USA - For poor countries, what comes next could be worse. At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many feared that the disease would hit the world’s poorest countries the hardest — that cases would overwhelm hospitals, health-care workers would run out of equipment and supplies, and the death toll would be devastating. Those eventualities, thankfully, have not yet come to pass. From available data, there appear to be fewer deaths per capita in low- and middle-income countries than in their richer counterparts. But developing countries may have suffered more from the pandemic economically and politically than they have in the realm of public health. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) study has found that social unrest increased after the SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola, and Zika pandemics, particularly in countries with high levels of inequality. COVID-19 has more potential than all those past diseases combined to increase poverty, deepen social fractures, and intensify conflicts.

USA - On February 25, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a bill that is touted as a step forward for civil rights in the United States. If enacted, the bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the federally protected classes that cannot be discriminated against and would expand where such protections are applied. While expanding such protections is not necessarily widely opposed (Mormon Republican Chris Stewart has introduced the Fairness for All Act as an alternative bill), the act explicitly says that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 cannot be invoked, and this has generated tremendous concern that both private businesses and religious institutions will be forced to toe the current cultural line regarding sexual and gender ideology, or else face discrimination suits and be sued into oblivion.

UK - Some people believe the most extraordinary things. Earth is flat, and airplane GPS is rigged to fool pilots into thinking otherwise. COVID-19 vaccines are a pretext to inject thought-controlling microchips into us all. The true president of the United States is Donald Trump; his inauguration will happen on January 20, make that March 4, make that a date to be arranged very soon. The question “How could anybody believe this stuff?” comes naturally enough. That may not be the most helpful question, however. Conspiracy theorists believe strange ideas, yes. But these outlandish beliefs rest on a solid foundation of disbelief.

USA - A surveillance contractor that has previously sold services to the US military is advertising a product that it says can locate the real-time locations of specific cars in nearly any country on Earth. It says it does this by using data collected and sent by the cars and their components themselves, according to a document obtained by Motherboard. "Ulysses can provide our clients with the ability to remotely geolocate vehicles in nearly every country except for North Korea and Cuba on a near real time basis," the document, written by contractor The Ulysses Group, reads. "Currently, we can access over 15 billion vehicle locations around the world every month," the document adds.

UK - Lockdowns were deemed bad for our mental health. Now the psycho-babble industry’s inventing anxiety about a return to normal life. Watch out, fellow Covid inmates – our long-awaited liberation from house arrest may apparently cause anxiety, stress and ‘Reentry Syndrome’. Or is this all just another case of ‘Makee-Uppee Syndrome’? Why am I not surprised that mental health charities are now warning that the experience of coming out of the lockdown “could trigger anxiety for many”? Because for decades and decades the mental health industry has worked overtime to convince us that just about anything in life can make us anxious and psychologically ill!

UK - Britain will take a step closer to police state tyranny this week when parliament passes a bill that will effectively end the cherished, longstanding tradition of ‘the right to protest.’ The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021 has been described by one MP as ‘a major step on the road to authoritarianism and suppression of dissent’ and by a leading criminal barrister as ‘absolutely crazy’ and ‘really scary.’ The new legislation is the brainchild of Home Secretary Priti Patel and is being sold to the Conservative base as a way of avoiding repeats of the various Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion demos which caused damage to property, massive disruption and a huge bill to the taxpayer for extra policing costs.

USA - When I was growing up in the 1970s, society was definitely beginning to change, but there were still plenty of men that knew how to be men. In those days, if men wanted to be masculine that was okay. And if women wanted to be feminine, that was okay too. But now everything has completely changed. Any effort to promote traditional gender roles is frowned upon, and masculinity in particular is under attack. In our society, “male” has become a label with highly negative connotations, and if you exhibit masculine traits you are considered to be part of the problem.

DENMARK - The ruling Social Democrats reacted positively to the proposal, while the right-wing opposition parties consider the proposed liberalisation a "slippery slope", "utter madness", and "an element of a truly poisonous ideology". The Danish Ethics Council has recommended giving 10-12-year-old children the opportunity to legally change their gender. The idea is that the change of certificate of health assurance will help combat gender dysphoria, that is the condition of those who feel uncomfortable with their assigned gender at birth. Furthermore, the initial stages of gender reassignment often begin at this age. "Children at this age most often already have a clear idea of what gender they belong to, in contrast to very young children, whose perception of gender is more flexible and ambiguous. It is at this age that the treatment of transgender children who want to change their sex begins", Anne-Marie Aksø Gerdes, who chairs the Danish Ethics Council, told the newspaper Berlingske.

USA - Georgia and Carolinas on 'high risk' alert as unparalleled tornadoes hit. The US National Weather Service has issued a rare "high risk" level warning as severe thunderstorms pose the risk of significant tornado outbreaks. The severe storm system will see an early start to the tornado season, with "intense" tornadoes, large hailstones and damaging winds forecast for the Carolinas and surrounding states. The National Weather Service (NWS) high-level threat covers three million people, with some 45 million under a severe weather warning from the storms. The warning also added that "other isolated severe storms are possible from southern Ohio into the central Appalachians". The warning stated that "all severe hazards are possible". These include tornadoes, some of which will be "intense", damaging winds and large hail.

USA - Joe Biden’s decline has become so painful to see and so embarrassing to watch that it feels cruel to mention it. But it’s even more cruel that Biden’s team act as if it’s not happening, and most of America’s media look the other way. Biden is the first President in decades to reach fifty days in office without giving a press conference. He missed giving the traditional speech to Congress in February. His [team] refuse to name when he might talk to the press, and only offer that it’s “something he will do in the future”.

VATICAN - Pope Francis insists in a new book things will never be the same in a post-pandemic world, calling instead for the establishment of a “new world order.” In a book-length interview with journalist Domenico Agasso titled God and the World to Come, scheduled for release in Italian on Tuesday, the pontiff reiterates his case for the Great Reset with a shift away from financial speculation, fossil fuels, and military build-up toward a green economy based on inclusiveness. After the coronavirus pandemic, “no one today can afford to rest easy,” the pope declares in a lengthy extract from the book published by Vatican News. “The world will never be the same again. But it is precisely within this calamity that we must grasp those signs which may prove to be the cornerstones of reconstruction.” “Let us all keep in mind that there is something worse than this crisis: the drama of wasting it,” he states. “We cannot emerge from a crisis the same as before: we either come out better or we come out worse.”

VATICAN - A dissident band of Roman Catholic priests leading a disobedience campaign against the Vatican said on Tuesday they would carry on blessing same-sex couples in defiance of Church orders. The Vatican said on Monday that priests cannot bless same-sex unions and that such blessings are not valid, in a ruling that disappointed gay Catholics who had hoped their Church was becoming more welcoming under Pope Francis. In some countries, parishes and ministers have begun blessing same-sex unions in lieu of marriage, and there have been calls for bishops to institutionalise de facto such blessings. Conservatives in the 1.3 billion-member Roman Catholic Church have expressed alarm over such practices. "We members of the Parish Priests Initiative are deeply appalled by the new Roman decree that seeks to prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples. This is a relapse into times that we had hoped to have overcome with Pope Francis," the Austrian-based group said in a statement. "We will - in solidarity with so many - not reject any loving couple in the future who ask to celebrate God's blessing, which they experience every day, also in a worship service."

USA - Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder star Natalie Portman has rewritten several classic fairy tales, including The Three Little Pigs, to make them “gender-neutral” so children can “defy gender stereotypes.” According to the Hello! magazine, Portman felt the ages-old fairytales “did not reflect the world.” And she wanted to have stories to read to her own children that edited away the focus on male characters. “I found myself changing the pronouns in many of their books because so many of them had overwhelmingly male characters, disproportionate to reality,” the Thor star said. “Boys need to see that women have a multitude of opportunities open to them, to consider what they think and feel, and how they experience the world.”

USA - In its latest exposé, the investigative journalism group Project Veritas has revealed footage of Facebook Global Planning Lead Benny Thomas highlighting the need for the government to break up Facebook. Thomas adds, “No king in the history of the world has been the ruler of two billion people, but Mark Zuckerberg is — and he’s 36.” In a recent report, Project Veritas published undercover footage of Facebook Global Planning Lead, Benny Thomas, revealing that he believes that it is imperative that the government break Facebook up and expresses his worries about the power wielded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

SWITZERLAND - On Wednesday, the World Economic Forum (WEF), along with Russia’s Sberbank and its cybersecurity subsidiary BI.ZONE announced that a new global cyberattack simulation would take place this coming July to instruct participants in “developing secure ecosystems” by simulating a supply-chain cyberattack similar to the recent SolarWinds hack that would “assess the cyber resilience” of the exercise’s participants. On the newly updated event website, the simulation, called Cyber Polygon 2021, ominously warns that, given the digitalization trends largely spurred by the COVID-19 crisis, “a single vulnerable link is enough to bring down the entire system, just like the domino effect,” adding that “a secure approach to digital development today will determine the future of humanity for decades to come.”