Why American President Donald Trump nominated a conservative media critic and pro-Israel commentator as the ambassador to South Africa after expelling that country’s ambassador to the U.S. is anyone’s guess.
The nomination of Leo Brent Bozell, described by the Associated Press (AP) as “an outspoken Israel supporter,” follows the administration’s expulsion of South Africa’s U.S. Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool.
Relations between the two countries have worsened since an executive order signed by President Trump in February stopped U.S. financial assistance to South Africa.
The Trump administration cited South Africa’s land reform policies and its genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against America’s most important Middle East ally, Israel, as reasons for the move.
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The AP also reported that President Trump “falsely accused the South African government of targeting the minority White population in the country and illegally seizing their land through its recently enacted Expropriation Act and offered to grant refugee status to White people (Afrikaners) who want to relocate to the U.S.”
During the heights of the oppressive and anti-Black apartheid rule in South Africa, Whites stole and confiscated the land from Black people. Post-apartheid not much has changed as Whites still own most of the land.
The expulsion of Ambassador Rasool, because of a speech the Trump administration deemed objectionable has South Africa sharing a growing list of countries and individuals on the receiving end of the president’s ire.
However, the South African ambassador who was declared persona non grata and expelled from the U.S. received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of supporters upon his return home to South Africa.
“It was not our choice to come home but we come home with no regrets,” Ambassador Rasool told the cheering crowd gathered at the Cape Town International Airport, palestinechronicle.com, reported.
In a commentary published in Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF.org), titled: “It’s Time: Boycott America,” written by John Feffer, he asks, “What did Ebrahim Rasool say that was so objectionable?” Feffer is an author and director of FPIC at the Institute for Policy Studies.
He continued, “But embedded in his remarks is this observation: ‘Donald Trump is launching … an assault on incumbency, those who are in power, by mobilizing a supremacism against the incumbency at home.’”
According to Feffer, he interpreted the “incumbency” as the dismantling of several federal initiatives in government and businesses targeting so-called “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
He added that in his view, Ambassador Rasool was pointing out that the U.S. administration and its supporters “… have launched a campaign to advance White supremacy in a country where the civil rights movement achieved enough progress to qualify today as the mainstream.”
Feffer pointed to the immigration overtures President Trump has made to White Afrikaners in South Africa, while at the same time, deporting Blacks and Brown people from the U.S. Feffer points out the executive order of a promise of American citizenship to White South Africans made by the Trump administration.
President Trump has offered White farmers a chance to resettle in the U.S. According to the German-based Deutsche Welle (dw.com) “nearly 70,000 White South Africans have since shown interest in relocating to the U.S.”
Ambassador Rasool pushed back against the false propaganda of the anti-White “land grab” and also spoke out against dictating who South Africa can support and advocate for. Addressing the crowd gathered at the airport, palestinechronicle.com reported that the ambassador stated,
“I want to say that we would have liked to come back with a welcome like this if we could report to you that we had turned away the lies of a White genocide in South Africa, but we did not succeed in America with that.”
He continued: “We would have preferred to come here to say that we have won for you AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act), but we could not win it by withdrawing our case from the International Court of Justice against Israel.
Because as we stand here, the bombing has continued and the shooting has continued, and if South Africa was not in the ICJ, Israel would not be exposed and the Palestinians would have no hope.”
Ambassador Rasool said, he would have preferred “to come here and say that we have won for you trade deals and that we have been able to secure for us trade deals, but we could not do so by allowing the U.S. to choose who must be our friends and who must be our enemies.”
Since the colonial period, maps of Africa served two main purposes: to identify the demarcation of European colonies and to falsely show the continent’s size compared to other global land masses.
According to Daily Express reporter Grace Piercy, a graphic by Design 109 “shows Africa is larger than the land masses of the U.S., China, India, Mexico, Peru, France, Spain, Papua New Guinea, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Norway, Italy, New Zealand, the UK, Nepal, Bangladesh and Greece put together.”
In her October 15 article published on express.co.uk titled: “Incredible map shows ‘true’ size of Africa—China, India and America all fit inside,” Piercy writes that though “the continent of Africa covers 20 percent of the planet’s land area and six percent of its total surface area … it is not accurately shown on the standard map, made with the Mercator projection. It makes countries along the equator appear smaller and countries closer to the poles larger.”
Mercator projection was presented by Gerardus Mercator in 1569. Why this false representation of Africa on modern-day maps continues is anyone’s guess. There is a fight against rampant “immappancy,” or a lack of geographical knowledge.
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This term was coined by Kai Krause who created the term to highlight the misrepresentation of the world’s geography. This distortion can potentially skew peoples’ understanding of the world and their places as members of the global community.
According to the website of the Illinois Center for Global Studies, according to Krause, “A survey with random American school children let them guess the population and land area of their country. Not entirely unexpected, but still rather unsettling, the majority chose ‘1-2 billion’ and ‘largest in the world,’ respectively.
Even with Asian and European college students, geographical estimates were often off by factors of 2-3. This is partly due to the highly distorted nature of the predominantly used mapping projections (such as Mercator).” A particularly extreme example is the worldwide misjudgment of the true size of Africa.
To help explain the importance of an accurate knowledge of geography and to introduce the relevancy and importance of the study of cartography (the art and science of graphically representing a geographical area), brothers and sisters coming into the Nation of Islam are required to memorize and study Student Enrollment and Actual Facts.
Contained in The Supreme Wisdom Lessons which includes in part information on the measurement and area of the land and bodies of water on the planet earth.
In Muhammad Speaks newspaper, published by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, a form of cartography was used in an illustration by Brother Eugene Majied.
The caption on one of Brother Eugene’s illustrations read, “The serpent deceived the whole world,” and depicts how U.S. imperialist power had besieged and conquered the entire planet.
Viewing a map of Africa precipitating from “the scramble for Africa—the period where European nations colonized the continent—and beginning with the year-long 1884-85 Berlin Conference, you discover “color-coded” maps of the continent to show what each European power laid claim to. The key on these maps is found in the bottom left or right-hand corner.
“The divisions were arbitrarily decided by the colonizing countries. They were not based on existing tribal or geographical boundaries. Some of the new boundaries split tribes in half. Others made huge territories that were difficult to control.
This led to conflicts in the twentieth century, when the colonized countries became independent,” explained a study titled “The Scramble for Africa” by St Johns College: University of Cambridge.
Another study: “Mapping Africa: Problems of Regional Definition and Colonial/National Boundaries,” published by the University of Chicago, stated that colonial maps imposed serious disadvantages upon Africa, “although perhaps less due to the specific boundaries they established than to the way they imposed outwardly oriented development patterns upon the continent.”
“‘Balkanization’ into numerous territories of varying sizes rather than a few big units is only a problem if one assumes that ‘bigger is better,’ which is not demonstrated by the relative success of various postcolonial states, e.g.,
Some of the very large ones such as Sudan and the Republic of Congo have experienced the most severe problems (even though the Congo has significant natural and mineral reserves),” the study noted.
“More significant, perhaps, was the competitive outward orientation of transport networks that did not link African territories to one another but rather tied each to a port within its own colonial domain and ultimately to trade with its European metropole.”
Brothers and Sisters, once again I am thankful to Allah for the privilege of being in your midst. We want to go directly to our subject matter this evening. For the last few weeks we have been dealing with the subject of “Time,” and so I will quote a few verses from the Holy Qur’an, Surah 103 Al-‘Asr (“The Time”), which will be the base of our work this evening:
“By the time, surely man is in loss, Except those who believe and do good, And enjoin one another to truth, And enjoin one another to patience.”
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“Time” is The Criterion of The Measurement of Our Action–if our actions do not correspond with the dictates of time, our action will bring us to loss, as the Holy Qur’an teaches us of The Manifestation of Losses (Surah 64).
Many of us are losing daily, hourly. We’re losing self-respect, self-worth. We’re losing our minds, we’re losing our families. We’re losing our loved ones. This loss is to bring grief upon the community that we may reflect again on The Time and act according to The Time.
Grammatical Correctness in Language
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was not known as an English-language “scholar”; some say he didn’t speak well, but I was with him one day and he taught me a very profound English lesson.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad
In The Problem Book of The Supreme Wisdom Lessons, which details the condition of Black people in a mathematical way, we are told to put our Mathematical Theology to work to secure benefit for ourselves, which are money, luxury, good homes and friendship in all walks of life. We are also told that if we don’t speak the Language well, we will not be successful.
Every discipline has its language, every skill has its language, and if we do not speak the language of our discipline or our skill well, we are not successful in communicating. Every time, every era has a language that is peculiar to that time. If you do not speak The Language of The Time, then you are not communicating properly, and you will not be successful. So in sitting with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad one morning, he said, “Brother, the English language basically is not spoken well when you speak and do not use grammatical correctness.”
In grammar, there must be subject and verb agreement: if the subject is in the present, then the verb, or the action, must be in the present, otherwise you don’t have subject and verb agreement. You are not speaking grammatically correct, and it impairs your success. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that as you use language to communicate your ideas, communicate your thoughts, you must speak in a way that your words, your thoughts, your ideas are clearly perceived by the one or ones to whom you are speaking. The less possibility there is for misunderstanding what you’re trying to communicate, the better it is that people will understand us.
What was Elijah Muhammad saying? The verb in the grammatical construction of the language represents the action; in other words, the “tense.” The word “tense” here means: Is it Present? Is it Past? Is it Future? Is it Present Perfect? Is it Past Perfect? Or, is it Future Perfect? These are the different tenses that you understand if you’ve studied grammar. But if you haven’t studied grammar, don’t worry about it; we’ll break it right down.
Look at the sentence “I am here”–the subject “I” is in Present tense because the verb “am” (be) is in Present tense. However, if I said: “I was here and I am here,” I would not be speaking grammatically correct. So what is Elijah Muhammad saying? If you and I live in The Present, our Action should be Present Tense. But if our actions belong to a Time gone by, then we are in the present, acting out the past–there is no “subject and verb agreement,” therefore we are not communicating properly and we are not speaking correctly. And when there is a lack of communication, there is a breakdown in social relationship.
The word “tense” has to do with time. When we are “out of time,” we increase t-e-n-s-ion (tension). When we increase tension because we are out of step with time, then we increase stress. And where there is tension and stress in our relationship because we are out of step with time, there is a cleavage (definition: “the act of a division or split”) apart, rather than a cleavage together.
“By the time, surely man is in loss. …” so Time is The Criteria. You are not a “slave,” but if your actions reflect slave mentality, then you’re not communicating properly and you begin to lose. If slavery was over, according to White folks words, with the “Emancipation Proclamation,” and we today in The Present are still looking to the Caucasian to provide us with our necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter, employment, education, then that action that we are involved in is an action that belongs to the past, to an era gone by.
You are in the present, but your actions are not proper; therefore, you are communicating well with the Caucasian, but you are not communicating well with one another because you are not speaking well.
Become Servants of Righteousness, not Sin
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to us that it was divinely prophesied that we would serve America 400 years. We bear witness the 400 years of our servitude to America is up, and if it is up, we must adopt an action that corresponds to the time. If the Scripture teaches we will go into bondage to serve Satan and follow the path of sin and iniquity, and The Time given to Satan’s rule is up and The Time given to our service of Satan and sin and iniquity is up, then The Time demands another action: We must stop serving Satan and start serving The Lord of The Worlds.
We must stop being servants of sin and we must start serving ourselves in righteousness.
Now does that seem so strange or farfetched? If we have run out of the time given to evil to hold sway over the people, and the evil is steadily losing, how can we come into our own, following an out-of-date activity? Evil is an out-of-date activity because it will not permit us to communicate properly to one another. We cannot do evil to one another and communicate to one another. The Time given to evil is over, so doing evil will not bring results, it will bring deterioration, loss, ruin, disgrace and death. If our actions can be judged as evil, and we are out of The Time given to evil, then we are not communicating correctly.
Either we’ve got to go out with the evil world, or we’ve got to change our actions to be in harmony with The World of Righteousness that is coming in.
Now, God has not sentenced you and me to death, God has sentenced to death The Wicked–but we are practicing wickedness. The longer we persist in the practice of evil, the more the fate of the wicked becomes our fate. If God’s Truth and Righteousness condemns something that we are practicing, though we like it, we’ve got to give it up. We may like evil deeds, but if The Word of God in The Time of Right condemns the action that belongs to the old world and to the past, then we have got to make up our minds to correct our conduct by The Standard of Time.
If you can agree that the White man’s world is on its way out, then the White man’s way is on its way out. And if the White man’s way is a way of evil, and is on its way out, then we’ve got to give up evil. Beloved, life and the spirit of life is tied into The Spirit of Righteousness. The Creator, Who set this whole Universe in motion, is a Righteous Creator. He set it up in righteousness, so the very energy that perpetuates the life of the Universe is a Righteous Energy. This is why there is so much talk in the Scriptures of the Bible of that which is called “Holy Spirit.”
This kind of spirit is different from the spirit of the world, because the spirit of the world has not any righteousness or holiness attached to it. It’s the spirit of the world, which is the spirit of adultery, the spirit of freakishness, the spirit of sport and play and partying. It is not the spirit of the serious intent of The God who fashioned life, so the key to longevity is in being in harmony with the spirit that perpetuates the life of that which keeps you living.
You draw your life’s sustenance from the Earth and what she produces. What the Earth produces is in harmony with the spirit of the Life Producer, Almighty God Himself. The Earth is producing you fruits of obedience, fruits of submission and you and I survive and grow strong from the fruit that the Earth produces. If we were in harmony with the spirit that germinates life, which is submission to the Will of the Life Giver, that spirit generates life into us.
The Power of Thought
Being in harmony with The Thinking of The Creator generates electrical energy in the cells of the brain picked up by the blood and carried to every part of the body. So you can’t just eat well, we’ve got to think better.
So, the song says, “I’m going to change my way of thinking, I’m going to change my style, I’m going to change my walk and my talk…”–that’s an old song we used to sing. But when the Right Word in accord with the Right Time strikes your ear, if you let it enter it starts changing up the way you think. And once the way you think is changed, the way you think starts changing up the chemistry of the cells.
This is nothing but pure science–and if there are doctors, and scientists, and biologists and chemists in the house, all you have to do is take what Brother Farrakhan says from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, go and study it, and come on back and bear me witness that I have been taught by a Master Teacher.
We must change the thinking, for the scripture teaches “As a man thinketh, so is he.” This is telling you The Power of Thought. Thought shapes and reshapes matter, so the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was not just interested in getting you to eat properly, he wanted to change the way we think. In changing the way we think, he will then change the way we act. And if our thinking gets in harmony with the Will of God, gets in harmony with The Time, then our actions follow suit, and instead of showing loss, we will show gain.
Even though the world seems to be going contrary to the way we think and act, we will be steadily gaining and the world will be steadily losing because we are on time.
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When the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “we are gods,” he wasn’t making mockery. He was showing us our Divine potential if we fed that which is in us from Allah and allowed ourselves to grow spiritually. Like you feed your stomach to grow physically, then spiritually you’ll grow right on up into God. And this is why, beloved Muslims, Allah gives us the right to wear His Attributes. He has 99 Attributes, and when you put them all together, you have Allah.
Well, what about The People of God? If we wear His Name and manifest His characteristics and recognize that as God’s Names work together for the fruition of His Will, and His Name represents His Attributes and Characteristics, then if we wear His Name, manifest His Attributes, and we come together in unity under His Will and His Guidance, then we become Allah!
The Holy Qur’an says: “And We adorned the lower Heavens with Stars. And We made man and We know what his mind suggests to him. And had We wished to take a pastime from before ourselves, surely We would have taken it. Nay, We cast Truth at falsehood till We knock out its brain.”–“We” who?
The We is us who believe and submit to The Will of The Supreme Being, The Lord of The Worlds, Almighty God, Allah. We have become “the actors of His Will,” so when you see us acting, it’s not “us” acting, it’s Allah Acting. When you hear us speaking, it is not “us” speaking, it is Allah Speaking. And when you see our manifestation of righteousness, it is not “our” righteousness, it is Allah’s Righteousness.
That is why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wanted you to change your way of thinking and looking at your own self.
If we would come together as a family, husband and wife, we will start pulling the children back and then holiness will replace the broken spirit from broken marriages and broken homes.
In Islam, we cover our women, because the female body is a natural attraction to a real man. Allah (God) formed the female that way. Human beings procreate because of the attraction between male and female. A woman that covers herself is not trying to attract a man on base principles. Women have had enough of men being attracted to them because of the beauty of their forms, face and hair rather than the intelligence of a creature of God that He created for a serious purpose.
When the slave-master destroyed us as a people, his aim was first and foremost to destroy the Black male so that the White male would become the master of the Black female and then take her all the way down. It became acceptable for us to be whores and pimps because then we as a people were constantly lowered because we have lowered our respect for the female.
Women are beautiful and the female body is attractive, but a real man cannot think sane thoughts with the female form on his mind. Girls look at television, watching beautiful Beyonce with her beautiful body, but her moves are so provocative. The child does not know anything about sex, but sees that adults approve of those provocative dances, and begins to imitate Beyonce. As young as four and three, girls are learning to shake their bodies in vulgar dances, yet no one seems to be speaking to this as the destruction of potential virtue.
Some men have become so sick that they try to push themselves in a sexual way into a baby, splitting them. Fathers are sexually abusing their daughters, along with uncles, brothers, cousins and even aunts; and now the lesbian craze is in. We are so undervalued because of our ignorance and lack of the potential for honor and respect.
So some women tell themselves they do not need a man for anything. It is not that our women want to be lesbians, but another woman understands the pain that another woman is going through or being put through in her interaction with men. When they get tired of the game playing, they fall on each other and find more comfort in another woman than they find in a man. But I do not care if you call yourself a lesbian, when a real man comes along, a real man will awaken that spark in you because you are a real woman—a beautiful woman, but a very abused woman.
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If a virtuous woman is more precious than silver and gold and you wake up in a place where there are 70 virtuous girls who have never been touched by a man, where did you wake up? You do not have to physically die to see that paradise, but you have to die as a n----r. You have to die as the creature that the White man made. When you wake up from that death, you will want to see virtuous women, because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “Where there are no decent women, there are no decent men, for the Black woman is the mother of civilization.”
Women are being programmed, not for the Kingdom of God, but for the kingdom of sluts. I am appealing to church leaders to begin to stand up and ask our women to be better and to protect them when they desire to be better.
Mary Holland is coming to the Vermont State House in Montpelier on April 10 to speak with lawmakers about CHD’s mission to end the epidemic of chronic childhood diseases.
By Albi Arhó
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland is coming to the Vermont capital in Montpelier on April 10 to speak with lawmakers. Holland will spend the day at the Vermont State House discussing the mission of CHD, which is to end the epidemic of chronic childhood diseases.
The Vermont Chapter of Children’s Health Defense New England and Vermont Stands Up have teamed up for this event to encourage legislators to work together to help Vermonters improve their health and that of the next generation.
They see children’s health as a non-partisan issue and are expecting representatives on both sides of the aisle to attend.
Holland has been involved in the vaccine choice and health freedom movement for over two decades.
“Once I learned about the liability protection that industry and healthcare providers enjoy and the suppression of accurate science and information about vaccine risk and injury, I understood the need for immediate change. I’ve been devoted to that change ever since.”
Through education, advocacy, litigation and research, CHD challenges federal and state governments, pharmaceutical companies, corporations and conflicted regulatory agencies to end the practices that are harming children’s health.
Before joining CHD’s staff in the fall of 2019, Holland directed the Graduate Lawyer’s Program at New York University’s School of Law for 15 years and lectured at Columbia Law School on international human rights advocacy.
She has frequently testified in state legislatures around the country. Holland has co-authored two books on vaccine safety.
Dr. Vickie Dubin Master, regional organizer of CHD New England, is excited about the opportunity this event will bring to open dialogue.
“As a Chiropractor for 36 years, I have noticed the deep decline in health of our population, especially the children. There are multiple issues that are creating this epidemic. By coming together to discuss this issue at the statehouse, we can come up with solutions, improve transparency and trust. We can heal our children and ourselves.”
“We wanted to offer an opportunity to come together and celebrate the healthier, happier Vermont we know we can have,” explains Amy Hornblas, who is helping to organize this event on behalf of Vermont Stands Up. “It all starts with conversation.”
There are a number of health choice bills under consideration this year in Vermont. Lawmakers likely could benefit from a national perspective in regard to legislation and litigation that has already happened around similar issues across the country.
To address those questions, Holland is also expecting to provide testimony in the House Committee on Health Care and others during her visit.
Members of the public, lawmakers and the press are invited to attend an educational presentation and opportunity for questions with Holland from 1-3 p.m. in room 10 at the Vermont State House.
There will also be an evening celebration in Montpelier where folks can gather for further conversation, music and food. (Holland is an extremely well-informed and articulate public speaker!)
The Defender’s Big Pharma Watch delivers the latest headlines related to pharmaceutical companies and their products, including vaccines, drugs, and medical devices and treatments. The views expressed in the below excerpts from other news sources do not necessarily reflect the views of The Defender. Our goal is to provide readers with breaking news that affects human health and the environment.
Health experts are warning that whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is making a dangerous comeback. Cases are rising across the country, and Louisiana recently reported that two infants have died — the state’s first deaths from the illness since 2018.
“For infants, it’s really rather terrifying,” Dr. John Schieffelin, an associate professor of pediatrics at Tulane University, told CNN. “They’re just coughing so much, they can’t eat, they can’t drink, and they often get a pneumonia, which means we have to put them on a ventilator. They just never stop coughing.”
So far this year, Louisiana has reported 110 cases of pertussis. That’s close to the 154 total cases reported for all of 2024, CNN reported. The U.S. saw more than 35,000 cases last year — the most in over 10 years. Ten people also died, including six babies under one year old, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Experts say that low vaccination rates and fading immunity are driving the surge.
“When you start to see these outbreaks…it tends to be as a result of that increased circulation of the microbe in the community, as well as populations with no immunity or reduced immunity that are susceptible to the infection,” Lisa Morici, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Tulane University School of Medicine, told CNN.
Children should get the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, or DTaP, vaccine at two, four, six and 15-18 months, and again at four to six years of age. A booster (Tdap) is recommended at age 11 or 12, and again every 10 years for adults, according to the CDC. Pregnant women are urged to get the Tdap vaccine during their third trimester. This helps protect babies too young to get vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Why Are Childhood Vaccination Rates So Low in This California County?
MedicalXPress reported:
Sutter County in Northern California has the lowest vaccination rates among transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students in the state, according to new data from the California Department of Public Health. Only 73% of Sutter County kindergarten students were up to date on their childhood vaccinations in the 2023–24 school year, versus a state average of 93.7%.
Data reported by the Los Angeles Times shows that Sutter is one of 16 California counties where it seems young students no longer have herd immunity against measles, a highly contagious disease. Stats show that fewer than 76% of Sutter County kindergarten students received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine last year, nearly 20 percentage points down from the generally accepted figure of 95% for herd immunity.
As vaccination rates improved overall in surrounding counties in the past decade, they have plummeted in Sutter County. In the 2014–15 school year, around 90% of kindergartners were up-to-date on their vaccinations.
FDA Misses Approval Deadline for Novavax’s COVID-19 Vaccine
BioPharma Dive reported:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review deadline for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine has come and gone without a decision amid a major organizational shakeup that has already resulted in the resignation of the nation’s top vaccine regulator.
Novavax’s shot in 2022 was granted an emergency use authorization, a special approval handed out during a public health emergency. By April 1, however, the agency was scheduled to decide whether to convert that clearance to the type of standard approval already given to rival COVID-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna.
In a short Wednesday statement, though, Novavax said that the deadline had passed without any word from the FDA, despite the fact that the company believes it’s responded to all of the agency’s requests and that its application is “ready for approval.”
“As of today, we continue to wait on action from the agency and have not yet received an official decision,” Novavax said, adding that its application included “robust Phase 3 clinical trial data” showing its vaccine could safely and effectively prevent COVID-19.
The State Key Laboratory for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong and the InnoHK Center for Virology, Vaccinology and Therapeutics have pioneered an influenza virus vector-based nasal spray vaccine platform and developed a nasal spray H5N1 avian influenza vaccine. The study is published in Nature Communications.
During the early COVID-19 pandemic, this platform enabled the rapid development of a nasal spray vaccine in collaboration with mainland China’s Wantai BioPharm. After completing Phase 1–3 clinical trials, it was approved in 2022 as the world’s first nasal spray COVID-19 vaccine.
The world has just emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, with vivid memories of the devastating impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on human health, economies, and social stability in recent years. Although SARS-CoV-2 has gradually evolved into a seasonal respiratory virus, new pandemics are inevitable. The World Health Organization and many nations have already begun preparations to address potential future pandemics caused by “Disease X.”
FDA Approves Freeze-Dried Version of Jynneos Mpox Vaccine
CIDRAP reported:
On March 31, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a freeze-dried formulation of Bavarian Nordic’s mpox vaccine, Jynneos, which can also be used to prevent smallpox. As with the frozen liquid version that is already FDA-approved, the freeze-dried version can be used in adults.
The FDA approval follows a standard FDA review of a supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) that Bavarian Nordic submitted in May 2024. The sBLA was primarily based on clinical data that showed comparable immune responses and safety between the freeze-dried and frozen liquid formulations, as well as additional nonclinical and manufacturing data.
“This approval will provide additional flexibility for stockpiling against a smallpox event or mpox outbreak,” the company said in a news release. The freeze-dried Jynneos version will be easier to store and transport, and will have a longer shelf life than the frozen liquid version that has been used extensively since 2022, when an outbreak caused by the clade 2 strain of the virus traversed the globe, hitting men who have sex with men especially hard.
The original Jynneos vaccine requires specific cold-chain storage and transportation. It was approved in September 2019. “Today’s FDA approval represents a significant milestone in our development of this next generation of Jynneos and in our collaborative efforts with the U.S. government to strengthen public health security.” said Paul Chaplin, PhD, president and CEO of Bavarian Nordic.
European Commission Approves Pfizer’s RSV Vaccine ABRYSVO to Help Protect Adults Aged 18-59 Against RSV Lower Respiratory Tract Disease
BioSpace reported:
Pfizer Inc. announced today that the European Commission has issued a decision amending the marketing authorization for ABRYSVO, the company’s bivalent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prefusion F vaccine, to extend the indication to include prevention of lower respiratory tract disease (LRTD) caused by RSV in individuals 18 through 59 years of age.
This expands the previous authorization for individuals aged 60 and older, and ABRYSVO now offers in the EU the broadest RSV vaccine indication, which includes:
Active immunization of individuals 18 years of age and older for the prevention of LRTD caused by RSV
Passive protection against lower respiratory tract disease (LRTD) caused by RSV in infants from birth through 6 months of age following maternal immunization during pregnancy
“We are thrilled that ABRYSVO is now approved in the EU to help prevent RSV in adults aged 18 and older, which causes approximately 158,000 adult hospital admissions annually from RSV disease, a common respiratory virus with symptoms that can be severe or even life-threatening,” said Alexandre de Germay, Chief International Commercial Officer, Executive Vice President, Pfizer.
Children exposed to higher levels of air pollution in their homes from birth to age 3 may develop weaker connections between key brain regions, leading to disruptions in the normal development of brain networks that may persist into adolescence.
Children exposed to higher levels of air pollution in their homes from birth to age 3 may develop weaker connections between key brain regions, with potentially long-lasting effects on future learning, behavior and health, according to one of the first studies of its kind.
The study is one of the first to explore how air pollution affects neurological connections when the brain is not actively engaged in a task, using brain scans taken multiple times in a large population-based group of children from birth, says lead author Michelle Kusters.
Published in February in Environment International, the researchers found:
More exposure to air pollution was linked to weaker connections between different brain networks.
Early exposure affected the connection between the amygdala (a region involved in emotional regulation) and brain regions involved in attention, movement and sensation, and hearing (hippocampus and caudate nucleus). This was especially true of exposure to PM2.5, which can penetrate deep into the lungs.
Ongoing exposure, particularly to PM10, a larger particle size, caused changes in the connections between brain networks (salience and medial-parietal networks) responsible for higher thinking and decision-making.
“These associations persist throughout adolescence, which may indicate persistent disruptions in the normal development of brain networks due to pollution exposure,” says Mònica Guxens, ICREA, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies, research professor at Barcelona Institute for Global Health, ISGlobal, and co-author of the study.
“This could affect emotional processing and cognitive functions.”
Young brains vulnerable to pollution harms
The findings add to growing evidence that air pollution can have long-term consequences for brain health, especially in children.
Particles from air pollution can enter the brain through the nose and lungs, where scientists suspect they trigger inflammation and oxidative stress, which harms cells.
They can also often carry heavy metals like lead, cadmium, arsenic and other toxic substances.
For this study, researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, ISGlobal, focused on five common pollutants: fine particulate matter (PM2.5 or tiny pollutant particles of 2.5 micrometers or less, and PM19), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX), all of which are primarily linked to traffic-related emissions.
Increased exposure to outdoor air pollution in early life, for instance, has been shown to make it harder for children to learn and process information, especially in terms of critical thinking and non-verbal tasks.
Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and early childhood can also lead to lasting changes in the brain’s white matter, research suggests.
The structure of many brain networks begins to form around the age of 2, but development continues as the brain matures. In newborns and young children, basic brain networks develop quickly in the first few years.
The amygdala, for example, grows by 105% in the first year and 15% in the second, which may make it particularly vulnerable to the effects of air pollution. Other networks involved in higher-level thinking usually develop later in childhood.
Pollutants also shown to affect brain volume
For this study, the researchers studied data from 3,626 children in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The children were scanned twice: once around age 10 and again at age 14, while they were resting (not doing any tasks).
The researchers looked at pollution exposure during two periods — from birth to age three and in the year before the brain scans — and used statistical models to estimate pollution exposure, combining actual measurements with local environmental information.
They noted several limitations of the study, including that it did not include air pollution data for schools or repeated measurements for all children in the study.
Another related study from the same research team examined how air pollution during pregnancy and childhood affects brain volume (the amount of space the brain occupies) through adolescence.
Based on data from 4,243 children from a large Dutch population-based birth cohort, the study found that exposure to PM2.5 and copper (from vehicle brake and tire wear) during pregnancy was linked at age 8 to smaller hippocampal volume.
However, the hippocampus appeared to show “catch-up growth” over time, between 8 and 17 years, suggesting plasticity in this area of the brain might mitigate the adverse effects of early-life air pollution.
While some brain regions may adapt, the researchers say ongoing disruptions in functional brain networks could have long-term effects.
More research is needed, along with better protection for children, they say.
“Given the widespread exposure to air pollution, these results reinforce the importance of policies aimed at reducing pollution levels, particularly in urban environments, to safeguard children’s brain development,” Kusters says.
Contemporary narratives about vaccines, including that they eradicated polio, are based on a “fairytale” that ignores the harms vaccines have caused, researcher and author Dr. Suzanne Humphries said in an interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
Contemporary narratives about vaccines — including that they eradicated diseases such as polio — are based on a “fairytale” that ignores the harms vaccines have caused, researcher and author Dr. Suzanne Humphries said in an interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
Humphries, a former board-certified nephrologist and internist who left the medical profession in 2011, is a leading researcher on vaccines and vaccine history. In 2013, she published “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History.”
Humphries told Rogan, “Polio is still here. Polio is still alive and well.” She said polio symptoms have since been attributed to other health conditions, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a neurological disorder.
According to Humphries, immunity enjoyed by vaccine manufacturers under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 worsened vaccine safety, as vaccine manufacturers were incentivized to include more harmful ingredients in their products, such as aluminum and mercury.
During her two-hour interview with Rogan, Humphries discussed the history of the polio vaccine, how vaccines are made, their connection to cancer and other health conditions and the mainstream narratives that help conceal vaccine harms from the public.
She also recounted how her own doubts about vaccine safety led her to leave the medical profession.
“I’ve been liberated from a prison … where my brain was locked down and I was told what to do and how to do it, and then watching the results,” Humphries said. “It would be one thing if the results were good, but the results aren’t good.”
Polio diagnoses were given new names to create illusion of vaccine efficacy
Humphries said that after the introduction of the polio vaccine, “the playing field, the goalposts, everything was changed.”
Even though there was more paralytic polio in the years after that vaccine was introduced, health officials and vaccine makers were able to show a “complete cascading drop” in cases by changing the definition of polio and its causes.
Symptoms that would have been diagnosed as polio before the introduction of the vaccine are now attributed to lead or mercury poisoning, or have been given new names, like GBS and transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that “follows the same pathology as polio,” Humphries said.
Polio diagnoses also paralleled the use of toxic pesticides like DDT. “The tonnage of production of DDT absolutely mirrored the diagnosis for polio in the days and the countries that still make DDT today is where we’re still seeing this paralytic polio situation happen.”
As the use of DDT and other similar chemicals declined, so did toxic exposures that caused symptoms that were previously attributed to polio, Humphries said.
Humphries went on to discuss the lack of rigorous vaccine safety testing and the original antigenic sin — when the body initially develops effective antibodies against an antigen, but when a different strain is introduced, the virus has negative efficacy.
“The few studies that exist with saline placebos show how bad the vaccine actually is and how it makes you not only not respond to the disease when it comes around, but makes you more susceptible to it in many cases,” Humphries said.
She also addressed contemporary mainstream vaccine narratives, which she said resulted from “226 years’ worth of propaganda,” and how doctors who have questioned vaccine safety have faced repercussions.
She said her views on vaccines led to skepticism on the part of her colleagues and contributed to her decision to leave the medical profession.
She said:
“I kept getting challenged while I stayed on for two years as a nephrologist at my hospital. I left because my soul just couldn’t hang out there anymore.
“We’ve been lied to and we’ve been tricked into thinking that this is all settled science, and that’s what’s infuriating.”
A suspected measles case in a 1-year-old child in Pima County, Arizona, turned out to be a reaction to the MMR vaccine — not measles. Meanwhile, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky called for an extra dose of the vaccine for babies ages 6-11 months old.
Some infectious disease experts — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) former director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky — are pushing health officials to recommend an extra dose of the MMR vaccine for babies ages 6-11 months who live in or travel to areas of the U.S. with measles outbreaks, according to Medpage Today.
The news comes as a suspected measles case in a 1-year-old child in Pima County, Arizona, this week turned out to be a reaction to the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine — not measles.
According to a Pima County news release, reactions to the MMR vaccine are “rare and do not carry the same risk as community-acquired measles.”
The Pima County Health Department did not specify the toddler’s symptoms but said state and county health authorities — and the local hospital where the child was treated — “took precautions in the child’s treatment as if it were an infectious case.”
Arizona has not reported any measles cases so far in 2025, the release said.
The CDC’s current Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule recommends children receive their first dose of the MMR vaccine between the ages of 2-15 months, and their second dose between ages 4-6 years.
Infants 6-11 months old who are about to travel internationally are advised to get an extra dose before traveling.
Walensky and colleagues argued in op-eds published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and STAT News that the recommendation should be changed due to the uptick in U.S. measles cases.
Some states experiencing measles outbreaks have already issued local advisories recommending that infants 6-11 months get an MMR shot, but there is no such national recommendation in place, Walensky and colleagues said.
“Pediatric immunization guidelines should be revised in light of evolving epidemiologic trends,” they wrote in JAMA. “We therefore propose updating the existing recommendation for an additional early MMR dose to infants aged 6 to 11 months traveling to any region with increased probability of measles exposure, whether international or domestic.”
Medpage Today said several infectious disease doctors — including Dr. Mary Caserta, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases — agreed with Walensky and her colleagues.
“If we have data showing that there’s an increased risk of measles in the United States, I’m definitely in favor of reviewing our immunization guidelines to see what we can do to best protect our children,” Caserta said.
No MMR safety data cited to support giving shot to young babies
In their op-eds, Walensky and colleagues made no mention of safety data underlying their proposal to give the MMR shot to 6-month-olds.
Heather Ray, science and research analyst/administrator with Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said that many people assume the MMR vaccine is safer than the measles, mumps and rubella infections.
“However, there are serious red flags regarding the safety and research behind the vaccine,” Ray said.
According to a collection of documents recently released by Physicians for Informed Consent, the risk of permanent disability or death from the MMR vaccine may be greater than the risk posed by measles, mumps or rubella infection. That’s because vaccine safety studies conducted so far haven’t been large enough.
Research has shown that in some instances, the MMR vaccine causes febrile seizures, anaphylaxis, meningitis, encephalitis, thrombocytopenia, arthralgia and vasculitis.
Ray called the risk of serious adverse events following MMR vaccination “concerning” and noted that “only a small percentage” are reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
As of the end of January, there have been 41 deaths reported in VAERS following MMR or MMRV vaccination since 2015.
MMRV is a combination of measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (commonly known as chickenpox) vaccines, according to the CDC. The MMRV’s age and dosage recommendations are currently the same as the MMR vaccine.
VAERS reports do not prove a causal relationship between a vaccine and an injury because the reports lack verification. However, underreporting to VAERS is a known problem. Researchers previously determined that the number of injuries reported to VAERS is less than 1%.
Ray also said:
“We don’t know the MMR vaccine’s long-term effects and health outcomes because the clinical trials only followed the subjects for less than six weeks, and the current formulation hasn’t even been safety tested.”
‘Manufacturing of fear is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry’
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD senior research scientist, voiced similar concerns.
The CDC childhood vaccine schedule is already “aggressive — some would find it reckless,” Jablonowski said. He added:
“Even the aggressive schedule does not recommend the live-virus MMR vaccine any earlier than 12 months old. This is not a coincidence of logistics. MMR is not recommended for younger than 12 months old because even the vaccine-zealous recommenders do not find the risks appropriate.”
In their JAMA op-ed, Walensky and colleagues noted that many parents are concerned about adding a third MMR shot to the schedule. “However,” they wrote, “this third dose can be especially critical because infants younger than 1 year face a heightened risk of severe measles-related complications such as pneumonia, encephalitis, and death.”
Jablonowski said if Walensky and her fellow authors are successful in persuading the medical community to administer the third dose to young babies, “they will have again demonstrated that immunization recommendations can be knee-jerk reactions to fear.”
“The manufacturing of fear is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry,” he said.
Walensky acknowledged that a third MMR dose would cost money. But she argued that it “can be cost-effective compared with the resources required to treat infections and contain outbreaks.”
In a March 31 op-ed for The Conversation, Peter Kasson, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, said that measles can “ravage the immune system and brain, causing long-term damage.”
Georgia Institute of Technology is one of many academic institutions that fund The Conversation.
Kasson emphasized that measles is one of the most contagious diseases on Earth. He wrote:
“One person who has it will infect nine out of 10 people nearby if those people are unvaccinated. A two-dose regimen of the vaccine, however, is 97% effective at preventing measles.”
David Speicher, Ph.D., a molecular virologist and epidemiologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, said he didn’t have an issue with the “scientific fact” presented in Kasson’s article.
Speicher noted that while measles can cause severe disease, “the risk of getting that severe disease is low and the risk of transmitting or getting infected in a population where most of the population is immunized for measles is also extremely low.”
Speicher said, “It appears like most of the measles articles are attempting to drive the fear like was done for COVID.”
A group of U.S. lawmakers say they no longer want to be complicit in the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip and total blockade of the Palestinian territory, calling on Washington to halt its military assistance to the occupying entity.
Legislators on March 18 condemned the administration of President Donald Trump for the increasing military assistance to Tel Aviv, demanding an arms embargo against Israel and an end to U.S. support for the occupying regime.
The calls come as Israel has resumed its airstrikes on the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, killing more than 400 Palestinians in the past few days, following a weeks-long ceasefire that had temporarily halted the genocidal war launched against the territory in October 2023.
Senator Bernie Sanders called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, saying that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Netanyahu has not allowed any food, water, or fuel into Gaza in two weeks.”
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“Now he has resumed bombing, killing hundreds of people and breaking the ceasefire that had given Gaza a chance to live again,” he added.
Congressman Greg Casar, for his part, denounced the Israeli blockade on Gaza, saying that the Israeli regime “has started bombing Gaza again, in violation of the negotiated ceasefire, after blocking food, water, and aid for weeks.”
The U.S. “must stop sending offensive weapons” to Israel, he said, adding, “We cannot continue to be complicit in Netanyahu’s assault on Palestinian families.”
Lawmakers also called for an immediate arms embargo against Israel.
“Netanyahu has blocked aid to Gaza for two weeks. Last night, he ordered strikes that killed over 400 Palestinians, endangered hostages, and broke a fragile ceasefire,” said Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Congress must uphold our laws and stop further weapons transfers to Israel,” she demanded.
Under Trump, the U.S. has continued supplying Israel with billions of dollars in weapons, including 2,000-pound (907kg) bombs. On February 7, Washington authorized the sale of over $7.4 billion in bombs, missiles, and other military equipment to Israel.
“The Israeli apartheid regime has resumed its genocide, carrying out airstrikes all across Gaza and killing hundreds of Palestinians,” Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote on X, stressing that Israel would never stop until there are sanctions and an arms embargo.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar echoed that sentiment. She stressed that “Netanyahu has shattered the ceasefire agreement, indiscriminately killing hundreds of people in Gaza.”
“Arms embargo NOW,” she demanded.
Congresswoman Summer Lee, for her part, while highlighting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, stressed that “Israel has consistently violated the ceasefire and cut off all aid to Gaza … This U.S.-backed genocide must end.”
The calls come amid increasing backlash against U.S. support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of over 48,500 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children, since October 2023.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes, as Israel simultaneously stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice.
