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Britain Tag

Just last week, Bernie Sanders rolled out his Medicare for All bill. Sanders and the bill's advocates railed against the current healthcare system as ineffectual, forgetting (or hoping the public has forgotten) that it's the product of Democrat ideas and votes. In Sanders' fantasy world, single-payer system is the only cure for what ails the American healthcare system. Most of his Democratic Senate colleagues agree. They were wrong about Obamacare and what it would fix and they're wrong single-payer.

A joint report released last week by the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (JPR), a London-based think tank, and the Community Security Trust (CST), the communal Jewish defense body in the UK, found an “unambiguous association” between antisemitic and anti-Israel attitudes in Britain. The report—an in-depth investigation and analysis of animus toward Jews, the role of hatred directed toward Israel, and the prevalence of bigotry across the political spectrum in Britain today—makes for a sobering read.

On Friday morning, a bomb was detonated in the London Underground near Parsons Green.  Two men have since been arrested, Prime Minister Teresa May has downgraded the UK threat level from critical to severe, and British police are searching the Surrey home of an elderly couple who fostered "refugee children."  The two men arrested are reportedly aged 18 and 21. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Investigators probing a bomb blast that injured more than two dozen people in London’s subway last week on Sunday combed through a house in this suburban town owned by elderly foster parents that neighbors said had recently been caring for two “refugees.”

A homemade bomb went off on a filled London Underground subway car this morning near Parsons Green that left 22 people injured. The police have announced they are treating it as a terrorist attack. From The London Times:
Officers believe that the blast was caused by an improvised explosive device and hundreds of detectives are now investigating, with the assistance of MI5.

The Telegraph revealed that authorities conducted a mock terrorist attack on the UK Parliament earlier this year that exposed actual terrorists could easily break in and kill at least 100 Members of Parliament in a matter of five minutes:
In a simulated attack, which took place in the middle of the night, officers posing as extremists used a boat to gain access from the river. They then navigated the corridors and stormed the House of Commons chamber in an exercise that could have caused mass casualties if replicated in real life.

The UK might “face an Islamist terrorist threat for the next 30 years,” warns country’s former spy chief. According to Jonathan Evans, who resigned as Director General of MI5 four years ago, threat of Jihad to the country was a “generational problem” and won’t be going away anytime soon. "I think that we are going to be facing 20, 30 years of terrorist threats," Evans told BBC. Britain has been rocked by four Jihadi terror attacks this year. The worst of which took place at the London Bridge in the beginning of June, where three Islamic terrorists drove a van into passers-by and subsequently went into a stabbing spree, killing 8 and injuring 48 others. Most of these assailants come from Britain’s vast migrant Muslim population.

The FBI has arrested Marcus Hutchins, the British security researcher that stopped the WannaCry ransomeware attack, for allegedly being a part of a software attack on banking accounts. The Guardian reported:
According to an indictment released by the US Department of Justice on Thursday, Hutchins is accused of having helped to create, spread and maintain the banking trojan Kronos between 2014 and 2015.

Four Muslim men have been convicted of planning a “Lee Rigby-style” terrorist attack that sought to murder and behead police or military personnel using explosive devices and swords. Four years ago, British soldier Lee Rigby was beheaded on a busy London street by two Nigerian-born men -- both recent converts to Islam. The gang of four wanted to carry out a similar attack. The four men were arrested last year carrying a bag of weapons, including a pipe bomb and a meat cleaver with the word 'kafir', or infidel, carved on it. The investigators also recovered a samurai sword in related raids.

As expected, the news has come of the death of Charlie Gard. This sad and troubling case has drawn worldwide discussion, and questions and concerns have been raised about what might happen in a similar case here. Some analogies have been made to the well-known US case of Terry Schiavo, but there were very important differences in the fact situation there that makes Schiavo a poor analogy. That case involved a battle between the husband and parents of the adult Schiavo over what her expressed wishes about end-of-life care had been. In contrast, Charlie Gard is an infant, and his case pitted his parents' wishes against the opinions of the hospital and doctors.

Eleven-month-old Charlie Gard, who suffered from mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, passed away on Friday, just a week before his first birthday. His mother announced that "Our beautiful little boy has gone, we are so proud of you Charlie."