the return of fugitive Daesh militants to Iraq.

The latest deadly terrorist attacks, which were conducted on Iraqi soil with the US and Saudi backing, were part of a plot to bring Daesh back, he added.

Bayati also noted that renewed US-Saudi support for Daesh is similar to that of 2014, when the Takfiri outfit unleashed a campaign of death and destruction in Iraq and overran vast swathes in lightning attacks.

There are no signs North Korean leader Kim Jong Un received heart surgery when he disappeared from state media for three weeks, but he reduced public activity due to coronavirus concerns, South Korean lawmakers briefed by the spy agency said on Wednesday.

Kim attended the completion of a fertiliser plant, North Korea's official media said on Saturday, the first report of his appearing in public since April 11.

His absence fuelled a flurry of speculation about his health and whereabouts, with a South Korean news outlet reporting Kim was recovering from a cardiovascular procedure while CNN said U.S. officials were monitoring intelligence he was "in grave danger" after surgery.


Members of South Korea's parliamentary intelligence committee said after a meeting with the National Intelligence Service (NIS) that the reports were "groundless."

"The NIS assesses that at least he did not get any heart-related procedure or surgery," committee member Kim Byung-kee told reporters. "He was normally performing his duties when he was out of the public eye."

"At least there's no heart-related health problem."

House Republicans pressed House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to stop blocking the release of 53 witness interviews from the committee's investigation of Russian election interference.

Led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, 27 GOP lawmakers said in a Tuesday letter that the House Intelligence Committee voted unanimously in fall 2018 to release dozens of witness interview transcripts from its Trump-Russia investigation, but the transcripts have not been made public.

"We understand now that Chairman Schiff is blocking the release of these transcripts. This news, if accurate, is disturbing — especially in light of Chairman Schiff's cries in 2019 for transparency regarding allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia," the congressmen said. "For almost four years, prominent Democrat politicians and commentators alleged that President Trump colluded with Russia, with Chairman Schiff going as far as to say that he had 'direct evidence' of collusion. Now that these allegations have been disproven by several investigations, the American people deserve to have transparency about why public figures such as Chairman Schiff continued to promote such wild accusations."

The letter is addressed to Schiff and Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the panel.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's lengthy December report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for 17 "significant errors and omissions" related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau's reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele's unverified dossier. Steele put his research together at the behest of Glenn Simpson's opposition research firm Fusion GPS, funded by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee through the Perkins Coie law firm.

The world has now been under Covid-19 lockdown for about two months, thanks to our fearmongering leaders, who've been comparing the coronavirus pandemic to a wartime situation and apparently competing with each other to see who can subject their populations to the most draconian measures. And they claim it's all necessary in order to save lives.

Never mind that as a consequence of the lock down it is likely that MORE people are dying than would otherwise have done, due to a variety of problems, not least the shuttering of primary health care - and particularly in 'Covid-19 hot spots', like the UK. So a strange "war" is going on where people are forced to sit at home and binge-watch Netflix while being frightened into submission by the media's wildly exaggerated claims about dubiously-acquired case/death numbers, and while the elderly and the vulnerable pay the highest price. It seems then that when justified by "saving lives", you can get away with literally anything - like killing off a bunch of people. We shouldn't be surprised though, because in just the last 20 years, several wars led by Western governments that killed, literally, more than 1.5 million people, were justified by the need to 'save people'

At the end of the World War 2, the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japanese cities - in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - killing approximately 200,000 civilians. Officially, it too was done "in order to save lives". Whatever immoral crimes against humanity are committed, it's rationalized as necessary for some greater good - even if that means blowing hundreds of thousands of people to pieces with weapons of mass destruction.

If people could be made to believe that nuking Japan was done in order to 'save lives', if people could be made to believe that invading and occupying Iraq and killing 1.5 million Iraqis was to 'save them', then surely it's not a big task to convince them that subjecting a third of the global population to home imprisonment and risking the destruction of the global economy, will also 'save lives'.

There are always fairy tales for children and hard truths for adults. The fairy tale is offered to make people feel comfortable and safe. Truth, on the other hand, is what it is - not something that can be shaped and distorted to produce 'the right feeling'. Adults who remain as children, believing in fairy tales, are dangerous because they take or support actions that can have very serious consequences for themselves and for society as a whole.

In recent years, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes against targets in Syria that presumably contain or belong to Syrian or Iranian forces. Iran denies the presence of troops in Syria and refers to its forces there as mere advisors to Bashar al-Assad's government.

Israel's military will continue its operations in Syria to pressure Iran, Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett told state television on Tuesday.

"Iran has nothing to do in Syria... (and) we won't stop before they leave Syria," he said.

The defence chief went on to repeat the Israeli intelligence assumption that Iran was "trying to establish itself on the border with Israel to threaten Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa".

The MH17 wreckage was still burning when the Ukrainian secret service convinced western audiences that rebels had brought down the plane. However several persons that for years have been incriminated in the media are not suspected by the Dutch Public Prosecutor and are not standing trial.

Only six hours after the downing of MH17 the Ukrainian secret service SBU put a video on YouTube with tapped phone conversations from rebels in Ukraine, indicating that they had brought down MH17. The video was immediately picked up by the media, among which the Dutch evening news on July 17 2014. The SBU video got over a million views.

From then on the atmosphere was set. The rebels were to blame, and probably Russia too. No need to explore alternate scenarios incriminating for Ukraine. The media were mobilized to pick up any information that would confirm the rebels' and Russia's guilt, and to overlook contradicting intelligence.