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Prince Andrew ‘put pressure on the US government to give Jeffrey Epstein a plea deal’ which saw the pedophile jailed for only 18 months in 2008, unsealed documents claim

Prince Andrew ‘lobbied the US government to help get a sweetheart plea-deal for pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein‘ that saw him jailed for just 18 months in 2008, newly unsealed court documents claim.

The allegation is contained within a motion by lawyers for two anonymous Epstein accusers who were trying to get hold of documents which they claim showed Andrew’s lobbying efforts.

The motion forms part of a 2015 libel case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s alleged madam, which have been kept under lock and key until today – when they were released following her arrest on sex trafficking charges.

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Exposing the maskerade: The questions every American should be asking about indefinite mask mandates

The trope of “just shut up and wear a mask” is not science, ordered liberty, or constitutional governance. It’s what they do in North Korea. We need real debate on the effectiveness of masks, the type of masks, the situations in which they are worn, the duration of time, the benchmarks that need to be met to measure effectiveness, and the process for promulgating these rules. We are no longer 24 hours into an emergency. We are four months into this virus, and it’s time to function like the representative republic that we are.

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AstraZeneca to be exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries

AstraZeneca has been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful by most of the countries with which it has struck supply agreements, a senior executive told Reuters.

With 25 companies testing their vaccine candidates on humans and getting ready to immunise hundred millions of people once the products are shown to work, the question of who pays for any claims for damages in case of side effects has been a tricky point in supply negotiations.

“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in … four years the vaccine is showing side effects,” Ruud Dobber, a member of Astra’s senior executive team, told Reuters.

“In the contracts we have in place, we are asking for indemnification. For most countries it is acceptable to take that risk on their shoulders because it is in their national interest,” he said, adding that Astra and regulators were making safety and tolerability a top priority.

Dobber would not name the countries.

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The Night A Mysterious Drone Swarm Descended On Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant

While the news has been filled with claims that strange unidentified craft with unexplainable capabilities are appearing over highly sensitive U.S. installations and assets as of late, a much less glamorous, more numerous, and arguably far more pressing threat has continued to metastasize in alarming ways—that posed by lower-end and even off-the-shelf drones. Less than a year ago and just days after the stunning drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s most critical energy production infrastructure deep in the heart of that highly defended country, a bizarre and largely undisclosed incident involving a swarm of drones occurred on successive September evenings in 2019. The location? America’s most powerful nuclear plant, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station situated roughly two dozen miles west of Phoenix, near Tonopah, Arizona. 

In a trove of documents and internal correspondences related to the event, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) described the incident as a “drone-a-palooza” and said that it highlighted concerns about the potential for a future “adversarial attack” involving small unmanned aircraft and the need for defenses against them. Even so, the helplessness and even cavalier attitude toward the drone incident as it was unfolding by those that are tasked with securing one of America’s largest and most sensitive nuclear facilities serves as an alarming and glaring example of how neglected and misunderstood this issue is.

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Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO)—chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as anti-cancer agents

Chloroquine (CQ) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) are well-known 4-aminoquinoline antimalarial agents. Scientific evidence also supports the use of CQ and HCQ in the treatment of cancer. Overall, preclinical studies support CQ and HCQ use in anti-cancer therapy, especially in combination with conventional anti-cancer treatments since they are able to sensitise tumour cells to a variety of drugs, potentiating the therapeutic activity. Thus far, clinical results are mostly in favour of the repurposing of CQ. However, over 30 clinical studies are still evaluating the activity of both CQ and HCQ in different cancer types and in combination with various standard treatments. Interestingly, CQ and HCQ exert effects both on cancer cells and on the tumour microenvironment. In addition to inhibition of the autophagic flux, which is the most studied anti-cancer effect of CQ and HCQ, these drugs affect the Toll-like receptor 9, p53 and CXCR4-CXCL12 pathway in cancer cells. In the tumour stroma, CQ was shown to affect the tumour vasculature, cancer-associated fibroblasts and the immune system. The evidence reviewed in this paper indicates that both CQ and HCQ deserve further clinical investigations in several cancer types. Special attention about the drug (CQ versus HCQ), the dose and the schedule of administration should be taken in the design of new trials.

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