A former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told a US cable news network that a bird flu pandemic is “very likely”. Robert Redfield, a virologist who served as director of the agency from 2018 to 2021, also noted that bird flu in humans is associated with “significant mortality”, and that a pandemic could have a death rate far in excess of that we’ve seen with COVID-19.Many influenza viruses infect wild bird populations across the world, but most of them pose no serious risk to humans. The problems arise when a strain of bird flu mutates and gains the ability to jump into another host species. All four major flu pandemics that have hit humanity during the 20th and 21st centuries – including the “Spanish” flu of 1918 and swine flu of 2009 – are thought to have begun with an avian flu virus.Recently, fears have been heightened that another pandemic strain could be coming our way, thanks to the almost unprecedented spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza among wild and domesticated birds and, crucially, many different mammal species.Outbreaks in cattle on dairy farms across several US states have already seen the virus spreading to farm cats and three human workers, all of whom thankfully had only mild illness. Virus particles have also been detected in beef and milk, though experts continue to stress that the food supply is safe and the risk to the general public is low.The fact remains, however, that the more we see this virus spilling over into mammals and the human population, the greater the chance it will adapt to be able to spread between people.This is what Redfield warned about when he spoke to NewsNation on Friday, June 14.   “I really do think it’s very likely that we will at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” Redfield told host Chris Cuomo.He added that there’s been a steady increase in the number of mammals becoming infected in the US since 2019, with some of the latest additions pushing the overall total to around 27 different species.H5 subtypes of avian flu, including H5N1, have long been at the forefront of concerns about a future human pandemic. The recent case of a human H5N2 infection in Mexico underscored the risk that any of these viruses could pose to mammals, although the world’s attention is still firmly and understandably focused on H5N1 as it has spread to even the remotest of regions.“As [H5N1] goes into more and more different mammals it’s changing its use of receptors […], it’s learning how to use different receptors for dolphins, and seals, [and] bears, and polar bears, and foxes, and raccoons, and cats,” Redfield explained. “So it’s going through a lot of changes, and as it picks up some of these new receptors it can get closer and closer to humans.”Surveillance remains key, and health authorities around the world are watching this virus like a hawk. As Redfield said, there’s no easy way to predict how long it may take for the virus to develop the necessary mutations that could lead to a pandemic, likely with a higher mortality rate than we saw with COVID-19 even before treatments and vaccines – “somewhere between 25 and 50 percent,” was Redfield’s forecast.Right now, there’s no evidence to suggest that the virus has yet developed the ability to spread between humans. The small number of human cases we’ve seen so far have all been isolated incidents associated with very close contact with infected animals. But that hasn’t stopped some countries already taking precautions.Finland looks set to become the first country to start immunizing at-risk people after the European Union secured a large order of a vaccine based on the similar virus H5N8, with other countries poised to make similar moves. An existing supply of vaccines is a major plus, and something we did not have for COVID when the pandemic ramped up in 2020. Hopefully, other lessons humanity has learned from SARS-CoV-2 will serve us well when the next pandemic comes. 

The SETI Institute’s new grants program supports advanced research in detecting extraterrestrial technosignatures with grants up to $100,000, leveraging the capabilities of the Allen Telescope Array, reports scitechdaily.com. The SETI Institute has introduced a groundbreaking grants program focused on advancing technosignature science. This unique initiative is designed to fund innovative research that tackles essential observational, theoretical, and technical challenges in the quest for technosignatures, which may reveal signs of past or present extraterrestrial technology. At the heart of this groundbreaking research is the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a world-class instrument known for its capabilities in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The ATA is the first, and still only observatory built specifically to conduct SETI research. With its upgraded feeds and backend processing capabilities, the ATA’s advanced technology and strategic design make it a pivotal tool in detecting potential technosignatures, solidifying its position as a leading asset in this scientific frontier. “In just the last few years, a wealth of new research avenues have opened up in technosignature science, made possible by new ideas, new technologies, and a fast-growing community of early-career researchers,” said Dr. Andrew Siemion, Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI at the SETI Institute. “The novel investigations enabled with this grants program will spur the state-of-the-art in the technosignature field, continuing in the spirit of the SETI Institute’s 40 years of leadership in SETI science.” The application deadline for the 2024 grants is July 15, 2024. Successful applicants will be notified by August 5, 2024. For more information and instructions click here. The post New SETI grants aim to revolutionize search for Extraterrestrial technology appeared first on Anomalien.com.

On August 28, 2013, three men, one of whom worked as an engineer at the US Department of Defense (Pentagon), came to hunt in the Canadian province of Ontario. Before they had time to set up camp, they saw in the sky an object similar in shape to a dumbbell. The UFO glowed indigo blue and was “half a football field” long. The engineer (he chose to remain incognito and the media do not show his photo, and in an interview with him below his voice was changed) tried to photograph the object on his Motorola phone, but he did not succeed – only “white noise pulses” were visible on the video, which flickered in the same rhythm as the glow of the UFO. However, he considers his video significant evidence in favor of the reality of the existence of UFOs: “The data obtained from this event may be the first real physical evidence that there is not just some kind of aircraft flying there, but that it is flying thanks to an incredibly complex and […] powerful rotating electromagnetic propulsion system,” says an eyewitness. He later contacted ufologist Robert Powell and told him about his sighting and video. Powell is known for investigating the 2007 mass UFO sightings over Texas and for his role in the UFO documentary series “Encounters,” which aired on Netflix last year. According to Powell, this is the only case of a dumbbell-shaped UFO that he has encountered. He says that UFOs of this form are very rare and in all the decades of the history of ufology, only about 50-60 cases of sightings of such UFOs around the world are known. This is what the UFO looked like, observed by the engineer and his friends. Powell personally met with the eyewitness engineer and watched his unsuccessful video to analyze the captured white noise interference. He also became convinced that the eyewitness actually worked for the Pentagon, because it gave him a “tour of the defense facility.” “The very first thing that struck us was how bright this object was. It looked impressive. Having worked with optical systems in the past, it could be described as a vehicle that looked like stadium floodlights – it was everything shone,” says the engineer. According to him, the entire surface of the “dumbbell” seemed to be covered with “indigo-colored plasma,” and this “dumbbell” was about 170 feet (51 meters) long, 60 feet (18 meters) wide, and approximately 20 feet high ( 6 meters). The object flew slowly, barely missing the treetops, over an old logging road. “At the same time, the apparatus slowly rotated around its center, emitting a stream similar to electric sparks, always opposite to the direction of movement, but without a specific starting point.” In addition to the phone, the engineer also had a small Sony video camera with him, but when he tried to photograph the UFO with it after the failure with the phone, it also captured nothing but noise. The object was so bright it was painful to look at: “It was kind of salty to my eyes. It was like I was looking at a laser through a diffraction grating or something like that.” Two other men (their identities and positions were not revealed) were also very excited by what they saw. The UFO, slowly rotating and moving in one direction, was observed by people for about 6-7 minutes, and then a second UFO, also brightly lit, appeared on the horizon, and at the same moment both ships “swept away at incredible speed.” It is estimated that the surface area of ​​the ship was approximately 3.1 million square inches and thus would require “a minimum of 160 MW (160 million watts) of power” to surround the ship with glowing plasma. “This amount of energy is 33% of the energy of the 478 million watt nuclear power plant at Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. “Without question, this vehicle was the highest power density vehicle I have ever imagined,” says the engineer. In addition to the interference, the video recording also captured the surprised exclamations of the engineer and his friends, but these videos were not posted in full on the Internet for public viewing. A small fragment of the recording with noise can be seen in a video of an interview with an engineer posted by the ufological network MUFON. Watch from the 19:37 mark. The post Pentagon engineer saw a huge blue UFO in the shape of a dumbbell appeared first on Anomalien.com.

Although leftist misrepresentations of current events always give me indigestion, two recent examples almost wrecked my intestines. The first was the presentation of Martha-Ann Alito’s irritation at having to stare at an unwelcome gay pride flag within viewing distance of her residence. The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito complained that she was tired of this sight.Why must she stare at symbols of wokeness everywhere she turns? This, by the way, was part of “a secret conversation,” and supposedly not everyone was to know, according to the New York Times, that Martha-Ann Alito was “pushing back at having to look at an LGBTQ symbol.”A re-elected Trump would be entirely justified in investigating government administrators who have worked to destroy him politically and financially.Talking with some young, woke acquaintances while listening with them, much to my displeasure, to CNN, I heard one of them opine that going after Alito because of his wife’s outburst wouldn’t be fair. After all, why should the justice be held responsible for his wife acting crazy (crazy in this context meaning “insensitive” or “fascist-like”)?While CNN’s obvious endgame, which is to remove non-woke justices from court cases as a threat to “democracy,” is truly infuriating, what bothered me even more was the abuse of Justice Alito’s wife. Why should she be forced to celebrate through the month of June, and a bit less frenetically the rest of the year, those who by most established social, and certainly inherited Judeo-Christian, standards, are acting indecently? This would have been the settled judgment among most Americans until recently, and their view still prevails among millions of moral traditionalists. Tolerating offensive behavior may be required by law, but celebrating it is a different matter.Why are there exhibitions of unbounded contempt for the feelings of these traditionalists while we are forced to rejoice over the sexual practices and gender mutations of a minority of our population? The obvious answer is that we’re afraid of the “fake media” and of what they do to those who deviate from their anti-traditional orthodoxies. Thus, we tear down Confederate battle flags and monuments because they give offense to some Americans, and rename sports teams that are called “Indians,” because that word offends rich, white leftists. But we think nothing of imposing the worship of LGBTQ symbols on those Americans of all races who find them morally disgusting.Personally, I don’t give a damn if Pete Buttigieg, “the first openly gay member of the Cabinet,” expressed outrage at Martha-Ann Alito’s secret conversation. Mayor Pete is certainly not my moral compass. A showcase homosexual in a woke administration, he is not even a decent transportation secretary.Second, The Hill recently ran a scare piece about the Bad Orange Man, who, if re-elected, might be inclined to exact “revenge” against his political opponents. The website publication quoted two of Trump’s Republican senatorial critics, one of them Mitch McConnell, who fear Trump’s eagerness to “retaliate with politically motivated prosecutions of his own.”Why shouldn’t Trump deal with his enemies the way they’ve treated him? Heaven knows he’s been provoked enough. After what Trump has been through since 2016, from an unwarranted FBI raid, to spying by the surveillance state, to being harassed by a weaponized Justice Department under Merrick Garland, and to being found guilty without evidence of an identifiable felony, it seems that a re-elected Trump would be entirely justified in investigating government administrators who have worked to destroy him politically and financially. For those who may not have noticed, a massive transformation of government agencies, including the Justice Department, FBI, and CIA, has taken place since the ideologically critical presidency of Barack Obama. These agencies now serve the left while making the increasingly implausible claim to be above politics. If Trump as president does not send a message to these agencies, which have become all but subsidiaries of the Democratic National Committee, and to malicious Democratic district attorneys like Alvin Bragg, he would be a stupid, cowardly RINO.Moreover, unlike the Biden administration, which has treated the political opposition as MAGA terrorists, Trump as president conspicuously desisted from legally harassing Democrats, even his arch-foe Hillary Clinton. It is outrageous that Trump, who showed saint-like forbearance in dealing with the legally suspicious activities of his opponents throughout his term as president, is now being attacked nonstop by the corporate media as a would-be dictator and “threat to democracy.” It is the Democrats who are playing this role and doing so to perfection.For the record: In a widely misquoted response on June 2 to the question of whether he would seek retribution as president, Trump made clear that “success is the best revenge.” In a subsequent interview, he added: “Sometimes revenge may be justified.” Let me repeat my point, if only for the sake of stifling the temptation of Democratic officials all over the country to do to other Republican politicians what they’ve done to Trump: Revenge is not only justified but absolutely imperative.

America on Wednesday will celebrate Juneteenth as a federal holiday for the fourth time. Yet the holiday, born out of bipartisanship, is becoming more divisive each year. The left has co-opted Juneteenth to push for radical racial policies like reparations and exclude most Americans from its celebration. As a result, many conservatives now oppose the federal holiday. But in the eyes of this Texas historian, it’s a mistake to abandon a unifying national holiday to the manipulations of the Left. We should instead do what conservatives are best at: get back to the roots. It’s not too late to save the holiday from those who would abuse it. Until the last four years, Juneteenth was an uncontroversial celebration of American freedom and the end of slavery in Texas. The holiday commemorates the day General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, informing Texas of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the state’s slaves, and marking the end of slavery in the Confederacy. The next year, in 1866, residents of Galveston began celebrating “Jubilee Day,” which eventually became what we know as Juneteenth. In 1979, Al Edwards, a Democratic state representative from Houston, sponsored legislation to make Juneteenth a paid state holiday. Governor Bill Clements, a Republican, signed the bill into law, and the holiday was born. The national acceptance of Juneteenth also began in a bipartisan fashion. President Trump was the first president to call for its adoption as a federal holiday in 2020, though it took a year for Congress to act. When it did, the bill passed the Senate with unanimous consent and 415-14 in the House. With that kind of history, one would expect conservatives, even those wary of the pitfalls of identity politics like me, to embrace Juneteenth’s consistency with the principles enshrined in our founding documents. The holiday celebrates what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom” for America. It celebrates the completion of the work of July 4, 1776 — the extension of liberty to all Americans. It also commemorates the untold numbers of young men who died in the war fighting for that freedom. If it’s good enough for Texas, why are some conservatives starting to oppose the holiday? Unfortunately, the answer lies mostly on the left. The left has worked hard to co-opt the holiday and use it as a tool to divide their countrymen and to replace the real Independence Day. It began on the very first federal Juneteenth, when Democratic leaders tied the 156-year-old holiday to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Then, they named the national holiday “Juneteenth National Independence Day,” setting it up in opposition to July 4. What was once a broadly accepted state holiday celebrating a significant moment in Texas history became a pawn in the national game of identity politics and subject to the division of the 24-hour news cycle. The Guardian published a story calling Juneteenth “the real Independence Day” — a slap in the face to both our founders and all Americans who celebrate July 4. Activists have called for Juneteenth to be used to explore “racial trauma” and enact reparations. Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that Americans are souring on Juneteenth. What they hear from the media and elected leaders on Juneteenth is a self-righteous, anti-American drumbeat of criticism and division. Most Americans are excluded from the celebration, as is anyone who believes in America’s founding or doesn’t buy the narrative that America is “systemically racist” today. But it’s not too late to save the holiday from those who would abuse it. Here’s one way: Celebrate it as the first day of a two-week-long national celebration of independence and freedom, stretching from June 19 to July 4. We should remember the wars in which Americans fought and died to defend our shared heritage of liberty and expand it to all Americans. We should commemorate the armies of young patriots — black and white — who fought wars against tyrannical elites, whether it was the English crown or the plantation owner. We should consider how elites today are trying to take away the very freedoms that were secured on June 19 and July 4 through the blood of our forefathers and work with our neighbors to protect our liberties. That’s the true spirit of Juneteenth. It’s a day of building our country up, not tearing it down. We have an opportunity to reject racial divisions and the revisionist history of the ivory tower. It’s long past time conservatives start reclaiming our institutions — let’s start on June 19.

So, there’s this story going around right now with Sage Steele — who basically got disbarred at ESPN for wrong think — interviewing Jillian Michaels, fitness guru and former host of "The Biggest Loser."Michaels goes on and on about how she had to leave California because of how crazy it has become and that the last straw was if a grown man came up to her son and essentially started grooming him into a pederasty same-sex relationship, that would not be deemed illegal.The reality is that California took the decadent premise that Jillian Michaels lives her own life by and followed it to its natural, damnable conclusion.Damn right, that’s crazy! She would want to shoot such a man, Michaels said, as well as a lot of other things subscribers to my show would readily endorse.Except there’s this: Michaels has been married to another woman since July 2022. Now, hold that thought for a moment while I tell you another story.Last week I had a different woman, who claimed to be conservative on her X bio and has tens of thousands of followers, proceed to scold me for mentioning how the prime minister of Italy had a child out of wedlock well into her 40s. It was a long-term, committed relationship, I was told. Don’t judge blah blah blah.Did I miss a memo? Is the official conservative position now the same one that Gloria Steinem held in the 1970s?Now, to be sure, I wasn't a virgin on my wedding night. I wasn't anything close. My wife wasn't a virgin on her wedding night, either. We most definitely were living in sin, so this isn’t about being holier-than-thou.This is about truth.If you look at the statistics, the odds that my wife and I were still going to be married, doing things the way we did it, without the spiritual conversion we ultimately had, were extremely low. And the odds that our children were going to end up in a broken home were extremely high, as they were for me when I was born out of wedlock to a 15-year-old mom.Even with our own spiritual conversion, my wife and I still almost couldn't keep our marriage together, but, by God's grace, we have endured and even flourished. That’s a testament to the power of faith, and with Christianity, there's always room for a comeback.But before there's a comeback, you need to know exactly what it is you must come back from. Does that sound like Jillian Michaels or the gal on X? Do they seem over the target for bringing about lasting cultural or personal revival?Benjamin Franklin forced his wife to raise another woman’s baby, and Thomas Jefferson may have had sexual relations with one of his slaves, but they weren’t publicly endorsing their behavior as normal or good. In fact, the heathen Franklin said the opposite. He held that of all the religious teachings in the world he had studied, no moral code was superior to the teachings of Jesus Christ.There's some humility, a recognition that God is God, and I am not. So again, I ask you: What collective standards are modern sages like Michaels and the Twitter/X gal hoping to rebuild society around as each one clearly pushes aside the fundamental things of God?The reality is that the state of California took the decadent and revisionist premise that Jillian Michaels lives her own life by and followed it to its natural, damnable conclusion. Yes, folks, the woke mob is more consistent than she is! Did she think she could only slide halfway down the slope to Gomorrah and just get comfortable in her own private Idaho?Of course, that can never work, no matter how well-intentioned her partial awakening is now. She moved out of California. So what? The real question is how much of California did she take with her and won’t let go of?The only thing that beats bad religion is the right one. The idols must be smashed.All of them.

Despite Marvel’s Avengers shutting down and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’s dwindling player numbers, the team behind Marvel Rivals isn’t worried about entering the live-service superhero market. The team-based hero shooter even has to compete with the free-to-play Overwatch 2, so we talked with the developers at NetEase and Marvel Games about where superhero games are headed, and how they’re planning on making Marvel Rivals different. Continue reading Marvel Rivals boss says superhero games won’t die despite recent flops MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Marvel Rivals release date, Marvel Rivals characters, Marvel Rivals System Requirements

Elden Ring is dominating the month of June with the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion release. An undiscovered expanse to explore in the Land of Shadow and a comprehensive lore dump are in store for Soulslike fans, alongside an exciting new blessing system to make combat a little less grueling.

Moore to the Point - The Lights Aren't Even On

Uncovering Election Vulnerabilities: Anatomy of a Ballot Harvest