The new study says there were mammals on sale in the market. We knew that: it was in our book published three years ago. It says there was SARS-CoV-2 in the market; yup, in our book. It says there were two strains in the market, A and B. Well, every human infection in the market was the B strain; the only sign of the older A strain was on a single glove, possibly contaminated in a lab. It says both animals and viruses were concentrated in the south-west corner of the market. Yes, that’s because, the Chinese scientists say, they focused their search on the stalls that had been selling mammals!

None of this is new. To the delight of the Chinese government, western virologists are keen to deflect the blame, even when they cannot point to an infected mammal in the market. Yet even the Chinese authorities have concluded that that raccoon dog won’t hunt.

The identities that matter to most people are not their gender, sexuality or politics, but their family, community and – yes – their nation. Most people in the United Kingdom are proud to be British. And so we should be. We Brits invented parliamentary democracy, pioneered the Industrial Revolution, ended the slave trade, and stood alone against Hitler in Europe's darkest hour. But almost all people in Britain have an additional national identity too. Most Scots are unashamedly proud to be both British and Scottish. As are the Welsh. These are identities that pre-date our Britishness but also bolster it. The same is true with the English.

But there's a key difference. Whereas all of the most high-status people in Scotland and Wales are proud to be Scottish and Welsh, most of the English political and media elite are far from proud to be English. While the metropolitan establishment have denigrated and mocked expressions of English identity, THEY SEEM HAPPIER CELEBRATING OTHER CULTURES, INSTEAD.

A nation should be proud of its past but, as the social critic Roger Scruton wrote, English elites repudiate our inheritance and national identity. English children learn little of our history. Legions of graduates are taught that England has a uniquely evil past that is responsible for the world's injustices. And the national arts council funds projects that consistently denigrate our past. We can't possibly forge a united country around an identity we aren't proud of.

When the pagers blew on September 17, a staggering 2,800 people were injured and at least 12 were killed, according to Lebanon’s health minister Firas Abiad. Then, as Lebanese citizens mourned the dead, a second wave of explosions went off. This time walkie talkies blew, killing at least 32 according to a BBC report. Hezbollah is one of the largest non-state militaries in the world and is funded by Iran. Violence erupted between Israel and Lebanon following the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas.

On Wednesday, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant visited an Israeli aribase and said the country was "opening a new phase in the war", adding that the "centre of gravity is shifting to the north through the diversion of resources and forces". The BBC's Middle East correspondent Hugo Bachega reported that Israeli jets were flying low over Beirut, creating sonic booms as the leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah spoke.

Antony Blinken has said Israel and Hamas representatives had already agreed to '90 per cent' of a proposed deal, and the Pentagon assured on Thursday: 'I can tell you that we do not believe that deal is falling apart.' With the election looming in November, the ongoing war in the southern Levant has proven a divisive issue and put strain on the incumbent Biden administration.

The United States and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire but have failed to bring Israel and Hamas to a final agreement.

Wars and rumors of war abound. It’s hot and ugly on the war front today. Israel just ingeniously (evil genius?) found a way to maim a few-thousands people by blowing up their pagers... Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among the wounded.

Ugly business for Russia and Ukraine, too, where over a million people have died because of the invasion and Ukraine’s choice to defend its own turf. The war in Ukraine is very ugly business that could easily end by Putin just stopping his invasion, but he’s not going to do that either.

Clearly NATO inspires huge distrust because of the many wars its had a part in that had nothing to do with protecting the US or any of its allies, such as in Iraq. I get that NATO does plenty of evil expansion of its own for unjust reasons.

We’re in a situation more dangerous in nuclear terms than the Cold War ever was. The answers to evil dictators like Kim Jung Un and Putin - who has reverted to former Soviet ways of boundary expansion, consolidating power around himself with constitutional revisions that are solely to his benefit, and imprisoning those who pretend they have freedom of speech but use words he’s outlawed while assassinating his detractors - are not easy answers to come by when the imperialists have nuclear weapons and threaten all the time to actually use them.

Peak stress: No wonder, with all of that in a day’s news, that 41% of Americans say they’re at ‘peak stress’ right now, listing, of course, many reasons besides politics, such as economic duress and global issues like war. If you feel anxious, you have a lot of company. 38% believe this year of chaos has been more stressful than last year. The primary sources of anxiety this year include finances (35%), the economy (28%), physical health (25%), the 2024 presidential election (20%), and other world issues (19%).

I wish I could do more in these pages to provide hope alongside the stressful topics I cover, as it is not my wish to add to people’s stress; Hard to do it, anyway, OUTSIDE OF RELIGIOUS-BASED HOPE for each individual’s life, and I try to tread easily on that because this is a news-based and economic based website. It’s a stressful year with no easy answers because few parties are willing to apply good and fair answers that resolve the problems.

Benjamin Franklin’s words are as true today as when first sounded: “I’ve lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future Ages.”

Security sources confirmed that hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, at around the same time as compromised pagers. Lebanese media has also reported that home solar energy systems have blown up in several areas of Beirut.

The ensuing panic has caused terrified residents to tear the batteries from their walkie-talkies and throw devices into the street in fear of more explosions. But how do you live if you don't know where the next blasts might come from?

It’s astonishing to think that, until four years ago, the UK government was intending to allow our 5G mobile broadband network to be based around Chinese-made kit. We are not at war with China, of course, and hopefully we never will be. But as a militant dictatorship it is clearly a potentially hostile nation. Would we really want to grant it the ability to intercept and interfere with our communications network?

If you manufacture an electronic device from scratch, you really can programme it to do whatever you want it to do – and no user could tell what you had done simply by taking it apart. Indeed, we could end up with a situation in which most of the country’s mobile phones suddenly ceased to work, or were programmed to send us propaganda or fake news. We like to think of our cars as being autonomous, yet increasingly they are being connected to the internet, especially electric ones. They could all be brought to a grinding halt at the flick of a switch.

Above all, this week’s events provide a strong argument for bringing much more manufacturing back home. Over the past few decades we have become far too dependent on electronics and other devices manufactured in South Asia. While Britain hasn’t itself been targeted this week, the events in Lebanon should wake us all up to the grave new era of cyber warfare.

The UNGA resolution demands that Israel withdraw all of its settlements from the West Bank within a year– including from towns that were Jewish before the Jordanian military expelled local residents in Israel’s independence war in 1948. It demands that Israel cease military activity in Judea and Samaria, and even demands that Israel get rid of passive measures, such as the “wall” (a fence, for most of its length) that keeps suicide bombers out of Israel.

Notably, the resolution never mentions the word “terror” once, nor does it acknowledge that Israeli military activity in the area is a reaction to attacks on Israeli communities and Israeli civilians by Palestinian terrorist organizations. The resolution passed with 124 votes in favor, 14 votes against, and 43 abstentions. Several European Union nations voted in favor of the resolution. The resolution has no binding effect at all, but is merely considered advisory.

However, when looking at states as a whole, New York did not come out on top, according to Yelp. California, it turns out, led the nation in searches for rodent-related pest-control searches, followed by Wyoming, Washington, DC, New Mexico and Wisconsin. And it seems a pest problem is plaguing the entire nation.