When 21-year-old North Korean defector, Yeonmi Park, made her debut on the world stage in October this year with harrowing tales of life under the repressive North Korean regime and her perilous escape to freedom, she left audiences, human rights heavyweights, and journalists in tears - some literally sobbing.

Wearing a pink, traditional Korean dress with its high waist and voluminous skirt, Park stood before the lectern at the One Young World Summit in Dublin and in between long pauses, wiping tears from her eyes and holding her hand to her mouth as she composed herself, she told of being brainwashed; of seeing executions; of starving; of the slither of light in her darkness when she watched the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic, and had her mind opened to the outside world where love was possible; of having to watch her mother being raped; of burying her father on her own at just 14; and of threatening to kill herself rather than allow Mongolian soldiers to send her back to North Korea. She talked about following the stars to freedom and then ended with her signature sign off, "When I was crossing the Gobi desert, scared of dying, I thought nobody cares, but you have listened to my story. You have cared."

You'd have to have been inhuman not to be moved. But - and you're going to hear a lot of "buts" - was the story she told of her life in North Korea accurate? The more speeches and interviews I read, watch and hear Park give, the more I become aware of serious inconsistencies in her story that suggest it wasn't. Whether this matters is up to the reader to decide, but my concern is if someone with such a high profile twists their story to fit the narrative we have come to expect from North Korean defectors, our perspective of the country could become dangerously skewed. We need to have a full and truthful picture of life in North Korea if we are to help those living under its abysmally cruel regime and those who try to flee.

Iran's atomic energy body says the country's sole nuclear power plant has been temporarily shut down over a "technical fault."

"Following a technical fault at Bushehr power plant, and after a one-day notice to the Energy Ministry, the plant was temporarily shut down and taken off the power grid," the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said on its website overnight.

The agency added that the power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr will be reconnected to the national electricity network "within the next few days" after the issue is resolved.

CNN anchor Don Lemon had some unfavorable remarks about the United States and Americans in a new interview. The left-wing cable TV host made a bizarre claim that Americans don't see black people as human beings, and declared that the U.S. needs to "realize just how racist it is."

Lemon gave an in-depth interview for the Washington Post Magazine's Sunday feature. Reporter Eric Easter asked Lemon, "You've suggested that Trump was the president we deserved and probably a necessary and revealing wake-up call. Do you still think that?"

Lemon responded, "Considering people's apathy to get involved in the political process, to pay attention to the political process, to go to the polls, their willingness to give so much attention to celebrity, I think that's what I meant by 'the president we deserve.'"

Whenever the woke diversity and inclusion agenda fails a test, it's always the test's fault - never the test-taker's.

It started in 2020, when the Academy Awards put new rules into place that required future films to be diverse and inclusive in order to qualify for nomination. Now, to bolster that diversity and inclusion agenda, the woke enemies of merit in art and entertainment have set their sights on eliminating box office receipts as a measure of cinematic success.

'In the Heights', a musical with an Asian director, Latino writer and all-minority cast, made a measly $11 million at the box office in its opening weekend, instead of the $25 to $50 million some delusional fools were projecting. It's looking as if it will make considerably less in week two, but, apparently, we need to ignore its failure to sell tickets and laud its inclusivity aims.

The publishing world's in danger of becoming a no-go area for freedom of expression. The delayed publication of a history text, amended after it was deemed "too white," is proof of that.

There's a veritable army of freelance censors and sensitivity entrepreneurs enlisted in the policing of culture. Poor Richard Cohen. The British author's book, titled 'The History Makers', was due out earlier this month before being serialised on BBC Radio 4.

Promoted as an "epic exploration of who writes the past", it had already been a target of cultural policing by Random House. The American publisher had previously demanded that Cohen rewrite part of his 800-page tome on the grounds that he failed to include a sufficiently large quota of black historians and academics. Yet, despite the rewrite, it decided to cancel his contract.

The Swedish National Museum is under fire for attaching "warning labels" to classic pieces of art, tipping viewers off about the dangerous "nationalism," racism, and "patriarchal gender roles" apparently hidden on canvas.

From reimagining its viking warriors as "transgender" to hanging homosexual art in its churches, to declaring its own history "copied," Swedish society has apparently committed itself to a full-throttle woke makeover in recent years. The Swedish National Museum in Stockholm is no different.

Since it reopened in 2018, audiences soon noticed new, "politicized" labels on paintings. Archaeologist Leif Gren reviewed them last week in an opinion piece for Vestmanlands Lans Tidning, concluding that museum officials weren't letting visitors "think for themselves."

Governments are using fear to control and manipulate their citizens. That has now been admitted by members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B), a subcommittee that advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) in the U.K. And they should know, because they advocated for it, and now say it was a regrettable mistake. As reported by The Telegraph, May 14, 2021:1

"Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people's behavior during the COVID pandemic have admitted its work was 'unethical' and 'totalitarian.' Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B) expressed regret about the tactics in a new book about the role of psychology in the Government's COVID-19 response.

SPI-B warned in March last year that ministers needed to increase 'the perceived level of personal threat' from COVID-19 because 'a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened.'

Gavin Morgan, a psychologist on the team, said: 'Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It's not an ethical stance for any modern government. By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people.'"

Several of the world's leading scientists plan to launch an independent expert group this week to advise, warn and criticise global policymakers about the climate and nature crises.

The new body has been inspired by Independent Sage - the cluster of British scientists who have held UK ministers and civil servants to account for their lack of transparency and mishandling of the Covid pandemic.


The Climate Crisis Advisory Group, comprising 14 experts from 10 nations and every continent, aims to have more of an international reach and provide the global public with regular analysis about efforts to tackle the global heating and biodiversity crises.

Headed by the former UK chief scientific adviser Sir David King, the new group will issue monthly updates about the state of the global environment at meetings that will be open to the media and the public. These online gatherings will be chaired by the BBC presenter Ade Adepitan.

"We are hoping that by putting expertise directly into the public domain we are reaching into policymakers' decision processes, and into the financial sector and how they invest in our future," King told the Observer. "We are not just going to say 'this is the state of the global climate', but also what should the global response be from governments and companies ... What we do in the next five years will determine the future of humanity for the next millennium."

Just over a year ago, I stumbled across an intriguing scientific paper. It suggested the pandemic that was ripping around the world was "uniquely adapted to infect humans"; it was "not typical of a normal zoonotic infection" since it first appeared with "exceptional" ability to enter human cells. The author of the paper, Nikolai Petrovsky, was frank about the disease when we spoke back then, saying its adaptability was either "a remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention". He even broke the scientific omertà by daring to admit that "no one can say a laboratory leak is not a possibility".

But even though Petrovsky has excellent credentials — professor of medicine at a prominent Australian university, author of more than 200 papers in scientific journals and founder of a company funded by the US government to develop new vaccine technologies — I was still anxious when my story went global. His original document had been posted on a pre-print site, so had not been peer reviewed, unlike if it had been published in a medical or scientific journal. These sorts of sites allow researchers to get findings out quickly. Petrovsky told me his first attempt to place these seismic findings was on BioRxiv, run by prominent New York laboratory. But it was rejected; eventually he succeeded on ArXiv, a rival server run by Cornell University. Last week, however, he told me this important origins modelling paper had finally been accepted by Nature Scientific Reports after "a harrowing 12 months of repeated reviews, rejections, appeals, re-reviews and finally now acceptance".

This acceptance is one more sign of the changing political climate as suddenly it is deemed permissible to discuss the possibility that the virus causing havoc around the world might have emerged from a laboratory. Petrovsky has had to endure what he calls "the legitimacy" of his paper as a peer-reviewed publication being denied for a critical 12 months — and he is far from alone. "I have heard all too many tales from other academics who have been equally frustrated in getting their manuscripts dealing with research into the origins of the virus published," he said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis edged former President Trump in a weekend presidential straw poll conducted at the annual Western Conservative Summit in Denver.

Mr. DeSantis received 74.12% support in response to a poll asking conference attendees to "vote for all candidates you approve of for President in 2024," followed by Mr. Trump, who garnered 71.43% support, according to results issued Saturday.

The survey of 371 respondents released at the end of the two-day summit offered an unscientific but intriguing glimpse at how conservative voters are leaning well ahead of the 2024 presidential race.

Coming in third behind the two Florida Republicans was Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, who received 42.86% support, followed by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with 39.35%, and Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina Republican, with 35.58%.

Other GOP figures receiving support in descending order were South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem; Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas; Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky; Donald Trump Jr.; former Vice President Mike Pence; Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri; Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas; and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Bringing up the rear were the Democrats, all of whom fell below 3% support, but the leaders were former first lady Michelle Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who each took 2.96%.

President Biden placed behind them with 2.43% support, ahead of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 2.19%.