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.”

UK - Misinformation and fake news continue to be a major problem across social media platforms. Now, a new study reports people with high emotional intelligence are much less likely to fall for deceptive and untrue news items. “Fake news on social media is now a matter of considerable public and governmental concern. Research on dealing with this issue is still in its infancy but recent studies have started to focus on the psychological factors which might make some individuals less susceptible to fake news,” says Dr Tony Anderson, Senior Teaching Fellow in Psychology at Strathclyde, in a university release. Some statements made by those who fell for fake news items include “the commenter on the post has the same thoughts as me” and “my kids are in this position so I completely get this.” Meanwhile, subjects who correctly identified fake news told researchers “comes across as more of a rant” and “fearmongering article with no data.”

USA - I have been telling parents for decades that sending a child to almost any college is playing Russian roulette with his or her values. But it is a different version of Russian roulette. In the traditional version, only one of the gun’s six chambers contains a bullet. In the college version of Russian roulette, 5 of the 6 chambers contain a bullet. If your child attends almost any university in America (or Canada or anywhere else in the English-speaking world), the odds are that your child’s decency, intellectual acuity, faculty of reason, character and moral compass will be damaged, perhaps permanently. The worse news is that sending your child to almost any elementary school or high school — public or private — is fast becoming equally toxic. More and more schools are being taken over by left-wing ideologues and by nonideologues who lack the courage to confront the ideologues.

VATICAN - The Vatican decreed today that the Catholic Church cannot give its blessing to same-sex unions because God 'cannot bless sin'. Pope Francis signed off the two-page ruling which was published in seven languages by the Vatican's orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It called on Catholic clergy to treat gay people with 'respect and sensitivity' but ruled that blessing their unions would 'approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognised as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God'. Francis last year caused controversy among Catholics by giving his backing to civil unions, but has never come out in favour of religious unions. Francis has always voiced opposition to gay marriage, saying that marriage should only be between a man and woman.

USA - President Joe Biden warned that the US may have to reinstate coronavirus restrictions in a Thursday address marking one year of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. While Biden attempted to provide a glimmer of hope, touting the advances the US has made in vaccination distribution and administration, he warned that the US “may have to reinstate restrictions” down the road if people do not remain vigilant, follow “the scientists,” and put “trust and faith” in the government. “Unity is what we do together as fellow Americans. Because if we don’t stay vigilant and the conditions change, then we may have to reinstate restrictions to get back on track,” Biden said during the Thursday address. “And please. We don’t want to do that again. We’ve made so much progress. This is not the time to let up. Just as we were emerging from a dark winter into a hopeful spring and summer is not the time to not stick with the rules,” he said, urging Americans to continue to wear masks and follow other protocols.

USA - Do you feel like no matter how hard you work, it’s harder and harder to get ahead? There’s a good explanation for that. The government intentionally and dramatically underreports the true cost of living, and that fake low number is what most employers use when they set the wages they pay. So your paycheck isn’t growing nearly as fast as it needs to in order to stay ahead of inflation.

USA - When the media lies, the media normalizes deceit, and the word “liar” loses its sting. Lying becomes part of the New Normal. When government lies as well — Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasions, Russiagate — lying becomes ubiquitous. Truth becomes so discordant that truth is discarded. Truth-tellers become dissident “conspiracy theorists” who are guilty of trying to shake the population’s confidence in the ruling lies. They are censored, and if they persist they risk becoming labeled “domestic terrorists” and “enemies of democracy.” Orwell’s 1984 is our reality.

EUROPE - Polish MEP Ryszard Legutko, of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, said the EU Parliament voting to make the bloc an “LGBTIQ freedom zone” was “absurd.” Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted by 492 to 141 to declare the political bloc a “zone of freedom” for “LGBTIQ” people, which was described as an act against allegedly increasing homophobia in conservative EU member-states like Poland. After calling the debate “absurd,” Legutko went on to accuse the EU Parliament of “only [being] interested in its ideology. They want to assert all of this at any price, they are denying freedom in this manner,” EU Observer reports. “Western Europe is engaging in ideological propaganda. At kindergarten age, you want to introduce ridiculous stories about gender,” Legutko lamented. Despite criticism from media and politicians outside of Poland, polls have revealed that the majority of the Polish public back the government’s position on LGBT ideology, with a June 2020 poll revealing that 62 per cent of the public are against same-sex marriages.

USA - An ethnic studies curriculum proposed for California schools includes a script for chants to ancient Aztec gods of human sacrifice and war, according to a report. Rufo reveals part of the curriculum includes teachers leading students in chants to Aztec gods — including Tezkatlipoka, the god of cannibalism and human sacrifice — asking them to grant the speakers power to be social justice warriors. The chant ends, Rufo says, “with a request for ‘liberation, transformation, [and] decolonization,’ after which students shout ‘Panche beh! Panche beh!’ in pursuit of ultimate ‘critical consciousness.’” It’s clear the curriculum intends to replace the Christian God and its extension of white supremacy with indigenous gods, Rufo argues. “It is, in a philosophical sense, a revenge of the gods,” he writes.

GERMANY - German companies are increasingly dependent on business with China and are shifting their activities to the People's Republic at a growing rate, as current economic data and a recent survey of German companies reveal. China is not only one of the very few countries to which German companies could continue to export in 2020 as much as in the previous year, but it is also the only major economy to which they could already export this January more than during the same month the previous year. The fact that exports to the People's Republic are a vital support for the German economy is particularly significant because Germany's domestic consumption remains sluggish due to the pandemic. Already five DAX companies, such as VW, Daimler, Infineon, are generating their largest share of sales in China more than on their German domestic market. To protect themselves against the risks of US economic warfare, German companies doing business with China are increasingly relocating their activities to the People's Republic. Efforts to encourage their withdrawal from China have failed.