Clarence Thomas suggests Covid vaccines are developed using cells of ‘aborted children’

None of the Covid-19 vaccines in the United States contain the cells of aborted fetuses. Cells obtained from elective abortions decades ago were used in testing during the Covid vaccine development process, a practice that is common in vaccine testing — including for the rubella and chickenpox vaccinations.

A group of doctors, nurses and other health care workers brought the case, suing the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in an objection to the state’s vaccine mandate on religious grounds. The district court issued a preliminary injunction, but the Court of Appeals reversed it and the Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the challenge on Thursday.

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Rep. Liz Cheney said Wednesday that the Jan 6 committee’s work has shown that former President Donald Trump’s involvement in a plot to overturn the 2020 election was “even more chilling and more threatening than we could have imagined.”

“We have to choose. The Republican Party cannot be both loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution,” Cheney said in a speech Wednesday evening at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. “We stand at the edge of an abyss and we must pull back. We must pull back.”

Cheney said she has been motivated to stand against Trump’s lies about the 2020 election because of her hopes that her children “will continue to live in an America where the peaceful transfer of power is guaranteed ... [and] in an America that is a nation of laws, not of men.”

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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and received Communion during a papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, witnesses said, despite her position in support of abortion rights.

Pelosi’s home archbishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, has said he will no longer allow her to receive the sacrament in his archdiocese because of her support for abortion rights. Cordileone, a conservative, has said Pelosi must either repudiate her support for abortion or stop speaking publicly of her Catholic faith.

Cryptocurrency market maker and lending firm Genesis Trading is facing potential losses into the “hundreds of millions,” according to three people familiar with the matter. The losses at Genesis relate in part to exposure to over-leveraged hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and Hong Kong-based crypto lender Babel Finance and are on the order of “a few hundred million dollars,” one of the people said. The losses come as the collapse of Three Arrows Capital sends shockwaves across the crypto lending industry, with numerous firms facing substantial losses from their exposure to the fund.

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Former top White House aide Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony at the January 6 committee hearing this week changed his mind on defending Donald Trump against charges he'd incited a riot.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump’s political career. Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again. Hutchinson’s resume alone should establish her credibility. The 25-year-old had already worked at the highest levels of conservative Republican politics, including in the offices of Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (LA), before becoming a top aide for former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.

In short, Hutchinson was a conservative Trumpist true believer and a tremendously credible one at that. She did not overstate things, did not seem to be seeking attention, and was very precise about how and why she knew what she related and about which testimony was firsthand and which was secondhand but able to be corroborated.

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 Amazon is limiting how many emergency contraceptives consumers can buy, joining other retailers who put in place similar caps following the Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade.

Amazon’s limit, which temporarily caps purchase of the contraceptives at three units per week, went into effect on Monday. The company did not share further details on what emergency contraceptive products were limited for purchase, but a listing showed the cap applied to Plan B, the popular “morning after” pill.

A similar policy went into effect Monday at the drugstore chain Rite Aid, which has limited the purchase of Plan B pills to three units per customer due to increased demand. The limit applies to both in-store and online purchases.

Emergency contraception is different from abortion pills used to end a pregnancy. Plan B, which can be obtained without a prescription, contains a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth control pills. If a woman takes Plan B within 72 hours of unprotected sex, she can lower the risk of pregnancy significantly. But if she’s already pregnant, the pill has no effect.

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Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said on Tuesday that Turkey has agreed to support Finland and Sweden's NATO membership bids, removing a major hurdle to the two countries joining the alliance.

Niinistö said in a statement that a joint memorandum on the matter was signed by Turkey, Finland and Sweden on Tuesday in Madrid ahead of what is shaping up to be a critical summit.

The joint memorandum underscores the commitment of Finland, Sweden and Turkey "to extend their full support against threats to each other's security," Niinistö said.

"The concrete steps of our accession to NATO will be agreed by the NATO allies during the next two days, but that decision is now imminent," he added.

"Poverty and desperation" led to the deaths of at least 50 migrants abandoned in a Texas lorry, Mexico's president has said.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blamed trafficking and "a lack of control" at the border - the worst case of migrant deaths due to smuggling in the US.

Nearly two dozen Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans were among the dead.

Those found alive, including four children, were taken to hospital.

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Upon learning on Dec. 1 that Attorney General William P. Barr had publicly declared the allegations of widespread voter fraud unfounded, Ms. Hutchinson said Trump slammed his lunch against a wall in his dining room in the White House, as she learned from the valet who cleaned up the broken china and ketchup dripping down the wall.

“There were several times throughout my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go on to the floor and likely break or go everywhere,” she said of the president.

Ms. Hutchinson said she had been told that on Jan. 6, an irate Mr. Trump, when informed he could not go to the Capitol to join his supporters, sought to wrench the steering wheel away from the Secret Service agent driving him. He continued to press to head there even after they returned to the White House.

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Upset that the crowd at his rally on Jan. 6, 2021, didn’t fill the cordoned-off space on the Ellipse, a furious Mr. Trump ordered security officials to allow people milling outside the security perimeter into the space so the event would appear well attended. Informed that some of those people were standing outside because they had weapons and didn’t want to pass through metal detectors, the president urged that they be allowed in anyway.

“They are not here to hurt me,” he said, according to Ms. Hutchinson, who was within earshot of the president at the time. Using a string of expletives, she testified, Mr. Trump said he wanted the security features removed. She also said the president had been told that the crowd of his supporters were threatening violence and had come armed including with guns, knives, spears and flagpoles, and wearing body armor. Mr. Trump encouraged them to go to the Capitol anyway, a detail that could prove legally problematic for him.

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More than four months after she was arrested at a Moscow airport for cannabis possession, American basketball star Brittney Griner appeared in court Monday for a preliminary hearing ahead of her trial.

The Phoenix Mercury star, considered in some polls to be the United States’ most gifted female athlete, could face 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of large-scale transportation of drugs.

Russian long-range bombers struck a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine’s central city of Kremenchuk with a missile on Monday, raising fears of what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called an “unimaginable” number of victims in “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.”

Zelenskky said that many of the more than 1,000 afternoon shoppers and staff inside the mall managed to escape. Giant plumes of black smoke, dust and orange flames emanated from the wreckage, with emergency crews rushing in to search broken metal and concrete for victims and put out fires.

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The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot announced it will hold a new hearing on Tuesday “to present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony.”

The surprise hearing, set for 1 p.m. ET on Capitol Hill, was announced Monday afternoon. It was not immediately clear what new evidence the committee planned to reveal. The panel did not identify who is scheduled to testify.

Monday’s announcement came days after the committee’s fifth public hearing, which focused on how former President Donald Trump pressured the Department of Justice to help him overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The committee previously planned to hold seven hearings on the initial findings from its nearly yearlong investigation into Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and sent members of Congress fleeing for safety.

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