Rochelle Walensky Resigns as CDC Director

Rochelle Walenksy resigned as CDC Director on Friday.

Walensky’s last day will be June 30.

“I have never been prouder of anything I have done in my professional career,” Walensky wrote in her resignation letter to Joe Biden.

AP reported:

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, submitted her resignation Friday, saying the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic was a good time to make a transition.

Walensky’s last day will be June 30, CDC officials said, and an interim director wasn’t immediately named. She sent a resignation letter to President Joe Biden and announced the decision at a CDC staff meeting.

Walensky, 54, has been the agency’s director for a little over two years. In her letter to Biden, she expressed “mixed feelings” about the decision and didn’t say exactly why she was stepping down, but said the nation is at a moment of transition as emergency declarations come to an end.

Rochelle Walensky is a monster for what she did during the Covid pandemic.

During the height of the pandemic, the CDC announced a 60-day moratorium on evictions.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky acted independently and signed the order – no congressional authorization needed. Walensky is queen and what she says goes.

‘This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads,’ Walensky said. ‘Such mass evictions and the attendant public health consequences would be very difficult to reverse.’

The Supreme Court eventually struck down Walensky’s unconstitutional moratorium.

Last month Walensky admitted to Congress that vaccinated people can spread the COVID virus.

This is after she said vaccine misinformation was one of the biggest health threats.

Walensky was also behind the push for the child masking policy in the US.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday said that it was no longer categorizing COVID-19 as a global health emergency.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/breaking-rochelle-walensky-resigns-as-cdc-director/

Arizona Supreme Court Issues Joke Sanctions Against Kari Lake Over Accurate Claim of 35,563 Unaccounted For Ballots – Fraudulent Signatures to Go Back to Trial! (ORDER INCLUDED)

The Arizona Supreme Court issued a new order on Thursday, denying Katie Hobbs’ request for attorneys’ fees from Kari Lake but still sanctioning Lake’s attorneys and ordering her to pay $2,000 to the Supreme Court.

Kari Lake’s lawsuit will now go back to trial on the critical issue of fraudulent signature verification; however, Maricopa County refuses to provide her legal team or We The People AZ with ballot affidavit signatures from the 2022 Election. See examples of the fraudulent signatures accepted by Maricopa County here.

The new sanction is a joke, but it’s still wrong.

The Court states, “claims are sanctionable if they are brought ‘without substantial justification.’ Further, ‘without substantial justification’ means that the ‘claim or defense is groundless and is not made in good faith.’”

However, Lake previously filed a Motion for Leave in the Arizona Supreme Court, proving that 35,563 ballots were unaccounted for in the County’s forms documenting the delivery of ballots to Runbeck and the forms documenting the number of ballots received from Runbeck.

Maricopa County falsely claimed that Kari Lake “presents—for the first time—a misleading factual theory about chain-of-custody documents” and “does not present any argument illustrating a need for this Court to review the court of appeals’ Opinion.” However, this issue was presented in the Arizona Court of Appeals.

Maricopa County just refuses to answer the central question of why there are over 35,000 unaccounted-for ballots. They also offer no response to the Runbeck whistleblower, who testified that ballots could be inserted anywhere in the process at Runbeck and that the employees were inserting ballots into the ballot stream. And Maricopa County is still avoiding the central issues that the county deliberately ignored the mandatory chain of custody requirements and the failures to do logic and accuracy testing. Clearly, Maricopa County misrepresented the facts to the court. They just didn’t follow the law.

From Lake’s Arizona Appeals Court Reply Brief:

Counting the number of ballots recorded on the Runbeck created “MC Inbound—Receipt of Delivery” forms for early ballots delivered to Runbeck on and after Election Day documents only263,379 early ballots received by Runbeck. Hobbs.Appx:123- In comparison, the “MC Incoming Scan Receipts” Hobbs (Hobbs.App:132-61) cites in her brief, documentsthe total number of early ballots scanned for signature verification at Runbeck as 298,942, the same figure reported by the Runbeck whistleblower noted in Lake’s opening brief at 18. In other words, the very “MC Inbound Receipt of Delivery” forms that Hobbs points to as chain of custody, fail to document any record of delivery or receipt of the other 35,563 ballots scanned at Runbeck, an inexplicable discrepancy that far exceeds the margin between Hobbs and Lake

The Arizona Supreme Court wrongfully “concluded and expressly stated that the assertion was unsupported by the record, and nothing in Lake’s Motion for Leave to file a motion for reconsideration provides reason to revisit that issue.” This claim was supported; they just ignored Lake’s argument.

This is why Runbeck and Maricopa County refused to provide video footage from their loading docks and warehouse after election day.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, We The People AZ Alliance will be filing a lawsuit after Maricopa County and Runbeck Election Services denied lawful public records requests for footage at their facility, which could prove that 35,563 illegal ballots were added to the count. Runbeck’s liberal attorney is also the same attorney who represented Katie Hobbs in Lake’s lawsuit.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/just-in-arizona-supreme-court-issues-joke-sanctions-against-kari-lake-over-accurate-claim-of-35563-unaccounted-for-ballots-fraudulent-signatures-to-go-back-to-trial-order-included/

Covid-19 pandemic is over – WHO

The World Health Organization has said that coronavirus no longer qualifies as a global emergency

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that Covid-19 no longer represents a global health emergency, after more than three years and nearly 7 million dead.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus officially downgraded the status of the disease on Friday while stressing it remained a “global health threat.” The decision to lower the alert level was made following a meeting of experts on Thursday.

While the “emergency phase” has concluded, thousands of people were still dying every week from the virus, the WHO insisted. The WHO first described Covid-19 as a pandemic in March 2020, when the virus had spread to every continent except Antarctica.

While the disease had claimed just a few hundred lives by that time, the pandemic declaration resulted in unprecedented lockdowns and restrictions on movement and commerce, causing economic contractions that are still being felt. Since then, about 764 million cases have been recorded globally, while 5 billion people have reportedly received at least one dose of a vaccine.

While most countries have dropped their pandemic control measures, the US still has a public health emergency in effect, which is not due to expire until next week. More than 1.1 million people died having Covid-19 in the US, more than in any other country, according to WHO statistics.

In 2021 the WHO declared the virus had jumped to humans from animals, only to reverse course the following year and acknowledge that “key pieces of data” were missing in assessing if it might have emerged from a lab instead.

Earlier this week, the organization announced that the head of the international mission sent to China to investigate the pandemic’s origins had been dismissed for sexual misconduct. Peter Ben Embarek has claimed political pressure was exerted on his team, including from outside China.

Frustrated by the lack of a coordinated global response to its emergency declaration, the WHO has put its 194 member nations to work drafting a global treaty to address future pandemics. While the agreement is ostensibly aimed at protecting the population from global health threats, critics have warned it could preempt national sovereignty and individual rights.

https://www.rt.com/news/575847-covid-pandemic-over-who/

Zelensky is a ‘puppet’ – Lavrov

The tensions between Moscow and the West can only be resolved by talking with the Ukrainian president’s foreign masters, Russia’s FM has said

The West and Russia will eventually sit down to discuss their differences, but this dialogue should be held not with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky but with those using him as a stooge, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Goa, India, Lavrov reiterated that Moscow had “never refused to settle issues arising from the actions of the US and their satellites to pump Ukraine with weapons” so that it could fight Russia.

The minister noted that many countries around the world are growing increasingly aware that these tensions cannot be defused solely by freezing the Ukraine conflict. “Everyone understands that the ongoing events are geopolitical in nature,” he said.

“Without solving the main geopolitical problem – that of the West aspiring to hold onto its hegemony and impose its own will on all the others, – it is impossible to resolve crises in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world,” Lavrov added.

The Russian diplomat pointed to China’s 12-point plan for a political settlement in Ukraine, which was released in late February. Lavrov said that while the plan does seek to settle the conflict itself, it also focuses on much more global and comprehensive issues.

“All this has to be discussed, of course, not with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters,” Lavrov said, noting that such talks would take place “sooner or later.”

In early April, amid speculation about an imminent Ukrainian spring counteroffensive, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ruled out any peace negotiations between Kiev and Moscow, suggesting that such talks would only help Russia to "ratify" its territorial gains.

Moscow has repeatedly said it is open to talks with Kiev if the latter recognizes “the reality on the ground,” including the new status of four former Ukrainian regions that overwhelmingly voted to join Russia last autumn. However, around the same time as the referendums, Zelensky signed a decree prohibiting negotiations with the current Russian leadership.

https://www.rt.com/russia/575839-zelensky-puppet-lavrov-west/

Rep. Gosar Floats Foreign Aid Moratorium After $200 Billion Sent to Ukraine

Rep. Gosar has previously called for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and even offered to host the talks in Arizona.

Freedom Caucus Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) is floating a moratorium on all foreign aid, as a result of the United States sending a whopping $200 billion to Ukraine in support of its Soros-backed revolution and ongoing war against Russia.

“America has sent over $200 billion to Ukraine despite all of the problems were have here at home,” Gosar, one of the most vocally America First members of Congress, wrote in a tweet.

“Would you support a total moratorium on all foreign aid?” he asked.

Responses to Gosar’s tweet have been overwhelmingly in favor of cutting all US foreign aid, a position increasingly taken by conservatives, especially those within the America First wing of conservatism.

https://nationalfile.com/rep-gosar-floats-foreign-aid-moratorium-after-200-billion-sent-to-ukraine/

Google engineer jumps to death in NYC, second worker suicide in months

A senior software engineer at Google jumped to his death from the search giant’s headquarters in Chelsea late Thursday, according to authorities and police sources.

The 31-year-old man — whose name is being withheld pending family notification — plunged from the 14th floor of 111 Eighth Ave. around 11:30 p.m., cops said.

Police responded to multiple 911 calls of an unconscious person lying on the ground near a building on West 15th Street, opposite the 2.9 million-square-foot, 15-story Art Deco building, authorities said.

The employee’s death comes months after Jacob Pratt, a 33-year-old Google employee who also worked at the Manhattan headquarters, was found dead of an apparent suicide.

Pratt appeared to have hanged himself in an apartment at the corner of West 26th Street and 6th Avenue in Chelsea just before 6 p.m. Feb. 16.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/05/google-senior-software-engineer-31-jumps-to-death-from-nyc-headquarters/

Virgin Islands struggles to subpoena Google’s Larry Page in Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit against JPMorgan

US Virgin Islands is attempting to subpoena Google co-founder Larry Page as part of its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over its role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring — but can’t seem to find Page to serve him the documents, a court filing revealed on Thursday.

The Virgin Islands government wants to subpoena the 50-year-old billionaire Google exec because it believes Page may have had a connection to the convicted pedophile, who was a JPMorgan client.

Page “is a high-net-worth individual who Epstein may have referred or attempted to refer to JPMorgan,” the court documents read.

The original lawsuit was filed against the big bank in December 2022. It claimed that JPMorgan “turned a blind eye to evidence of human trafficking over more than a decade because of Epstein’s own financial footprint, and because of the deals and clients that Epstein brought and promised to bring to the bank.”

Page is believed to be one of those referenced clients, and this isn’t the first time the Virgin Islands government has tried to serve a subpoena on Page to uncover more.

A previous attempt to subpoena Page was made on April 11, the court filing said, and the government “made good-faith attempts to obtain an address for Larry Page, including hiring an investigative firm to search public records databases for possible addresses.”

“Our process server attempted service at the addresses identified by our investigative firm, but discovered the addresses were not valid for Mr. Page,” the documents said.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/05/virgin-islands-struggles-to-subpoena-googles-larry-page-in-jeffrey-epstein-lawsuit-against-jpmorgan/

Mexican President Stops Pentagon from Tracking ‘Asian’ Balloon Through Country’s Airspace

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador bragged that the Pentagon asked for permission to track an Asian balloon through Mexican Airspace and he denied it.

Lopez Obrador made the comments during one of his morning news conferences in Mexico City. He claimed to be standing up for Mexican sovereignty. As part of his rhetoric, AMLO has often claimed that he will not tolerate Mexico being subservient to the U.S. as they were in the past and will fight to keep its interventionism out of Mexico.

“(On Wednesday) they called from the Pentagon to (Mexican) Defense to ask for permission because they wanted to fly over our airspace with airplanes and drones of high technological military level because they had detected a balloon that came from Hawaii and was going to pass through Mexico,” Lopez Obrador said during his conference as he emphasized his stance on not allowing other nations to intervene in Mexican affairs. During his comments. AMLO used the term “from Asia” to describe the balloon but did not say specifically if it was Chinese.

Despite the request, Lopez Obrador said he did not allow the U.S. military to follow the balloon as it was about to enter Mexican airspace at 35,000 feet. Tracking indicated the balloon would enter Mexico through Manzanillo and exit through Tamaulipas.

“The response was no, we don’t allow the entry of those aircraft and those drones into our airspace,” Lopez Obrador said.

The Mexican president said that his country is willing to cooperate and that the U.S. could send the information to them. Mexico would do its own tracking operation using its own equipment. He added that some information was shared but that Mexico did not find anything.

It remains unclear where the balloon went after entering Mexican airspace. The AP reports that the U.S. government has since determined that it was not a Chinese aircraft.

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2023/05/05/mexican-president-stops-pentagon-from-tracking-asian-balloon-through-countrys-airspace/

NATO to Open Office in Japan, the Alliance’s First in Asia

China warned against NATO's 'eastward foray into the Asia Pacific'

NATO is planning to open a liaison office in Japan next year, the alliance’s first in Asia, Nikkei Asia reported Wednesday.

In recent years, NATO has turned its gaze toward the Asia Pacific region and named China a “systemic challenge” in its 2022 Strategic Concept. As part of its strategy against China, the alliance is deepening cooperation with countries in the region.

According to Nikkei, the purpose of the liaison office in Japan is to “allow the military alliance to conduct periodic consultations with Japan and key partners in the region, such as South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand as China emerges as a new challenge, alongside its traditional focus on Russia.”

The report said NATO and Japan will take more steps to increase cooperation by signing an agreement known as an Individually Tailored Partnership Programme ahead of the NATO summit that will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, in June. Japan also plans to open an independent mission to NATO, separate from the Embassy in Belgium.

In response to the news, China warned of NATO’s plans to expand into Asia. “Asia is an anchor for peace and stability and a promising land for cooperation and development, not a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.

“NATO’s continued eastward foray into the Asia Pacific and interference in regional affairs will inevitably undermine regional peace and stability and stoke camp confrontation. This calls for high vigilance among regional countries,” she added.

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/05/04/nato-to-open-office-in-japan-the-alliances-first-in-asia/

From Shabbat arrangements to Jerusalem oil: Jewish details of King Charles coronation

In first, representatives of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and Zoroastrian communities, among others, to be incorporated into proceedings for Saturday royal ceremony

At a reception of faith leaders at Buckingham Palace the day after Queen Elizabeth’s death in September, King Charles pulled Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, aside for a word.

The reception was pushed earlier in the day than originally planned to accommodate Mirvis, since it fell on a Friday. But it ran long and Shabbat was approaching. According to Rabbi Nicky Liss, head of the Highgate Synagogue, Charles asked Mirvis what the rabbi was doing sticking around — didn’t he have to get home by Shabbat?

The protocol is that no one is allowed to leave the room before the king does, Mirvis responded. Charles then promptly told him to get home.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on September 8. (Aaron Chown / AFP)

LONDON (JTA) — At a reception of faith leaders at Buckingham Palace the day after Queen Elizabeth’s death in September, King Charles pulled Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, aside for a word.

The reception was pushed earlier in the day than originally planned to accommodate Mirvis, since it fell on a Friday. But it ran long and Shabbat was approaching. According to Rabbi Nicky Liss, head of the Highgate Synagogue, Charles asked Mirvis what the rabbi was doing sticking around — didn’t he have to get home by Shabbat?

The protocol is that no one is allowed to leave the room before the king does, Mirvis responded. Charles then promptly told him to get home.

Into the Land: A Tale of Two Cities

Both men are expected to bring that spirit of mutual respect to Charles’ coronation day on Saturday, as the new king will include a range of faith leaders who have never before been featured in a royal ceremony of this magnitude.

While much of the ceremony is still rooted in Christian rituals, representatives of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Bahai and Zoroastrian communities will be incorporated into the proceedings.

In fact, non-Jewish faith representatives will enter Westminster Abbey before Anglican clerics. Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh members of the House of Lords will hand Charles objects of the royal regalia. And in a notable cross-cultural mash-up, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is Hindu, will read a passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, which includes language on the “loving rule of Christ over all people and all things.”

There is one large obstacle for observant Jewish participants and onlookers: The ceremony falls on Shabbat. But Charles has invited Mirvis to sleep in his home on Friday night — Clarence House, located a 15-minute walk from Westminster Abbey, the site of the coronation — so he can easily get to the event without using electricity (he will attend an early morning Shabbat service on his way).

And when religious leaders recite a “spoken greeting in unison” to Charles at the end of the ceremony, Mirvis will not use a microphone.

While many Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law hold that Jews should not enter churches, London’s top rabbinical court ruled in the 1970s that chief rabbis may do so if their presence is requested by the monarch. Coronations have been held at Westminster Abbey since 1066; the last time one was held on Shabbat was in 1902.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-jewish-details-of-king-charles-coronation-shabbat-arrangements-jerusalem-oil/

Denver City Council Member: Tax White-Owned Businesses And Give It To Black, Brown-Owned Businesses

Democrat Denver City Council member Candi CdeBaca advocated this week for taxing white-owned businesses and giving that money to black and brown-owned businesses as a form of reparations.

CdeBaca is an unabashed communist, proudly declaring back in 2019 that she “believe[s] in community ownership of land, labor, resources, and distribution of those resources” and that she was “excited to usher it in by any means necessary.”

CdeBaca claimed during the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance Forum on Thursday that “capitalism was built on stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen resources.

“And a check today could not undo the cumulative impact of generations of that stolen wealth in all of those categories,” she continued. “And so I think it has to come in the form of land, labor, and resources in an ongoing fashion. And there are structures that we have that could be flipped to begin to do that reparations.”

CdeBaca claimed that an economic development plan for the Five Points neighborhood was stealing from the businesses there because it would increase taxes.

“Instead of a bid collecting extra taxation from the black and brown businesses that are struggling, you could be collecting those extra taxes from white-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to black and brown-owned businesses, who are not part of the bid, or who are simply just black or brown owned,” she said. “And that’s one way to give back in the business form fashion. I think when we talk about resources being returned, this is where consumer-owned or municipally-owned resources are important.”

CdeBaca also pushed for giving checks “in an ongoing fashion” to black and brown people as a form of reparations.

“And we need to go far beyond welfare wages and go to prosperous wages because we don’t want to just survive anymore and reparation’s goal should not be survival, it should be repairing the harm, which is this entire economy,” she said.

http://www.womensystems.com/2023/05/denver-city-council-member-tax-white.html

At Least 20 Properties in the UK Linked to Nigeria’s President-elect and His Associates

igeria's president-elect, Bola Tinubu, whose victory in February is being challenged in court, has been keeping part of his wealth in the United Kingdom, where he and his close associates own at least 20 properties that were mostly acquired when Tinubu was the governor of Lagos State.

Following the 2023 presidential election, Tinubu is scheduled to succeed Muhammadu Buhari as president on 29 May 2023. His opponents claim the elections have been fixed.

The 71-year-old is widely seen as Nigeria's political kingmaker for his role in the elections of several governors in the country's southwest region, as well as the election of Buhari, who defeated the incumbent in 2015.

The governors he picked tended to be former directors of companies owned by Tinubu or his son.

Bloomberg first reported on Tuesday that Tinubu's son, Oluwaseyi, is the main shareholder of Aranda Overseas Corporation, an offshore company that bought a controversial US$10.8 million U.K. property in 2017.

At the time it was bought, Nigeria was trying to confiscate the London house that belonged to a Nigerian oil dealer who was facing corruption charges at home and in the United States, according to OCCRP Nigerian partner Premium Times.

However, OCCRP has uncovered more than a dozen other properties with links to Tinubu, mostly acquired while he served as Lagos State's governor from May 1999 to May 2007. Tinubu’s spokesman did not respond to email and text messages seeking comment.

“If there are reasonable grounds to suspect these assets were bought with criminal funds then they should be investigated,” said Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International U.K. “Owning a home via an offshore company has seldom made much sense except for securing secrecy,” he added.

Tinubu’s history is not entirely clean. He was forced to forfeit $460,000 to the U.S. government in 1993 as proceeds of narcotics trafficking, according to the ruling of a U.S. District Court in Illinois.

However, about a year later, Abeeb Holdings Limited, an offshore company registered in Gibraltar with Tinubu as the beneficial owner, bought Flat 9 at 96-100 New Cavendish Street in London.

His connection to Abeeb Holdings Limited has been revealed, thanks to the Register of Overseas Entities, a new measure designed by the U.K. to reveal the true owners of offshore firms that hold property in the country.

https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/17597-at-least-20-properties-in-the-uk-linked-to-nigeria-s-president-elect-and-his-associates

Burger King to Close 400 Stores Nationwide

Burger King is closing 400 stores nationwide by the end of 2023.

It is unclear which locations will be closing down.

TODAY reported:

The popular fast food chain Burger King plans to close up to 400 restaurants before the end of 2023, TODAY.com confirmed.

This week, the CEO of Restaurant Brands International Inc., which owns Burger King, said they are preparing to close between 300 and 400 locations.

The CEO, Joshua Kobza, said in a call announcing Q1 earnings results, that the company “historically” closes “a couple hundred” Burger King restaurants each year.

So far this year, several large Burger King franchisees have filed for bankruptcy: Illinois-based Toms King, Michigan-based EYM King, and Utah-based Meridian Restaurants Unlimited.

According to a Restaurant Brands International release announcing the earnings, 124 Burger Kings have already shuttered this year, bringing the total number in the United States to fewer than 7,000.

Kobza said in the call that the company plans to focus on working with smaller franchisees to “improve the overall health” of the company’s franchise system.

Last month McDonald’s temporarily shut its US offices as it prepared for corporate layoffs.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/burger-king-to-close-400-stores-nationwide/