USA - As a country, we have never been through anything like this before. In the months ahead, millions upon millions of highly qualified people are going to be forced out of their jobs because of federal, state and local mandates that will soon be implemented. If you think that this is a good idea, you are crazy. How will you feel if there is a fire in your neighborhood and your home burns down because there weren’t enough firefighters? Or how about if you have a heart attack but you have to wait three hours for an ambulance because there aren’t enough first responders?

UK - The idea of challenging taboos and breaking free from the shackles of moral norms is becoming rampant in advertising. But while the commercialisation of identities may be good for the bottom line, it messes people up. A new advert in the UK for John Lewis home insurance offers compelling evidence that transgenderism has become the sacred cause of the woke establishment. Titled ‘Let Life Happen’, it features a narcissistic-looking young boy running riot and thrashing his home. However, according to the message signalled by the ad, all is forgiven because he is wearing his mom’s frock and lipstick. According to the current woke ethos, little boys expressing themselves through cross-dressing are inevitably labelled as ‘brave’, and unlike their straight-laced mates are capable of expressing themselves through transgressing. In this ad, John Lewis isn’t just simply selling insurance; it is also celebrating a lifestyle. This lifestyle promotes transgression and the ethos of transgenderism… it is only a matter of time before the act of criticising transgenderism itself becomes a taboo.

USA - New York has begun firing and suspending healthcare workers who refuse to get inoculated with the experimental Covid-19 shot, proving the mandate from the state that once praised its ‘frontline heroes’ is really just about power. Monday was the deadline for New York’s healthcare workers to receive their first vaccine dose, and the state’s facade of blissful obedience has already begun to crack.

ISRAEL - Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is in Washington DC to meet with top Biden administration officials for talks centered on Iran as well as the Gaza Strip and other security-related matters. As expected, Lapid warned US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan that Iran is on the brink of becoming a "nuclear threshold state". As nuclear talks between Tehran and world powers have remain stalled in Vienna, a key question at the center of debate over whether the US should seek a restored JCPOA deal with Iran remains just how close is Iran to acquiring a nuke?

UK - 18 companies on brink of collapse after gas shipper fails. Two more UK energy firms have gone bust in the past 24 hours due to soaring wholesale gas prices and up to 18 utility companies are now also at risk as a major gas shipper falls into difficulty, an industry expert has warned. Pure Planet and Colorado Energy, which have a combined 250,000 UK customers, have become the latest casualties in the market. The announcement on Wednesday comes after nine small energy suppliers collapsed last month. Wholesale gas prices have more than quadrupled this year and many utility firms have been unable to cope with the rising overheads. Now the founder of green energy firm, Ecotricity, has warned there could be a “domino effect” as a major gas supplier to the utility firms runs into problems. In a post on Twitter, Dale Vince noted the latest energy firms to go bust and warned a number of other companies could be about to leave the market. He tweeted: “And one gas shipper, that provides wholesale gas to 18 utility companies, about to exit - that could cause a domino effect.”

USA - Whether you like it or not, a major global energy crisis is here, and it is going to hit all of us right in the wallet. Today, markets for energy are truly global, and that means that price spikes in one part of the planet will inevitably filter elsewhere. For example, a lot of natural gas that is produced in the United States is now heading for Europe, and that is pushing up prices here. As energy supplies get tighter and tighter, power bills are going to go higher and higher. In fact, the US government is now warning American citizens to expect heating bills to rise more than 50 percent this winter. Needless to say, a lot of families out there simply cannot afford that.

UK - Tik Tok users are being warned not to try the latest trend being spread through viral videos - scalp popping. The trend involves pulling your hair hard so your scalp makes a popping sound. But experts have warned the noise is made by damage to your scalp. The sound comes from the soft tissue (galea aponeurotica) between the scalp and the skull popping off the skull, which can cause bleeding under the scalp and ultimately lead to infections, reports The Mirror. "Firstly you can easily tear the inside of the scalp which can lead to bleeding and possible infections, it can become sore and extremely uncomfortable," Dr Ross Perry, Medical Director of Cosmedics skin clinics told. Plastic surgeon Anthony Youn said this is 'really not something you want to try' reports Women's Health magazine.

USA - President Joe Biden will meet with Pope Francis on October 29 before attending a two-day summit of G20 leaders in Rome where he hopes to reach agreement on a Global Minimum Tax of 15%, White House officials said on Thursday. Biden’s visit with the Pope comes as some Roman Catholic bishops in the United Stateshave sought to admonish Biden for his support of abortion rights. Biden is a Catholic who attends church regularly. His wife, Jill Biden, will also attend the meeting with Pope Francis.

USA - White evangelical congregations are debating how closely to mix religion and politics. At the Patriot Church on the outskirts of the city, politics and religion mix freely under a flag-painted roof. “This nation was founded on predominantly Christian values by predominantly Christian people. We just want to keep that in play,” Pastor Ken Peters told “MTP Reports.” To Peters and many other pastors like him, the stakes are high. Many in the white evangelical community feel under siege from a socially liberal mainstream culture increasingly out of step with their beliefs. “They can’t stand Christian culture,” Peters said. “Why? Because we believe marriage is between a man and a woman. We believe that there are only two genders. We believe that life in the womb is actually human life, and they’re murdering human life for money.”

UK - As late as March 12, Sage members were still advocating a policy of herd immunity. On that day, Sir Patrick told reporters at the first of what became daily press conferences in Downing Street: ‘It’s not possible to stop everybody getting it and it’s also actually not desirable because you want some immunity in the population. We need immunity to protect ourselves from this in the future.’ Four days later Sir Patrick and many in Sage did a screeching handbrake turn after a paper was published by Prof Ferguson predicting up to 500,000 deaths from Covid if the Government did nothing to tackle it.

UK - Industry leaders are growing increasingly concerned after it was revealed containers packed with food, furniture and electronics are backing up at Britain's busiest freight port predominantly due to the UK's dearth of drivers. Felixstowe in Suffolk has become severely congested to the point that Maersk, the world's largest container shipping company, is diverting its big vessels away from the UK because the dockside is full and there are not enough truck drivers to pick up and deliver fully loaded containers and return the empty ones. However, the disruption is not limited to Felixstowe, with sources pointing to a bottleneck at distribution centres in the Midlands causing problems as well. The lack of drivers to move containers, along with a surge in imports and restrictions at ports due to Covid has created a 'perfect storm', according to the Times. One shipping boss told the paper: 'I don't want to sound like a Grinch but there are going to be gaps on shelves this Christmas.'

USA - Chief Executive Officer of Freight Right Global Logistics Robert Khachatryan on Tuesday told Breitbart News some 62 ships remained unable to unload at California ports, delaying inventories for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. “There are currently 62 vessels anchored outside of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports,” Khachatryan exclusively told Breitbart News. “The number has been consistently over 50 vessels for weeks and has gone up to as high as 90.” Khachatryan explained the vessels are waiting off the coast to unload their containers because the shoreside receiving areas are full.

USA - The truth is starting to come out, and a lot of people aren’t going to like it. When the supply chain problems and the shortages began, government officials repeatedly assured us that they would just be temporary, and most of us believed them. But now it has become clear that they aren’t going to be temporary at all. In fact, during a recent interview with Bloomberg, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg admitted that some of the supply chain problems that we are currently facing could last for “years and years”. I don’t know about you, but to me “years and years” sounds like a really long time.

USA - As most Americans are still learning about the hacking-for-cash crime of ransomware, the nation’s top homeland security official is worried about an even more dire digital danger: killware, or cyberattacks that can literally end lives. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in April galvanized the public’s attention because of its consumer-related complications, including long lines at gas stations, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in an interview with USA TODAY's Editorial Board last week. But "there was a cyber incident that very fortunately did not succeed," he added. "And that is an attempted hack of a water treatment facility in Florida, and the fact that that attack was not for financial gain but rather purely to do harm.” Mayorkas and cybersecurity experts said the Oldsmar intrusion was one of many indications that malicious hackers increasingly are targeting critical parts of the nation's infrastructure – everything from hospitals and water supplies to banks, police departments and transportation – in ways that could injure or even kill people.

USA - School used to be the place where you would send your children to get a proper education. It was a place where they could learn basic sciences and critical thinking skills. Today, however, public schools are nothing more than propaganda centers indoctrinating children into the latest far-left ideologies. Nowhere has this been made more evident than in the sexual education standards currently being disseminated to schools nationwide. Developed by a coalition of left-wing nonprofit groups, the second edition of the National Sex Education Standards aspires to teach school children about various ideas many parents would likely object to, according to The Federalist.