Wretchard.com

Under the scheme, people would have been required to show proof – whether of double vaccination, a negative Covid test or finishing self-isolating after a positive PCR test – in order to gain entry to clubs and other crowded events.

BBC

England vaccine passport plans ditched, Sajid Javid says

The health secretary rules out the scheme for nightclubs and large events, following much criticism.

‘Home suddenly feels like such a long way away’ …

Julia’s hopes of temporarily returning to the UK to live and work close to family before her son started secondary school have been thwarted. And like thousands of others, the inability to see close relatives for almost two years has been agonizing.

BBC

Covid: UK expats struggle with Australia lockdowns

People who left the UK to settle in Australia tell what life has been like during six lockdowns.

House Democrats also are considering raising the minimum tax on U.S. companies’ foreign income to 16.5% from 10.5% and increasing the top capital-gains tax rate to 28.8% from 23.8%. Lawmakers are also expected to raise money by expanding Internal Revenue Service enforcement and might include other tax increases on corporations and high-income individuals.

WSJ

House Democrats Consider 26.5% Corporate Tax Rate

Lawmakers are expected to propose a smaller capital-gains tax increase than President Biden wants.

Six employees at the Lewis County Health System have resigned, and seven more are unwilling to get vaccinated, meaning Lewis County General Hospital will stop delivering babies for the time being.

NY Post

New York hospital to stop delivering babies as staffers quit over vaccine mandate

A hospital in rural New York is pausing its maternity services as employees quit instead of getting the vaccine.

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans were reasonably positive about the state of their rights and liberties. Today, after 20 years, not as much…

That attitude has eroded in the years since, with far fewer people now saying the government is doing a good job protecting rights including the freedom of speech, the right to vote, the right to bear arms and others.

Americans less positive about civil liberties, poll shows

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans were reasonably positive about the state of their rights and liberties. Today, after 20 years, not as much.

A chilling video showed a group of Taliban fighters beheading an Afghan soldier before celebrating and singing while holding the several of the victim by his hair. …They then start shouting praise for the Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada. The video ends with the group stating they must shoot the Afghan soldiers because ‘he has to look shot’.

Daily Mail

Taliban BEHEAD Afghan soldier and celebrate holding severed head

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT A group of Taliban fighters filmed themselves chanting praise to their supreme leader after beheading an Afghan soldier and parading around his head.

Dr Hans Kluge said new strains of Covid will continue to emerge and the virus will remain with us like the flu. Earlier this year, he said the pandemic would be over once 70 per cent of people were fully immunized. But he admitted today that the situation had now changed, so leaders need to adapt their vaccination strategy. 

Covid vaccines won’t end pandemic, WHO Europe chief warns

Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s Europe director, said new strains of Covid will continue to emerge and the virus will remain with us like the flu, so vaccination strategies need to be adapted.

Mr Heappey, speaking to Christopher Hope, the Daily Telegraph’s chief politics correspondent during his weekly politics podcast, said: “There’s a wobble. “But it’s not an institutional wobble. It’s a wobble in confidence

Britain’s special relationship with US has ‘wobble in confidence’, says defence minister

James Heappey tells Chopper’s Politics podcast that criticism over Afghanistan has left Washington unsure about its role in the world

“You will hear from [Biden] in the form of a video in advance—or if that will be available that day, I should say,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.

Free Beacon

Biden Will Not Deliver Live Remarks on 9/11 Anniversary – Washington Free Beacon

President Joe Biden will not give a live speech to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He will instead release a prerecorded video of his remarks.

When climate envoy John Kerry visited China last week, senior Chinese officials emphatically rejected Biden’s proposal to deal with climate cooperation as a freestanding issue, apart from other, more contentious matters.

Axios

Inside Biden’s latest call with China’s Xi Jinping

Biden’s testing personal diplomacy after a frosty start to U.S.-China relations.

Trying to follow US politics from a distance can be challenging because there are so many questions and so few answers.

• Is California a national bellwether?
• Is the full court press in CA a sign of strength or weakness?
• Can the progressives buy their way to victory with the infrastructure bill?
• At what point does the economy rival the pandemic as an issue? When does the clamor for freedom break even with the desire to feel safe?
• Can Biden use the pandemic to beat down the states?

Having done away with term limits in 2018, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong is pushing what some observers describe as a mini “revolution”, curbing the excesses of capitalism and shedding negative cultural influences of the West.

Reuters

Analysis: Unleashing reforms, Xi returns to China’s socialist roots

When Xi Jinping took command of the Communist Party in late 2012 and proclaimed “only socialism can save China”, it was largely ignored as the perfunctory mention of an antiquated slogan – not to be taken literally in a modern-day, market-powered economy.

The dominant narrative became that “we are at war.” When at war, everyone has to follow orders. If a platoon is ordered to go right and some soldiers explore maneuvering to the left, they are shot as deserters. Scientific skepticism had to be shot, no questions asked. The orders were clear.

Tablet

How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science

Imperatives like skepticism and disinterestedness are being junked to fuel political warfare that has nothing in common with scientific methodology

Days after China sent US climate envoy John Kerry home empty handed, Beijing has given Alok Sharma, the COP26 President and the UK’s senior climate official, the same message: China won’t cave in to Western demands, plunging Joe Biden’s and Boris Johnson’s Net Zero agenda into doubt.

GWPF

UN climate summit COP26 in trouble as China rebuffs UK

Days after China sent US climate envoy John Kerry home empty handed, Beijing has given Alok Sharma, the COP26 President and the UK’s senior climate official, the same message: China won’t cave in to Western demands, plunging Joe Biden’s and Boris Johnson’s Net Zero agenda into doubt. Beijing has tol…

The Biden administration is taking aim at major meatpackers, charging that “pandemic profiteering” is squeezing consumers and farmers alike, with a few companies that dominate the industry raking in record profits.

Bloomberg

White House Blasts Meatpackers for ‘Profiteering’ on Groceries

The Biden administration is taking aim at major meatpackers, charging that their “pandemic profiteering” is squeezing consumers and farmers alike, with a few companies that dominate the industry raking in record profits.

Two coal-fired generators had to be fired up yesterday to meet Britain’s electricity demands, in a move that usually happens only in winter.

London Times

National Grid turns to coal after wind fails

Two coal-fired generators had to be fired up yesterday to meet Britain’s electricity demands, in a move that usually happens only in winter.Coal power still acc

France’s top court on Tuesday overturned a decision by a lower court to dismiss charges brought against cement giant Lafarge for complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria’s civil war.

AFP

France’s Lafarge loses ruling in Syria ‘crimes against humanity’ case

France’s top court on Tuesday overturned a decision by a lower court to dismiss charges brought against cement giant Lafarge for complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria’s civil war.

An Aug. 27 essay that circulated online in both the official Xinhua news agency and the state-controlled People’s Daily newspaper is being viewed by some analysts as a sign China could soon return to the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s …

Washington Times

Chinese media accuse U.S. of biological warfare

The Chinese Communist Party has stepped up a war of words against the U.S., airing direct accusations that Washington engaged in biological warfare against China.

“This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19.

The Intercept

New Details Emerge About Coronavirus Research at Chinese Lab

More than 900 pages of materials related to US.-funded coronavirus research in China were released following a FOIA lawsuit by The Intercept.

Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.

WSJ

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

The number of men enrolled at two- and four-year colleges has fallen behind women by record levels, in a widening education gap across the U.S.