A California District administrator, Samia Shoman, has sparked controversy by calling for the removal of "privileged White voices" from influencing the curriculum in her district.

According to a recent report by Fox News, Shoman, who is involved in overseeing curriculum in her district, made the statement during a meeting with parents and educators discussing the implementation of a far-left ethnic studies curriculum.

Shoman reportedly stated, "We need to make sure that we are not centering White voices and perspectives in our curriculum. We need to make sure that we are uplifting and centering the voices and experiences of marginalized communities."

This statement has caused backlash among parents and educators who believe that it is important to have a diverse range of voices and perspectives in the curriculum. Many have criticized the administrator for promoting a divisive and discriminatory agenda that is harmful to students and the community as a whole.

An ongoing controversy over what constitutes virology research that is too dangerous to conduct—and whether the U.S government funded studies in China that violated a policy barring funding for such risky research—has taken a new turn. While denying once again it had helped create the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed in a letter sent yesterday to Republicans in Congress that experiments it funded through a U.S.-based nonprofit in 2018 and 2019 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China had the “unexpected result” of creating a coronavirus that was more infectious in mice.

NIH says the organization holding the parent grant, the EcoHealth Alliance, failed to immediately report this result to the agency, as required. A newly released progress report on that grant also shows that EcoHealth and WIV conducted experiments changing the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which is raising additional questions.

NIH noted in its letter that when the agency reviewed the original EcoHealth grant proposal, it determined the proposed experiments—designed to determine whether certain bat coronaviruses might infect humans—did not meet its definition of so-called gain-of-function (GOF) experiments that can make pathogens more dangerous to humans.

Ishould not have been entirely surprised when I saw How to Read Donald Duck, a book I had written with the Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart, being burned on TV by Chilean soldiers. It was mid-September 1973 and a military coup had just toppled Salvador Allende, the country’s president, terminating his remarkable experiment of building socialism through peaceful means.

I was in a safe house when I witnessed my book – along with hundreds of other subversive volumes – being consigned to the inquisitorial pyre. One of the reasons I had gone into hiding, besides my fervent participation in the revolutionary government that had just been overthrown, was the hatred the Donald Duck book had elicited among the new authorities of Chile and their rightwing civilian accomplices.

We had received death threats, an irate woman had tried to run me over and neighbours – accompanied by their children – had stoned the house where my wife, Angélica, and I lived in Santiago, shouting: “Long live Donald Duck!” It was later discovered that the 5,000 copies of the third printing of the book had been taken from a warehouse by the Chilean navy and cast into the bay of Valparaíso.

What had we done to incur such enmity?

Mastercard has launched new technology which allows consumers to pay for goods with their face or hand at checkout.

The card provider launched the program on Tuesday for retailers to offer the new biometric payment solutions.

At checkout, shoppers will be able to authenticate their payment by showing their face or the palm of their hand instead of swiping their card.

So far, it has gone live in São Paulo, Brazil, however Mastercard says it has plans to roll it out globally later this year.

“All the research that we’ve done has told us that consumers love biometrics,” Mastercard’s president of cyber and intelligence Ajay Bhalla told CNBC.

Policymakers in several states are looking to shore up the security of the electrical grid after a series of attacks at substations in recent months exposed vulnerabilities and knocked out power for thousands.

Over the last year, at least four states have reported deliberate attacks against electrical transmission facilities. The most significant outage occurred in early December, when a peak of over 45,000 utility customers in Moore County, North Carolina, were left without power after two substations were attacked with gunfire. 

A new coalition fighting drug addiction is urging President Biden to oppose controversial government-licensed injection sites where junkies can shoot up — and instead provide addicts the recovery treatment afforded his son, Hunter Biden.

The group NorthAmericaRecovers.org — an umbrella organization consisting of 21 groups including Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths — unveiled mobile digital ads in DC Monday with a photo of a mother of a homeless fentanyl addict saying, “Please Help My Son Escape Addiction the Way You Helped Hunter.”

New York City has two government-licensed, supervised consumption sites called “overdose prevention centers.”

The group said other cities such as Philadelphia are seeking federal waivers from federal prohibition to operate sanctioned drug use sites.

The ads are aimed at persuading Biden and his Justice Department to reject “supervised drug consumption sites,” where taxpayer-funded healthcare workers assist anyone over 18 to inject or smoke fentanyl and other hard drugs. The goal of the consumption sites is to prevent drug overdose deaths.

The city of Atlanta is facing a firestorm of criticism after a peaceful protest turned into a night of chaos and destruction in the wake of the death of 26-year-old environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran at the hands of police.

The protest began peacefully on Saturday with protesters carrying signs with the activist’s nickname, Tortuguita (“little turtle” in Spanish), and using they/it pronouns. However, as the night progressed, things quickly devolved into a scene of destruction as rioters set off fireworks, threw rocks at the Atlanta Police Foundation, and set a police car on fire.

“Atlanta is safe, and our police officers have resolved the disruptions downtown from earlier in the evening,” City of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said Saturday evening. “The City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Department will continue to protect the right to peaceful protest. We will not tolerate violence or property destruction.”

Pentagon can’t account for $220 billion in gov’t property, fails fifth audit | 18 Jan 2023 | A Tuesday report by the Government Accountability Office revealed that the Department of Defense failed its fifth audit in a row after it could not account for at least 220 billion in government-furnished property, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. The DOD has been mandated by federal law to complete audits since 1994; however, the mandate was ignored for decades due to the agency’s massive size, according to Military dot com. Since launching its first independent audit, in 2017 the Pentagon has never passed. The Pentagon failed its fifth audit in November after the agency could not prove expenditures for 61% of its 3.5 trillion in assets. To perform this year’s overall audit of the DOD, which was expected to cost 218 million, the agency aggregated 27 separate audits conducted by approximately 1,600 auditors. According to Military.com, the auditors performed 220 in-person site visits and 750 virtual site visits.  https://www.theblaze.com/news/pentagon-can-t-account-for-220-billion-in-gov-t-property-fails-fifth-audit 

Remember: on 9/11 whatever hit the Pentagon wiped out the documents and experts reviewing them looking for the missing $trillion.  That was 22 years ago. 

The United Kingdom is presently calm, cloudy, and cold, leaving the burning of natural gas picking up the slack for becalmed ‘renewable’ generation, and even coal-fired power plants saved from being decommissioned this winter ordered back online to keep the lights on.

Three coal-fired power plants, two at Drax in Yorkshire and one at West Burton in Lincolnshire, were ordered to make themselves ready for use in the early hours of Sunday morning as a cold snap — predictable for winter, perhaps — combined with short cloudy days and very little wind sees solar and turbines producing little energy.

The National Grid made the announcement at gone four o’clock Sunday morning, saying warming up three “winter contingency coal units”, as they call them, “should give the public confidence in Monday’s energy supply”, strongly implying the Grid predicted possible shortages to come tomorrow had that extra capacity not be there to call upon.

On November 30, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), an elite military think tank, and lobby group, with deep ties to the UK government, published a landmark report entitled 'Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022'. While desperate to portray the operation as a failure, even the normally Russophobic RUSI can’t ignore Moscow’s total cyberwarfare dominance over Kiev.

Complete superiority

Buried in the document is a long section on the electronic warfare aspect of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It found that within weeks of February 24, Moscow’s forces quickly established total dominance in this sphere by deploying extensive jamming infrastructure. Once achieved, Kiev’s most sophisticated cyber systems were not only totally confused, but absolutely crippled.

Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia sanctions -  "All of these harebrained schemes, hatched in Washington, have backfired grandly." 

"Those who have pushed for them are now reduced to just two face-saving maneuvers: blaming their political opponents; and blaming Russia. And these two maneuvers are set to backfire as well."

Afghanistan is witnessing its coldest winter in 15 years, adding to the misery of millions who are already struggling with multiple crises.

Omar khan, a Kabul resident and a father of seven, lives in a cold shack. Two of his children are severely sick. Without a job and relief assistance, he has been unable to afford food, heating and medication for his family. The situation has triggered fears of human losses.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has put Afghanistan on its list of 11 crisis hotspots in 2023. The UN survey shows that two thirds of Afghanistan’s population – over 28 million people – need humanitarian aid.

Heads of households like Shah Gul say they can’t cope with the harsh winter alone.

British unions have warned that the UK steel industry, which supports around 35,000 jobs, is "a whisker away” from collapse as the country grapples with its biggest strike wave in decades amid global energy crisis.

The warning was made in a letter on Sunday to the British government from Unite, Community and GMB unions, which accused Business Secretary Grant Shapps of taking "little meaningful action" to aid the sector amid spiraling energy costs.

Unite's assistant general secretary Steve Turner wrote that the government’s inaction leaves the sector "at breaking point" and "a whisker away from collapse.”

Turner said the steel industry's current predicament was driven by "crippling energy costs, carbon taxes, lost markets, lower demand, and open market access for imported steel," among other issues.

"Endless sticking plaster solutions from the Conservatives have left our UK steel sector on the brink,” he added. "Instead of finding a long-term solution, successive Conservative governments have lurched from crisis and bailouts with no plan to keep UK steel internationally competitive or deliver a return on taxpayers investment."

The signing ceremony for Operational Memorandum of Understanding of the NATO-accredited Space Centre of Excellence recently took place at the French Ministry of Defence in Paris, France. This event is both the commencement of the NATO Space Centre of Excellence’s journey and the culmination of a joint effort led by 15 sponsoring nations, NATO representatives, and the French Establishment Team. The birth of this new actor in NATO’s wider framework is an essential milestone in the approach of NATO and the sponsoring nations to Space.

The Operational Memorandum of Understanding…will precede the signing of the Functional Memorandum of Understanding between the nations and NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, officially setting the Centre of Excellence as a NATO-accredited centre and full member of the NATO Centres of Excellence community.

British anti-monarchists say they have planned a protest for the day of King Charles' coronation, which is expected to take place amid much pomp and circumstance as the public continue to struggle with high inflation and an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis.

Campaign group Republic, which is a British republican group advocating the replacement of the United Kingdom's monarchy with a parliamentary republic, made the announcement on Sunday.

The group said it had notified London's police about its plans for a peaceful demonstration at Parliament Square, which is overlooked by Westminster Abbey where Charles III is to be crowned in May.

"The coronation is a celebration of hereditary power and privilege, it has no place in a modern society," said Republic's Chief Executive Graham Smith.

The USA will support the transfer of F-16 fighter jets by allies to Ukraine - the American ambassador to the OSCE. Michael Carpenter, confirmed today.

Washington will agree with the idea of partners to transfer F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

Answering the question whether the administration of US President Joe Biden is ready to allow the Netherlands to supply Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, the ambassador said: “We have long been of the opinion that what our allies supply is their business. And we support the countless contributions (to defense) that our allies have made for Ukraine.

This has been true from the very beginning of the war, when we discussed legacy Soviet systems, to the present period, when we discuss main battle tanks and more sophisticated air and missile defense capabilities and systems. And so I expect there will be broad support in the United States for our allies to continue to increase their contributions,” Carpenter said.

Reports are now coming in claiming Germany will ignore the Potsdam Agreement that ended World War 2, and allow German Leopard-2 Tanks to be transferred to Ukraine to fight Russia.

German Minister: Germany Won't Object To Poland Giving Ukraine Leopard Tanks: Russians Whine

Ukraine’s supporters pledged billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine during a meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, though the new commitments were overshadowed by a failure to agree on Ukraine’s urgent request for German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks.

The issue appeared to move close to a resolution late Sunday when Germany’s top diplomat said her country would not object if Poland decided to send some of its Leopards to Ukraine.

The leader of a top pro-life hospice group has sounded the alarm over a recent study showing Canada as the world leader in organ donations from people who obtained state-sanctioned euthanasia.

The study was published in the American Journal of Transplantation in September 2022.

It found Canada is first in organ transplants, or organ donation after euthanasia (ODE) as it is known, from people who obtained assisted suicide.

Data shows Canada as having 49 cases of ODE in 2021 alone, with 136 cases since euthanasia, or medical assistance in dying (MAiD), as it is called, became legal in Canada in 2016.

Between Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and Belgium, there were 286 cases of ODE.

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, 6% of all organ donations for transplants in Canada come from a person who died from MAiD.

Canada’s increasingly permissive laws have allowed euthanasia to rise 32% since 2020, with more than 10,000 people dying in 2021 alone.

Head of the OIC office in Kabul, Muhammad Saeed Al-Ayash, said the aid would reach at least 280,000 people in 25 provinces of the country. 

“This project includes 47,400 food packages. Every package is 62 kilograms and includes flour, rice, oil, date, ben and sugar that will be distributed to families in need,” he said. 

The acting head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, Matiullahaq Khalis, said that the aid will be provided to vulnerable people and those who deserve it across the country.

“We will distribute to everyone equally, no matter where they live or what language they speak,” he said.

A number of vulnerable families welcomed the move by the OIC.

In January 2023, all masks were thrown off. The Euro-Atlantic elites, motivated after their meetings in Davos, realized that there was no more need to cover their true intentions with hypocritical appeals to “save the young Ukrainian democracy for the sake of world peace.” More and more representatives of the so-called “golden billion” from the West recognize the real goals of the bellicose policy that they have been waging against Russia for decades, namely, the destruction of the integrity of the Russian Federation as a state and the deprivation of the Russian people of statehood in order to gain control over huge resources that “for some historical injustice belong to the Russian barbarians.” The fate of the state of Ukraine and the lives of its population are of little interest to them, because in case of victory, its fertile territory will become a pleasant bonus.

Euro-Atlantic elites have unleashed and are waging an aggressive war against the Russian Federation in their personal interests. Moreover, the ongoing development of the military conflict, the lack of political will of the West to resolve it and the strengthening of bellicose rhetoric with the recognition of the true goals of the war indicate that these elites are ready to escalate the conflict up to the third world war, and even the nuclear threat will not stop them.

Japan will start considering Covid as being equivalent to the seasonal flu — a sign of the attitude shift toward the pandemic.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Friday that Covid would be reclassified to disease category five from the current level two.

In practical terms, it ditches a recommendation to wear masks in indoor public spaces and ends the need for infected people and close contacts to self-isolate

But symbolically, it shows how major countries are finally learning to live with Covid rather than treating it like an immediate public health emergency.

The new classification in Japan – which will kick in in Spring – recommends patients only to wear masks indoors if symptomatic – as opposed to the general recommendation for everyone currently in place.

In one of its patented Friday news dumps, the Biden Regime just quietly admitted that an astonishing 251,000 Illegal aliens were encountered on the southern border in December, the highest of any month in U.S. history.  [Illegal border crossings in December surged to highest of Biden's presidency, AP-NBC, January 20, 2023]

Too many receive taxpayer-funded help when they get here, from free shelter to free plane tickets. But it’s not just various levels of government that facilitate the invasion. Faith-based “charities” play a key role. The GOP/GAP must use its control of the House of Representatives to investigate these charities, strip them of their (substantial) government funding, and end their aid to the migrant invasion.

The critical role played by these charities was highlighted last year when the first illegals were bused to Washington, D.C. Catholic Charities was there with a warm welcome. “All we know is that we’ve got a group of people who are arriving who need help, and we want to be there and be a compassionate presence, and help them in whatever ways we can,” said spokeswoman Sister Sharlet Wagner [Email her]last April [Catholic Charities Coordinates Migrant Arrivals: ‘All We Know’ Is They ‘Need Help’, by Ashley Oliver, Breitbart, April 18, 2022].