Met officers and paramedics are at the scene in Bishopsgate, near Liverpool Street Station - with the incident said to have happened just yards from a police station.Across much of the planet that enforced lockdowns, but the West in particular, crime, including violent attacks, have been increasing:
Unconfirmed reports from social media suggest the incident began when bystanders stepped in to stop bike thieves.
A tweet from the City of London police confirmed they were aware of the incident.
"Our officers are at the scene and @Ldn_Ambulance are in attendance. A cordon is currently in place," it read.
Meanwhile, another person who saw the aftermath said: "[I] drove past it, and saw 4 people injured - City of London police, told me 4 people were randomly stabbed.
"At the time roads were still open - didn't really look to see if there was blood everywhere, but I'm assuming so."
Meanwhile, nearby offices have been plunged into lockdown.
The A10 at Bishopsgate headed south at the junction of A1211 Wormwood Street had been closed by police.
Elon Musk plans to turn Twitter into an "everything app" after reviving plans to buy the social media company for $44bn (£38bn).
After a u-turn over his takeover, the Tesla billionaire said: "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app."
Mr Musk had been trying to back out of a deal to buy the social media business but announced a surprise reversal on Tuesday, saying he would purchase the company at $54.20 per share. He was facing a court battle as Twitter pressed him to go through with the takeover.
Mr Musk, the world's richest man who is worth $220bn, gave no details of what his "X" app would look like, but he claimed buying Twitter "accelerates X by three to five years, but I could be wrong".
He has previously expressed an interest in creating a "super app" similar to China's WeChat.
WeChat, which is used by more than 1 billion people in China, combines instant messaging, video calls and mobile payments.
Mr Musk told Twitter staff earlier this year: "Think of it like WeChat in China, which is great now, but there's no WeChat equivalent outside of China. There's a real opportunity to create that."
He added: "You basically live on WeChat in China because it's so helpful, so useful to daily life. I think if we achieve that or come even close to that with Twitter, that would be a success."
In text messages between Mr Musk, his friends and advisers that were revealed as part of his court battle with Twitter, he revealed some details of his thinking about social media.
In one note to his brother, Kimbal, Mr Musk said: "I have an idea for a blockchain social media system that does both payments and short texts/links like Twitter. You have to pay a tiny amount to register your message on the chain, which will cut out the vast majority of spam and bots."
Blockchain is the digital ledger technology used by Bitcoin, which could be used for payments.
He later said his "plan B" is a "blockchain-based version of Twitter" where users would "pay maybe 0.1 Doge per comment". Dogecoin is a joke cryptocurrency that Mr Musk has promoted in the past.
Later, however, Mr Musk said in a text to his main banker that a "blockchain-based version of Twitter isn't possible" because it would be too slow.
In other messages, he appears sympathetic to the idea of introducing paid-for membership tiers.
The billionaire added his vision for Twitter was "not some right wing nuthouse" but that it would be "broadly inclusive as possible".
Twitter has said it plans to go through with the sale to Mr Musk. Twitter shares jumped 21pc on news that the deal was back on. Shares in Tesla, his electric car company, climbed 2pc.
In July, Mr Musk attempted to tear up his takeover offer, claiming Twitter management's figures for the number of fake accounts and "bots" on the social network were misleadingly low.
Twitter subsequently sued him in the Delaware Chancery Court to force him to go through with the agreement. The trial was due to begin on October 17.
Analysts said the billionaire had come to the conclusion that he could lose his court battle against Twitter. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said: "We continue to believe Musk saw the writing on the wall and knew his chances of a victory in Delaware were slim to none with the best path accepting the current deal and move forward."
Mr Musk's other companies include rocket venture SpaceX and Starlink, the satellite broadband company, as well as his electric car company Tesla.
The Impossible Burger is a plant-based burger, the key ingredient of which is a protein called soy leghemoglobin (SLH for short), derived from genetically modified (GM) yeast.
[T]he results of a rat feeding study commissioned by Impossible Foods and carried out with SLH suggest that the burger may not be safe to eat.
SLH is the substance that gives the burger its meaty taste and makes it appear to bleed like meat when cut. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) initially refused to sign off on the safety of SLH when first approached by the company. The rat feeding study results suggest that the agency's concerns were justified. Rats fed the GM yeast-derived SLH developed unexplained changes in weight gain, changes in the blood that can indicate the onset of inflammation or kidney disease, and possible signs of anaemia.
Potentially adverse effects in SLH-fed rats
In light of these limitations, it is remarkable that the SLH-fed rats did show a large number of statistically significant potentially adverse effects, compared with the control group - for example:The fact that these changes were seen in spite of the statistical weaknesses of the study (stemming from the short duration and low number of animals in each group) gives particular reason for concern.
- unexplained transient decrease in body weight gain
- increase in food consumption without weight gain
- changes in blood chemistry
- decreased reticulocyte (immature red blood cell) count (this can be a sign of anemia and/or damage to the bone marrow where red blood cells are produced)
- decreased blood clotting ability
- decreased blood levels of alkaline phosphatase (can indicate malnutrition and/or celiac disease)
- increased blood albumin (can indicate acute infection or damage to tissues) and potassium values (can indicate kidney disease)
- decreased blood glucose (low blood sugar) and chloride (can indicate kidney problems)
- increased blood globulin values (common in inflammatory disease and cancer).[3]
Reproductive changes in SLH-fed females?
In the study, apparent disruptions in the reproductive cycle were found in some groups of females fed SLH. In normal healthy rats, the uterus fills up with fluid during the proestrus phase of the cycle, in the run-up to the fertile and sexually receptive phase (estrus). In the SLH-fed rats, significantly fewer "fluid filled" uteri were seen. This correlated with decreased uterus weight, as might be expected.[3]
[...]
In 2019 Impossible Foods introduced a new recipe for its Impossible Burger. In addition to GMO-derived SLH, the burger now contains another GMO ingredient: protein from herbicide-tolerant soy.[6] The company introduced soy protein to replace wheat protein in order to improve the texture and to avoid gluten, the protein in wheat that some people cannot tolerate.[7]
As a result, Impossible Burger Version 2.0 can contain residues of the "probable carcinogen" glyphosate,[8] the main ingredient of the herbicide used on GM soy.
Testing by Health Research Institute Laboratories, commissioned by the advocacy group Moms Across America, found glyphosate at a level of 11.3 ppb. The level was 11 times higher than the Beyond Meat burger, another plant-based burger that is made from non-GMO ingredients.[9] (However, Beyond Meat's crashing stock suggests that the hype over any fake meat product is misplaced.)
Comment: "We didn't do it" - the CIA
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