With new units on China and climate change, global health and emerging tech, the CIA is expanding its reach (as it has often tried to do, unsuccessfully, in the past). But these ventures are likely to have unwanted consequences.

The CIA recently announced a reorganization that includes the creation of two new 'mission centers', one focusing exclusively on China while the other - called the Transnational and Technology Mission Center - will look at emerging technologies, climate change, and global health.

Both of these new units pose baffling questions. You might wonder why it has taken so long for the CIA to set up a dedicated China unit, given the long-term increases in the country's economic, military and geopolitical power.

In the wake of Attorney General Merrick Garland's announcement that he plans to sic the FBI on concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings against critical race theory and COVID restrictions, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted the Biden administration and said Americans should "be afraid of your government."

Paul told Fox News:

"Moms at school boards are being told that they're criminals, potential domestic terrorists, for the crime of dissent, and I think criminalizing dissent is something that we should all be appalled with,"

Garland claimed that there has been a "disturbing trend" of teachers being threatened or harassed. PJ Media's Megan Fox looked into these allegations and concluded they're mostly bunk.

In a decision that sent shockwaves through Europe, Poland's constitutional court on Thursday ruled the country's laws had supremacy of those of the European Union. The long-awaited ruling says some parts of EU treaties and court rulings go against Poland's highest law.

Jakub Jaraczewski, research coordinator at Democracy Reporting, called the move a

"massive escalation of the crisis of the rule of law in Poland. This is unprecedented. We have an EU member state basically stating that the primacy of EU law, one of the core ideas of the European Union common legal order, is partially not effective in Poland. This has not happened before."

Laurent Pech, professor of European law at Middlesex University, compared the ruling to a

"nuclear strike on the EU legal order. As soon as the judgment is going to be published, Polish judges are going to have to choose between violating EU laws or disobeying the constitution. So if they do not violate EU laws, because they have a duty to apply EU rule of law standards under the treaties, then they are going to face disciplinary proceedings and possibly also criminal proceedings."

The Polish verdict drew strong condemnation from the EU's executive and the main parties in the European Parliament. The European Commission said the ruling "raised serious concerns" and suggested that Warsaw could expect a strong response from Brussels.

Hungary has called on European Union institutions "to respect member states' sovereignty" after it backed a Polish court ruling that some EU law is incompatible with the Polish constitution.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban signed a Hungarian government decree on Saturday, his press chief told state news agency MTI, welcoming the ruling by Poland's Constitutional Court which has plunged the EU into an existential crisis.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said she was "deeply concerned" by the ruling and that the Commission would do all in its power to ensure the primacy of EU law.

Right-wing populist governments in Poland and Hungary have been at odds with the Commission over issues ranging from media freedoms, migration, LGBT rights to judicial independence. The two former communist states, which joined the EU in 2004, have been allies within the bloc, often voting in tandem, and supporting each other's case.

• There are many hard lessons to be learned from the current energy crisis in Europe, including the importance of both flexibility and backup options for an energy grid
• While the concept of an energy transition has been fully embraced by governments and institutions around the world, it seems the logistics of such a transition has been ignored
• In order to take back control of an energy transition that has evidently spun out of control, policymakers must manage the decline of the current system as well as the creation of a new one

The energy crisis in Europe exposed the complexity of a transition to green energy: it is not happening overnight, and it cannot be done successfully with the old tricks. Energy systems, markets, and grids globally need fundamental changes to legislation, regulation, and oversight in order to accommodate 100-percent zero-emission sources. And even in that case, power systems need flexibility and backups in order to avert similar crises down the road as many parts of the world commit to net-zero emissions by 2050 or 2060.

The current crisis in the UK is a cautionary tale about how not to rush to green energy, Rochelle Toplensky of The Wall Street Journal notes.

The Taliban have ruled out cooperation with the US to contain extremist groups in Afghanistan. The group has staked out its uncompromising position on a key issue ahead of the first direct talks between the former foes since America withdrew from the country in August. Senior Taliban officials and US representatives are to meet over Saturday and Sunday in Doha, the capital of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

Officials from both sides have said issues to be tackled include reining in extremist groups and the evacuation of foreign citizens and Afghans from the country. The Taliban have signaled their flexibility on evacuations.

Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shaheen told The Associated Press there would be no cooperation with Washington on going after the increasingly active Islamic State (IS) group affiliate in Afghanistan.

A former high-ranking Capitol Police official with knowledge of the department's response to the Jan. 6 attack has sent congressional leaders a scathing letter accusing two of its senior leaders of mishandling intelligence and failing to respond properly during the riot.

The whistleblower, who requested anonymity for privacy reasons and left the force months after the attack, sent the 16-page letter late last month to the top members of both parties in the House and Senate. His missive makes scorching allegations against Sean Gallagher, the Capitol Police's acting chief of uniformed operations, and Yogananda Pittman, its assistant chief of police for protective and intelligence operations — who also served as its former acting chief.

The whistleblower accuses Gallagher and Pittman of deliberately choosing not to help officers under attack on Jan. 6 and alleges that Pittman lied to Congress about an intelligence report Capitol Police received before that day's riot. After a lengthy career in the department, the whistleblower was a senior official on duty on Jan. 6.

The Government has been condemned after refusing to release details of key email conversations involving leading scientists over the origins of Covid-19.

This newspaper used Freedom of Information rules to obtain a cache of 32 emails about a secretive teleconference between British and American health officials held early in the pandemic.

But officials blacked out almost every word before releasing the crucial documents.

A former National Security Council (NSC) official who testified that then-President Donald Trump attempted to use the Ukrainian government for a "domestic political errand" has dismissed the theory the Kremlin had damaging information about the 45th president it used to extract concessions from him.

"What Putin had on Trump is what everybody else had — recognition of his extreme vulnerability to manipulation," Fiona Hill told The Daily Beast in an interview published Monday.

The idea that Trump was uniquely vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow took root even before his inauguration, when BuzzFeed News published the now-infamous dossier compiled by ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele. Among the dossier's many salacious claims: that Russian intelligence had a video of Trump paying prostitutes to urinate on the bed in the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow.

The only people worth silencing are those who are right.

Google is waging a war against skeptics because skeptics have the truth on their side and they win debates too easily. How do we know? There are plenty of wrong people on the internet, and acres of misinformation, but Google is happy to feed those creators. The Flat Earthers are not spreading fast on Youtube, they're not attracting millions of views. But no one needs to cut off their money supply because their arguments aren't persuasive. To stop those ideas from running amok, the world only needs free speech.

Google announces: ...a new monetization policy for Google advertisers, publishers and YouTube creators that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. This includes content referring to climate change as a hoax or a scam, claims denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change.

Google demonetizes content creators who deny climate change

by Ian Miles Cheong, Rebel News

Arrogance knows no bounds:

The tech giant claims it will be able to differentiate between content "that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim."

Who needs scientists anyhow - just Google the truth instead of doing all those experiments?

It's time for skeptics to hone their skills in satire and parody. Let's screw those algorithms!

For content creators who were relying on Youtube adverts, losing the monetization could kill the business, it's a cruel blow. Google's behaviour is grossly unfair and deceptive. It sold itself as a "platform" deceived people into watching and sharing their creative talents, and on November 1 could wipe them out. But good talent can still find a way — not only are there other, better video homes, but it's so much better to get a business model that doesn't feed or rely on Google. My advice would be to connect with your audience, set up a blog or a website, and ask for help and donations. Use Youtube while you still can, to set up a list.