Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

In one of Henry Kissinger’s final interviews before his death at 100 years old, the former statesman warned that Germany had made a “grave mistake” in allowing so many migrants into the country.

The former US diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner’s death was announced on Wednesday.

“Dr. Henry Kissinger, a respected American scholar and statesman, died today at his home in Connecticut,” his consultancy Kissinger Associates said in a statement on Wednesday.

Kissinger was best known for normalizing American relations with China, but his legacy is hotly disputed thanks to his US policy of “Vietnamisation,” with many on the left seeing him as a war criminal.

For decades, Kissinger was a leading member of the Bilderberg Group, a shadowy secret society that pushed globalism and open borders.

However, just last month, in what may have been his final televised interview, Kissinger sounded a warning for the west.

“It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts,” he told Politico, referring to Germany.

The former Secretary of State noted that mass migration, “creates a pressure group inside each country that does that.”

In other words, Kissinger, a lifelong globalist, made an almost deathbed confession in which he acknowledged that diversity isn’t our greatest strength.

One wonders whether any of the current establishment leaders, particularly in the Netherlands where they just got trounced by populist Geert Wilders, will heed his warning.

*  *  *

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Authored by Jeff Carlson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Obama administration, just 17 days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, revised the guidelines of Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333, “Procedures for the Availability or Dissemination of Raw Signals Intelligence Information by the National Security Agency.”

Although widely overlooked, the implications were broad and far-reaching.

Under the new procedure, agencies and individuals could request the National Security Agency (NSA) for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contain relevant information that’s useful to a particular mission.

No privacy protection of the raw data was undertaken. Under the new rules, sharing of information was significantly easier–and the information being shared was raw and unfiltered.

At the time I wondered about the timing of the order. But what I found particularly curious was that it was enacted so late. Allow me to explain.

On Dec. 15, 2016, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, signed off on Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.

Why the pressing need to rush this order during the final days of his office? An order which allowed for significant expansion in the sharing of raw intelligence amongst agencies.

Was it to enable dissemination of information gathered by those in the Obama administration amongst intelligence agencies? But if so, why was the order not put into place earlier?

Why just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump officially took over the Oval Office?

Crucially, privacy protection of the underlying raw data from the NSA was specifically bypassed by the order. As The New York Times noted at the time, “the new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws.”

On its face, the rule was supposedly put in place in order to reduce the risk that “the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency,” but in reality, it dramatically expanded government officials’ access to the private information of American citizens.

As noted by the NY Times, historically, “the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information.”

However, with the Jan. 3, 2017, approval of Section 2.3, and the associated expansion of sharing globally intercepted communications, other intelligence agencies would be able to search “directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for ‘minimizing’ privacy intrusions.”

When Obama’s new NSA Data Sharing Order was signed, many wondered at the timing and questioned why there was a pressing need to rush an order that allowed for significant expansion in the sharing of raw intelligence among agencies during the final days of his administration.

But as I hinted at during the outset of our discussion, an equally valid question is, why was the order enacted so late? As it turns out, Section 2.3 was reported as being on “the verge” of finalization in late February 2016 as reported by the New York Times, which noted that “Robert S. Litt, the general counsel in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that the administration had developed and was fine-tuning what is now a 21-page draft set of procedures to permit the sharing.” It had been anticipated that the order would be finalized by early to mid-2016.

Instead, for reasons that lack official explanations to this day, Section 2.3 was delayed until January 2017. Interestingly, the finalized version signed into effect by President Obama contains a provision relating to “Political Process” that hadn’t been in place in earlier versions.

One of the items within this provision prohibited dissemination of information to the White House. Remember that this provision would not impact President Obama whose administration ended in two weeks. But it would most definitely impact the dissemination of information to the incoming Trump administration.

If this new provision had been implemented in early 2016 as originally scheduled, dissemination of any raw intelligence on or relating to the Trump campaign to officials within the Obama White House would likely have been made more difficult or quite possibly prohibited.

In other words, prior to the January 2017 signing of Section 2.3, it appears that greater latitude existed for officials in the Obama administration to gain access to information. But once the order was signed into effect, Section 2.3 granted greater latitude to interagency sharing of that information.

On July 27, 2017, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats regarding the ongoing leaks of classified information and the need for new unmasking legislation to address the problem.

Mr. Nunes’s letter specifically pointed out officials within the Obama administration, stating that “We have found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.”

Mr. Nunes noted that “one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration.”

Read more here…

The latest ranking of America’s best universities is here, perfectly timed for the approaching admissions season.

“Best” is of course subjective, and U.S. News and World Report has compiled 19 metrics on which they evaluated more than 400 national universities. Some of them include:

• Graduation rates & performance: A four-year rolling average of the proportion of each entering class earning a bachelor’s degree in six years or less. Performance is measured against predictions made by the publishers, and when beaten, the university gains a higher scoring.

• Peer assessment: A two-year weighted average of ratings from top academics—presidents, provosts and deans of admissions—on academic quality of peer institutions with which they are familiar.

• Financial resources: The average per student spend on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2021 fiscal year.

• Debt: A school’s average accumulated federal loan debt among borrowers only.

• Pell graduation rates & performance: the same calculation as stated above, but focused only on Pell Grant students, adjusted to give more credit to schools with larger Pell student proportions.

The website’s methodology section details how they sourced their data, the weights assigned to each metric, and their changes over the years.

And, as Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao and Niccolo Conte detail below, from the hundreds assessed come the nearly 50 best universities that offer a variety of undergraduate majors, post-graduate programs, emphasize research, or award professional practice doctorates.

Which are the Best Universities in America?

At the top of the list, Princeton University is the best university in the country, known for its physics, economics, and international relations departments. Notably, it’s a rare Ivy league university that does not have a law, medical, or business school.

Here’s the full ranking of America’s best universities, along with annual tuition requirements.

MIT places second, and Harvard and Stanford tie for third. Yale rounds out the top five.

Private universities, including seven Ivy League colleges, dominate the top of the rankings. Meanwhile, the highest-ranked public schools are tied at 15th, both state schools in California.

For affordability, since the higher ranks are populated by private universities, there tends to be a broad correlation of better universities being more expensive. That said, the most expensive school in the top 50 ranks is actually the University of Southern California, tied at 28th, for $68,237/year.

As it happens, also tied at 28th, the University of Florida is the most affordable public school for in-state students ($6,381/year) and Florida State University tied at 53rd, is the most affordable for out-of-staters at $21,683/year.

However these costs are tuition-only, and don’t account for other necessary expenses: accommodation, food, and textbooks.

Best University versus Best “Fit”

Finding the best university for prospective students is more than just perusing a long ranking list.

Aside from the numerous schools present within each university—which can often be the best for specific majors—factors like location, proximity to family, campus culture, the non-academic pursuits (sports, extracurriculars, internships) are also taken into consideration.

In fact, research has found that just attaining a university degree improves future earnings potential and employability.

Furthermore, individual engagement at college (irrespective of the rank of the school in question) plays a far bigger role in learning and general well-being than simply attending a highly-ranked school.

However, for low income and minority students, attending a top-ranked school does improve future earnings considerably. For women, it also often results in delaying marriage and kids, which results in more work-hours and as a result, more pay.

Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Iowa Republicans will be the first in the nation to weigh in on the competitive Republican presidential race, as they continue their long-time Iowa Caucus tradition on Jan. 15 next year.

But Democrats—with a virtually noncompetitive race, a presidential call to ditch caucuses, and memories of the bungled 2020 caucus—are turning entirely to mail ballots for the 2024 caucuses in Iowa.

If 2020 was the year of election anomalies, the first irregularity was the Democratic Iowa Caucus which was rife with technical flaws, offered no results on election night, and left the Associated Press unable to ever declare a winner.

The Feb. 3, 2020, Democratic Iowa Caucus used a freshly developed smartphone app to communicate caucus results, but the app got glitchy, and a hotline to call in results was overwhelmed, preventing results from being available on caucus night. By the next day, just 62 percent of the Democratic results were counted. A week later, folks were losing patience.

“The Iowa Democratic Party deserved better than what happened on caucus night,” state party chair Troy Price said in his Feb. 12 resignation letter. With results still not determined, he stepped down eight days after the caucus. By the time Mr. Price resigned, New Hampshire already had results from its Feb. 11, 2020, primary.

The first three rounds of the 2024 primary season didn’t go well for then-candidate Joe Biden, who had terrible results in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. He didn’t see a win until March 1 in the South Carolina primary where he got 49 percent of the Democratic vote. The Iowa results were finally calculated two days before South Carolina’s primary, putting Mr. Biden in fourth place behind Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Right after South Carolina and before Super Tuesday, Mr. Buttigieg, Ms. Klobuchar and former candidate and Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke dropped out of the race and endorsed Mr. Biden. Mr. Sanders dropped out a month later and also endorsed Mr. Biden.

Traditional Caucus Called ‘Anti-Worker’

With the presumptive candidate chosen, the long-delayed result of the Democratic Iowa Caucus fell out of the national conversation. But it was not totally forgotten—nor was Mr. Biden’s poor performance in the early races.

Using the racial makeup of voters as one reason, two years later, President Joe Biden wrote a letter calling for the end of caucuses and a change to the Democratic nominating calendar.

“Our party should no longer allow caucuses as part of our nominating process,” he wrote in December 2022, saying caucuses take too long, require voters to choose their candidate in public, and because they are held at a set time, it is tough for hourly workers to attend.

Caucuses are “Inherently anti-participatory. It should be our party’s goal to rid the nominating process of restrictive, anti-worker caucuses,” he said.

And allowing Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada to go first makes the early votes too white, President Biden indicated. Too often, he said, candidates drop out or are marginalized by the press and pundits because of poor performances in small states early in the process before voters of color cast a vote.

“We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window,” Mr. Biden said. “For decades, Black voters, in particular, have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process.”

Iowa is 89 percent white, with 7 percent of the population Hispanic, and 4 percent black, according to the U.S. Census.

New Hampshire is 92 percent white; 4 percent Hispanic; 2 percent black.

Nevada is 45 percent white; 30 percent Hispanic; 10 percent black; 9 percent Asian; and 5 percent two or more races.

South Carolina, where Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign turned around, is 63 percent white; 7 percent Hispanic; 26 percent black; 2 percent Asian; and 2 percent two or more races.

Mail-in Caucus

The Democratic and Republican styles of running caucuses in Iowa are different. In addition to choosing candidates, both parties conduct the business of the party, choosing local party leadership and delegates, and discussing the party’s platform.

Republicans gather, discuss, and then vote once. Those results are sent to Republican headquarters.

Traditionally, Democrats gather, discuss, and then go stand in a corner of the room designated for their candidate. After heads are counted, supporters of the candidate with the lowest number of votes choose a different corner. This is repeated until one candidate is clearly the winner. It involves time and lots of conversations.

But it will be different for Democrats in 2024 as the party tries to maintain its place as the first caucus in the nation and play by the new rules of the National Democratic Party, which in February honored President Biden’s request and reordered the presidential primary calendar. South Carolina will go first now, with a Feb. 24 primary.

In Iowa, Democrats will request a presidential preference card through the mail or email. Presidential preference cards will be mailed out starting Jan. 12. The last day to request a presidential preference card is Feb. 19.

Democrats will hold in-person precinct caucuses on Jan. 15, 2024, to conduct party business only. No presidential preference will be taken at the in-person precinct caucuses, according to information provided to The Epoch Times by the Iowa Democratic Party.

The results of the mail-in presidential preference will be released on Super Tuesday, March 5, meaning that while Iowa Democrats will start collecting ballots first, results will not be first in the nation.

Why First Matters

The Iowa caucuses have been the first in the nation since 1972.

Republicans, in 2024, have the more interesting, competitive race, and they will continue in their traditional style, holding the caucuses first. That is why many Republican candidates have spent time in Iowa.

“Obviously, [being first] is very important to us,” Kush Desai, spokesman for the Iowa Republican Party, told The Epoch Times.

“From the day of the 2020 caucus, our Republican chairman was fighting harder to defend how they handled their 2020 caucus—more than, I think, most Democrats were, because we should look to preserve the first-in-nation status … I think they are still kind of nursing the hope that this is just a temporary thing, and then Iowa will be put back [as] first on the Democratic calendar.”

Many residents of small, rural towns across the United States may never meet a political candidate passing through the region, but candidates spend more time in Iowa.

“Once the caucuses are done, we don’t see them anymore until the next election cycle,” Silver City, Iowa, Mayor Sharon McNutt told The Epoch Times.

“We’ve learned to expect it, but that’s why we fight for first-in-the-nation. Because if it wasn’t for first-in-the-nation, we wouldn’t even have that. I think that the Iowa voice is a rich voice for the Midwest. So, we speak for not only Iowa, but a lot of surrounding states that are rural.

By John Kemp, Senior Market Analyst

India produced a record amount of electricity from coal in October to make up for a shortfall in hydro generation following lower-than-normal monsoon rains.

Coal remains fundamental to the country’s energy security, despite rapid deployment of wind and solar generation, underscoring the challenge of reducing emissions.

Notwithstanding the ambitions expressed at the UN climate conference in Dubai, for the foreseeable future, India will depend on its mines and rail network to satisfy rapidly growing electricity demand and ensure reliability.

Total electricity demand met increased by 24 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) (+21%) in October compared with the same month a year earlier.

But hydroelectric generation fell by 5 billion kWh (-30%) as unusually low monsoon rainfall depleted water resources.

Total precipitation across most of India, the Himalayas and Tibet has been less than 80% of the long-term average since the start of the rainy season in June.

The volume of water stored in the 150 reservoirs monitored by India’s Central Water Commission was 20% below the level in 2022 and 7% below the average for 2013-2022 on November 23.

Reservoirs are managed to provide a mix of hydroelectricity and irrigation; depletion would have been even more severe if hydro generation had not been curbed to save water for agriculture.

Despite big increases in installed capacity, solar and wind generation were unable to make up the deficit. Wind increased by 0.3 billion kWh (+10%)…

…. while solar was up 1.3 billion kWh (+16%).

Instead the electricity system turned to extra gas (1.6 billion kWh, +103%) and especially coal (28 billion kWh, +33%) to meet demand.

Coal-fired generators produced a seasonal record of 111 billion kWh in October 2023 up from 84 billion kWh in October 2022.

Coal satisfied 80% of electricity demand up from 73% a year earlier, while the hydro share fell to 9% from more than 15%.

COAL REMAINS KING

India’s installed solar capacity has risen by almost 47 million kilowatts (+24% per year) while wind capacity is up by 9 million kilowatts (5% per year) since the start of 2018.

Over the same period, coal generation capacity has increased by just 9 million kilowatts (1% per year) and gas-fired capacity has been essentially unchanged.

But coal units have much higher utilization, and are particularly critical to meet load in the shoulder seasons of March-April and September-October, when renewable generation is lower but air-conditioning load is relatively high.

In the final analysis, India’s electricity system remains overwhelmingly reliant on coal for baseload and ensuring reliability.

To cope with rising electricity demand and poor hydrological conditions, India boosted mine production and the volume hauled by the railways to generators to record rates in October.

Coal output was up by 13 million tonnes in October and by a total of 87 million tonnes since January compared with a year earlier.

The volume dispatched to power producers was up 8 million tonnes in October and by 35 million tonnes in the first ten months.

Even so, coal stocks at generators were severely depleted in September and October, and by the end of October had been reduced to just 7.5 days at the required level.

Inventories had been reduced near to three-year lows and close to levels that sparked the fuel crisis and blackouts in September 2021.

Coal production and dispatch will have to remain high throughout the winter, when consumption is lower, to rebuild stocks ahead of the next shoulder season.

Much of the international community has seen the ongoing temporary truce and accompanying hostage/prisoner swap in Gaza as a good and welcome development. The UN and even regional Arab countries have urged for the ceasefire to become permanent, but hardliners in the Israeli government are growing impatient concerning Israel’s stated aim of wiping out Hamas.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is now demanding an end to the truce, which his ultra-conservative Otzma Yehudit party has opposed from the beginning.

He’s even threatening to break apart the governing coalition under Prime Minister Netanyahu. Ben-Gvir posted to X this week in Hebrew: 

“Stopping the war = breaking apart the government.”

It’s being widely reported as a clear threat to collapse the unity ruling coalition government; however, it remains unclear whether his party’s exit would ultimately fragment the coalition at this moment of war and national emergency.

On Thursday a pair of Palestinian gunmen unleashed M16 and pistol fire on a crowd waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop, killing three Israelis and injuring 16.

Shortly after the attack, Hamas claimed responsibility.

The Hamas statement said “the operation came as a natural response to unprecedented crimes conducted by the occupation” and further called for “an escalation of the resistance.”

Ben Gvir quickly pointed out that this means Hamas has broken the truce, and that Israel should continue attacking Gaza: 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir argued that Hamas had broken the truce, centered around fighting in Gaza, after the organization claimed responsibility for a Thursday terror attack in Jerusalem. Less than an hour after Thursday’s truce extension was finalized, the shooting attack killed three Israelis.

“With one hand Hamas signs a ceasefire, with the other it sends terrorists to murder Jews in Jerusalem,” the police minister, who was against the pause in fighting to begin with, said in a Thursday statement released by his Otzma Yehudit party.

“This is not a ceasefire but rather a continuation of the conception of containment [of terror attacks] and concession that brought us murdered people, which gives [Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya] Sinwar hope that he can exit this conflict with the upper hand,” he continued.

Ben Gvir declared in his Thursday statement, “We have to stop deals with the devil, and return immediately to the fight, with rare strength.”

PM Netanyahu’s words conveyed to US Secretary of State Blinken on the same day appeared geared toward assuaging these growing voices that are critical of the truce. “I told him we have sworn, and I have sworn, to destroy Hamas. Nothing will stop us,” he informed a post-meeting press conference.

Netanyahu later in the day issued a statement specifically reacting to Ben-Gvir, insisting that the war against Hamas would continue until Hamas is eliminated: “There is no situation in which we do not go back to fighting until the end,” the prime minister stressed. “This is my policy. The entire Security Cabinet is behind it. The entire Government is behind it. The soldiers are behind it. The people are behind it — this is exactly what we will do.”

Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Vice President Kamala Harris is headed to Dubai for the COP28 summit being held Nov. 30 through Dec. 12.

The White House announced on Nov. 29 that Ms. Harris, along with “dozens of senior U.S. officials representing more than 20 U.S. departments and agencies” will be headed to the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28, being held in the United Arab Emirates’ capital.

In a Wednesday afternoon press call, Ike Irby, deputy domestic policy advisor to the vice president, said the visit builds on the administration’s “leadership on bold global action to address the climate crisis.“

“Throughout her engagements in Dubai, Vice President Harris will highlight the administration’s historic investments to address the climate crisis at home and abroad and announce several initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions support, adaptation, and boost climate resilience alongside global partners,” he said.

Senior administration officials declined to share specific details of Ms. Harris’ expected visit but did say the vice president is expected to speak at multiple engagements on Dec. 2.

Mr. Irby said Ms. Harris will have an opportunity to engage with global leaders assembled at COP28 and discuss the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Ms. Harris is expected to speak during the World Climate Action Summit. More details are expected to be announced on Ms. Harris’ visit in the coming days.

An overview schedule published by the UNFCCC said the World Climate Action Summit will take place on Dec. 1 and Dec. 2. It is scheduled to include high-level roundtables and events. The G77 and China Summit is expected to take place on Dec. 2.

The overall objective of COP28, according to the UNFCCC, is to “address the climate crisis by agreeing on ways to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.” More than 70,000 delegates are expected to attend the event.

“Countries are developing plans for a net-zero future, and the shift to clean energy is gathering speed, but … the transition is nowhere near fast enough yet to limit warming within the current ambitions,” the UNFCCC release said.

Authored by Paul Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle,

Congressional leaders with the House Energy and Commerce investigative subcommittee will question CDC Director Mandy Cohen tomorrow in what should be an interesting hearing on restoring public trust.

The hearing “should” be interesting, because this committee has a long history of holding corporate and government leaders accountable.

However, we have yet to see this committee get any actual explanation for a rash of mistakes and failures during the COVID pandemic.

During her final appearance before Congress last summer, the prior CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky, gave false testimony about a study on masks. When two researchers pointed out Walensky’s mistake, a congressional staffer emailed them that the committee would correct the record. “We want the record to reflect the accurate facts for posterity,” the staffer with House Appropriations wrote, “And take this responsibility very seriously as the lack of trust in public health officials is becoming an enormous problem for many reasons.”

Having run congressional investigations for several years, I’m confused why the Energy and Commerce committee has done so little peeking into COVID scandals at the CDC—many of which I have documented during the last couple of years. Congressional staff work long hours and often don’t have the time to look into every problem, but how can the CDC regain public trust when employees with the PR firm for Pfizer and Moderna staff the CDC’s Vaccine Center?

Last October, I discovered that employees with the global PR firm Weber Shandwick are embedded at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), the CDC group that implements vaccine programs. Weber Shandwick won this multi-million dollar CDC contract back in September 2020, during COVID pandemic’s first year. 

A few weeks after Weber Shandwick won the CDC contract, a senior vice president at the firm posted a company blog that disclosed Weber Shandwick clients working on COVID-19 vaccines included GSK, Sanofi, and Pfizer. A special investigation by PR Week reported that Weber Shandwick provided publicity for Moderna’s COVID vaccine.

“So excited to be starting a new role today,” one Weber Shandwick employee wrote on her LinkedIn account. “I’m joining Weber Shandwick as an Account Director supporting a contract I know well, at CDC’s NCIRD!”

Weber Shandwick employees staffing NCIRD help to run the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). After ACIP recommended recommended in late 2021 that everyone over 12 receive a “bivalent” Covid-19 vaccine as a booster dose, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, warned that ACIP’s advice was made without convincing data.

Despite sending a slew of emails to the CDC—some directly to the CDC Director—I never got an explanation for this obvious conflict of interest. Senator Rand Paul later sent the CDC a letter, but the agency ignored him. Will the House Committee demand answers?

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A new report from Consumer Reports found that electric vehicles have almost 80% more problems and are “generally less reliable” than conventional internal combustion engine cars. Good thing every major government around the world is subsidizing their use in the name of ‘climate change’, right?

Even worse than electric vehicles were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which were found to have 150% more issues than traditional ICE vehicles, CBS reported. Ordinary hybrids are the best of the breed, with about 25% less problems than gas cars, the study found. 

The study encompassed information from over 330,000 vehicles produced from 2000 to 2023, including a limited number of reports on brand-new 2024 models.

The recent vehicle reliability report from Consumer Reports coincides with a time when car purchasers have the benefit of a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 when buying an electric vehicle. 

But, as CBS noted in their summary, the adoption of EVs by consumers has been slower than initially anticipated. One contributing factor to this slower adoption is the higher maintenance costs associated with EVs compared to conventional vehicles, along with the necessity for additional equipment like home electric charging stations.

EV owners most commonly reported issues related to the battery and charging systems, as well as issues with the fit and finish of the vehicle’s body panels and interior components. Consumer Reports observed that EV manufacturers are still in the process of mastering new power systems and suggested that as they gain expertise, the overall reliability of EVs would improve.

Consumer Reports also pointed out that persistent concerns about reliability are likely to compound the challenges that deter many potential buyers from transitioning to EVs. These concerns join existing ones about higher costs, limited availability of charging infrastructure, and extended charging durations associated with EVs.

CBS wrote:

“PHEVs may have more problems than conventional cars and electric vehicles because they combine internal-combustion engines with an electric drive, which creates additional complexity, Consumer Reports said. That means there’s more than can go wrong.”

“Consumer Reports rates vehicles on 20 problem areas, ranging from squeaky brakes to EV charging problems, and PHEVs can experience every one of them, it noted.”

Not all PHEVs were horrible. According to Consumer Reports, the Toyota RAV4 Prime and Kia Sportage received reliability ratings that are above average. In addition, three plug-in hybrid electric vehicles – the BMW X5, Hyundai Tucson, and Ford Escape – achieved scores that were average. 

Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports concluded: “This story is really one of growing pains. It’s a story of just working out the bugs and the kinks of new technology.”

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,

Top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are calling for attention from U.S. health authorities on the “suspicious” clusters of viral infections and reports of pneumonia affecting Chinese children, warning that it would be “an abdication” of their duty for allowing the Chinese regime to “repeat its misdeeds from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In a Nov. 29 letter addressed to Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) director Mandy Cohen, who is set to testify before the committee’s oversight subcommittee on Thursday, the lawmakers underscored the Chinese regime’s repeated efforts to suppress information about the burgeoning COVID-19 crisis since it began to spread in China three years ago. Such actions by China have drawn criticism from international bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which, the lawmakers noted, “has long been criticized for being overly accommodating to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

The infections of children with respiratory illness and pneumonia in China have overwhelmed hospitals and alarmed the WHO, which is urging China to share data about the outbreak. Anecdotal reports have also indicated that children are transmitting the illness to other members of their family, including adults.

The Chinese authorities have responded by saying that they have detected no “unusual or novel pathogens or unusual clinical presentations,” and only a “general increase in respiratory illnesses due to multiple known pathogens,” according to a WHO statement on Nov. 23. It cited Chinese authorities as further stating that “the rise in respiratory illness has not resulted in patient loads exceeding hospital capacities.”

The three Republican lawmakers—Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Brett Guthrie (R-Va.), and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.)—while expressing skepticism about WHO, are asking the CDC to step up.

“The American people should not have to rely on the unaccountable and untrustworthy WHO to communicate information about Chinese public health threats. Further, we cannot allow the CCP to block the CDC from accessing the information it needs to protect Americans and assist in appropriate public health response efforts,” they wrote in the letter.

They requested the CDC to brief the committee on a biweekly basis on the issue, and respond to a list of questions about the wave of respiratory illness in China by Dec. 13, including whether CDC has engaged with the Chinese counterparts regarding the outbreak issue, related details, and its plan of action.

“There’s no question that we should be taking a hard look at it and not not counting on them to give us the real facts,” Mr. Griffith, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, told The Epoch Times’s sister media NTD.

“We need to figure out what we need to do to protect ourselves from a disease that’s in China from coming here, if we can.”

From the early days of the pandemic, the CDC had tried to offer assistance to China. Letters The Epoch Times obtained showed that Dr. Robert Redfield, who was head of the CDC at the time, had attempted to arrange for a team of experts to fly to China to help identify the virus. The United States and allies made nearly 100 requests to China asking to offer assistance in the health crisis, but the regime rejected them all, according to David Asher, a former lead COVID-19 investigator at the U.S. State Department.

Now, concerns about overcrowded hospitals and long lines for seeing a doctor have led China’s top health body, the National Health Commission, to call for local clinics to increase their capacity.

Chinese People on Front Line

Chinese authorities haven’t provided any data on the current outbreak, but many schools are telling students to stay home because of the large number of sick children.

A woman from Yunnan Province in southwestern China said that her four children are all experiencing fever. One of them has had a fever for half a month, with pimples appearing on the face and their throat swelling up and festering.

“The doctor didn’t tell us much and prescribed us some drugs. We’ve been taking them, but there hasn’t been much effect,” she told The Epoch Times.

Beijing resident Ms. Lin said that her two children had become infected first, before spreading the illness to her and her husband.

At their school, parents have been asked to send digital requests for a leave of absence to a group chat monitored by teachers if their children become sick.

“Every day, we would see some children explaining why they can’t come to school,” she told The Epoch Times.

A majority of sick students are coughing. And even days after their symptoms go away, some of the children would start coughing again or develop fever soon after they returned to school, she said.