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Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaled that they are open to increasing the amount for the stimulus checks after President Donald Trump threatened to veto the COVID relief bill unless the direct payment was increased to $2,000 per individual.

“Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks. At last, the President has agreed to $2,000—Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it!” Pelosi wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

“We spent months trying to secure $2,000 checks but Republicans blocked it. Trump needs to sign the bill to help people and keep the government open and we’re glad to pass more aid Americans need. Maybe Trump can finally make himself useful and get Republicans not to block it again,” Schumer wrote on Twitter shortly after Pelosi issued her message.

In a video message issued earlier on Tuesday, the president threatened to veto the $2.3 trillion omnibus spending and pandemic relief bill.

“Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists, and special interests,” the president said, “while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it.”

“It wasn’t their fault. It was China’s fault.”

Trump said that lawmakers need to send him a suitable piece of legislation by his standards—or else the next administration will have to sign off on the measure.

“And maybe that administration will be me,” he added.

The president pointed to hundreds of millions of dollars tagged for the Egyptian military, Cambodia, Burma, “gender programs” in Pakistan, and numerous other countries. These provisions were also singled out by progressives and conservatives alike as an example of pork-barrel spending.

On Monday night, a number of lawmakers griped that they didn’t have enough time to look through the approximately 5,500-page bill (pdf).

Trump also noted that tens of millions of dollars are going to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. “which is not even open for business,” as well as the National Gallery of Arts and the Smithsonian.

Other non-pandemic measures were included, such as combatting the spread of Asian carp in the Great Lakes area, construction projects at the FBI, and others.

The president said he would also veto the bill because stimulus payments are being doled out to “illegal aliens” and their families.

“Despite all of this wasteful spending, the $900 billion package provides hardworking taxpayers only $600 [to Americans] in relief payments,” he said, arguing that not enough cash is being provided to small business owners who have suffered during the pandemic induced lockdowns.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A German geneticist says that people who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine should be denied emergency medical treatment.

Wolfram Henn, a member of Germany’s Ethics Council, told Bild newspaper that vaccine refusniks should not be able to access ventilators and other emergency measures.

“Whoever wants to refuse the vaccination outright, he should, please also always carry a document with the inscription: ‘I don’t want to be vaccinated!’” said Henn.

“I want to leave the protection against the disease to others! I want, if I get sick, to leave my intensive care bed and ventilator to others,” he added.

Henn said that the efficacy of vaccines has been proven “a billion times over” and that people should “leave it to the experts” rather than listening to those who oppose vaccinations.

“I urgently recommend that these alarmists go to the nearest hospital and present their conspiracy theories to the doctors and nurses who have just come from the overcrowded intensive care unit completely exhausted,” said Henn.

Germany, which has seen numerous large protests against lockdown measures, will remain under lockdown until at least January 10.

As we previously highlighted, drinking alcohol in public has also been banned, leading to Christmas mulled wine stands being targeted for shut down by authorities.

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Over the past few days, health officials across Europe (but especially in the UK) along with the top executives of Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna etc. have repeatedly assured the public that the first wave of COVID vaccines will work against the COVID-19 mutation – the press has taken to referring to a “new variation” presumably to avoid stoking a panic – first discovered in southern England.

Of course, what these companies meant to say is that there’s presently no evidence that this mutant strain of COVID can infect patients who have already been inoculated with the new vaccines. Now, Moderna and Pfizer are reportedly “testing” their new jabs to determine their efficacy against the main vaccine.

BioNTech’s Chief Ugur Sahin

Pfizer says it’s “generating data” by taking blood from people who have already been inoculated, throwing it in a test tube, and testing to see if the blood “may be able to neutralize the new strain from the UK,” according to the network. Moderna, on the other hand, said only that it will be “performing additional tests in the coming weeks to confirm this.”

Both companies insist their vaccines have proven effective against other variants of the virus. However, some researchers who have been studying the mutant strain’s genome have told CNN they have concerns that his particular mutation might reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines. That’s not to see it will render the vaccine completely useless, but it is some food for thought.

In an interview with the FT, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin proclaimed that should the vaccine prove ineffective, his company’s mRNA platform could simply whip up a modified vaccine, easy peasy.

…”the beauty of the messenger mRNA technology is we can directly start to engineer a vaccine that completely mimics this new mutation and we could manufacture a new vaccine within six weeks,” he said

He added that it will take roughly two weeks to determine whether the vaccine is effective against the new variant, or not.

Dr Sahin said it would take two weeks to complete the laboratory work needed to definitively prove whether or not the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, already approved for use in the UK, US and EU, would still work as effectively.

How it works is relatively straightforward: “In principle, what we would do is change the insert [of the vaccine] and replace a virus variant with another variant without touching the platform,” Dr Tureci said.

If anything, the biggest delays would be linked to regulators and the re-approval process. The Pfizer vaccine has already begun to be administered in the UK, the US, Canada and Israel, but the EU’s drug regulator only just approved it on Monday, vaccinations aren’t due to start until Dec. 27 (distribution begins the day before).

That’s why officials like Matt Hancock have been so adamant with the whole “nothing to see here” line. Because approving another round of vaccines would be like having the same terrifying nightmare every night for two years straight.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

The widening US sanctions on the Russia-led natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 are a kind of hybrid warfare used by the United States, Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

“This is indeed a variant of hybrid warfare, it is used as a hybrid war by the United States,” Peskov said, as carried by Russian news agency TASS, asked about if the Kremlin agreed with a previous statement by Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska that the sanctions were hybrid warfare.

“Let’s take the sanctions against Nord Stream – it is a pure hybrid war that goes on like a war accompanied by unfair competition,” TASS quoted Peskov as saying on Monday.

The US continues to try to kill the project by slapping sanctions on anyone or any company helping the pipeline in any way.

US sanctions have delayed offshore construction works as the United States looks to thwart the completion of the pipeline by broadening the scope of the sanctions against service providers and those funding vessels involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2, and including the project as a target of more sanctions in the US defense bill.

However, work off the coast of Germany, the endpoint of the pipeline, resumed earlier this month, with the pipe-laying vessel Fortuna laying a 2.6-kilometer (1.6-mile) section of the pipe.   

“The Kremlin seeks to present its energy infrastructure project as a done deal, a fait accompli that sanctions are powerless to halt. None of that is true.” @BLSchmitt https://t.co/uniCITWuyu

— CEPA (@cepa) December 21, 2020

Potential new US sanctions on Russia because of recent cyber attacks, as well as plunging oil prices because of fear of a new coronavirus strain, sent the Russian ruble to its steepest drop since March this year. Additionally, the ruble was further pressured by the growing risk aversion toward emerging-market currencies and other asses on the markets on Monday.

Early on Monday, oil prices dropped by 3.5 percent amid growing concerns over the new virus strain in the UK, which prompted many European countries to suspend all flights from the UK.

Until this week Antarctica was the last continent on earth that was entirely coronavirus free. But now local news reports say there’s been a significant outbreak at Chile’s permanently staffed O’Higgins research base.

There have now been at least 36 positive COVID-19 cases confirmed there, after Chile mobilized a major effort to transfer the infected to the city of Punta Arenas for urgent medical care.

According to The Hill, “The infected include 26 members of the Chilean army and ten maintenance workers. At least some of those who tested positive for COVID-19 exhibited symptoms before undergoing a PCR test.”

It’s suspected that the virus likely reached the isolated research outpost on the globe’s southernmost and sparsely populated continent via a resupply ship named the The Sargento Aldea. At least three crew members had tested positive upon the ship’s return. 

Chile’s navy said that all had been tested before the ship’s sailing and came up negative.

Sadly #Antarctica is no longer free of COVID-19! The Chilean army today reported 36 personnel at O’Higgins Base have tested positive (26 military and 10 civilians); the station has been undergoing the annual exchange of personnel over the last few weeks; pic @Base_OHiggins pic.twitter.com/OKtjqQQ4Om

— The Antarctic Report (@AntarcticReport) December 22, 2020

The potential for the virus’ spread to other among 70 total research outposts remains possible but unlikely, given the international personnel at these locations already live largely isolated and quarantined away from each other.

This includes and estimated 1,000 researchers living on the continent during winter months, and 5,000 during the summer.

Chile remains a hard-hit Latin American country with nearly 600,000 coronavirus cases out of a population of only 18+ million. This makes it the sixth most infected country in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus dashboard.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

People in France who refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine will be banned from using public transport and engaging in other activities under a newly introduced law.

The law, which is set to be submitted to parliament, mandates that citizens have proof of a negative COVID test or “preventative treatment, including the administration of a vaccine” in order to “access transport or to some locations, as well as certain activities.”

The law has sparked “angry protests from opposition politicians,” according to AFP.

France’s vaccination program, which is set to get underway on Sunday, will not be mandatory, but a whopping 55% of citizens say they will not get the shot.

RN leader Marine Le Pen branded the vaccine measure “essentially totalitarian.”

“In a backhanded way, this bill does not aim to make vaccinations mandatory, but will prevent anybody who doesn’t comply from having a social life,” she said.

RN party spokesman Sebastien Chenu called the plan a “health dictatorship,” while centrist senator Nathalie Goulet said the draft was “an attack on public freedoms.”

Guillaume Peltier, deputy leader of the center-right LR party, warned that the law would allow the government to “get all the power to suspend our freedoms without parliamentary control.”

As we previously highlighted, France has imposed some of the strictest lockdown measures in Europe, with citizens having to fill out a form every time they leave their home.

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Germany has expressed outrage over what it says are “unjustified” sanctions leveled by Russia on Tuesday in response to prior German punitive sanctions against Kremlin intelligence officials over the alleged state-sponsored poisoning of opposition activist and political figure Alexei Navalny.

The AFP reports on the tit-for-tat measures:

The charge d’affaires at the German embassy in Moscow, Beate Grzeski, was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry and informed that “countermeasures in the form of travel bans against German state institutions have been ordered”, the source said.

The German government source added: “While this past pattern of Russian countermeasures is known, they remain in the view of the German government unjustified,” according to AFP.

“We continue to call on Russia to clarify the use of a chemical weapon on Russian territory against a Russian citizen,” the official said. “Russia has shown no willingness to do so.”

Russia’s foreign ministry earlier said it considers the initial German action to have been the unnecessary start of the “confrontational” tit-for-tat, which had been imposed in October. Here’s the latest Russian statement announcing the new travel ban aimed at German officials:

“The countries that initiated this measure presented no evidence either to the Russian authorities, in defiance of repeated requests dispatched to them, or to their own partners in the EU.

Under the veil of secrecy the EU Council adopted a hasty confrontational political decision running counter to the international legal prerogatives of the UN Security Council and the Helsinki principles of non-intervention in the internal affairs, cooperation among states and diligent compliance with obligations assumed under international law. The concrete names were selected arbitrarily to match the EU Council’s decision in question,” the Foreign Ministry said.

The EU officials targeted by Russia have yet to be named by the Kremlin, but the Swedish and French embassies were notified that the expanded list includes members of their government as well.

Meanwhile there are now bizarre claims that Novichok, a Soviet-designed nerve agent, was actually stealthily placed in Navalny’s underwear before he fell ill on a Russian flight on August 20. 

Why would FSB poison a marginal opposition figure, botch it so that he survives, & then get easily caught? Easier ways to kill someone if they want to. Perhaps it’s a Mafia-esque warning shot to people like Navalny they accuse of working w/ Western intel. Thuggish, but plausible.

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 21, 2020

This is said to be based on an inadvertent phone “confession” made by one of the Russian intelligence agents said to have been involved in the plot.

Navalny has been recovering in Germany after he was flown out of Russia by an emergency medical transport following his dramatic collapse and going unconscious on the Russian commercial flight.