Paradise News

Tag: General News

  • Fact Check: Did Joe Biden ban TikTok for US workers but start a campaign account? Fact-checking Sen. Katie Britt

    As U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., delivered the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address, she pointed out a place his governance and his campaign clash. 

    Criticizing Biden’s foreign policy, she described how China spreads “propaganda” through the likes of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. 

    “And what does President Biden do? Well, he bans TikTok for government employees, but creates an account for his own campaign,” she said March 7. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

    Britt is correct in saying that Biden’s campaign uses TikTok, even after he limited its access for federal government employees.

    In signing the Consolidated Appropriations Act in 2022, Biden generally barred federal government employees from using TikTok on agency-owned devices. There are exceptions for law enforcement, national security interests and security research.

    NBC News reported in 2023 that Biden’s campaign would not be on TikTok, citing three anonymous sources. But on Feb. 11, on the day of the Super Bowl LVIII, “BidenHQ” posted its first TikTok video — a cheeky reference to the Taylor Swift-as-CIA asset conspiracy theory.

    Wired and The Associated Press reported that the campaign uses a separate device specifically to log into and access TikTok, isolating it from communications on other devices.

    In recent days, the White House has embraced a bipartisan bill that would prevent ByteDance-owned apps from appearing on app stores or U.S. websites. This means ByteDance would need to sell TikTok or face a national ban. 

    We asked Biden’s campaign for comment on this and didn’t hear back.

    PolitiFact has a fact-checking partnership with TikTok; you can read more about it here.

    Britt said Biden banned government employees from using TikTok while using it for his campaign. The ban on the app applied to devices owned by agencies. With that note, we rate this claim Mostly True.

    RELATED: US frets about TikTok feeding data to China; banning app won’t end the threat, experts say



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  • Paul Offit looks back on COVID-19, misinformation, and how public health lost the public’s trust in new book – Paradise Post

    Abraham Gutman | (TNS) The Philadelphia Inquirer

    PHILADELPHIA — Trust in public health agencies declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, as misinformation about vaccines and the virus proliferated on social media. But did the public health agencies themselves also play a role in the decline of their credibility?

    Paul Offit had a front-row seat to federal public health agencies’ pandemic response. A pediatrician and vaccine developer from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Offit is a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, which played a critical role in reviewing COVID vaccine research and advising the FDA on vaccine safety.

    In his new book, “Tell Me When It’s Over: An Insider’s Guide to Deciphering Covid Myths and Navigating Our Post-Pandemic World,” Offit chronicles the first years of the pandemic, explains the science of COVID, and traces the rise of anti-vaccine movement and misinformation. He also blames those charged with protecting the nation’s health of taking action against evidence — and in doing so undermining public trust.

    He says public health agencies made mistakes in key moments, such as when the FDA fast tracked in 2020 the authorization of an antimalaria drug with risk of fatal heart side effects that didn’t work against COVID. At the time, President Donald Trump called the medication a “game changer” and promoted it as a COVID treatment. The FDA revoked the authorization a few months later.

    “People lost faith in the FDA,” Offit said. “People saw that you could twist the FDA’s arm.”

    The Inquirer spoke to Offit about his new book, and what steps public health agencies can take to reclaim the public’s trust.

    Best of times, worst of times

    The pandemic saw significant scientific advancement. Scientists were able to produce a safe and effective vaccine to protect against a new virus within a year — a feat that can take more than 10 years. Offit called the vaccine “the greatest” medical achievement in his lifetime.

    At the same time, more people grew suspicious of vaccines, and their mistrust continued to grow through last fall, according to surveys by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In the center’s most recent survey, 71% agreed that vaccines approved in the U.S. are safe, down from 77% in April 2021.

    The way public health agencies and elected officials communicated also contributed to the public’s loss of faith, Offit said.

    He criticized the response to a July 4, 2021, celebration in Provincetown, Mass. After thousands of people attended the event, nearly 350 fully vaccinated men were among those who developed COVID. Only four of those vaccinated were hospitalized, and the rest developed mild or no symptoms.

    Offit saw a success: the vaccines were working.

    But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used the term “breakthrough infection” to describe the incident, a phrasing choice that Offit said implied failure to offer protection.

    Another mixed message came in August 2021: President Joe Biden promoted booster shots for American adults even though boosters had not been approved by the FDA yet.

    A month later, the FDA advisory committee overwhelmingly voted against the recommendation to offer boosters to people under age 65, because there wasn’t enough evidence at the time that an extra dose would improve protection to people of all ages.

    The conflicting messages added to public distrust, Offit said.

    The FDA began expanding the eligibility for boosters in Nov. 2021, and currently recommends that everyone over a ge 6 months receive an extra shoot.

    Neither the FDA nor the CDC responded to request for comment about Offit’s criticism. A spokesperson for the FDA shared a statement saying the agency stands by the safety and effectiveness of the COVID vaccines.

    Admitting mistakes and going on offense

    Rebuilding trust in public health agencies won’t be easy, Offit said. But he has some ideas for how to move forward.

    Science and knowledge are always evolving, which means the best advice experts can offer may change. Public health agencies shouldn’t shy away from that fact and should do more to explain the scientific process, Offit said.

    “You have to trust the American public to at least tell them the truth,” he said. “It’s OK to make your best guess and get it wrong, but say that.”

    Offit also wants to see public health agencies more aggressively responding to anti-vaccination claims and other misinformation. When misinformation is spread, public health agencies should spend resources on campaigns disputing the claims with science.

    People who advocate against vaccines “harm children,” he said, pointing to the recent measles outbreaks in the U.S, and he wants public health agencies to portray them as such.

    “Hammer back,” Offit said.

    ©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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  • What Happens When History Is Erased? An Artist Edits Civil Rights Images To Eerie Effect

    Phillip Pyle II’s series “Forgotten Struggle” leaves protest signs blank, abstracting historical images of racial justice. (Phillip Pyle II via CNN Newsource)

    By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

    (CNN) — From the gospel song title “We Shall Overcome” emblazoned on banners and buttons during the Civil Rights era, to the last words of Eric Garner, “I Can’t Breathe,” used in marches and social media hashtags in 2014, protest slogans have often become rallying cries that help concretize history-making movements.

    But what if that messaging was inexplicably (or deliberately) erased from our records? That’s the version of history Houston-based artist Phillip Pyle II poses in the photographic series “Forgotten Struggle,” in which he presents provocatively edited pictures of Civil Rights protestors during the 1960s carrying blank white signs. The eerie negative space on their posterboard placards abstracts the images; while they are still broadly recognizable to anyone familiar with American history, much of the crucial context is lost.

    Several of Pyle’s images will be displayed at this year’s FotoFest Biennial in Houston, which opens March 9, but the artist began the series more than a decade ago in response to controversial social studies textbook changes made by the Texas State Board of Education. Since then, classroom curriculum has become a flashpoint around the country, with a tidal wave of new legislation in red states in recent years banning books and restricting topics related to race, racism and LGBTQ+ identity — and in Florida, even trying to cast some aspects of slavery in a positive light.

    “The whole point of ‘Forgotten Struggle’ is that these (events) happened and now they’re trying to be omitted,” Pyle said in a phone call. “So let’s just play along.”

    By creating a visual metaphor for the “whitewashing and erasure of history,” he added, he hopes to subvert the process by sparking even more interest in what appears to be censored in his images.

    FotoFest’s executive director, Steven Evans, said Pyle’s work “communicates really quickly and powerfully.” It was a natural fit for the biennial’s theme “Critical Geographies,” which explore how “space, place and communities are influenced by social, economic, ecological and political forces,” Evans explained in a phone call.

    The political battles being waged across education have reached a peak in Houston, where the state’s education agency took control of the city’s public schools — 274 in total — early last year, citing, in part, the consistent underperformance of a single high school. The takeover raised alarm over the state’s new power over its largest school district.

    “A lot of questions about agency are happening here and about what is being taught, how it’s being taught, how resources are being allocated,” Evans said. “So I think that at a very particular level in Houston, but also at a national and international level, (Pyle’s work) is speaking to the moment.”

    But Pyle’s images don’t just infer commentary on contested curriculum. For some, the images might bring to mind how misinformation spreads online, such as when internet users misattribute an image, edit out important context, or outright fake a photograph through AI. (Perhaps they also resemble blank-sign meme templates, a trope which can be endlessly updated to keep current with the internet discourse of the day.)

    For others, viewing the images could help place historical events in a contemporary context, be an opportunity to observe lesser-seen details, or the impetus to research the source material on their own.

    Pyle prefers some ambiguity, arguing that social media has created an environment where “everything can be very matter of fact” and rigid in its presentation. “You have to figure out for yourself what is going on here in this moment,” he explained of his work.

    “(I want) to talk about history in a way that’s not beating you over the head with history,” he added.

    At FotoFest, some of Pyle’s works will be printed large and mounted on the wall, while others will be presented in vitrines, the glass display cases that often present historical documents and artifacts in museums. But Pyle also thinks about how his images will live online, and how they might be viewed decades from now.

    “I want to create these things that enter the internet zeitgeist,” he said. “In the future, somebody will come across it and be like, ‘What happened to this historical photo?’”

    In that way, he hopes the work — and its glaring absences — will continue to raise questions long after our own lifetimes.

    The-CNN-Wire
    & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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  • Virtue Signal Fail: ‘Disgusting Fraud’ Bernie Sanders Slammed for Selective Mask-Wearing Amid SOTU


    Socialist Vermont senator inconsistently wears mask to listen to speech, while removing mask to greet Biden.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) raised eyebrows at Thursday’s State of the Union address, confusingly wearing a mask during Joe Biden’s speech, while at other times having the mask removed to closely greet people.

    The socialist Democrat was slammed on social media for half-assedly attempting to revive the Covid-era remnant. At the same time, his virtue-signaling fail was praised for proving face masks are a useless spectacle.

    For example, Sanders’ mask was suspiciously absent when he entered the House Chamber and as he shook hands with Biden, an 81-year-old in the most at-risk Covid age group.

    The mask was also missing while Sanders yukked it up with Democrat Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono.

    On the other hand, Sanders absurdly felt the need to don the mask while listening to Biden’s speech.

    The senator’s transparent low-effort attempts to normalize the mask only while cameras were on him were blasted on X.

    The senator’s efforts to promote the face mask comes as studies have shown the masks are not only ineffective, but also “may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals.”

    The globalists are increasing their attacks on Infowars and the stakes have never been higher!

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  • KURIGA KIDNAP: Further Attacks On Students Will Aggravate Out Of School Children— Peter Obi

    Africa-children

    …APC-Controlled Government Has Failed Woefully— Atiku

    Former Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi has raised the alarm over the rise of out-of-school children in the future, should the attacks on students persist in the country.

    In a series of posts shared via his X handle, Obi berated the recurrence of student attacks, calling for more concerted efforts to combat the continuing menace of nationwide insecurity.

    No fewer than 287 students and pupils were abducted on Thursday, from a Government Secondary School (GSS) in Kuriga village of Chikun Local Government, Kaduna State.

    Obi, while reacting to the incident, demanded that “every effort should be directed towards the safe release of the children.”

    He called on the federal government to implement better security measures to avoid future occurrences.

    “While insecurity has continued to bear down on every sector of our national existence, its negative impact on education will be more devastating for the nation.

    “I once again appeal to the government, both state and federal, to explore all possible means to ensure the safe release of the abducted school children and their teachers,” Obi said.

    In the same vein, a former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar described the insecurity situation in the country as worsening, and one that leaves the media awash with terrifying news.

    Abubakar opined that such reports are likely to rank the country as “one of the most terrorised territories on earth.”

    The former 2023 presidential candidate further described the cases as “endless” and “interminable.”

    He added, “The APC-controlled government has failed woefully to give the people the basic things expected of a responsive government.

    “It is a clear manifestation of the failure of governance. The government has continued to play the ostrich while the nation is plagued by insecurity.

    “The government has continued to play the ostrich while the nation is plagued by insecurity.
    While the weak and vulnerable are neglected, the government is making empty rhetoric about reforms.

    “And while our young men are abducted, killed, or conscripted into the army of the terrorists and our women and girls are ravished and subjected to different forms of gender-based violence, the authorities do nothing.

    “This is in negation of the constitutionally guaranteed commitment that the security and welfare of citizens is the primary responsibility of the government.”

    Meanwhile, a United Kingdom (UK) Based Security and Risk Management Film, Peccavi Consulting has asked the security agencies in Nigeria to focus on four key areas to prevent the recurrence of mass kidnappings of students.

    The firm in a series of posts on X, named the key areas to include the target, bandit camp, hostage holding area, and ransom exchange point.

    According to the firm, these factors should be taken into consideration during the invention of strategies to create a safe environment for learning across the country.

    The firm noted that in such instance as Kiruga’s, the assailants target schools, located in isolated areas with low-security presence.

    It asked the security agencies to identify potential bandit camps where criminals are likely to find hidden and inaccessible by vehicles or trucks to rest, train and keep weapons.

    It said, “The same applies to where the hostages are kept, the major difference being that the camp doesn’t necessarily need to be guarded 24/7 while the hostages do.

    “Ransom exchange point: this needs to be a point with similar characteristics to the camp & close enough to the camp for the bandits to get there easily as well as the ransom payer, it needs multiple exits to prevent an ambush, be isolated but also observable.”

    The firm, therefore, asked the nation’s security agencies to utilise a combination of map/satellite photo/town planning data study to identify likely targets including schools, hospitals, trains, airports, motorparks and apartments.

    “A similar exercise should identify areas that are conducive to serving as bandit camps. All of which should be validated with local knowledge, in order to prevent & deter,” Peccavi Consulting said.

    KURIGA KIDNAP: Further Attacks On Students Will Aggravate Out Of School Children— Peter Obi is first published on The Whistler Newspaper

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  • Fact Check: Some claim vindication after CDC change on COVID-19 guidance. Here’s why they’re wrong.

    New COVID-19 guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends precautions in line with influenza and other respiratory viruses, leaving some skeptics crowing on social media that they were right all along.

    “The CDC officially agrees with ‘conspiracy theorists’’ from 2020,” a March 2 Instagram post read. “Interesting how that worked out.”

    The post’s caption listed grievances about pandemic measures such as lockdowns, school closures and vaccines, saying, “And now, four years later the CDC says treat it like the flu.”

    This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    We found dozens of social media posts making similar claims that people who have long said COVID-19 was no different than the flu were right all along.

    The claims are wrong about what the change in CDC guidelines says about the early days of the pandemic and a virus that has killed more than 1 million people in the U.S. and more than 7 million globally since 2020, experts told PolitiFact.

    What changed in the guidance?

    The CDC changed its guidance on COVID-19 to streamline it with other respiratory viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. People with COVID-19 no longer must isolate for five days before going back to the office or to school, as the CDC had previously recommended.

    Instead, the CDC said, people sick with COVID-19, or the flu and other respiratory viruses, should stay home and away from others until their symptoms have improved and they no longer have a fever — without the use of fever-reducing medications — for at least 24 hours.

    People are also encouraged to take additional steps for the next five days to avoid spreading the virus, such as social distancing, wearing a mask or improving air quality by opening windows or using an air purifier, the CDC said. 

    Those are important to protect those more vulnerable to COVID-19, such as people 65 and older and those with weakened immune systems, the CDC said.

    “What (the) CDC is really saying is, ‘Here are three options for what to do during that five-day period when you might still be infectious,’” said Dr. Céline Gounder, editor at large for KFF Health News and an infectious disease specialist.

    The CDC also recommends people stay up to date with vaccines, practice good hygiene and take steps for cleaner air, such as purifying indoor air. 

    The new guidance doesn’t apply to health care settings or for pathogens such as measles that may have specific containment measures, the CDC said.

    Why did the guidance change?

    The CDC said in a March 1 news release that the new guidelines are meant to bring a unified approach to common respiratory viruses that have similar routes of transmission and symptoms. The changes would make recommendations easier to follow and help protect those most at risk, the agency said.

    The change is possible because there are far fewer hospitalizations and deaths today associated with COVID-19, and there are more tools available to treat it, such as vaccines and treatments.

    “We are in a different place. We have data and evidence that shows our tools are working to protect us against COVID,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a March 4 X post announcing the new guidelines.

    Weekly hospital admissions for COVID-19 this winter were down more than 75%, and deaths were down by more than 90% compared with January 2022, the peak of the virus’s first omicron wave, the CDC said.

    “We saw these decreases even while our wastewater data showed we had high levels of viral illness circulating this season,” Cohen said in her X video.

    More than 98% of the U.S. population has some degree of immunity against COVID-19, through vaccines, prior infections or both, the CDC said. At the same time, vaccines and treatments such as antiviral drug Paxlovid are available that weren’t early in the pandemic. 

    Some states, such as California and Oregon, had already put similar isolation guidance in place before the CDC change.

    Gounder said most people who are sick aren’t testing and don’t know if they have COVID-19, the flu or a common cold virus. So the goal of the CDC change is to “align the guidance across all of them so you don’t even have to test to know what to do.”

    Does that mean COVID-19 should have been treated like the flu from the start?

    No, experts told PolitiFact. It just means that we’re in a much better place than we were early in the pandemic, when we were learning on the fly about a novel coronavirus.

    “The CDC is comparing the mortality of COVID-19 to influenza now but that was not the case at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, a University of California, San Francisco, medical professor and an infectious disease expert. “COVID was far deadlier than influenza until we got to widespread population immunity.”

    That does not mean that COVID-19 was like the flu in 2020, Gandhi said.

    “SARS-CoV-2 hit a nonimmune population all over the planet at that time, unfortunately leading to high rates of mortality,” Gandhi said.

    Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and George Washington University adjunct associate professor, said public health policy must evolve as science — and the facts — change.

    The outlook for someone suffering from the flu is much different today, and public health measures have also evolved. Before the advent of flu vaccines or antibiotics, the influenza pandemic of 1918 spread worldwide and killed at least 50 million people, including about 675,000 in the United States. As with COVID-19, public health control efforts around that early flu outbreak were largely limited to social distancing and quarantines. 

    Health officials appropriately used mitigation measures specific to COVID-19 through 2020 and 2021 when there was hope the disease could be contained or eliminated, Wen said.

    “Circumstances have changed,” Wen said, pointing to available vaccines, treatments and high population exposure to the virus, and less lethal subvariants of omicron. “It is now clear that it’s not possible for COVID to be eliminated. As a result, it is now appropriate to consider COVID in the same category of other serious respiratory pathogens such as influenza.”

    Gounder said the claim that the CDC guidance change vindicated people who said we should have treated COVID-19 like the flu all along is “patently false,” adding that even though deaths are down from their peak, COVID-19 is still the deadliest of the common respiratory viruses in the U.S., and the most likely to land adults in the hospital.

    Our ruling

    An Instagram post said the CDC’s new COVID-19 guidance means “The CDC officially agrees with ‘conspiracy theorists’ from 2020″ who wanted to treat COVID-19 like the flu.”

    The claim ignores what public health officials knew about the virus that causes COVID-19 in the pandemic’s early days. It overlooks that vaccines, treatments and natural immunity have since lessened the threat of COVID-19, leading to far fewer deaths and hospitalizations.

    We rate the claim False.



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  • Why are clocks set forward in the spring?

    By JAMIE STENGLE (Associated Press)

    ALLAS (AP) — Once again, most Americans will set their clocks forward by one hour this weekend, losing perhaps a bit of sleep but gaining more glorious sunlight in the evenings as the days warm into summer.

    Where did this all come from, though?

    How we came to move the clock forward in the spring, and then push it back in the fall, is a tale that spans over more than a century — one that’s driven by two world wars, mass confusion at times and a human desire to bask in the sun for a long as possible.

    There’s been plenty of debate over the practice, but about 70 countries — about 40% of those across the globe — currently use what Americans call daylight saving time.

    While springing the clocks forward “kind of jolts our system,” the extra daylight gets people outdoors, exercising and having fun, says Anne Buckle, web editor at timeanddate.com, which features information on time, time zones and astronomy.

    “The really, really awesome advantage is the bright evenings, right?” she says. “It is actually having hours of daylight after you come home from work to spend time with your family or activities. And that is wonderful.”

    Here are some things to know so you’ll be conversant about the practice of humans changing time:

    HOW DID THIS ALL GET STARTED?

    In the 1890s, George Vernon Hudson, an astronomer and entomologist in New Zealand, proposed a time shift in the spring and fall to increase the daylight. And in the early 1900s, British home builder William Willett, troubled that people weren’t up enjoying the morning sunlight, made a similar push. But neither proposal gained enough traction to be implemented.

    Germany began using daylight saving time during World War I with the thought that it would save energy. Other countries, including the United States, soon followed suit. During World War II, the U.S. once again instituted what was dubbed “war time” nationwide, this time year-round.

    In the United States today, every state except Hawaii and Arizona observes daylight saving time. Around the world, Europe, much of Canada and part of Australia also implement it, while Russia and Asia don’t currently.

    INCONSISTENCY AND MASS CONFUSION

    After World War II, a patchwork of timekeeping emerged across the United States, with some areas keeping daylight saving time and others ditching it.

    “You might have one town has daylight saving time, the neighboring town might have daylight saving time but start it and end it on different dates and the third neighboring town might not have it at all,” says David Prerau, author of the book “Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.”

    At one point, if riders on a 35-mile (56-kilometer) bus ride from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, wanted their watches to be accurate, they’d need to change them seven times as they dipped in and out of daylight saving time, Prerau says.

    So in 1966, the U.S. Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which say states can either implement daylight saving time or not, but it has to be statewide. The act also mandates the day that daylight saving time starts and ends across the country.

    Confusion over the time change isn’t just something from the past. In the nation of Lebanon last spring, chaos ensued when the government announced a last-minute decision to delay the start of daylight saving time by a month — until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Some institutions made the change and others refused as citizens tried to piece together their schedules. Within days, the decision was reversed.

    “It really turned into a huge mess where nobody knew what time it was,” Buckle says.

    WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE IF WE DIDN’T CHANGE THE CLOCKS?

    Changing the clocks twice a year leads to a lot of grumbling, and pushes to either use standard time all year, or stick to daylight saving time all year often crop up.

    During the 1970s energy crisis, the U.S. started doing daylight saving time all year long, and Americans didn’t like it. With the sun not rising in the winter in some areas till around 9 a.m. or even later, people were waking up in the dark, going to work in the dark and sending their children to school in the dark, Prerau says.

    ”It became very unpopular very quickly,” Prerau says.

    And, he notes, using standard time all year would mean losing that extra hour of daylight for eight months in the evenings in the United States.

    A NOD TO THE EARLY ADOPTERS

    In 1908, the Canadian city of Thunder Bay — then the two cities of Fort William and Port Arthur — changed from the central time zone to the eastern time zone for the summer and fall after a citizen named John Hewitson argued that would afford an extra hour of daylight to enjoy the outdoors, says Michael deJong, curator/archivist at the Thunder Bay Museum.

    The next year, though, Port Arthur stayed on eastern time, while Fort William changed back to central time in the fall, which, predictably, “led to all sorts of confusion,” deJong says.

    Today, the city of Thunder Bay is on eastern time, and observes daylight saving time, giving the area, “just delightfully warm, long days to enjoy” in the summer, says Paul Pepe, tourism manager for Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission.

    The city, located on Lake Superior, is far enough north that the sun sets at around 10 p.m. in the summer, Pepe says, and that helps make up for their cold dark winters. Residents, he says, tend to go on vacations in the winter and stay home in the summer: “I think for a lot of folks here, the long days, the warm summer temperatures, it’s a vacation in your backyard.”

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  • Video: Pelosi Triggered Biden Called Laken Riley Murder Suspect ‘Illegal’ – ‘Should Have Said Undocumented’


    Meanwhile, normal Americans are furious about the murder itself and the Democrat open border agenda

    Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on CNN following Joe Biden’s divisive State of the Union address to complain about his non-PC choice of language when referring to a murder suspect.

    Biden brought up Laken Riley, incorrectly calling her “Lincoln,” and said she was “an innocent young woman killed by an illegal.”

    Responding to Biden’s remarks, Pelosi told CNN viewers, “He should have said undocumented. It’s not a big thing, okay? We usually say undocumented, he said illegal.”

    Most media outlets said Pelosi “slammed” or “scolded” Biden, but CNN ran with the headline, “Pelosi defends Biden’s use of the word ‘illegal’ to describe migrant.”

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    Technically, Pelosi should be more concerned that Biden said Riley “was killed by an illegal” when 29-year-old Venezuelan illegal migrant Diego Ibarra has yet to be convicted and is a suspect.

    However, all current evidence does point to Ibarra being guilty, and it was recently discovered his brother is tied to a Venezuelan criminal gang causing violence in New York.

    Pelosi was criticized online for being more upset about Biden’s use of the term “illegal” than the millions of illegals coming into the country and the thousands of American deaths at their hands.



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  • Tinubu Expresses Hope Over Rescue Of Abducted Borno IDPs, Kaduna Students

    Bola-Tinubu-

    President Bola Tinubu has expressed optimism over the safe rescue of the abducted victims, whisked away by armed men from an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in Borno, and a Government Secondary School (GSS) in Kaduna State respectively.

    The president revealed this on Friday through its official handle on X, assuring the affected families of justice.

    This week alone, over 400 people have been abducted in Northern Nigeria.

    Two days ago, armed men invaded an IDP camp in Ngala tow, the headquarters of Gamboru Ngala Local Government Area of Borno State, bordering Cameroon where terrorists are most active.

    The armed men abducted about 200 persons, majorly women and whisked them away to an unknown location.

    Also on Thursday, armed men wielding weapons in their hundreds invaded the precinct of the GSS, also housing a primary school, and abducted 287 persons. A total of 25 students were said to have returned to their families.

    Tinubu while reacting to the incidents said, “I have received briefings from security chiefs on the two incidents in Borno and Kaduna, and I am confident that the victims will be rescued.”

    To him as well as the affected families whose children/ward are now in the custody of kidnappers, “nothing else is acceptable” than their freedom.

    He noted that “Justice will be decisively administered.”

    Tinubu further directed security and intelligence agencies to immediately rescue the victims and ensure that justice is served against the perpetrators of these abominable acts.

    “I sympathise with the families of the victims and assure them that they would soon be reunited with their loved ones,” Tinubu said.

    Nigeria is again, faced with emboldened criminals who resort to kidnapping school children in large numbers, particularly in the suburban areas in Northern Nigeria for huge ransoms.

    Since 2014 to date, over 1,680 students have been abducted by Non-State Government Actors (NSGA) — Many of whom are female students.

    In some cases, the female victims are either released after a ransom has been paid, or are married off to their captors.

    These incidents have persisted despite various safe school initiatives implemented by the federal government to create a safe space for children to learn without any form of obstruction, including insecurity.

    Tinubu Expresses Hope Over Rescue Of Abducted Borno IDPs, Kaduna Students is first published on The Whistler Newspaper

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  • Fact Check: No, you can’t tell if you’re pregnant the day after conception

    Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the abortion issue has been an easy motivator for Democrats and a political loser at the ballot box for Republicans nationwide. 

    Wisconsin Republicans, too, have struggled to weather that particular political storm. In January, a group of them proposed a bill marketed as a way to find consensus: a 14-week abortion ban that would have to be approved by voters before taking effect. 

    The bill would scale the timeframe for legal abortions in Wisconsin back from 20 weeks and is currently sitting with the state Senate after passing the Assembly Jan. 25. 

    Though the bill was ultimately amended to include exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, it didn’t have them initially. 

    When asked during an Assembly committee hearing on the bill why it didn’t include those exceptions, state Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie — who co-authored the bill — said 14 weeks should be enough time for a person to be aware of a pregnancy and decide whether to continue that pregnancy. 

    In fact, Nedweski said, “we have technology and medical advancements today that can tell you if you are pregnant the day after conception.” 

    Medical experts disagree.

    Pregnancy hormone can’t be detected right after conception

    Nedweski’s office did not return a request for the evidence she used to make the claim. We’ll break down the science here. 

    A pregnancy test detects the presence of the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, in a person’s body. But the body doesn’t produce that hormone until several days after conception. 

    Fertilization, which happens when the sperm and egg unite, is what most people refer to as “conception,” said Dr. Abigail Cutler, an OB-GYN at UW Health and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

    About five to 10 days after fertilization, the fertilized egg implants in the lining of the uterus. HCG is produced shortly afterward, Cutler said, first in low levels which rise rapidly over time. 

    “The very earliest someone can confirm whether they are pregnant is following implantation, the timing of which varies but can take a week or more,” she said. 

    Pregnancy tests that people can buy over the counter, which detect the presence of hCG in urine, often aren’t sensitive enough to pick up those lowest levels of the hormone when it first appears, she added. An hCG blood test can detect the hormone as soon as it’s being produced, but that kind of test isn’t as readily accessible because it must be ordered by a health care provider.

    Other medical information supports that hCG doesn’t show up immediately after conception, though its timing can vary. 

    According to the Cleveland Clinic, hCG can be found in a person’s blood around 11 days after conception, and it takes slightly longer to show up in urine. Johns Hopkins Medicine says it can be found in urine five to seven days after conception. Mount Sinai Health System says hCG can be found in the blood and urine of pregnant people as early as 10 days after conception. 

    Cutler also noted that confirming a pregnancy by any means requires having a reason to suspect pregnancy in the first place. 

    According to SSM Health, some people may begin noticing early symptoms of pregnancy a week or two after conception. But others may not realize until their period is noticeably late — which can be hard to determine for people with irregular menstrual cycles — or even further into the pregnancy. Some people feel no symptoms at all. 

    With that information in mind, Cutler said there are many reasons why someone may not suspect a pregnancy until it is several weeks along.

    Our ruling 

    Nedweski claimed that there are “technology and medical advancements today that can tell you if you are pregnant the day after conception.”

    But pregnancy tests are looking for a hormone that doesn’t get produced right after conception. It could take a week or more to be produced in high enough levels to show up on a pregnancy test, even one done by a health care provider.  

    We rate this claim False. 

     



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