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The UK's independent forecaster says the economy will return to pre-Covid levels faster than expected.

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Bride wears special wedding dress for husband, who is blind

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96-year-old German woman tried for atrocities at WWII Nazi camp

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Budget 2021: Eight ways Rishi Sunak's plans affect you

The chancellor has delivered his Covid recovery Budget, here's how it will affect your money.

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Merck Will Allow Other Drug Manufacturers to Produce Its COVID-19 Pill

(LONDON) —Pharmaceutical company Merck agreed to allow other drug makers to produce its COVID-19 pill, in a move aimed at helping millions of people in poorer countries get access to the potentially life-saving drug, a United Nations-backed public health organization said on Wednesday.

The Medicines Patent Pool said in a statement that it had signed a voluntary licensing agreement for molnupiravir with Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

The agreement will allow the Medicines Patent Pool to grant further licenses to qualified companies who are approved to make the drug. Neither drug maker will receive royalties under the agreement for as long as the World Health Organization deems COVID-19 to be global emergency. Molnupiravir is the first pill that has been shown to treat the disease.
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Charles Gore, the executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool, said the early results for molnupiravir were “compelling” and that he hoped this first voluntary licensing agreement for a COVID-19 treatment would lead to others.

Despite repeated requests from governments and health officials, no vaccine makers have agreed to a similar deal. A hub set up by WHO in South Africa intended to share messenger RNA vaccine recipes and technologies has not enticed a single pharmaceutical to join.

Merck has requested its pill be licensed by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, decisions that could come within weeks.

Merck reported this month that molnupiravir cut hospitalizations and deaths by half among patients with early symptoms of COVID-19. The results were so strong that independent medical experts monitoring the trial recommended stopping it early.

An antiviral pill that people could take at home to reduce their symptoms and speed recovery could prove groundbreaking, easing the crushing caseload on hospitals and helping to curb outbreaks in poorer countries with weak health care systems.

It would also bolster a two-pronged approach to the pandemic: treatment by way of medication and prevention, primarily through vaccinations.

The charity Doctors Without Borders welcomed the agreement Merck struck to share its COVID-19 pill, but said it didn’t go far enough.

“The license excludes key upper-middle-income countries like Brazil and China from its territory, where there are strong, established capacity to produce and supply antiviral medicines,” said Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, who called the deal “disappointing.”

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Metropolitan Police officer PC Adam Zaman charged with rape - Sky News

Metropolitan Police officer PC Adam Zaman charged with rape Sky News
Met Police constable, 28, is charged with rape and suspended from duty after sex attack Daily Mail
Serving Met police officer charged with rape The Guardian
Serving Met Police officer Adam Zaman charged with rape Yahoo News UK
Serving Metropolitan Police officer, 28, charged with rape and suspended Mirror.co.uk
View Full coverage on Google News

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Rutgers professor says white people deserve low birth rates

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Steny Hoyer: Letting the Filibuster Stand Will Break American Democracy

In many ways, the United States Senate is an anachronism left over from a time when thirteen colonies were independent sovereign nations. The Senate was created as a representative of those entities, not of the people. Today, however, at a time when our very democracy is at risk, the Senate serves as a roadblock to the American people’s ability to have their will realized.

The survival of our democracy is under attack, and the Senate threatens the ability of Americans to see their views acted upon. This is not what the Constitution, nor the Framers, contemplated.

I was elected to the Maryland State Senate in 1966. That was the indirect result of two profound Supreme Court cases: one decided in 1962 (Baker v. Carr) and one decided in 1965 (Reynolds v. Sims). The first decision said that the lower houses of every state had to be apportioned based on population—not geography. The central premise being “one man, one vote.” The second case held that both state houses and state senates must reflect populations not geographical subdivisions—in other words, “people, not trees.”
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Before these two decisions, it was common for states to diverge widely in the voting power of different residents, depending on where they lived. In another case, also in 1964, Wesberry v. Sanders, the Court applied the “one man, one vote” requirement to the U.S. House of Representatives.

As a result of those decisions, Prince George’s County, where I lived, received four additional senators. Up to that time, each of our twenty-three counties had one senator, which meant that Maryland’s smallest county, Kent County, with 15,481 people in 1960, had as many senators as Prince George’s County, with 357,395. I was elected to one of the new seats created to address that unjust imbalance.

In the cases I’ve mentioned, the Supreme Court found that it was a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause not to have “substantially equal legislative representation for all citizens in a state regardless of where they live.” That principle applied to state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. It did not apply, however, to the U.S. Senate.

That’s because the Senate’s makeup had been determined not by fairness, but by a political deal between thirteen sovereign entities that they would be represented equally in the Senate. While that agreement was included in the Constitution, it is, nevertheless, as much in violation of the “one man, one vote” principle as were the state legislatures before the Court’s rulings in the 1960’s.

Notwithstanding the Seventeenth Amendment, the Senate cannot now be called a representative body of the people. Voters in Wyoming are almost eighty-times more powerful than their fellow citizens in California—an egregious violation of the sacred principle of equal protection. Seventy-five Senate seats represent about 40% of the population!

To compound that inequality, the Senate has adopted rules and customs that make the majority even less able to work its will. As a result of the Senate’s much-abused filibuster rule, one Senator from any state can effectively veto the actions of the entire body.

The filibuster defies the clear intent of the Constitution and its writers—and of the almost universal legislative practice that “the majority rules.” In fact, James Madison, in Federalist 58, in response to a suggestion that more than a majority be required, said: “In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed.”

And, in Federalist 22, Alexander Hamilton said: “What at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser.”

The writers of the Constitution clearly contemplated that there were times that extraordinary majorities would be called for: 1) amending the Constitution; 2) impeaching a president or other office holders; 3) approving a treaty negotiated by the executive; and 4) overriding a veto by a president. However, the drafters of the Constitution discussed but did not include a provision for the passage of legislation to need more than a majority vote. Therefore, I believe the filibuster to be an unconstitutional requirement for more than a majority to pass legislation.

The Senate has considered itself to be the “greatest deliberative body.” They have, however, become the most non-deliberative body. And, in recent decades, they don’t even discuss (i.e. filibuster) their reasons for opposition.

The House has many times sent to the Senate legislation supported by large majorities of the American people and a majority of the U.S. Senate—only to see its consideration blocked. Just last week, the minority in the Senate refused to even debate critical voting rights legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act. From raising the minimum wage to securing equal pay to enacting commonsense gun reforms, the minority regularly blocks any consideration whatsoever.

Surely, the Founders had no such intent for legislation to be frozen. They clearly believed the majority would rule, not just in the House but in the Senate as well.

The Senate should become a democratic body, even if not a representative one, and honor the principle of majority rule. Let the people’s voices not be silenced by a minority.

I would urge my colleagues in the Senate to eliminate Rule XXII, which allows a filibuster (feigned or real) to silence the majority. The premise that such a rule is necessary as some kind of check and balance fails to understand that good principle. It is the legislature that checks the executive, who checks the legislature by the veto, and Supreme Court who checks both on behalf of the Constitution and the minority.

If the Senate Minority has veto power over the Senate Majority, our democracy is upside down, and there is real danger that Americans will conclude their democracy is broken. That has happened too often around the world. We must not let it happen here.

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People crossing Channel ‘not genuine asylum seekers’ and just want to stay in hotels, Priti Patel says - The Independent

People crossing Channel ‘not genuine asylum seekers’ and just want to stay in hotels, Priti Patel says The Independent
Priti Patel says she wants to force migrant boats back to France ‘to save lives’ The Independent
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Friday 29 October 2021

Stiffest charge stands for ex-cop who killed Daunte Wright

Budget 2021: Surge in house prices predicted to slow

Wembley park killings: Danyal Hussein jailed for life for murdering sisters - BBC News

The make-or-break climate summit: here’s what’s at stake at Cop26 - The Guardian

He Unleashed a California Massacre. Should This School Be Named for Him?

After my unborn son's fatal diagnosis, doctors seemed determined to change my 'choice'

NASA's Perseverance rover beamed back striking images of Mars after 2 weeks cut off from Earth

Flight diverted after passenger allegedly roughs up flight attendant

Holly Willoughby stuns on This Morning in scarlet Halloween outfit - but 'annoyed' viewers switch over - Manchester Evening News

Call for action on TB as deaths rise for first time in decade - The Guardian

Thursday 28 October 2021

LIVE: Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney arrive in Wrexham - North Wales Live

Budget 2021: UK economy set to return to pre-Covid level at end of year