Excess deaths in the past year were thousands higher than in the pandemic year of 2021 – 67,724 vs 54,770 above the pre-pandemic five-year average – and just a quarter were from Covid. Lucy Johnston has the story in the Express.

Unexpected deaths are more than 10% higher than the pre-Covid average, with experts warning we are facing “a catastrophe of equal proportion to the pandemic itself”.

They are calling for an urgent investigation into the causes, with figures showing that there were more excess – or unexpected – losses last year than in 2021.

There were 67,724 extra deaths in England and Wales between April 30th 2022 and April 28th 2023. That is 12.8% above the pre-­pandemic five-year average.

Just when you thought it was all over (or couldn't get any worse)...

In the last decade, 37 traders and brokers have been prosecuted by the US Department of Justice and the UK's Serious Fraud Office for their roles in 'rigging' interest-rates during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC).

However, in extracts from Rigged, a book by Andy Verity on the Libor-rigging scandal (published in The Times), he explains how in 2008, it was central banks and government that pressed banks to bring down key interest rates, but none of this evidence was ever shown to jurors in nine criminal trials which resulted in multiple jail sentences for those involved (19 convicted, 9 jailed).

Backed up and supplemented by published data, The BBC reports that the suppressed evidence indicates that in October 2008, central banks intervened on a large scale in the setting of Libor and Euribor.

 Six protesters were arrested in Nebraska on Friday as Republicans in the state voted to approve an abortion ban and ban on transgender surgeries for minors, according to police. 

 Republican and independent voters in Nassau County, New York, this week were shocked to find out that they had changed parties after all the voter information cards mailed out before an upcoming primary mistakenly identified every voter as a Democrat.

 The mother of an 8-year-old girl who died in Biden administration custody this week says that officials repeatedly ignored pleas to get her medical attention.

 North Carolina Republican Dan Bishop said this week that the Bank of America provided the FBI with private financial information about anyone who was in Washington, D.C., from January 5-7, 2021. 

Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, is suing The Washington Post for defamation, seeking $3.78 billion in damages.

The lawsuit was filed in Sarasota County, Florida on Saturday night accusing The Washington Post of publishing false and defamatory statements about Truth Social, its CEO Devin Nunes, and former President Trump.

These false statements seriously damaged Truth Social’s reputation and caused substantial financial damage.

“WaPo has been on a years-long crusade against TMTG characterized by the concealment of relevant information in its possession—a bitterly ironic truth for a publication whose motto is ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,'” the suit said.

Military bases that housed tens of thousands of Afghan refugees in the U.S. incurred almost $260 million in damages that in some cases rendered buildings unusable for troops until significant repairs to walls and plumbing are made, the Pentagon’s inspector general found.

Over the last two weeks of August 2021, the U.S. Air Force managed the largest humanitarian evacuation in its history, airlifting 120,000 people from Afghanistan in just 17 days. The bulk of those passengers were Afghans fleeing Taliban rule, and U.S. aircraft delivered tens of thousands of those Afghans initially to bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Italy, Bahrain and Germany.

On March 27, a transgender lunatic named Audrey Hale shot up a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter, who tragically killed three adults and three children before being neutralized by well-trained Metropolitan Nashville Police Department officers, was a 28-year-old biological female who had “transitioned” to a public-facing male “gender identity.” Nashville police also confirmed that the shooter once attended the school herself.

Based simply on those established facts, one might offer a reasonable educated guess as to the likely motive of this horrific school shooting: a one-time Christian seems to have spurned the faith of her upbringing, adopted a vogue new worldview that is in irreconcilable tension with Christianity, and lashed out in one final kamikaze act to vindicate her new paganism and vanquish the foes of her youth.

The reasonable educated guess, in short, was — and remains — that this was an ideologically motivated anti-Christian hate crime, an act of domestic terrorism. The veracity of that guess was only bolstered by the revelation, which recently resurfaced on Twitter, that at some point during the murderous rampage, the shooter took precious time to divert from the school, scurry over to the adjacent church and unload seven rounds into a stained-glass figure of Adam — that is, Adam from Genesis.

Ukraine's state-owned power company Energoatom warned Monday that Russian shelling had knocked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant offline overnight. 

The operator said on Telegram the Dniprovska power line was disconnected, leaving it to rely on diesel generators - and reviving fears of nuclear catastrophe.

Energoatom said generators have enough fuel reserves to last ten days. The backup supply is needed to cool reactor fuel and prevent nuclear meltdown.

Still, it stressed that 'it is impossible to restore external power to the plant during this time. An accident with radiation consequences for the whole world may occur.'

Ukraine's largest power station has been caught in intense clashes since its occupation at the start of the war, provoking fears of a Chernobyl-type disaster.

A new poll has shown how frustrated the American people have become with Joe Biden. Negative views regarding the direction of the country and the national economy continue to prevail – by far.

Merely 21% of adults express confidence in the country’s trajectory. Among them, 36% are Democrats, whereas only 7% are Republicans. Only 24% of the populace perceives the economy positively, with a staggering 76% considering it in a state of decline.

What did Mr. Durham know three days ago when he released his report, that he did not know prior to the November 8th, 2020 election?

Special Counsel John Durham’s final report on the origins of the Russian collusion hoax (also known as Obamagate) document the single greatest dirty trick in the history of American politics and government; an abuse of power in which the full authority and extraordinary intelligence capabilities of the United States government were illicitly and illegally used to remove a duly elected President — Donald J. Trump — from office.

Contrary to the completely politicized and undocumented claims of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report, as well as the feeble assertions of the Mueller investigation; neither the FBI or the CIA had any evidence whatsoever of collusion between any Russian entity and Donald Trump’s campaign for President.

Ninety-four percent (94%) of those polled say they are worse off now than during Trump years.

That's according to the latest unscientific poll of 1,075 people at SharylAttkisson.com.

Eighty percent (80%) report they are "far worse off now," than when Donald Trump was president, while another 14% said they are a little worse off.

 New York City is having a bit of trouble with repeat retail crime offenders, but Mayor Eric Adams’ latest soft-on-crime approach to solving the problem is downright laughable.

 The Ford Raptor is very gay. That’s not a middle school joke, it’s an actual vehicle offered by The Ford Motor Company, which created a special edition “very gay” version of its Raptor pick-up truck two years ago, complete with a rainbow paint job. Yet nobody even noticed it until recently — which sort of makes the whole thing a lot more funny.

 The attorney for Sarah Comrie — a white pregnant woman vilified on social media as a racist over a viral video showing a bike rental dispute between her and a black man with his friends in New York City — created a Twitter account to track defamatory remarks about his client.