The social network says the rapper will help build an “uncancellable” ecosystem with “all voices welcome”

Hip hop star and businessman Kanye West has agreed in principle to acquire social media platform Parler. The decision was announced after the rapper, who has legally changed his name to Ye, was suspended on Instagram and Twitter.

“This deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech,” Parler CEO George Farmer said in a statement on Monday.

He added that “Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

According to Parler, the acquisition ensures “a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome.”

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” West said in a statement released by Parlement Technologies, Parler’s parent company. Parlement added that West was “taking a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech.”

Instagram and Twitter suspended West’s account this month and deleted messages directed at Jewish people. West claimed that rapper Diddy, whose real name is Sean Combs, was “controlled by the Jews” , and accused Jews of seeking to suppress those who oppose their “agenda.”

The remarks were condemned by the American Jewish Committee.

Parler was founded in 2018 by John Matze and Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of billionaire Rober Mercer, the co-owner of conservative news website Breitbart.

In the wake of the storming of the US Capitol building by supporters of former President Donald Trump in January 2021, the social network was removed from Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store, while Amazon dropped it from its web hosting service. The companies argued at the time that Parler permitted “violent content.”

After weeks of being offline, Parler found a new host. The social network also introduced stronger content moderation, which allowed its return to the App Store in May 2021 and the Google Store last month.

The country’s economy is expected to contract in the next 12 months, forcing employers to cut jobs, a survey of economists showed

The US will likely enter a recession in the coming year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing its latest survey of economists.

According to the report, the probability of a recession in the US within the next 12 months is 63%, up from 49% projected in the previous WSJ survey in July.

The economists polled said that risks had increased due to the Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring down inflation by hiking the key interest rate. The Fed has raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points at each of its last three meetings, most recently in September, bringing the rate to the 3.00-3.25% range. Over half of the economists surveyed said they expect the Fed to hike rates further and even to do “too much,” which would destabilize the economy. They expect the country’s gross domestic product to contract by 0.2% in the first two quarters of 2023, while in the previous survey, they had predicted 0.8% growth during that period.

A shrinking economy would be expected to affect the labor market, as employers would be forced to cut jobs. Nonfarm payrolls are forecast to decline by about 34,000 per month in the second quarter of 2023 and by 38,000 a month in the third quarter. The unemployment rate is expected to rise from the current 3.5% to 3.7% in December, and to 4.3% by June 2023.

“The Federal Reserve is choosing between the lesser of two evils – take a recession with a rise in unemployment today or risk a more corrosive and entrenched inflation taking root,” Diane Swonk of KPMG told the news outlet.

On average, the economists expect a recession to be relatively short at around eight months, and the US economy to return to growth by the end of next year.

Researchers at Boston University have created a new strain of Covid-19 that has an 80% kill rate in humanized mice.

In an effort to research what makes Omicron so transmissible, the researchers cobbled the Omicron spike protein to the original strain of Covid-19. The resulting virus was five times more infectious than Omicron.

“The Omicron spike (S) protein, with an unusually large number of mutations, is considered the major driver of these phenotypes. We generated chimeric recombinant SARS-CoV-2 encoding the S gene of Omicron in the backbone of an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 isolate and compared this virus with the naturally circulating Omicron variant,” reads the pre-print.

The new research, which has not been peer-reviewed, was conducted by a team from Boston and Florida.

“In…mice, while Omicron causes mild, non-fatal infection, the Omicron S-carrying virus inflicts severe disease with a mortality rate of 80 percent,” the researchers wrote, adding that while the spike protein is responsible for infectivity, changes to other parts of its structure are responsible for its deadliness.

The researchers also looked at the effect of different strains on human lung cells grown in the lab – which Covid latches on to before instructing healthy cells to make copies of itself. They found that the modified strain produces five times more viral particlesthan the original Omicron strain (which all the rodents survived).

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A jury in Connecticut has ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $950 million to the families of eight victims who were killed during the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

For years, Jones had claimed that the shooting was staged and that the families were crisis actors in an effort by the government to confiscate Americans’ guns. The latest verdict is the second against Jones, following a ruling from a separate jury in Texas ordered Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages, an amount that may soon be reduced due to state laws capping the amount of damages.

The Connecticut trial lasted three weeks and included testimony from the parents of victims and school employees, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, CNN reported. The case itself is a consolidation of three other cases, brought about by various families and the FBI agent.

Since the shooting, Jones had repeatedly claimed the incident was a hoax, which families of the victims said throughout the trial led to harassment against them and continued anguish after losing their children. In 2018, the families began taking action against Jones and Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Jones’ conspiracy theorist organization Infowars.

Prosecutors asked the jury to award $550 million based on the number of impressions Jones’ false claims received online.

“You may say that is astronomical. It is,” Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the plaintiffs said while addressing the jurors. “It’s exactly what Alex Jones set himself up to do. That’s what he built. He built a lie machine that could push this stuff out. You reap what you sow.”

When Jones began facing lawsuits for his false claims, he acknowledged that the shooting did occur, but, as CNN reported, he didn’t comply with court orders during the discovery process of the lawsuits brought against him in Texas or Connecticut, which led to the families winning default judgments against him.

In August, Jones was ordered to pay Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse, who was killed in the mass shooting along with 19 other children and six educators, The Daily Wire previously reported.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Rohit Chopra said he was considering investigating PayPal over a now-retracted update to the user agreement that said users would be fined $2,500 for spreading misinformation.

“I’ve never actually never heard of a payment system thinking that it could fine someone for legal expression that their users are making,” Chopra told CNBC.

“We have ordered most of the Big Tech firms for information about how they are making decisions about who they kick off their platforms,” Chopra added. “But we also need to look into whether they believe they can be fining users for illegal activity.”

PayPal said that the updated policy was sent in error.

“An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information,” a PayPal spokesperson said. “PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy. Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.”

Though, PayPal is still saying that it will fine users $2,500 for promoting “intolerance that is discriminatory.”

Despite retracting the policy, PayPal has been criticized, with Sen. Tim Scott saying that he would investigate the issue further.

apper Kanye West said late Wednesday night that he was “happy to have” crossed the line by saying something that has been widely condemned as anti-Semitic because it now means that he can discuss cancel culture in the U.S.

“Hey, if you call somebody out for bad business, that means you’re being anti-Semitic,” West told reporters after he left the screening of Daily Wire host Candace Owens’ new documentary. “I feel happy to have crossed the line of that idea so we can speak openly about things like getting canceled by a bank.”

West’s comments were in reference to an email obtained by The Daily Wire that showed that a JPMorgan Chase bank was ending its banking relationship with West.

The statement, which was scant on details, was obtained by Candace Owens on the same day that Owens launched her new documentary on The Daily Wire, “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold.”

“We are sending this letter to confirm our recent discussion with [redacted] that JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A (the ‘Bank’) has decided to end its banking relationship with Yeezy, LLC and its affiliated entities (collectively, the ‘Company’),” the bank said in an email to West. “To provide the Company with sufficient time to transition to another financial institution, we will continue to maintain the accounts (attached as Exhibit A), including all related products and services, until November 21, 2022.”

“To avoid any transaction delays, we suggest that you stop processing Company transactions and/or using any products associated with the accounts five business days before the scheduled closure date set forth above,” the statement continued. “After that date, the Bank will close any open accounts, and after deduction of any permissible service charges and pending transactions, remit all remaining funds in the form of a check delivered to the Company at the address of record.”

JPMorgan Chase urged West to “act promptly [to] transfer your business to another financial institution before November 21, 2022.”

The bank encouraged him to reach out to them if he had any further questions.

The bank, according to Owens, gave “no official reason” about its decision to end its relationship with West.

News that the bank terminated its relationship with West comes as the rapper was in Nashville to attend the premiere of Owens’ documentary.

Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles stopped multiple woke reporters in their tracks during his daily press conference when he was asked about going against Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin and “representation.”

During the Tampa Bay coach’s press event Tuesday, he was fielding questions from reporters who felt it necessary to turn the Bucs’ upcoming game against Pittsburgh into a race issue. The NFL coach made it clear he wasn’t interested in their agenda.

One reporter asked Bowles about how he and Tomlin are “two of the few black head coaches in the league,” what their relationship was like, and about the interim head coach for the Carolina Panthers Steve Wilks “joining that fold.”

“I have a very good relationship with Tomlin,” Bowles replied. “We don’t look at what color we are when we coach against each other. We just know each other. I have a lot of very good white friends that coach in this league as well.”

“And I don’t think it’s a big deal,” he added. “As far as us coaching against each other, I think it’s normal … and we coach ball. We don’t look at color.”

nother reporter then jumped in and appeared to scold the coach for not giving the woke response desired, and reminded him that “you also understand that representation matters, too, right?”

She then told the head coach about how seeing him there inspires others because “football players, they see you guys. You know, they see someone that looks like them, maybe grew up like them …”

“Well, when you say ‘see you guys’ and ‘look like them’ and ‘grow up like them’ means that we’re oddballs to begin with,” Bowles replied. “And I think the minute you guys start — stop making a big deal about it, everybody else will as well.”

Wilks was announced as interim head coach Monday after the Panthers fired coach Matt Rhule following the team’s dismal start to the 2022 season with a 1-4 start, as ESPN reported. Rhule was with the team for less than three years and amassed a total record of just 11-27.

From conversations with family and friends, one detects an uneasy awareness of increasing risk to investments. There are two broad camps. The first and the majority are only aware that interest rates are rising, and their stocks and shares are falling in value but fail to make the connection fully. The second camp is beginning to worry that there’s something very seriously wrong.

Investors in the first camp have usually delegated investment decisions to financial advisers, and through them to portfolio managers of mutual funds. They have taken comfort in leaving investment decisions to the experts, and besides the odd hiccup, have been rewarded with reasonably consistent gains, certainly since the early noughties, and in many cases before. They trust their advisers. Meanwhile, their advisers are rewarded by the volume of assets under their management or by fees.

Ever since the recent unprecedented sabotage attacks on the Russia to Europe Nord Stream pipelines, the central question has continued to remain who did it and correspondingly cui bono?

Just when speculation and an avalanche of theories have inundated the web on an array of international outlets, the Biden administration has bluntly (and apparently lacking self-awareness) boasted that the pipeline bombings present an “opportunity”.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Friday joint press briefing with Canada’s top diplomat that the damage and disruption to the pipelines are being seen in Washington as a “tremendous opportunity” to greatly reduce European energy imports on Russia.

In addressing the ‘mystery’ sabotage incidents, Blinken began, “I think first it’s important to make clear that these pipelines – that is, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 – were not pumping gas into Europe at this time.  Nord Stream 2 never became operational, as is well known.  Nord Stream 1 has been shut down for weeks because of Russia’s weaponization of energy.”

A mere few sentences later, he followed by saying “ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”

He at the same time touted that the Untied States has now become “the leading supplier of LNG [liquefied natural gas] to Europe,” stressing too that the Biden administration is helping to enable European leaders to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”

Tellingly, in that single section of comments while speaking alongside his Canadian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, Blinken had repeated the word “opportunity” while highlighting the European energy crisis no less than three times.

Canada’s Joly for her part pointed the finger at Russia for sabotaging its own pipeline during a panel discussion the same day, telling an Atlantic Council conference that the world is “not naïve” about who is responsible for the acts of “sabotage”. She’s the latest top official of a NATO government to do so.