Posted by Tyler Durden; Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Oct. 10 said it still doesn't know what caused the pneumonia that killed a Russian anti-plague researcher earlier this month, but it noted that no case of plague has been registered.

Meanwhile, the U.N.-backed health body wrote that based on information from Russian officials, WHO "has not identified evidence of ongoing transmission associated with this event."

"A key uncertainty remains the absence of a confirmed diagnosis in the deceased laboratory worker," the Oct. 10 statement reads.

The organization said it will monitor the situation and decide whether there are any potential health risks associated with the woman's death if more information becomes available.

"Test results were negative for the tested high-threat pathogens," WHO wrote, adding it has not found any "evidence of ongoing transmission associated with this event."

A Russian health body provided information to WHO and confirmed the lab researcher's death. It said that "no case of plague had been registered recently in Irkutsk Oblast," where the laboratory is located, according to the statement.

"Preventive and control measures had been implemented in accordance with national sanitary legislation, and the laboratory testing of contacts detected no high-threat pathogens," the statement reads, reiterating information provided by Russian authorities and the WHO.

Claire's Observations:  In other words, this alleged potential "...Russian health hazard pandemic hype", was simply a "nothingburger".

Posted by Tyler Durden; Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Oct. 10 said it still doesn't know what caused the pneumonia that killed a Russian anti-plague researcher earlier this month, but it noted that no case of plague has been registered.

Meanwhile, the U.N.-backed health body wrote that based on information from Russian officials, WHO "has not identified evidence of ongoing transmission associated with this event."

"A key uncertainty remains the absence of a confirmed diagnosis in the deceased laboratory worker," the Oct. 10 statement reads.

The organization said it will monitor the situation and decide whether there are any potential health risks associated with the woman's death if more information becomes available.

"Test results were negative for the tested high-threat pathogens," WHO wrote, adding it has not found any "evidence of ongoing transmission associated with this event."

A Russian health body provided information to WHO and confirmed the lab researcher's death. It said that "no case of plague had been registered recently in Irkutsk Oblast," where the laboratory is located, according to the statement.

"Preventive and control measures had been implemented in accordance with national sanitary legislation, and the laboratory testing of contacts detected no high-threat pathogens," the statement reads, reiterating information provided by Russian authorities and the WHO.

Claire's Observations:  In other words, this alleged potential "...Russian health hazard pandemic hype", was simply a "nothingburger".

by VBL

Evelyn Cheng’s CNBC newsletter, How a gold-buying spree helps the yuan go global, now describes that connection. Its analysts explain the purpose behind the infrastructure GoldFix has followed with Eric Yeung: giving overseas holders a place to deploy their renminbi.

A Place to Use the Yuan

CNBC puts the problem and the proposed solution together:

China’s decades-long push for yuan internationalization is getting a lift from the buildout of Hong Kong as a gold trading center — denominated in the Chinese currency.

“As those trading volumes grow, there would be a growing volume of the physical gold trade that is denominated in RMB and not linked in USD,” said Charles Chang, managing director and Greater China country lead for corporate ratings at S&P Global Ratings.

The Chinese yuan, also known as the renminbi, accounts for a fraction of international transactions in a global financial system dominated by the U.S. dollar. Analysts I spoke with don’t expect major changes to that dynamic anytime soon, but Beijing’s gold purchases and Hong Kong trading platform are just the latest steps toward supporting greater use of the yuan globally.

“The challenge with internationalizing the RMB it’s somewhat more challenging to find places where you can use the RMB,” Chang said. “In terms of gold particularly, if the RMB that the buyer receives can be converted to gold, then it gives more channels for the spending to be done.”

Hong Kong linked its gold vault with Shanghai last year, allowing yuan-denominated physical delivery to international institutions, CNBC reports. The planned expansion from 150 tonnes to more than 2,000 tonnes over three years would increase the capacity to handle that business. Capacity is distinct from actual metal holdings or turnover.

J.R. Duren , independent.co.uk

Number of people at least two months late on a bill increased 60 percent in the past three years; US families are behind on bills at rate not seen since Great Recession of 2008.

American families are falling behind on their bills at a rate not seen since the Great Recession, according to new federal data.

One in five households are behind on a loan payment, reported the Federal Reserve in its three-year survey of 4,367 U.S. families.

“Between the 2022 and 2025 surveys, the share of families that reported being behind on loan payments sharply increased from about 12 percent to almost 20 percent,” the report said.

The median debt per household - which includes credit cards, student loans, mortgages and other lending types - rose from $170,200 in 2022 to $183,600 in 2025, the report noted.

During a House Oversight DOGE subcommittee hearing, Republicans on the committee grilled NPR CEO Katherine Maher and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) CEO Paula Kerger over their anti-Trump bias and the extreme, woke programming on the stations.

Just when you think the radical open-border lobby and activist judges have pushed the legal system to its absolute limit, the United States Supreme Court is now being forced to step in to answer a question that should take precisely two seconds to answer:

This is not surprising since they are basically campaigning for him at this point.

Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas has triggered a whole bunch of lefties for simply writing a tweet about Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day.

A transgender person (biological male) fatally stabbed a man in South Side Chicago for disrespecting his gender.

A transgender person (biological male) fatally stabbed a man in South Side Chicago for disrespecting his gender.

Daughters of the American Revolution is a history organization which caters to women who are related to people who fought in the American Revolution.

An NFL social media staffer who decided to virtue-signal for the left on Columbus Day should be having a bad day after failing to understand the nickname of the team they are working for.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that a 21-year-old Afghan alien, Badshah Sahi, was sentenced to 35 years for multiple child sex charges.

 The force behind SpaceX is pouring rocket fuel into the Republican Party’s hopes to hold its congressional majority in next month’s midterm elections.

In case you missed it over the weekend, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts appeared on MSNOW and pushed Trump-deranged conspiracy theories about the upcoming midterm elections.

New report out of Germany reveals that hundreds of child marriages have been officially logged across the country, exposing young girls, some as young as 11 years old, trapped in marital unions with adult men hailing from high-risk migration zones like Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan.

White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia told reporters during her first press briefing on Tuesday that President Trump has already asked US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign from her post amid a widely reported corruption scandal. 

 Iran is preparing for another potential showdown with President Donald Trump, and Tehran is now threatening to expand the conflict across the Middle East, launch ground incursions into neighboring countries, sink American warships, and kill U.S. military personnel if Washington resumes major strikes against the Islamic Republic.

In deep-blue Santa Rosa, California, woke high school students staged a mass walkout that helped sideline a football team, all because the team captain dared to post “Free the Cornell 7” on Instagram.

Nearly 500 criminal fugitives living in taxpayer-subsidized housing have been arrested in a sweeping nationwide law enforcement operation targeting dangerous offenders who were allegedly using government-assisted housing as a refuge from justice.

For exactly three years today, the mainstream media and Western governments have covered up what really happened during Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7th of 2023.

Most notably, they have continued to cover up the fact that Israel issued the “Hannibal directive” that day as a response to the Hamas operation- an Israeli military doctrine that calls for the IDF to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians to prevent them from being taken captive.

This shows that Hamas was not responsible for every Israeli death on October 7th, and that at least hundreds of the Israelis killed that day were actually killed by the IDF.

This was confirmed by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which reported that the directive was ordered on October 7th at :