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MPs probe Crown Estate after it rakes in £1.1billion profit from offshore wind farms

The Crown Estate is facing fresh scrutiny as it emerged it is raking in over a billion pounds of profit from offshore wind farms.

The estate, which owns the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland on behalf of the monarch, recorded profits of £1.1billion in each of the past two financial years – an increase of £658m from 2022-23.

And as King Charles was urged to stop Britain’s seabed being used as a ‘cash machine’, The Mail on Sunday can reveal MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC) are set to investigate. 

The committee last week launched a probe into the Crown Estate’s leases on properties to members of the Royal Family after questions over the peppercorn rent paid by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to live in 30-room Royal Lodge.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the PAC, told the MoS: ‘Given that wind farms are such an important part of the Crown Estate’s income, the issue will inevitably feature when we do our inquiry.’ 

Greenpeace called on the King to intervene, alleging the Crown Estate has ‘exploited’ its monopoly position to charge hefty fees for the leases which, it claims, is forcing up UK energy bills.

The environmental campaign group claims the estate, whose £15billion portfolio also includes property and vast areas of land, removed a cap on the so-called ‘option fees’ developers pay to reserve rights to the seabed, contributing to the surging profits.

Once the wind farms start to generate electricity, the Crown Estate receives 2 per cent of the revenue generated. 

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Scientists who advised government during Covid did not reveal they had received more than £200m in grants from one of the world’s biggest pharma investors, report says

Scientific advisors to the Government during the Covid pandemic failed to reveal they received over £200million in grants from one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical investors, a report reveals.

Twenty-six members of the influential Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), which helped shape lockdown rules, did not register the research funding from the Wellcome Trust in an apparent conflict of interest.

The report by the campaign group UsForThem analysed research data from The Wellcome Trust, which is largely funded by its investment portfolio and links to the pharmaceutical industry.

It claims the 26 members received at least £210 million in grants from Wellcome between 2018 and 2026 which were not declared on the SAGE register of participants’ interests (Ropi) with £175 million provided during the key Covid years of 2020 and 2021 alone.

Analysis by the Mail on Sunday of publicly-available information shows one grant recipient was Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the biggest advocates for vaccines and whose advice to Prime Minister Boris Johnson led to the UK lockdown in March 2020, and who famously resigned as a government adviser two months later after it emerged he broke rules to meet his married lover.

Prof Ferguson declared in the register that he was involved with a ‘Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium’, but did not mention Wellcome anywhere.

Yet he was either the lead applicant or sponsored other applications for grants worth £5.6million including a £1.25 million grant looking at influenza-like viruses in Vietnam, according to the analysis of Wellcome’s figures.

Of the 149 SAGE members during the Covid crisis 38 applied for funding or supported other applications to the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s biggest charity.

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How Epstein Channeled Race Science and ‘Climate Culling’ Into Silicon Valley’s AI Elite

ewly released Jeffrey Epstein files reveal that an apocalyptic worldview – blending racial hierarchy, genetic “optimisation” and even climate-driven population culling – was circulating inside the elite, founder-linked networks shaping Silicon Valley’s rise.

These ideas appear most starkly in the convicted sex offender’s private exchanges with the AI theorist Joscha Bach, and sit alongside the longtermist and transhumanist philosophies championed by other influential figures in the same circles.

Joscha Bach, whose work on cognitive architectures and machine consciousness has shaped advanced AI research and influenced figures such as Elon Musk, appears in the documents engaging Epstein in sweeping discussions about race, hierarchy, genetic engineering and the supposed ‘utility’ of mass death, including under conditions of climate stress.

Meanwhile, another philosopher whose ideas underpin much of modern longtermism and whose work helped shape Silicon Valley’s early thinking on artificial general intelligence, Nick Bostrom, moved through the same intellectual and institutional ecosystem.

His published arguments on eugenics, selective population strategies and existential “optimisation” reveal a parallel strand of thinking within that milieu, financed and legitimised by many of the same networks.

Both men were also financed by Epstein.

Taken together, the Bach correspondence and the longtermist ideas circulating in this environment show that human hierarchy, population thinning and genetic destiny were not fringe provocations, but part of the ambient intellectual air inside the circles designing the next generation of AI.

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Where Are America’s Dry Counties?

While the U.S. ended federal Prohibition in 1933, local restrictions on alcohol still persist across the country to this day.

As Visual Capitalist shows in the map below, based on work by Wikipedia user Mr. Matté, many counties remain “dry,” banning the sale of alcohol entirely, or “moist,” allowing only limited sales.

Where Alcohol is Still Restricted

The data, crowdsourced from local government sites and media reports, reveals that alcohol restrictions are concentrated in the South, particularly in states like Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Arkansas stands out the most in the map above, with a patchwork of red and orange counties indicating either total bans or partial restrictions on alcohol sales. In fact, the state has long struggled with outdated liquor laws, where even grocery stores in “moist” counties may be prohibited from selling wine or spirits.

Alcohol Status: It’s Complicated

Here’s what the terminology means:

  • Dry county: No alcohol sales allowed by law
  • Moist county: Alcohol sales are partially restricted (e.g. allowed in restaurants but not in stores)
  • Wet county: Alcohol can be sold without county-level restriction

Even within “wet” counties, individual towns may choose to remain dry, and in “dry” counties, specific towns or establishments can apply for exemptions, creating a legal maze for consumers and businesses alike.

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New discovery: The ‘sacred boundary’ surrounding Stonehenge

Some 4,500 years ago, people dug a series of deep, wide pits in the area near Durrington Walls in southern England. They were gemometrically arranged, forming a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) wide circle that enclosed over three square kilometers (1.16 square miles).

Long mistaken for naturally occuring features, the circle of human-made shafts has now come to be understood as a colossal project that lends new dimensions to the Stonehenge landscape.

An invisible ring around Durrington Walls

Durrington Walls is just a stone’s throw from the small English town of Amesbury, and just three kilometers, or about half an hour on foot, from Stonehenge. Each pit or shaft is approximately 10 meters (32.8 feet) wide and 5 meters deep.

Of the 20 pits discovered so far, a new study suggests that at least 15 form a huge, even circle around the henge of Durrington Walls. A henge is a type of prehistoric earthwork consisting of a ring-shaped bank, fortified with an inward ditch, encircling a flat circular area.

They were likely used for ceremonial purposes, to congregate or perform rituals. At the center of Durrington Walls used to be a circular structure of wooden posts, driven deep into the ground and surrounded by a settlement.

The pits were discovered years ago, but the newest research is just now uncovering more details, and providing deeper understanding. Scientists have now been able to date the structure to about 2480 BCE using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL).

The OSL method is a fairly precise way of pinpointing a sediment’s last exposure to light — and by extension, the last time it was covered or buried — by measuring the natural radiation captured in certain minerals like quartz and feldspar. This technique relies heavily on the quality of the sample and has a margin of error of about 5-10%.

The recent study shows that the circular structure did not accidentally form over centuries, but was the result of intentional efforts in a planned, momunental project. The pits were actively used as part of the cultural landscape — and traces of humans, plants and animals indicate deliberate coordination.

A ‘sacred boundary’ mapped with astounding precision

None of the shafts examined can be attributed to natural erosion of the chalky landscape — the pits’ sheer size and number clearly suggest they were dug by humans. They form a near-perfect circle, and are spaced at even intervals. The width and distance of the pits follow a clear pattern.

This means that the humans involved were able to mark distances, count steps or measurements, and work out a coordinated plan — all before they started digging. And so, what at first glance seemed like an assortment of strange holes became a rare testament to the fact that numbers, measurements, and large-scale planning were already part of the daily lives of Neolithic people living in the area.

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Journal Retracts ‘Ghost Written’ Monsanto Study Claiming Glyphosate Is Safe

Over the past year massive scandals involving academic research have come under the microscope, after dedicated researchers uncovered rigged studies that made it through peer-review with flying colors, and are now being retracted. 

On Friday, the Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology journal announced that it has retracted a review, safety evaluation, and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, after it emerged that Monsanto was heavily involved in its production. 

“This decision has been made after careful consideration of the COPE guidelines and thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the authorship and content of this article and in light of no response having been provided to address the findings,” the journal said in a statement. 

“Litigation in the United States revealed correspondence from Monsanto suggesting that the authors of the article were not solely responsible for writing its content,” and contributions by Monsanto employees were not disclosed, including in the acknowledgements section of the review. 

The journal also said that the authors may have been paid by Monsanto – which was also not disclosed. 

The Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology had been frequently cited in defending glyphosate, an ingredient in Roundup, including citations on Wikipedia, researchers said in a paper published in September. Since 2017, multiple juries have concluded that Roundup exposure has resulted in non-Hodgkin lymphoma in people. Bayer took over legal cases involving the matter after it purchased Monsanto in 2018, including a case that may be adjudicated by the Supreme Court. -Epoch Times

Meanwhile the study’s lead author, Gary Williams – a former pathologist at New York Medical College, is MIA, according to an Epoch Times inquiry. 

An internal email from February 2015 presented as evidence in a 2017 court case revealed that Monsanto employees worked with the authors of the review, with one employee writing that it would be expensive to involve experts from all major areas in a review – and would be cheaper to simply involve certain experts and “we ghost-write” other sections. 

“We would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak. Recall that is how we handled Williams Kroes & Munro, 2000,” the employee wrote. 

So of course, the journal retracts the dodgy study almost 10 years later – even as other journals – including Critical Reviews in Toxicology, attached expressions of concern co-authored by Williams because they said they authors didn’t disclose the involvement of Monsanto employees and contractors in authoring their research.

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World Health Organization Won’t Ease Coca Leaf Ban, Even As Review Found Prohibition Is More Dangerous Than The Plant

The World Health Organization had a historic opportunity to ease a strict global ban on the coca leaf—a prohibition, campaigners said, with “racist and colonial” roots. But the agency has chosen not to do so.

The WHO’s own expert review had detailed in September how millions of people across the Andes consume the coca leaf daily as part of a longstanding cultural practice without any significant negative effects—and that, conversely, coca control strategies are associated with substantial public health harms.

And yet on December 2, the WHO’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) recommended that the plant be kept in Schedule I of United Nations drug treaties—the most restrictive category of control—because coca leaves can relatively easily be converted into cocaine.

“The simplicity of extracting cocaine from coca leaf and its high yield and profitability are well known,” the ECDD wrote. “The Committee also reviewed evidence of a marked increase in coca leaf cultivation and in the production of cocaine-related substances, in the context of significant, increasing public health concern about cocaine use. In that context, the Committee considered that reducing or removing existing international controls on coca leaf could pose an especially serious risk to public health.”

The committee noted that a 34 percent year-on-year increase in cocaine production was reported in 2023, with some countries reporting historically high levels. But reform advocates emphasize that coca is not cocaine. They insist that the WHO’s review acknowledged both the plant’s medical potential and the lack of evidence of problematic coca leaf use anywhere in the world—two key criteria a drug must satisfy to be placed in a less restrictive schedule.

“It’s unacceptable for humanity to demonize a sacred medicinal plant,” Jaison Perez Villafaña, a wisdom keeper or mamo from Colombia’s Arhuaco community, told Filter. “It was more of a political decision than a scientific one. The coca leaf (el ayu) is not itself to blame for being converted into cocaine by humans with economic interests.”

The ECDD said it recognized that “coca leaf has an important cultural and therapeutic significance for Indigenous peoples and other communities and that there are exemptions for traditional use of coca leaf in certain national frameworks.” A coalition of Indigenous coca leaf producers and consumers wrote to the WHO in October urging the UN body to “clearly differentiate” between traditional coca use and issues associated with cocaine.

Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation, called the WHO’s suggestion that keeping coca in Schedule 1 would restrict cocaine production “ridiculous,” saying the decision exposed “the moral and scientific bankruptcy pervading the entire system” of global drug control.

“Whilst we may expect decisions like this to emerge from political bodies subsumed within entrenched ‘war on drugs’ narratives, there was a hope that the more objective, scientific, and nominally independent corners of the UN would maintain a degree of pragmatism and principle—even if their recommendations were later rejected by UN political entities,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

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Major Climate Crisis Study Retracted Over “Inaccuracies” As Doom Narrative Collapses

A widely hyped climate-doom study published in Nature in April 2024, and then amplified by left-wing corporate media outlets (CNN, Bloomberg, you name it), desperate to push the “green” narrative and weirdly obsessed with driving Americans into a state of severe climate shock, has now been embarrassingly retracted.

On Wednesday, Nature retracted the study titled “The economic commitment of climate change“ after economists discovered that flawed data from Uzbekistan had heavily skewed the results.

If Uzbekistan data were excluded, the paper’s eye-popping forecast of a 62% collapse in global economic output by 2100 under unabated emissions would only fall to 23%.

The retraction should intensify the debate over how accurate long-term climate forecasts actually are – and by our estimates, Al Gore, thirty years and counting, is still very wrong.

For 20 months, the study was touted by Bloomberg, CNN, Forbes, and countless MSM outlets, and even cited by the World Bank and the OECD. This helped manufacture a wildly misleading narrative of an impending climate catastrophe.

The study’s authors, led by Leonie Wenz of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, and Maximilian Kotz, a postdoctoral researcher at the institute, wrote in a retraction notice that the issues were “too substantial for a correction,” forcing the paper’s withdrawal.”

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SURPRISE! Watchdog Claims U.S. Weapons Left Behind by Biden in Afghanistan Now Make Up ‘Core’ of the Taliban Military

A watchdog has now confirmed that American weaponry left behind in the botched 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan now makes up the ‘core’ of the Taliban military.

This means that if American soldiers are ever again put on the ground in an armed conflict in Afghanistan, there is a distinct possibility that they could be injured or killed by weapons paid for by the American taxpayer. Thanks, Joe Biden!

Joe Biden could have been impeached for a number of things, but he should have been impeached for this. All of this.

Just the News reported:

Afghan watchdog concludes billions in weapons U.S. left behind form ‘core’ of Taliban military

The inspector general responsible for scrutinizing U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan has detailed the billions of dollars wasted by the U.S. government during the 20-year war in the country and concluded that the arsenal of U.S.-provided military weaponry that was left behind now forms the “core” of the Taliban’s own military machine.

A massive number of U.S.-made and U.S.-supplied weapons and military facilities were left behind in Afghanistan as a result of President Joe Biden’s troop withdrawal announcement in April 2021, which resulted in the dissolution of the Afghan military, a chaotic U.S. evacuation, and a Taliban takeover in August 2021.

The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued its “final forensic audit report” this week more than four years after the U.S. withdrawal and evacuation from the country, concluding that “these U.S. taxpayer-funded equipment, weapons, and facilities have formed the core of the Taliban security apparatus.” SIGAR said in its final report that it will close its doors at the end of January 2026 as a result of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2025.

It’s simply maddening.

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EU targets platforms that refuse to censor free speech – Telegram founder

The EU is unfairly targeting social media platforms that allow dissenting or critical speech, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said.

He was responding to a 2024 post by Elon Musk, the owner of X, who claimed that the European Commission had offered the platform a secret deal to avoid fines in return for censoring certain statements. The EU fined X €120 million ($140 million) the day before.

According to Durov, the EU imposes strict and unrealistic rules on tech companies as a way to punish those that do not comply with quiet censorship demands.

“The EU imposes impossible rules so it can punish tech firms that refuse to silently censor free speech,” Durov wrote on X on Saturday.

He also referred to his detention in France last year, which he called politically motivated. He claimed that during that time, the head of France’s DGSE asked him to “ban conservative voices in Romania” ahead of an election, an allegation French officials denied. He also said intelligence agents offered help with his case if Telegram quietly removed channels tied to Moldova’s election.

Durov repeated both claims in his recent post, describing the case as “a baseless criminal investigation” followed by pressure to censor speech in Romania and Moldova.

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