RT News - November 4th 2022

The Bank of England says Britain could be facing it's longest recession in history. Britain's GDP fell by two points in October. The annual inflation rate surged to 10.1% in September, returning to the 40-year high hit in July and five times the central bank’s target. (QueenStreet comment : for ordinary citizens, the 10% inflation seems much higher with so many products in the shops doubling and trebling, including basics such as bread)

In USA the stock markets tumbled as the FED increased interest rates again.

As USA citizens say democracy is one of their prime concerns in the coming mid-term elections, President Biden says democracy is at risk, go and vote and ignore what's going on around them. US citizens are mostly worried about inflation and the cost of living, according to recent polls.

Moscow and Kiev conduct another prisoner swap, this time exchanging 107 captured soldiers from each side. Some of the Russian troops describe the abuse they witnessed in captivity.

Hundreds of people gather outside a hospital in Pakistan to show support for former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was wounded in an assassination attempt.

Washington excludes the struggling West African nation of Burkina Faso from an extensive trade deal because it says there's not enough democracy there. That's as locals, facing a devastating jihadist insurgency, say they need a helping hand to survive, and it probably won't be from the West.

Disunity in NATO as member state Türkiye says it won't allow Sweden and Finland into the bloc until they fulfil certain demands, despite pressure from the alliance's leadership.

North Korea has fired dozens of missiles into the seas around itself and some have landed in South Korean waters, as a protest against what NK sees as reckless moves by USA and South Korea.

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via RT website 3 Nov, 2022 18:30 BIOLABS

US biolab accidents going unreported – The Intercept

Some have reportedly involved deadly pathogens, and hundreds of cases have been kept from public view

Directors of America’s biolabs have admitted to hundreds of dangerous accidents in the past two decades, but even incidents involving exposure to deadly viruses have been kept from public view, an investigation by The Intercept has revealed.

“People have it in their minds that lab accidents are very, very rare, and if they happen, they happen only in the least well-run overseas labs,” Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright told the media outlet. “That simply isn’t true.”

The erroneous public perception could stem from the fact that, as The Intercept found, Americans don’t hear about US biolab accidents. The outlet obtained more than 5,500 pages of laboratory incident reports from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), compelling the agency to release the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Many lab mishaps are reported to the NIH, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, but the agency doesn’t pass on the information to the public, even in cases involving Level 3 and Level 4 biolabs.

One such incident occurred in 2016, when a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis accidentally pricked her finger with a needle after injecting a mouse with a recombinant strain of the Chikungunya virus, The Intercept said. The student didn’t tell her supervisor about the accident until after becoming ill and seeking treatment at a local hospital emergency room.

The university disclosed the accident and infection to the NIH, where the report was kept under wraps until The Intercept came calling six years later.

“That’s not a good situation,” said Scott Weaver, a University of Texas immunologist and expert on Chikungunya. “If that person knew they had a needlestick and they were working with Chikungunya, they should have reported it immediately. And then whatever health care people saw them should have recognized that there was a very small — but not zero — risk of them transmitting the virus.”

Chikungunya, which was first identified in Tanzania in the 1950s, is a debilitating and potentially deadly virus that can lead to chronic arthritis. In the local Makonde language, its name means “bent over in pain.” Outbreaks of the virus were reported in Italy and the US between 2007 and 2017.

The Intercept investigation found a wide range of other biolab accidents over a period spanning 18 years. For instance, in 2018, a US Food and Drug Administration researcher in Maryland contracted MRSA after working with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The University of North Carolina reported five escapes of lab mice in 2013 and 2014. At least one of the rodents had been infected with SARS.

The Washington University Chikungunya incident was among five needle injuries reported by the school, despite its lab being a Level 3 facility where researchers wear double layers of protective gear, including two pairs of gloves.
https://www.rt.com/news/565915-us-biolab-accidents-go-unreported/
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via RT website 4 Nov, 2022 04:55

China blasts latest European visit to Taiwan

The Foreign Ministry denounced the trip as a “farcical political stunt”

China has condemned a recent trip to Taipei by lawmakers from several European nations and the EU itself, insisting all foreign efforts to assist “Taiwan independence” are “doomed to fail.”

Meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday, the delegation included officials from Britain, Ukraine, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, the Netherlands, and the European Parliament. Two of the lawmakers are currently under sanctions by Beijing in retaliation for previous EU measures.

Asked about the visit during a Thursday press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed the lawmakers in question “have often deliberately hyped up issues and spread falsehoods and rumors against China.”

“They have little credibility to speak of and are not worth taking up your attention. The farcical political stunt of these few MPs will lead nowhere but only invite disgrace,” Zhao said, adding “a word of advice” to Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party: “to collude with external forces and seek ‘Taiwan independence’ is doomed to fail.”

During the sit-down with Taiwan’s leader, Ukrainian lawmaker Nikolay Kniazhitsky gifted Tsai a traditional shirt, and also gave Foreign Minister Joseph Wu a pair of boxing gloves signed by former champion fighters Vitali and Vladimir Klitschko. Wu later thanked the official for “passing on the fighting spirit of Ukraine to Taiwan,” while Tsai said she had a “productive meeting” with the lawmakers.

The officials are part of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a body established in 2020 to form a “coherent response to the rise of the People’s Republic of China,” which it has deemed a “defining challenge for the world’s democratic states.” This week’s trip marked its first formal delegation to Taiwan.

Just as the IPAC visit concluded, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was set to depart for his own trip to Beijing alongside a number of high-profile business executives. Though a German lawmaker was part of the latest junket to Taiwan, Zhao nonetheless expressed hope that Scholz’s first trip as chancellor would be a success, noting that “China and Germany are comprehensive strategic partners.”

While Taiwan has been self-governed since nationalist forces fled to the island following the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Beijing considers it to be part of its sovereign territory. The Chinese government has stated that it seeks peaceful reunification with Taiwan, but ultimately claims the right to use force to reclaim the island.
https://www.rt.com/news/565931-china-european-visit-taiwan/
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via RT website 3 Nov, 2022 20:30

UK is ‘too deep’ in Ukraine conflict – Moscow

London has been presented with evidence of its role in the attack on the Black Sea fleet, Russia’s ambassador said

Proof of the UK’s alleged involvement in a recent drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet will become public within hours, Russia’s ambassador to London, Andrey Kelin, said on Thursday.

In an interview with Sky News, Kelin claimed that Moscow knows “about the participation of British specialists in training, preparation and execution of plans against the Russian infrastructure and the Russian fleet in Black Sea.”

He also said that the “detailed” information about the attack, the main responsibility for which Moscow lays on Kiev, had been passed to Britain.

When pressed by the reporter to publicly reveal evidence supporting Moscow’s claims, Kelin said that “it will become public pretty soon, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow.”

“It can bring us to the line of – I would not say ‘no return’, return is always possible... But, anyway, we should avoid escalation, and this is a warning actually that Britain is too deep in this conflict,” Kelin emphasized.

In his opinion, the situation is becoming “more and more dangerous.”

Kelin’s remarks came just a few hours after the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the British Ambassador to Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, over the UK’s supposed link to the attack in Crimea. According to the ministry’s statement, Bronnert was warned that London’s hostile actions “could lead to unpredictable and dangerous consequences.”

The Russian Defense Ministry earlier claimed that British instructors had led the training of the Ukrainian troops who carried out the aerial and seaborne drone attacks on Russian ships at the Sevastopol naval base in Crimea on Saturday. A minesweeper was damaged in the raid. The British Defense Ministry denied the allegations.

The Ukrainian authorities have been reluctant to acknowledge their responsibility for the attack.
https://www.rt.com/news/565922-kelin-evidence-attack-uk/
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