A fire has broken out at a production facility belonging to the world's largest vaccine producer, the Serum Institute of India (SII). The company's management has said Covid vaccine production hasn't been impacted, however.

On Thursday afternoon, emergency services were called to an SII plant in Pune, after a fire broke out on the fifth floor.

Executive Director Suresh Jadhav confirmed the facility in question is used for the production of a BCG vaccine - an inoculation used primarily against tuberculosis.

While sexologists have suggested the consent app would put a damper on sex life and impede sexual skills, legal professionals have warned that electronic consent won't hold up in court, rendering the app sparked by a controversial "consent law" useless.

The app iConsent has hit the Danish market a few weeks after parliament passed a much-debated law that classifies all sex without formal consent as rape. Failing to obtain consent before engaging in intercourse may result in criminal charges.

According to the founders, the purpose of the app is to ensure that both parties agree to have intercourse.

"It works in such a way that the user can enter the phone number of the person he or she wants to have sex with. You send the request, and the other is then given the opportunity to accept or reject the request for consent to sex", developer Carsten Nielsen explained to Danish Radio.

The given consent is valid for 24 hours and is limited to sexual intercourse.

Nielsen agreed that it may feel strange reaching for a phone in an intimate situation, but, in isolation, so is putting on a condom.

The Dutch government on Wednesday proposed the first nationwide curfew since World War Two and a ban on flights from South Africa and Britain in its toughest moves yet to limit the spread of coronavirus in the Netherlands.


Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the curfew, which is largely intended to target new, more infectious variants of the disease, must be approved by parliament, which is set to debate measures against the coronavirus on Thursday.

The flight ban, which Rutte said also will apply to all South American countries, will begin on Saturday. The curfew was expected to take effect this weekend, he said.

Three people have died, one person is still missing, and over 8 have been left injured following a large explosion in Madrid on Wednesday. The blast occurred just before 3pm, destroying four floors of a building, No.98 in the Calle Toledo in central Madrid, as well as ripping the façade off the building.


The mayor of Madrid José Luis Martínez Almeida, who arrived at the scene soon after the emergency services, confirmed at the time that 'at least two people' had died, and that the initial assessment by the authorities was that the blast was caused by a gas leak. It has since been reported that repairs were being done to a gas boiler at the time of the explosion, and that a technician is still missing.

The central question Americans ought to consider on this Inauguration Day as The Old Order returns is whether what they are seeing in their country is happening because it is strong or because it is weak.

On its face, a capital city packed with a military presence — an occupation hailed by the media, as the swamp protects itself — may seem like a show of force, a reiteration of law and order above all else. As Chris Bedford writes this morning, all that needed to happen for Tom Cotton's idea to become reality was for the seat of the powerful to be attacked instead of the neighborhoods in Kenosha. Had the federal government and the Department of Justice been willing to do what Donald Trump wanted them to do this summer, perhaps people would've learned earlier that rioting does not pay. But that's not what they learned, and for good reason.

Wiser observers will understand that a capital city in need of such an overwhelming military presence — if only for the mental and emotional stability of the so-called leaders who inhabit it — also indicates a vast maw of weakness. The frail leadership of the United States is the great unremarked phenomenon of this moment. In this moment of crisis, we have what appears to be the most elderly class of political elites in the history of the nation. The octogenarian and septuagenarian set of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Dick Durbin are white knuckling it to the end of their careers — attempting to make their mark before leaving the stage and passing things on to people who share none of their memories of the time before.

Much has been said about the terrifying models that in the spring projected such a staggering number of deaths from the novel coronavirus.

In hindsight, as bad as the pandemic has been, it never even approached the dismal numbers suggested ‒ the very numbers that rationalized society-wide lockdowns in Italy, the U.K., New York City, and then in many other places as the pandemic spread.

What researchers have struggled with since then is how to measure the impact of various actions taken. Do we even know if what we're doing is working? Where's the evidence for that, and are there other things we ought to do instead?

Naturally, proponents of lockdowns have long said that strong government action prevented all kinds of horrors. If anything, the poor outcomes we had in the spring and the fall indicated that we didn't do enough. Skeptics, on the other hand, said that lockdowns did nothing but harm our societies ‒ physically, economically, and mentally ‒ and that infection rate curves moved the way they did regardless of what strong-worded politicians implemented, and often before their strong policies took effect. The August NBER paper by Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky and Tao Zha, 'Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19' spells out the uncomfortable position for most policy-makers: the virus seems to spread rapidly, kill selectively, and in no way responds to anything that well-meaning politicians have thrown at it.

They should never call themselves writers again. It had to happen.

People who call themselves WRITERS are signing a letter pressuring publishers to ban Trump, and anyone who has worked for him:

Do not publish a Trump memoir. Stay away from him.

The letter was penned by Barry Lyga. Who?

LA Times, January 15 [1]: "More than 250 authors, editors, agents, professors and others in the American literary community signed an open letter this week opposing any publisher that signs book deals with President Donald Trump or members of his administration."

"Former DC Comics president Paul Levitz, journalist Sarah Weinman and 'Little Fires Everywhere' author Celeste Ng are among signatories to the letter, written by novelist Barry Lyga and titled 'No Book Deals for Traitors'."

"'We all love book publishing, but we have to be honest — our country is where it is in part because publishing has chased the money and notoriety of some pretty sketchy people, and has granted those same people both the imprimatur of respectability and a lot of money through sweetheart book deals,' the letter read. 'We affirm that participation in the administration of Donald Trump must be considered a uniquely mitigating criterion for publishing houses when considering book deals'."

"'Consequently, we believe: No participant in an administration that caged children, performed involuntary surgeries on captive women, and scoffed at science as millions were infected with a deadly virus should be enriched by the almost rote largesse of a big book deal. And no one who incited, suborned, instigated, or otherwise supported the January 6, 2021 coup attempt should have their philosophies remunerated and disseminated through our beloved publishing houses'."

Beloved publishing houses? I'm sure no writer, in the last ten thousand years, has ever used that phrase.

Get stuck and take a puff.

Cannabis activist group DC Marijuana Justice plans to offer weed gift bags to those who get the COVID-19 vaccine in the nation's capital, the organization has announced.

"We are looking for ways to safely celebrate the end of the pandemic and we know nothing brings people together like cannabis," wrote DCMJ co-founder Nikoas Schiller in a press release for the initiative, dubbed "Joints for Jabs."

The group plans to hand out free ganja baggies at Washington, DC, vaccination sites, both to commemorate what is hopefully the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic and as advocacy for both reefer and getting vaccinated.

"To celebrate this momentous occasion and thank people for getting vaccinated, dozens of DC homegrowers will lawfully distribute free bags of cannabis outside vaccination centers as soon as the general public is able to get vaccinated," the release says, further quoting Schiller as saying, "When enough adults are inoculated with the coronavirus vaccine, it will be time to celebrate — not just the end of the pandemic, but the beginning of the end of cannabis prohibition in the United States."

As calls to "deprogram" Trump supporters mount, CNN has hosted a former Moonie-turned-professional deprogrammer who suggested the whole nation had been "negatively influenced" and needed help. Viewers were not eager to sign up.

Cult expert Steven Hassan was on Tuesday brought on CNN to advise on how to deprogram members of what he described in his 2019 book as the "Cult of Trump." Perhaps with an eye toward boosting his deprogramming business, however, he suggested the entire country was in need of his services.

After CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota spoke of the Trump supporters who'd thronged the Capitol earlier this month as if they were no longer living, dramatically intoning over footage of the raid that "some of the people that you see here were once elementary school counselors, some of these people were firemen," she asked Hassan how Trump had "radically changed their personality."

Leicester uni to axe 145 jobs, with medieval studies and English language set to sink to create a woke 'decolonised curriculum'

Cash-strapped University of Leicester is to cut dozens of jobs. Apparently, courses on race, sexuality and diversity will be spared the chopping block while professors teaching the English language should seek new employment.

On Monday, the university disclosed details about its downsizing plans. Due to Covid-19, its income flows have dried up, so some of its 3,800 staff will have to go, with as many as 145 jobs slated to become redundant.

An email explaining the situation and announcing a 90-day consultation period was sent to employees, and some of them were quite unhappy with the management's rationale for selecting which areas should be "disinvested."