News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
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The laboratories and other buildings that once housed a chemical manufacturer here in New Jersey's most populous city have been demolished. More than 10,000 leaky drums and other containers once illegally stored here have long been removed. Its owner was convicted three decades ago. Yet the groundwater beneath the 4.4-acre expanse once occupied by White Chemical Corp. in Newark remains contaminated, given a lack of federal funding. But three decades after federal officials declared it one of America's most toxic spots, it's about to get a jolt. This plot in Newark is among more than four dozen toxic waste sites to get cleanup funding from the newly-enacted infrastructure law, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday, totaling $1 billion. "This work is just the beginning," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said. President Biden signed legislation reviving a polluter's tax that will inject a new stream of cash into the nation's troubled Superfund program. The renewed excise fees, which disappeared more than 25 years ago, are expected to raise $14.5 billion in revenue over the next decade and could accelerate cleanups of many sites that are increasingly threatened by climate change. The Superfund list includes more than 1,300 abandoned mines, radioactive landfills, shuttered military labs, closed factories and other contaminated areas across nearly all 50 states.
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As the year draws to a close, there are reasons to feel cautiously optimistic about areas in which the environment scored victories in 2021. Delayed by a year as a result of COVID-19, November's COP26 - the United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Glasgow - welcomed the world's second-largest fossil-fuel emitter, the United States, back to the negotiating table after four years of inaction on climate change. By the summit's end, the U.S. and China had made a surprise joint declaration to work together on meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. The biggest news in forest conservation was the pledge at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow to end deforestation by 2030; the commitment includes a pledge to provide $12 billion in funding to "help unleash the potential of forests and sustainable land use." The Biden administration spent part of its first year restoring habitat protections that had been rolled back by its predecessor. Perhaps the most prominent was the re-establishment of full protection for the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in southern Utah, as well as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument off New England. Populations of some of the world's most iconic species are showing some improvement as a result of protective measures. Humpback whales, whose haunting songs helped build support for the "Save the Whales" campaign that ushered in the modern environmental movement, are increasing in number in many parts of their range.
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There's often outcry when a public figure eschews covid-19 related rules – but even more so when those breaking the rules are the same ones who set them. In 2020, guideline-flouting officials faced backlash across the world – from New Zealand to Ireland to Canada to the United States. There was California Gov. Gavin Newsom's attendance at a lavish $350 per person dinner party. Or the British prime minister's then-top aide Dominic Cummings, who defied a lockdown for a 260-mile road trip while he and his wife were infected with covid-19. And the senator in the Philippines who broke quarantine to visit the hospital where his wife was in labor – all waiting for his coronavirus test result, which ended up positive. As the pandemic persists, the cycle of rule-flouting, public outcry, followed by an official apology and sometimes, a resignation, continues. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is embroiled in another scandal – this one with a Christmas theme. In early December, controversy arose over a 2020 Christmas party (or series of parties) at 10 Downing Street, the British prime minister's office, in the midst of a strict coronavirus lockdown. Johnson issued an apology at the House of Commons. After the prime minister's apology, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, said that the "millions" who followed public health protocols last Christmas "now think the prime minister was taking them for fools, that they were lied to."
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One in two people worldwide saw their earnings drop due to the coronavirus, with people in low-income countries hit particularly hard by job losses or cuts to their working hours, new research shows. US-based polling company Gallup, which surveyed 300,000 people across 117 countries, found that half of those with jobs earned less because of the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This translated to 1.6 billion adults globally, it said. "Worldwide, these percentages ranged from a high of 76 per cent in Thailand to a low of 10 per cent in Switzerland," said researchers in a statement. In Bolivia, Myanmar, Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia, Honduras and Ecuador, more than 70 per cent of people polled said they took home less than before the global health crisis. In the United States, this figure dropped to 34 per cent. The Covid-19 crisis has affected workers across the world – particularly women. International charity Oxfam said ... that according to its own research, the pandemic had cost women around the world $800bn (Ł578bn) in lost income. The poll also showed that one in three people surveyed had lost their job or business due to the pandemic – translating to just over 1 billion people globally. These figures also varied across nations, with more than 60 per cent of respondents in lower-income countries such as the Philippines, Kenya and Zimbabwe having lost their jobs or businesses, compared to 3 per cent in Switzerland and 13 per cent in the United States.
Note: This article fails to mention that these were consequences not of the virus, but of the lockdowns. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
In his new bestselling book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, Children's Health Defense board chair and lead counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. provides readers with previously little-known information on Dr. Fauci's handling of pandemics prior to COVID including the AIDS epidemic. "...Dr. Fauci copied the choreographed script for winning remdesivir's EUA from the worn rabbit-eared playbook that he developed during his early AIDS years, and then used repeatedly across his career to win approvals for deadly and ineffective drugs," writes Kennedy. "Time and again, he has terminated clinical trials of his sweetheart drugs the moment they begin to reveal cataclysmic toxicity. He makes the absurd claim that his drug-du-jour had proven so miraculously effective that it would be unethical to deny it to the public, and then he strong-arms FDA to grant his approvals." One of the AIDS treatments promoted by Dr. Fauci and his agency [NIAID] was azidothymidine (AZT), a powerful and toxic chemotherapy drug used widely for AIDS patients despite the availability of less toxic options. AZT, according to SPIN magazine, is a drug that "was worse than the disease." Kennedy also exposes Dr. Fauci's experiments using various toxic AIDS drugs on Black and Hispanic foster children in New York and six other states.
Note: Read more about the foster children used as guinea pigs to test HIV drugs. If you don't have time for the whole book (rated 4.9 stars on amazon.com), you can find an engaging summary of key points on this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and health from reliable major media sources.
Longtime vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a runaway bestseller on his hands with his blockbuster book skewering Dr. Anthony Fauci, no thanks to what his publisher calls a "total media blackout." "The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health" continued its reign Wednesday atop the Amazon and USA Today nonfiction bestseller lists and ranked fifth on The New York Times' list of top-selling books. The book is flying off the shelves even though technology platforms refuse to carry its advertising. Mainstream media outlets won't touch it, much to the frustration of Tony Lyons, president and publisher of Skyhorse Publishing. "I defy you to find a single case where the No. 1 bestselling book in America over a 16-day period has not been mentioned in one mainstream newspaper in the country," Mr. Lyons [said]. Not even the aura of the Kennedy name has tempted the mainstream media. The snub hasn't occurred in a vacuum. Mr. Kennedy became persona non grata after he launched his vaccine criticism in 2005. Dr. Fauci is a media favorite, and social media companies have cracked down on content that contests the coronavirus authorities in the name of squelching "misinformation." Among the book's claims are that the White House chief medical adviser oversaw the "disastrous mismanagement" of the 2020 pandemic and has prioritized the pharmaceutical industry over public health.
Note: If you don't have time for the whole book (rated 4.9 stars on amazon.com), you can find an engaging summary of key points on this webpage. Learn how the CIA is involved in suppressing Kennedy's book and so much more. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation and the coronavirus from reliable sources.
Children's Health Defense's board chair and lead counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s highly anticipated book, The Real Anthony Fauci, is available today in bookstores throughout the U.S. and Canada. The New York Times bestselling author's latest work "details how Fauci, Gates and their cohorts used their control of media outlets, scientific journals, key government and quasi-governmental agencies, and influential scientists and physicians to flood the public with fearful propaganda about COVID-19 virulence and pathogenesis, and to muzzle debate and ruthlessly censor dissent," said Kennedy. The Real Anthony Fauci exposes a side of Dr. Fauci that has thus far been shielded from the public by the ongoing media blackout of any information that counters the Pharma/government narrative. "Fauci's gargantuan yearly disbursements allow him to dictate the subject, content and outcome of scientific health research across the globe," said Kennedy. "These annual disbursements also allow Fauci to exercise dictatorial control over the army of â€knowledge-and-innovation' leaders who populate the â€independent' federal panels that approve and mandate drugs and vaccines – including the committees that allowed the Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 vaccines." "Fauci's COVID policies also spawned new insidious authoritarianism – and propelled America down a slippery slope toward a grim future as a dark totalitarian security and surveillance state," said Kennedy.
Note: If you don't have time for the whole book (rated 4.9 stars on amazon.com), you can find an engaging summary of key points on this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Classrooms in the Los Angeles Unified School District could look much different next month, after tens of thousands of students have reportedly missed the district's COVID vaccine deadline. When the new semester begins, about 34,000 LAUSD pupils will either be forced to enroll in independent study or will have to leave the district. According to district officials, there is no longer enough time for students who have not yet received a first dose of vaccine to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 10. The LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the U.S., has the strictest vaccine mandates in the country. About 85% of the district's approximately 600,000 students are in compliance with the mandate requiring those 12 and older to get their COVID-19 shots. That percentage includes students who have received at least one vaccine dose, individuals with a medical exemption or qualify for conditional admission to the district. This last group include homeless or foster youths, students whose families are in the military or certain special education students. Nearly 500 Los Angeles Unified School District employees were fired this week for refusing to comply with a mandate that they get vaccinated against COVID-19. The school board voted 7-0 in separate motions on Tuesday to terminate 496 employees. Most of those fired had likely been on leave since mid-October when LAUSD staffers were to have received at least their first vaccine dose. Employees were required to receive their second dose by Nov. 15.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Although 74 percent of its population is fully vaccinated, the state of Vermont is experiencing its largest surge of COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began. Throughout the past week, coronavirus infections have jumped 54 percent along with an 18 percent increase in hospitalizations. According to the Vermont Department of Health, six new deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 complications across the state. Ninety percent of those hospitalized in intensive care units in the state are unvaccinated. Vermont is far from the only state recording surges of COVID-19 infections. The number of Americans fully vaccinated reached 200 million Wednesday amid a dispiriting holiday-season spike in cases and hospitalizations that has hit even New England, one of the most highly inoculated corners of the country. New cases in the U.S. climbed from an average of nearly 95,000 a day on November 22 to almost 119,000 a day this week, and hospitalizations are up 25 percent from a month ago. Deaths are running close to 1,600 a day on average, back up to where they were in October. The overall U.S. death toll less than two years into the crisis could hit another heartbreaking milestone, 800,000, in a matter of days. Some states, notably in highly vaccinated New England, but also in the Midwest, are grappling with some of the worst surges since the start of the pandemic. Hospitals are filling up and reacting by canceling non-urgent surgeries or taking other crisis measures, while states are strongly promoting boosters.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
The largest oil and gas companies made a combined $174bn in profits in the first nine months of the year as gasoline prices climbed in the US, according to a new report. The bumper profit totals ... show that in the third quarter of 2021 alone, 24 top oil and gas companies made more than $74bn in net income. From January to September, the net income of the group, which includes Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP, was $174bn. Gasoline prices have hit a seven-year high in the US due to the rising cost of oil, with Americans now paying about $3.40 for a gallon of fuel compared with around $2.10 a year ago. The Biden administration has warned the price hikes are hurting low-income people, even as it attempts to implement a climate agenda that would see America move away from fossil fuels, and has released 50m barrels of oil from the national strategic reserve to help dampen costs. But oil and gas companies have shown little willingness so far to ramp up production to help reduce costs and the new report, by the government watchdog group Accountable.US, accuses them of "taking advantage of bloated prices, fleecing American families along the way" amid ongoing fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis of major oil companies' financials shows that 11 of the group gave payouts to shareholders worth more than $36.5bn collectively this year, while a dozen bought back $8bn-worth of stock.
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Tropical forests can bounce back with surprising rapidity, a new study published today suggests. An international group of researchers looking at a number of aspects of tropical forests has found that the potential for regrowth is substantial if they are left untouched by humans for about 20 years. For example, soil takes an average of 10 years to recover its previous status, plant community and animal biodiversity take 60 years, and overall biomass takes a total of 120, according to their calculations." This is due in part to a multidimensional mechanism whereby old forest flora and fauna help a new generation of forest grow – a natural process known as "secondary succession". These new findings ... suggest that it is not too late to undo the damage that humanity has done through catastrophic climate change over the last few decades. "That's good news, because the implication is that, 20 years ... that's a realistic time that I can think of, and that my daughter can think of, and that the policymakers can think of," said Lourens Poorter ... lead author of the paper. This idea of natural regeneration is frequently disregarded in favour of tree plantations, but according to Poorter, the former yields better results than restoration plantings. "Compared to planting new trees, it performs way better in terms of biodiversity, climate change mitigation and recovering nutrients." The takeaway message is that we don't necessarily need to plant more trees when nature is doing it by itself, Poorter said.
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The sweetest Thanksgiving tradition this side of candied yams is back! Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench will once again get together for the holiday, six years after she accidentally sent him a text inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner, believing she had texted her own grandson. "We are all set for year 6!" Hinton posted Sunday on Twitter, acknowledging that it will be the sixth straight year they have spent Thanksgiving together. He also posted a text message Dench shared inviting him, his girlfriend and his family to dinner. "It would bring my great joy if you, Mikaela and your family would come to my house on Thanksgiving day to share good food and great conversation. Your friend always, Wanda." Hinton, who accepted the invitation, also posted a selfie featuring him and Dench. Hinton and Dench went viral in 2016 after she texted him, saying she's hosting Thanksgiving dinner and would love it if he could attend, thinking she was texting her grandson. They then swapped photos. "You not my grandma," he wrote. "Can I still get a plate tho" Dench didn't miss a beat. "Of course you can," she replied. "That's what grandma's do ...feed every one." Last year, Dench and Hinton (along with Mikaela) met up prior to Thanksgiving, along with a small group of her family, including "the grandson that originally started all of this by changing his phone number and not telling me he changed it," [she said]. "He's changed my life a lot, I know that."
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Swastikas on the wall become giant cupcakes with purple icing, and the words "my Hitler" are transformed into "my muffins". All in a day's work for the Italian street artist who fights racism by turning nasty graffiti into food. "I take care of my city by replacing symbols of hate with delicious things to eat," says the 39-year-old artist, whose real name is Pier Paolo Spinazze and whose professional name, Cibo, is the Italian word for food. On a recent sunny morning he had been alerted by one of his 363,000 Instagram followers that there were swastikas and racial slurs in a small tunnel on the outskirts of Verona. Up he turned, wearing his signature straw hat and necklace of stuffed sausages. He took out his bag of spray paints and set to work, while cars drove by beeping. He covered up the slurs with a bright slice of margherita pizza and a caprese salad - mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. A swastika was transformed into a huge red tomato. As he has become a local celebrity in Verona, he has also made enemies: "Cibo sleep with the lights on!" someone spray painted on a wall. He turned the threat into the ingredients of a gnocchi recipe. "Dealing with extremists is never good, because they are violent people, they are used to violence, but they are also cowards and very stupid," Spinazze said. "The important thing is to rediscover values that we may have forgotten, especially anti-fascism and the fight against totalitarian regimes that stem from the Second World War," he said.
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Autism may be more prevalent among American children than believed, a new U.S. government study shows. One in 44 children at age 8 in the United States have been diagnosed with the developmental disorder, a jump from the previous estimate of 1 in 54 children, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report found. But a second study offered more heartening news: After looking at 4-year-old children in the same 11 communities analyzed in the first report, researchers found there was progress in the early identification of children with autism. These children were 50% more likely to receive an autism diagnosis or special education classification by age 4 when compared to the 8-year-olds. The new rate was based on 2018 data from 11 communities in the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) network. Autism rates in those communities ranged from 1 in 60 (1.7%) in Missouri to 1 in 26 (3.9%) in California. These differences could be due to how communities identify children with autism, according to the CDC, which noted that some communities also have more services for children with autism and their families. The reports were published Dec. 2 in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Researchers also found persistent racial and ethnic differences in the diagnosis of autism. In several of the 11 communities, fewer Hispanic children were diagnosed with autism than Black or white children.
Note: Why isn't the government pouring in billions of dollars to get to the bottom of what is causing this huge and continuing rise in autism? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
President Joe Biden's new vaccine mandates for federal employees don't apply to members of Congress or those who work for Congress or the federal court system. Biden issued two executive orders on Thursday requiring vaccination against COVID for federal workers and contractors who work for the federal government. He also asked the Department of Labor to issue an emergency order requiring businesses with more than 100 employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested on a weekly basis. However, Biden's order on federal workers applies to employees of the executive branch. The House of Representatives and the Senate belong to the separate legislative branch, and the courts to the judicial branch. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said ... that the House couldn't require members to be vaccinated. "I can't go to the Capitol Physician and say, 'Give me the names of people who aren't vaccinated' ... We can't do that," she said. Pelosi's office reiterated that position ... on Friday, saying the speaker's April 29 remarks were "referring to the institution in which she serves." "She's saying she cannot force Members to be vaccinated, which is true," the statement said. In August, a group of 19 Democrats in the House wrote a letter to the Capitol's attending physician, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, asking him to consider a vaccine requirement or a minimum of two COVID tests per week for members and staff who can't show proof of vaccination. No requirement has yet been put in place.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That's according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic. NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.73 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates. In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who's been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR's methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: "It's back down to around 5.5 times higher." The trend was robust, even when controlling for age, which is the primary demographic risk of COVID-19 mortality. The data also reveal a major contributing factor to the death rate difference: The higher the vote share for Trump, the lower the vaccination rate.
Note: Though COVID vaccines do not prevent viral spread, the evidence is strong that they are effective at reducing disease severity and death. Yet the media is clearly hiding the many thousands of deaths and side effects resulting from the vaccines, as can be seen at https://nomoresilence.world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
A new generation of Covid-19 treatments will soon be available, and they matter more than many people realize. They have the potential to substantially reduce hospitalization and death. In the simplest terms, they can help turn Covid into a more ordinary respiratory disease, similar to the common cold or flu, rather than one that's killing about 1,000 Americans a day and dominating daily life for millions. Two treatments are on the way – one from Pfizer and one from Merck – and they will have both medical and psychological benefits. Not only can they reduce serious Covid illness, but they can also reduce Covid fears and help society move back to normalcy. Both Pfizer's and Merck's treatments are pill regimens that people take for five days after a positive Covid test. The pills prevent the virus from replicating inside the body and are broadly similar to treatments that revolutionized H.I.V. care in the 1990s. In truth, the virus has already been largely defanged. The death rate for vaccinated adults under 50 is virtually zero. Pfizer has projected that it will produce enough doses to treat 20 million people in the first half of next year. The Biden administration has agreed to buy 10 million of the treatments, known as Paxlovid, at a cost of about $530 each. Merck projects that it will produce more than 10 million courses of its drug, called molnupiravir, by the end of this year. The federal government has agreed to buy 3.1 million of those courses for around $700 each.
Note: And thus big Pharma is set to receive another huge windfall. Why are they setting prices so how and raking in huge profits when so many are suffering financially? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday to halt the start of President Biden's national vaccine mandate for health care workers, which had been set to begin next week. The injunction, written by Judge Terry A. Doughty, effectively expanded a separate order issued on Monday by a federal court in Missouri. The earlier one had applied only to 10 states that joined in a lawsuit against the president's decision to require all health workers in hospitals and nursing homes to receive at least their first shot by Dec. 6 and to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4. "There is no question that mandating a vaccine to 10.3 million health care workers is something that should be done by Congress, not a government agency," Judge Doughty ... wrote. He added: "It is not clear that even an act of Congress mandating a vaccine would be constitutional." The judge ... also wrote that the plaintiffs had an "interest in protecting its citizens from being required to submit to vaccinations" and to prevent the loss of jobs and tax revenue that may result from the mandate. In leading a 14-state lawsuit against the mandate, Attorney General Jeff Landry of Louisiana said the federal mandate would blow holes in state budgets and exacerbate shortages in health care facilities. The Biden administration tied compliance with the vaccine mandate to federal funding, requiring immunizations of millions of workers at hospitals, nursing homes or other health facilities that heavily rely on the Medicare or Medicaid programs.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
More than 500 residents in Oregon have now died of COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated against the virus as health officials continue to report over 2,000 new infections daily. Since the beginning of the pandemic, health authorities in Oregon have recorded a total of 552 breakthrough COVID-19 deaths throughout the state. Of the total number of deaths, 273 people had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. At least 144 received the Moderna vaccine and 78 were given the Johnson & Johnson shots. The recent report also showed that there were 4,134 new COVID-19 cases recorded between Nov. 21 and Nov. 27. At least 1,186 were breakthrough infections. As of Dec. 2, Oregon reported a total of 45,545 coronavirus infections among the fully vaccinated. The Oregon Health Authority's report comes as the state continues to report high rates of COVID-19 cases. Over the past weekend, health officials recorded 2,041 new infections and 25 additional deaths.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Saudi Arabia used "incentives and threats" as part of a lobbying campaign to shut down a UN investigation of human right violations committed by all sides in the Yemen conflict, according to sources with close knowledge of the matter. The Saudi effort ultimately succeeded when the UN human rights council (HRC) voted in October against extending the independent war crimes investigation. The vote marked the first defeat of a resolution in the Geneva body's 15-year history. Speaking to the Guardian, political officials and diplomatic and activist sources with inside knowledge of the lobbying effort described a stealth campaign in which the Saudis appear to have influenced officials in order to guarantee defeat of the measure. In one case, Riyadh is alleged to have warned Indonesia – the most populous Muslim country in the world – that it would create obstacles for Indonesians to travel to Mecca if officials did not vote against the 7 October resolution. In another case, the African nation of Togo announced at the time of the vote that it would open a new embassy in Riyadh, and receive financial support from the kingdom to support anti-terrorism activities. The resolution was defeated by a simple majority of 21-18, with seven countries abstaining. In 2020, the resolution passed by a vote of 22-12. "That kind of swing – from 12 no's to 21 – does not just happen," said one official. Nations that supported the measure ... were apparently caught off guard by the Saudis' aggressive tactics.
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