News and Headlines 10/4/2021: Keeping you informed.

US News, Politics, World News, Videos, Commentary/Opinion, Keeping you informed.

In The News:

September 2021 Saw Second-Most Background Checks of Any September in History

There were record NICS checks for 17 straight months, January 2020 through May 2021, with each of those 17 months breaking every previous record for NICS checks in that respective month.

In other words, January 2020 saw more NICS checks than any previous January, February 2020 saw more than any previous February, March 2020 more than any previous March, and so on, all the way through May 2021.

NICS checks do not provide a precise measurement of the number of guns sold, and that is because the background check is provided on the purchaser rather than the gun. And upon passing a background check, a purchaser may purchase multiple guns.

New York’s largest private health care provider fired 1,400 employees who refused the vaccine

New York began ratcheting up the heat last month for government workers and health care employees to get the vaccine. Hospitals and nursing homes in New York have begun removing workers for failing to meet a state-mandated deadline as Gov. Kathy Hochul pleaded with holdouts to get 11th-hour inoculations.

“To those who have not yet made that decision, please do the right thing,” Hochul said at a press briefing. “A lot of your employers are anxious to just give you the jab in the arm and say you’re part of the family, we need your help to continue on.”

Employees who refuse the shots face suspensions and termination. Workers terminated because of refusal to get the vaccine are not eligible for unemployment insurance without a doctor-approved request for medical accommodation.

DEA agent killed, another injured along with Tucson police officer in shooting at Amtrak station

***(Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star via AP)***

Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said the suspect from the shooting is dead and that a second suspect is in custody.

Magnus said it started around 8 a.m. when the Counter Narcotics Allianceboarded a train to do a routine check for money, drugs and firearms.

He said the CNA made contact with two individuals on the second level of the double-decker train. One suspect was taken into custody while the second, a Hispanic male in his 20s or 30s, pulled out a firearm and started shooting.

Clean up underway after major oil spill

A clean up effort is underway after a major oil spill off the coast of southern California.

The US Coast Guard is leading the response which aims to limit the environmental effects.

The oil spill is one of the largest recent spills in California with at least 126,000 gallons of thick black sludge seeping into the ocean roughly five miles off the cost of Hunnington beach over the weekend.

Crews above the water are working to prevent the oil from spreading while dive teams search for the cause of the leak.

Mom dies of vaccine-induced blood clot, obituary gets ‘misleading’ label when posted to Twitter

“She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat.

“But, slowly, day by day, her freedom to choose was stripped away. Her passion to be actively involved in her children’s education—which included being a Room Mom—was, once again, blocked by government mandate.

Ultimately, those who closed doors and separated mothers from their children prevailed.

This very sad story was made even worse by the Twitter Police.

When a Twitter user shared Wilson’s obituary on Friday, adding in the caption that she had not wanted to get vaccinated, the post was slapped with a warning label.

Armed diner shoots 2 gunmen robbing Texas restaurant, kills 1

According to KFDM, the armed customer fatally shot one of the gunmen who was trying to rob Church’s Chicken in Port Arthur around 8:45 p.m. Friday.

Both attempted robbers fled the scene on foot after being shot, with one later dying in the hospital from his bullet wounds, police said.

“Several shots were fired and both suspects were struck,” the Port Arthur Police Department said in a press release. “The suspects fled the scene and were later located by police officers.”

Whistleblower says Facebook is misleading public

A Facebook whistleblower on Sunday accused the social media giant of repeatedly prioritizing profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation, and said her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Libby Hogan reports.

Blackburn on what to expect from Facebook whistleblower’s testimony before Congress

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s interview on 60 Minutes, the company’s business practices and the U.S. doing business with China.

Politics:

‘Does The Plan Cost Nothing? Or Is The Plan Free?’ Reporter Presses Psaki On Cost Of Biden Budget

A reporter pushed Press Secretary Jen Psaki on the cost of President Biden’s budget during a press briefing on Monday.

Left-Wing Billionaire George Soros Bankrolling Group Behind Harassment of Kyrsten Sinema

Soros’s Open Society Foundation is Living United’s biggest donor. The group gave $1.5 million to Living United in 2019 and $250,000 in 2017, according to the philanthropy’s grants database. Living United reported around $1.7 million in revenue in 2019 and $328,000 in 2017.

The Living United activists may have broken Arizona law, which says it is illegal to photograph or videotape another person in a restroom “where the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy” and is relieving themselves or undressing.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-immigration charity, FWD.us, gave $7,500 to Living United last year. The Ford Foundation gave the organization a $500,000 grant in 2018. The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the country, contributed $60,000 to Living United in both 2017 and 2019.

Warren calls on SEC to probe Fed on insider trading

That came on top of recent disclosures that two other officials — Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren — also actively traded in stocks and real estate assets while the central bank was engaged in an extensive rescue of financial markets.

Both Kaplan and Rosengren announced their resignations last week. The most recent news about Clarida’s trades, earlier reported by Bloomberg, adds a new wrinkle.

Because of the quasi-private structure of regional Fed banks, their presidents are not required to disclose their financial trades to the Office of Government Ethics, unlike Powell, Clarida and other members of the Fed’s Washington-based board.

KT McFarland on Milley: “You Bet That’s Treason”

KT McFarland, former deputy NSA under President Trump, says General Mark Milley committed treason when he communicated with China behind Trump’s back.

World News:

Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp global outage

Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have all gone down in a major outage overnight.

The three apps – which are all owned by Facebook and run on shared infrastructure – completely stopped working just before 3AM.

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook Communications exec Andy Stone tweeted.

“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”

Daily Mail blasts U.K. government for heavily redacting emails related to origins of COVID-19

***Stefani Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images***

Details of a teleconference on the COVID-19 pandemic response held in early 2020 between leading scientists including Dr. Anthony Fauci remain shrouded in secrecy after the U.K. government heavily redacted documents requested by a newspaper.

What is known is that in the early days of the pandemic, a group of scientists led by Fauci, Dr. Jeremy Farrar, the director of the London-based megacharity Wellcome Trust, and Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, among others, held the call “in total confidence” and that after the call, the public campaign by many of the participants to stifle discussion of the lab-leak theory intensified.

Since the call was held on February 1, 2020, EcoHealth Alliance’s ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology have come to light, and Fauci’s repeated assurances that the U.S. National Institutes of Health did not fund risky virus research at the Wuhan lab have been shown to be false.

China Threatens Taiwan on Twitter as Warplanes Swarm Island

Hu Xijin, editor of the Chinese state-controlled newspaper Global Times, issued the latest threat on Sunday via Twitter, declaring that “China moved its National Day military parade from Tiananmen Square to the Taiwan Straits.”

More than 52 Chinese warplanes entered Taiwanese airspace on Monday, breaking a single-day record of flyovers that was set two days ago, when 39 jets buzzed over the embattled island. There have been nearly 150 similar incidents since the beginning of the month.

China’s increasing willingness to violate Taiwanese airspace signals that Beijing is not concerned about agitating Taiwan and its allies, particularly the United States, which condemned the CCP’s air operations but did nothing else.

Cyprus thwarts Iran-directed assassinations;Germany outraged by Iranian demand TV7 Israel News 10.04

1) Cypriot counter-terror units successfully thwart an Iranian-directed attempt to conduct targeted killings of Israelis in the Mediterranean Island.

2) Germany voices outrage over an Iranian demand of the United States to unfreeze billions of dollars as a prerequisite to restarting nuclear talks.

3) Iran conducts a massive military exercise along the border of Azerbaijan – citing Baku’s relations with Jerusalem as a source of regional instability.

Katie Hopkins: on MASSIVE police overreach in Australia. Gentleman is 500 metres from home address.

Commentary/Opinion:

‘Woke stuff has gone a step further’ in New Zealand: Alan Jones

Sky News host Alan Jones says “woke stuff has gone a step further” in New Zealand as trans weightlifter Laurel Hubbard has won the University of Otago’s sportswoman of the year award.

“Hubbard was born a male, and then transitioned to female in her 30s, absolutely nothing wrong with that,” Mr Jones said.

“You’d feel ripped off if you were a biological woman wouldn’t you?

“The notion that someone born a male is entitled to be considered in the same sports category as someone born a female is more than about accepting one another, it seems to be about rewarding biological difference.”

The dollar WILL be surpassed if we don’t REFOCUS

We learned a lot from the COVID pandemic — like the need to develop medicine domestically, for example — so why then does the federal government’s GIANT infrastructure bill not focus on any of that?

Government isn’t just preparing us for a new normal…we’re in it NOW.
And it’s time to stop denying basic truths: like how much our economy — and the future of our nation — is in trouble.

We must focus on what makes America STONG, rather than just trying to be the ‘least suckiest’ country, Glenn says.

Because there may come a day soon when the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency and that will cause MASSIVE changes we are NOT ready for.