Brazil Launches Formal Investigation Of Bolsonaro, Arrests His Justice Minister, Over Riots

In a move that was entirely to be expected given that Brazil's new far left leadership has been railing against massive pro-Bolsonaro, anti-Lula protesters as "terrorists" - Brazil's Supreme Court on Friday ordered a formal investigation of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been living outside the country, in Orlando, Florida.

Though the Biden White House after days of speculation has repeatedly underscored it has yet received no extradition request for Bolsonaro, there have been growing calls among US progressive lawmakers to cancel his visa and boot him from the United States.

New left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his top officials have pointed the finger at the man popularly dubbed 'Brazil's Donald Trump' for stoking election denial and fueling riots in the country, most notably last week's storming of Brazil's Congress building and other facilities.

Bolsonaro supporters, who have alleged widespread election fraud, have also held frequent protests outside military facilities, demanding that the armed forces intervene to overthrow a 'false election'.

The Oct.30 election, which was the second round, saw Lula take 50.9% of the vote against Bolsonaro’s 49.1%. The closeness of the results sparked anger and unrest among pro-Bolsonaro crowds.

Estimates of those arrested for breaking into Brazilian Congress on Jan.8 range from 700 to over 1,300 - with authorities reportedly continuing to investigate those who trespassed on the federal property.

And now the ratcheting rhetoric and legal case being built against Bolsonaro could possibly result in his own arrest if he were to return home to Brazil, given that his minister of justice has just been arrested:

Brazil’s former Minister of Justice and Public Security Anderson Torres, who was in charge of security in Brasilia during the invasion of government buildings last week, has been arrested on suspicion of “omission” and “connivance”.

Torres, who was former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s justice minister, was arrested after returning to Brazil on Saturday after a vacation in Florida, the same US state that Bolsonaro had travelled to after losing the election to current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The new justice minister, Flavio Dino, had issued an ultimatum last week: Torres could either return of his own will or face formal extradition proceedings. Torres days later returned to Brazil to hand himself in, where he's expected to fight the charges.

All of this is seen as part of the Lula government's war to root out "Bolsonaristas" as they see the movement as a threat to Brazil's democracy, and many are saying it has parallels to Jan.6 in the US.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/brazil-launches-formal-investigation-bolsonaro-arrests-his-justice-minister-over-riots

House Democrats introduce measure to lower voting age to 16

Bill supported by AOC, others.

Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced a measure this week to lower the federal voting age to 16, a change that has drawn support from top party leaders in the past.

The bill, House Resolution 16, would establish that “the right of citizens of the United States, who are sixteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.”

The policy would repeal the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which establishes the national voting age as 18.

In the past, former Speaker of the House and longtime Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has supported a 16-year-old voting age.

“I think it’s really important to capture kids when they’re in high school when they’re interested in all of this when they’re learning about government to be able to vote,” she told the Daily Caller in 2019.

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/house-democrats-introduce-measure-lower-voting-age-16

Biden Admin Fails to Comply with Classified Doc Probe After Vowing ‘Highest Standards of Transparency’

The Biden administration has failed to comply with the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s mishandling of top secret documents after promising the “highest standards of transparency” in United States history.

In a letter issued by the president on February 4, 2021, Biden vowed the highest standards of transparency would be “revitalized” and implemented within his administration.

“In a democracy, the public deserves as much transparency as possible regarding the work of our national security institutions, consistent with legitimate needs to protect sources and methods and sensitive foreign relationships,” Biden’s letter stated.

“The revitalization of our national security and foreign policy workforce requires a recommitment to the highest standards of transparency,” the president wrote.

But Biden has failed to live up to his promised standard.

On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, requested the National Archives disclose “all documents and communications between or among the White House and the Department of Justice or NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] regarding the documents retrieved from President Biden’s personal office at the Penn Biden Center.”

The National Archives has apparently not complied. Comer told Fox News on Saturday the National Archives is stonewalling the Oversight Committee’s investigation.

“I have jurisdiction over the national archives. This agency is supposed to do a briefing anytime something like this happens. They have not,” Comer said. “Not only have they not given us a briefing, even though we’ve requested one, they have not answered any of our simple requests for information.”

Meanwhile, there appears to be a blame game brewing within the Biden administration about who is responsible for the mishandling of classified documents — some of which are top secret.

A report by CNN revealed Biden administration officials are blaming the National Archives for refusing to treat then-Vice President Biden’s records with the “same high regard” as it did former President Obama’s records.

“While the National Archives sends staff members to the White House to gather files and papers of the President, they do not treat all vice presidential papers with the same high regard, officials said,” CNN reported, citing “former and current administration officials and others familiar with the process.”

Law enforcement has reportedly begun interviewing individuals responsible for the violation. According to NBC News, Joe Biden’s former executive assistant Kathy Chung, hired to the post after a recommendation from Hunter Biden, was questioned by law enforcement over the classified documents stashed in three separate locations. Chung’s employment as Joe Biden’s assistant was in part due to Hunter Biden, who recommended his father hire her, according to Hunter’s laptop emails.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/14/biden-admin-fail-comply-classified-doc-probe-after-vowing-highest-standards-transparency/

White House: Government Debt Doesn’t Weaken America ‘at All’

On Friday’s edition of NBC’s “Now Tonight,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Jared Bernstein argued that America’s government debt doesn’t weaken the country.

Host Jake Ward asked, “For those of us at home, the idea of having debt sounds like a very, very bad thing. … What I want to ask you here is, is [Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)] right, does our debt as a nation make us weak?”

Bernstein responded, “Not at all. First of all, the key point there though — and I will — again, I’ll answer your question, but I think the House leader is engaging in a kind of sleight of hand there in the following sense: If Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans believe that we should lower the debt, they have every right and even every obligation to their constituents — if that’s their position — to write new spending bills, future spending bills that reduce our debt, either raise revenues or cut spending. That’s absolutely their prerogative. But raising the debt ceiling is necessary to pay spending obligations for which we have already agreed, okay? Funding our military, paying our Social Security recipients, paying our bondholders. These are debts. These are obligations that Congresses — this Congress and other Congresses — have already endorsed, have already signed off on. It’s exactly analogous to having your dinner at the restaurant and saying, I’m not going to pay for this meal because there have been too many meals that we’ve been having lately. It’s just really a non-sequitur. Again, if they want to take action on further spending to reduce the debt, go ahead and introduce bills. Joe Biden has shown that deficit reduction is something he’s pretty good at, 1.7 trillion over his first couple of years.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/01/14/white-house-government-debt-doesnt-weaken-america-at-all/

Would-be murderer Sara Jane Moore was sentenced to life behind bars on January 14, 1976, for her attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/today-in-history-news-headlines-on-this-day-in-pictures-famous-historical-images-crime-sport-celebrity-world-news-global-events/08ca7615-2af7-41d6-964f-6fd0c9c8f357

Google changed their results

Second pick was taken Thursday

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https://www.translate.com/latin-english

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>>18144604

New Gas Boilers Should Be Banned Within 10 Years, Demands UK Govt Report

A report on net zero goals commissioned by the British government has said that all new gas-powered boilers should be banned within the next ten years – a move that would cost average households thousands.

The Independent Review of Net Zero, written by Conservative (Tory) MP Chris Skidmore — the man who first introduced Net Zero targets in Parliament — has called for a radical transformation of homes in Britain, arguing that the sale of new gas boilers should be completely phased out within a decade and for legacy heaters to be replaced by allegedly more environmentally friendly heat pumps.

The report was commissioned during the brief tenure of former prime minister Liz Truss, who attempted to lift the ban on domestic fracking — a reform which was swiftly killed off by current premier Rishi Sunak after he was installed in a parliamentary party coup.

In the paper, Skidmore admitted that his plan would mean a costly process for already struggling Britons, estimating that households will lose between £4,000 to £6,000 by the year 2040, and that any potential savings will not be seen until after that.

The report went on to acknowledge that up to 500,000 households will not see any savings from the transition at all, unless government subsidises the move.

According to the parliamentary climate change committee, the cost of replacing gas boilers with heat pumps could rise to as high as £26,000 per household. Nevertheless, the report claimed that “ultimately” the benefits of the net zero plans will be greater than the costs.

In addition to the recommendations on boilers, the report called for an “onshore wind revolution” and a “rooftop revolution” to increase the number of solar panels by 500 per cent by 2035 in order to supposedly lessen the nation’s dependency on foreign energy sources in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

“There is no denying the fact that, 42 months on from the UK signing net zero into law, we are now in a net zero race. To stand still, delay or maintain the status quo is not an option,” Skidmore insisted in The Telegraph.

“We have reached a tipping point. The risks of ‘not zero’ are now greater than the associated risks of taking decisive action on net zero now,” the Conservative MP asserted.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/01/14/new-gas-boilers-should-banned-within-10-years-demands-uk-govt-report/

Children's hospital gender program navigator touts giving uteruses from 'live donors' to trans women

The transgender advocate said helping trans women get pregnant was 'one of the main reasons I do the work that I do'

A Pittsburgh children's hospital is under fire after its gender program navigator advocated for helping transgender women get pregnant by giving reproductive organs to them from live donors.

In a presentation on "Fertility in the LGBTQIA+ community" last May that went viral this week, the community navigator for a youth gender program at the University of Pittsburgh Children's Hospital discussed the criteria the medical community uses for gender transition in adolescents, as well as a 2018 study on uterine transplants for transgender patients.

"One area that had not been looked at before in any serious way was could the donors be live donors?" Alicyn Simpson, who works with the hospital's pediatric Gender and Sexual Development Program, asked. "Live donation has been something the [transgender] community has talked about for decades, it was really thought about as magical thinking."

Simpson said that trans men "assigned female at birth" would discuss the possibility of giving their reproductive organs to trans females.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/childrens-hospital-gender-program-navigator-touts-giving-uteruses-live-donors-trans-women

Growing COVID strain may be more likely to infect the vaccinated, those who've already had virus, NYC health officials say

A growing COVID strain — Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 — may be more likely to infect the vaccinated and those who've already had the virus, New York City health officials tweeted Friday.

"Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for 73% of all sequenced COVID-19 cases in NYC," the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said. "XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible form of COVID-19 that we know of to date and may be more likely to infect people who have been vaccinated or already had COVID-19."

Nevertheless the agency added in a subsequent tweet that "getting vaccinated and getting the updated booster is still the best way to protect yourself from hospitalization and death from COVID-19, including from these new variants" and encouraged residents to "get your updated booster today."

What else do we know about XBB.1.5?

Reuters — citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — reported Friday that XBB.1.5 is estimated to account for 43% of U.S. COVID-19 cases for the week ending Jan. 14.

In the first week of January, the subvariant accounted for about 30% of cases, Fox News said, adding that the offshoot of XBB was first detected in October. It's also known as "Kraken."

Fox News added that the World Health Organization warned earlier this week that the strain may lead to an increased number of cases based on genetic characteristics and early growth-rate estimates.

"Our concern is how transmissible it is," Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said, according to Fox News.

Van Kerkhove added that "he more this virus circulates, the more chances it will have to change," the cable network reported.

However, she also said there's no data yet that proves XBB.1.5 causes more severe disease, Fox News reported, and that the WHO is working on a new risk assessment for the variant that's expected to be released soon.

CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen also said the strain "does not appear to cause more severe disease. Like other Omicron descendants, it probably causes milder illness compared with the Delta variants that predated Omicron."

Anything else?

Incidentally, Wen supported hardline measures such as universal masking requirements and in September 2021 proposed barring the unvaccinated from interstate travel, vaccinations for every American over the age of 12, proof of vaccination for all U.S. residents, and that businesses shouldn't serve the unvaccinated.

Wen appeared to change her tune a bit in December 2021 when she called cloth face masks "little more than facial decorations" and added that the U.S. should require people to wear surgical masks in crowded indoor areas. Last month Wen said natural immunity against COVID is the optimal protection.

In a Friday op-ed for the Washington Post — titled "We are overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations. That’s a problem." — Wen wondered if Americans are "dying from covid or with covid?"

https://www.theblaze.com/news/growing-covid-strain-may-be-more-likely-to-infect-the-vaccinated-those-whove-already-had-virus-nyc-health-officials-say

https://twitter.com/nycHealthy/status/1613913360352903171