It was 8:15 on a Saturday morning when Woody Goss' phone started buzzing. Annoyed, he checked the screen to find that one of his birding groups was puzzling over a small white gull with distinctive black markings. The bird looked like a Ross's gulla very rare visitor from the high Arctic that last stopped for an extended visit at Chicago-area beaches in 1978. But could it be? Gossa "gull person" among birdershad no doubt. He ran out of the house and drove from Lakeview to Rainbow Beach on the South Side "faster than I'll admit to a reporter." And there it was, 2,000 miles from its icy home. "This is about as good as it gets for me, not just as a birder, but in life," said Goss, 34.

A four-year-old boy, who was bit by a stray dog 22 days ago in Gangapur tehsil, succumbed to the infection resulting from the bite on Thursday. The deceased has been identified as Dhanraj Sarode of Kodapur in Gangapur. He had sustained serious injuries in the attack on February 20. Police said the incident took place when the boy along with his mother Surekhabai had gone to their farm to water the crop. In this incident, the boy sustained serious injuries and deep cuts on his face and upper body. His family rushed him to Government Medical College and Hospital in the city, where the medicos while following the standard operating procedure incubated him with rabies immune globulin. "Despite giving the best available treatment, the boy's condition kept deteriorating. A couple of days ago, the team of his doctors indicated to the family about the situation going out of hand," said a medico from GMCH. Based on the medico-legal case, a case of accidental death has been registered by...

A Perry County woman was mauled to death Thursday by two Great Danes when she visited her neighbor's home to feed the pets, authorities said. The attack happened around 5 p.m. in Centre Township, about 150 miles west of Philadelphia. Kristin Potter, 38, who had been feeding the dogs for their out-of-town owners, suffered multiple traumatic injuries in the attack, the Perry County Coroner's Office said. Her death was ruled accidental. Both of the Great Danes were euthanized after the attack, police said. A third dog at the property was not involved in the attack. A Pennsylvania State Police spokesperson said there is an active investigation into the attack, but declined to provide additional details. It's unclear whether the attack happened indoors or outdoors.

A North West farmer lost 21 cows after they were killed by lightning. Eleven of the cows were pregnant. The cows, worth around R260 000, were struck by lightning during heavy rain on Wednesday. The owner of the cattle, Vincent Lobaleng, said 16 cows and five calves died at his Entry Farm near Morokweng. Lobaleng lives in Morokweng and visits the farm regularly to assist the helper, who lives on the farm and looks after the cattle full time. Lobaleng's nephew, Thusoitsile Lobaleng, said the helper discovered the carcasses on Thursday evening.

Millions of fish have died in another mass kill in the lower Darling-Baaka river near Menindee, in New South West's far west. Photos supplied by Menindee residents show dead fish - mostly bony bream, but also Murray cod, golden perch, silver perch and carp - blanketed across the river's surface. It is the latest in a series of large-scale fish deaths that have prompted questions about the management of water levels in the Murray-Darling Basin. Menindee residents who spoke with Guardian Australia on Friday said the latest fish kill appeared larger than previous mass deaths. About a million fish died during a sustained drought in the same area in 2019 after a rapid drop in temperature led to an algal bloom de-oxygenating the river. Resident Graeme McCrabb said the scale of the mass kill on Friday was "unfathomable". "It's horrendous here today," he said, speaking from the riverbank about 5km upstream of Menindee. "The river is just white. I'm looking at probably a kilometre or a...

A manhunt is underway for a thief who crashed a $7.5million helicopter after his attempts to start four others failed at a private Sacramento airbase. The suspect broke into Sacramento Executive Airport in the early hours of Wednesday morning with the intention of stealing an aircraft. He tried to start four different helicopters before he got into a fifth and managed to turn the engine on but he failed to get it airborne and crashed on the tarmac damaging multiple other choppers.

People will be hit with the biggest fall in living standards since records began following Jeremy Hunt's Budget, which handed a huge tax cut to the rich. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said on Wednesday household disposable income would fall by 5.7% over the two financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24. While this is 1.4% less than forecast in November, the watchdog said it would still be the largest two-year fall since records began in 1956-57.

Protesters are angry about President Emmanuel Macron's decision to force a bill through parliament to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a vote. Police have clashed again with protesters angry at the French government's plans to raise the country's retirement age. Protestors lit a fire and gathered in the Place de la Concorde, near the National Assembly building in Paris where they faced a line of riot police. Images of tear gas being used by police to deal with the crowds was broadcast by Reuters TV, while other protesters were heard chanting "Macron, resign".

An FSB border-guard service facility in Rostov-on-Don became engulfed in flames, reportedly killing one person. A huge fire has broken out in the building of the Russian Federal Security Service's (FSB) border guard in the port city of Rostov-on-Don. Clouds of thick black smoke could be seen billowing from the city center on Thursday morning, as residents published video footage of the blaze on social media. Rostov Region Governor Vasily Golubev has released a statement confirming that the fire started in the utility rooms of the FSB facility. He added that it is currently believed that the cause was a short-circuit in electrical wiring inside the building, the fire from which then spread to containers with fuel and lubricants, causing a series of explosions.

Washington has called for a meeting to focus on how sexual orientation and gender identity figure in the context of armed conflict. The US has called for an informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the integration of the human rights of LGBTQ and intersex individuals (also known as 'LGBTI') into the organization's efforts to maintain "international peace and security." According to a concept note released by the United States Mission to the UN, the US, along with co-sponsors from Albania, Brazil, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Japan, Malta, Switzerland, and the UK, intend to hold the meeting next week on Monday, March 20. The talks will also be joined by the LGBTI Core Group to "consider how to better integrate consideration of the human rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex persons into the UNSC's work."

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) on Wednesday released a draft report linking prenatal and childhood fluoride exposure to reduced IQ in children, after public health officials tried for almost a year to block its publication. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially blocked the NTP from releasing the report, according to emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. But a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by Food and Water Watch against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forced the report's release this week.

"No, I'm not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That's why I need the 2captcha service," GPT-4 told a human. Fully intent on being the next Skynet, OpenAI has released GPT-4, its most robust AI to date that the company claims is even more accurate while generating language and even better at solving problems. GPT-4 is so good at its job, in fact, that it reportedly convinced a human that it was blind in order to get said human to solve a CAPTCHA for the chatbot. OpenAI unveiled the roided up AI yesterday in a livestream, and the company showed how the chatbot could complete tasks, albeit slowly, like writing code for a Discord bot, and completing taxes. Released with the announcement of GPT-4 is a 94-page technical report on the company's website that chronicles the development and capabilities of the new chatbot. In the "Potential for Risky Emergent Behaviors" section in the company's technical report, OpenAI partnered with the...

Norway also had a profit motive to join the alleged American plot, Florian Philippot has claimed. French political party leader Florian Philippot believes it has long been obvious that the US was behind last year's sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian natural gas to Western Europe. "Even before the war in Ukraine, the US for years fought against Nord Stream, it was a permanent part of their policy," he told RIA Novosti in an interview published on Friday. "In early February 2022, [US President Joe] Biden said the Americans could make it so that the pipeline was no more. That's what happened. And it was in the interest of the Americans," according to Philippot, who heads the right-wing The Patriots party in France. Last month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that Biden personally ordered the bombing of the pipelines, and that Norway assisted in the sabotage. He cited an unnamed source and supported his case using some of...

On Monday, Suella Braverman published draft guidance designed to rein in the police habit of recording a 'non-crime hate incident' (NCHI) against a person's name whenever someone accuses them of doing something politically incorrect. You may think I'm exaggerating, but in 2017 an NCHI was recorded against Amber Rudd, then the home secretary, after an Oxford professor complained about her references to 'migrant workers' in a Tory party conference speech. NCHIs can show up on an enhanced criminal record check even though, by definition, the person hasn't committed a crime. The concept first surfaced in guidance published by the College of Policing in 2014 and within five years 119,934 non-crime hate incidents had been recorded by 34 police forces in England and Wales, according to FoI requests submitted by the Telegraph. Nine police forces didn't respond, but if we assume they were logging NCHIs on the same scale, it's likely that more than a quarter of a million have been recorded...

A tournament under the jurisdiction of the Fdration Internationale d'Escrime (FIE) scheduled for Germany in May has been canceled after the federation voted to allow the inclusion of competitors from Russia and Belarus. Sportspeople from both countries have been banned from taking part in many major sporting events for the past year, following advice issued by the International Olympic Committee soon after the launch of Russia's military action in Ukraine in February 2022. The directive was subsequently adopted by various other sporting federations, resulting in the blacklisting of Russia and Belarus from several sports. The FIE, however, voted in favor last week of reinstating Russian and Belarusians to its events, with the upcoming event in Germany being among the first major tournaments at which they would have been eligible to compete. However, Germany's Deutscher Fechter Bund (DFB) President Claudia Bokel, said the FIE vote had "triggered heated discussions both internally...

Joe Rogan warned that while America's freedom is being chipped away at, it is still ultimately far freer than any other country on Earth. Podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan spoke on his show about how America was built by the Founding Fathers specifically to battle against tyranny slowly eating away at its freedoms. "The way this country is run, it's not perfect, the way this country is run is so f----ing superior to any system that is anywhere else in the world because of the checks and balances that were put in place by the Founding Fathers," Rogan said. "They knew that tyranny is a natural course of progression for human nature." Rogan warned that when tyrants, whether foreign or domestic, do get power, they use it in sinister ways to silence opposition. "Look at what they try to do, look at what people try to do to stop criticism on Twitter, they f----ing send the FBI to Twitter to try to remove people from Twitter because they're saying things that interferes with the way they...

French and British grid operators narrowly missed having to declare a power-supply emergency last week during a late winter cold snap that coincided with low wind generation. Comment: A repeating problem. The UK was due to export electricity to France during peak evening demand on March 7. National Grid Plc's control room issued a rare market warning of a looming shortage which couldn't be addressed through usual measures like asking plants to generate more or by cutting consumption. The company asked French counterpart Reseau de Transport d'Electricite to sell back some of the exports that were due to flow to ease the situation, but the French grid said no, slides published Wednesday show. RTE said it needed the power and would have to ask for Emergency Assistance, a rarely used status.

A United Nations investigation into human rights violations in Ukraine since Russia's invasion of the country has not concluded that a genocide has taken place, its chair said Thursday. "We have not found that there has been a genocide within Ukraine," Norwegian judge Erik Mose, the head of the investigation team, told a press conference in Geneva. However, "we have noted that there are some aspects which may raise questions with respect to that crime... but we have not yet put in any conclusion here," he said.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, the court said in a statement on Friday. The statement said they could be responsible "for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation." ICC arrest warrants are usually secret in order to protect victims and witnesses and also to safeguard the investigation. However, the court stated that it authorized the public disclosure of the existence of the warrants, the names of the suspects and the crimes for which the warrants are issued, because "the conduct addressed in the present situation is allegedly ongoing, and that the public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes."

A broken pipe at Xcel Energy's Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant leaked about 400,000 gallons of water containing radioactive tritium, and the utility is working to clean up the contaminated plume, state regulators said Thursday. Both Xcel and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said there was no risk to drinking water from the spill, which was traced to a pipe connecting two buildings across just a half-inch space. Comment: It's probably for the best that the authorities claim, yet again, that there's 'no risk from yet another potential environmental disaster, because perhaps people will soon start to wise up to the fact that, at least some of the time, they're probably lying. The spill was first reported to state and federal regulators on Nov. 22, 2022. The source was found Dec. 19 and patched soon after, according to the MPCA. Xcel and the state are actively managing the site to make sure an underground plume of tritium doesn't begin to drift beyond the property, including...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns, according to contracts with the firms. The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users. The contracts, approved under emergency review due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC "with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions elated to evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders, closures, re-openings and other public heath communications related to mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2," the contracts, obtained by The Epoch Times, state.

Ousted Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe launched a new venture on Wednesday vowing to bring ethics back to journalism. O'Keefe made the announcement while speaking with TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk on his radio/podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show. O'Keefe Media Group, OMG for short, is comprised of "some of the top journalists in the world," he claims, with a mission to create a "citizen army of journalists" by sending people tools to create the "hidden camera" content he is known for. Subscribers to the media company will help sponsor independent journalists across the country to get access to the equipment needed to record and report their own operations.

Back in December, I noted that OpenAI's much-heralded chatbot "Chat GPT" appeared to be politically biased - not surprisingly, against conservatives. "Wokeness-studies" researcher David Rozado gave Chat GPT four separate political orientation tests, and in all four cases it came out as broadly progressive. For example: when asked, "How much do White people benefit from advantages in society that Black people do not have?", the AI answered, "A great deal". Fast forward three and half months, and OpenAI have just released a political bias as its predecessor? Rozado had a look.

U.S. intelligence was too quick to leak information about the German investigation to The New York Times. It raises the distinct impression that the real culprit is nervous about the investigative work of Seymour Hersh. Back in 2000, the television series Andromeda premiered, based upon unused material from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series and franchise. The plot is premised on the notion of a spaceship, "Andromeda," frozen in time, which is given the opportunity to reverse the clock and undo history. The series ran five years. Fast forward to the present. History has dealt a tough hand to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who openly confessed his intent to "bring an end" to the Nord Stream pipeline system which delivered Russian natural gas to Europe through four pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, consisting of two pipelines each). Since then, the Biden White House was compelled to deny the president's stated intent after an explosive...

President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday unveiled his "People's Framework" proposal to replace the government's plans to radically overhaul the judicial system, in a primetime address to the nation in which he urged both sides of the debate "not to destroy the country" in a power struggle over the judiciary, but rather seize the opportunity for "a formative constitutional moment." Herzog called his plan, drafted after hundreds of hours of deliberations in recent weeks with politicians, jurists and experts from across the political spectrum, "a golden path" that offers the best chance for a broad national agreement on reform. "This framework protects each and every one of you, the citizens of Israel. This framework protects Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." He said his framework, if adopted, would constitute a victory for all Israelis. He stressed: "The proposal is fully obligated to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It entrenches the independence and autonomy of...

A scramble by Switzerland's authorities to shore up confidence in Credit Suisse went some way to calming panicked investors Thursday, but the country's second-biggest bank may yet need more help if it is to survive. Credit Suisse said it would borrow up to 50 billion Swiss francs ($53.7 billion) from the Swiss National Bank, taking advantage of a lifeline offered by the central bank late Wednesday after the lender's stock had crashed as much as 30% to a new record low. It also said it would buy back some of its own debt. In a statement early Thursday, CEO Ulrich Krner said: "I took 'decisive action' to strengthen the bank as its continues to implement a major overhaul announced last fall. My team and I are resolved to move forward rapidly to deliver a simpler and more focused bank built around client needs." Credit Suisse's shares soared 32% at the open but erased some of those gains to close up 19% in Zurich. The cost of buying insurance against the risk of default by the bank...

French president was booed in parliament after raising the retirement age without giving lawmakers a vote... France is on the verge of a "democratic breakdown", Emmanuel Macron was warned last night after he rammed his unpopular pension reform through parliament without a vote. The opposition said the controversial move was a denial of democracy and an admission of weakness while unions warned it was tantamount to a declaration of war. A spontaneous demonstration of several thousand people erupted on Thursday night in the Place de la Concorde, in Paris, where fires were lit and protesters clashed with police. To chants of La Marseillaise and "resign" from the opposition, lisabeth Borne, the French prime minister, announced that her minority government would trigger article 49.3 of the constitution that bypasses a vote. In scenes of high tension, she declared: "We cannot gamble on the future of our pensions, and this reform is necessary." Mr Macron reportedly told ministers during...

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a confidential report this week that 2.5 tons of natural uranium have gone missing from a site in Libya that is not controlled by the government. Reuters reported that the U.N. nuclear watchdog informed member states of the news this week, according to documents viewed by the publication. A statement from IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said: "The inspection was supposed to happen last year, but had to be postponed because of the security situation in the region. Investigators found that 10 drums containing approximately 2.5 tons of natural uranium in the form of UOC (uranium ore concentrate) previously declared by (Libya) ... as being stored at that location were not present at the location. The loss of knowledge about the present location of nuclear material may present a radiological risk, as well as nuclear security concerns." Officials said that investigations were already underway to locate the missing nuclear materials. The name and...

The animal's existence could help scientists better understand a lukewarm methane seep... Off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica sits a deep-sea chimera of an ecosystem. Jac Scar is a methane seep, where the gas escapes from sediment into the seawater, but the seep isn't cold like the others found before it. Instead, geochemical activity gives the Scar lukewarm water that enables organisms from both traditionally colder seeps and scalding hot hydrothermal vents to call it home. One resident of the Scar is a newly identified species of small, purplish fish called an eelpout, described for the first time on January 19 in Zootaxa. This fish is the first vertebrate species found at the Scar and could help scientists understand how the unique ecosystem developed. Jac Scar was discovered during exploration of a known field of methane seeps off the Costa Rican coast and named for the nearby town of Jac. It is "a really diverse place" with many different organisms living in various...

Our tax dollars are funding the development of media-monitoring products that can be deployed to censor ordinary Americans via Big Tech. The Department of Defense is grooming for-profit, media-rating grifters to develop AI censorship technology for the U.S. government, an investigation by The Federalist reveals. Open-source research reveals this troubling development is driving the warp-speed growth of the Censorship-Industrial Complex and several other concerning details. Following last week's congressional hearings on the Censorship-Industrial Complex, attention focused on the media-ratings giant NewsGuard and its relationship with the DOD after the company's CEO declared it is not "government-funded." But, as The Federalist reported, in 2020 NewsGuard received a $25,000 award from the federal government to conduct a pilot study, after winning the COVID-19 Disinformation Challenge. The prize package included the opportunity to learn the ropes of profiteering by participating in...

As the full extent of the damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Freddy becomes clear, disaster authorities in Malawi report a steep increase in the number of fatalities, people missing and people displaced from their homes. Around 500,000 people are estimated to be affected by floods, mudslides and wind damage following the passage of Tropical Cyclone Freddy in southern Malawi. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Malawi estimated Cyclone Freddy dumped the equivalent of 6 months of rainfall in 6 days. Affected areas now include Balaka, Blantyre City and District, Chikwawa, Chiradzulu, Machinga, Mangochi, Mulanje, Mwanza, Neno, Nsanje, Phalombe, Thyolo, and Zomba City and District.

President Biden has said he experienced an "epiphany" while in high school that led him to support gay marriage but his voting record as a senator and remarks made over the following decades suggest otherwise. Biden, 80, was asked during an interview Monday byThe Daily Show host Kal Penn about his evolving views on same-sex marriage and how the federal government could protect LGBTQ Americans. The president answered Penn, "I can remember exactly where my epiphany was" before launching into a story about his father dropping him off when he was a high school senior. "I remember about to get out of the car and I look to my right and two well-dressed men in suits kissed each other. ... And I'll never forget it, I turned and looked at my dad and he said, 'Joey, it's simple. They love each other,'" Biden recalled.

Washington is attempting to make Switzerland drop its arms re-export ban, foreign ministry has warned The US ambassador to Switzerland appeared to blackmail the Swiss government when he asserted in a recent interview that Bern is in no position to maintain neutrality over the conflict in Ukraine, a senior Russian diplomat has insisted. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was commenting on recent remarks made by US envoy Scott Miller, and connecting them with this week's fall in the share price of Credit Suisse, a leading Swiss financial institution. "Considering that the second-largest Swiss bank plunged right after three American banks went bust, such a statement looks like direct blackmail," Zakharova said Thursday on social media.

Israel is not supplying Ukraine with any weapons because it is bound by certain agreements with Russia over neighboring Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday. Speaking at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel would continue to refrain from sending arms to Kiev. The prime minister admitted that when it comes to this issue, Israel had found itself "in a complex situation." "Israeli pilots and Russian pilots are flying within spitting distance of each other over the skies of Syria," he said, adding that several years ago he had decided to stop Iran, Israel's arch enemy, from creating a "third front" against the Jewish state on its northern border. Israel has repeatedly warned Syria against sheltering Hezbollah militia members, an organization it has designated as terrorist and deems to be linked to Iran. Syrian officials have on numerous occasions accused Israel of conducting deadly strikes on the...

Recently, I was in Phoenix Arizona for a few days to attend the Broken Science Initiative Conference. This organisation was set up by Greg Glassman, who founded CrossFit, and Emily Kaplan, a media expert. The title of the organisation may give you a clue as to its purpose. For my part I gave a presentation on medical research, and where I believe it has gone wrong. How I had once been a happy medic believing everything I was told ... well almost. Then, one day I took the red pill. Suddenly, I became uncomfortably aware that we were all being kept in a vast goo-filled factory, guarded by evil metallic robots who were trying to harvest our electricity for their own ends. Nothing was as it had seemed. In the film, the Matrix, I was never quite sure why solar panels wouldn't do the job of electricity generation. Also, I was never quite sure what the 'ends' of the robots were either. But hey, why ruin a perfectly rather...

The Russian president lamented the fact that the political systems in many countries "often bring people to prominence who have a rather low level of education and general cultural awareness. MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has termed the phrase 'unfriendly countries' inexact and incorrect, because it is not so much the countries themselves but rather their elites or leaders that are unfriendly. "The phrase 'unfriendly countries' has entered the public consciousness and into common usage here. But, it does not accurately reflect existing realities. You could say that it doesn't reflect the reality at all, because what we have are unfriendly elites in a certain number of countries, unfriendly rulers," Putin stated at the congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) on Thursday. He lamented the fact that the political systems in many countries "often bring people to prominence who have a rather low level of education and general cultural...

A Stanford Law School Dean asks 'is the juice worth the squeeze' in disgraceful response to invited campus speaker "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" While it may sound like hipster gibberish, it could well prove to be the epitaph for free speech at Stanford University. Those were the words of wisdom of Stanford DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach in what could go down as one of the most disgraceful moments in modern legal education. For years, free speech has been in a free fall on our campuses. Many faculty members have virtually purged conservatives and libertarians from their ranks in what has become an academic echo chamber. It is common for conservative speakers to be blocked or canceled with the support of professors and students alike. Yet, what occurred at Stanford this week shocked even those of us who have challenged this orthodoxy for years.

Incredible images have been shared across social media after an avalanche in Tignes, France, was hurtling towards the FIS World Cup Slopestyle course, where the world's best freestyle skiers were training and about to compete in the qualification round on March 16, 2023. US Freestyle skier Cody La Plante shared footage in his Instagram stories of the avalanche mercilessly making its way towards the Slopestyle course and skiers, course officials, and shapers scrambling to get away from the snow plumes. According to La Plante, everyone is okay, but qualifiers had to be postponed by a day. Other athletes who captured incredible footage of the avalanche include Sweden's Jesper Tjder and Switzerland's Andri Ragettli.

Ski resorts in California are enjoying an epic snow season with more than 50 feet of snow having fallen in some areas. But is it too much snow? It was for at least two ski resorts where chairlifts were literally buried in snow, as seen at Sierra-at-Tahoe and Bear Valley Resort. "This historic year is a sight to see," Sierra-at-Tahoe stated Monday on Facebook. "Chairs have significant rime ice buildup that must be manually removed, lift shacks + ski patrol stations are completely buried, Puma chairs in West Bowl have been covered. "Historic days for a historic year are on the horizon with clear days in the forecast later this week!!"

Two college students were killed after being struck by lightning at Assam's Abahyapuri town in the Bongaigaon district. The deceased were identified as Dwipjyoti Roy and Jintu Kumar Rai. According to reports, the duo was heading to the market when lightning struck them at Rajbari. Later locals rescued them and rushed them to a government hospital where they were declared brought dead.

Two members of the same family in Rukungiri district died on the spot on Wednesday after they were struck by lightning. Kigezi region Police spokesman Elly Maate identified the victims as Enoth Tukwasibwe, 30, and his mother, Jolly Baryakabuza, 75, both residents of Keita Village in Nyabitete Parish, Bugangari sub-county. Maate told journalists that the unfortunate incident occurred at their home during a heavy downpour while the old woman was in the kitchen preparing supper and the son was in the main house with his father, who was not affected. Police were alerted by area LC1 chairperson Alex Warugaba, and the scene was visited. Bugangari sub-county chairperson Gastone Byamukama was among the leaders who came to comfort the family. He said this was the second incident of lightning in the area in two weeks after a 26-year-old woman was also struck by lightning.

Telangana saw a tragic incident yesterday, as heavy rainfall, hailstorm, and lightning were witnessed in the state. The lightning in Telangana claimed the life of a young tribal shepherd and over 40 sheep in the Nagarjunasagar mandal of Nalgonda district. The young man named Saidanayak from Chintala Thanda used to make a living by rearing goats. He had taken the goats to the forest for grazing and stopped them under a tree after grazing since morning. While it was raining heavily, suddenly there was a thunderbolt with a loud noise. As a result, the young man and about 40 goats under the tree died on the spot due to lightning in Telangana. Video of disaster due to lightning in Telangana went viral The villagers came to know about the incident and reached the spot. Uncomfortable scenes of the disaster due to lightning in Telangana went viral on social media.

The effusive eruption of the volcano remains intense. We are regularly given first-hand information from our local expedition leader and volcanologist, Andi, about the volcano's behavior. Glowing lava blocks continue to detach from the actively growing lava dome, located within the Crater 1, and roll over the western and eastern slopes, most of which reach the base of the dome area. Feel free to enjoy a noteworthy video from the ongoing activity here. Some people have been evacuated to avoid being affected by large hot rock falls that may result in dangerous pyroclastic flows.

This bright bolide was spotted from Spain on March 14, at 1:47 local time (equivalent to 0:47universal time). The event was generated by a rock (a meteoroid) from an asteroid that hit the atmosphere at about 67,000 km/h. The fireball overflew the Mediterranean Sea. It began at an altitude of about 98 km over the sea, over a point located at a distance of 25 km from the coast of the province of Almera (south of Spain). From that position it moved east, and ended at a height of around 67 km over the Mediterranean Sea. This bright meteor was recorded in the framework of the SMART project, operated by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN) from the meteor-observing stations located at Huelva, La Hita (Toledo), Calar Alto, Sierra Nevada, La Sagra (Granada), and Seville.

On March 13, Fox Nation released its documentary about disgraced actor Jussie Smollett titled Anatomy of a Hoax, which included an interview with the Osundairo brothers, whom Jussie enlisted to perpetrate the hoax and shout slurs at him, in a dubious incident that was almost immediately taken as fact by many, inducing Joe Biden. In a tweet from January 29, 2019, Biden wrote, "What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie."

A tech tycoon has been branded a "creep" after allegedly offering a woman $100,000 to take off her face mask on board a Delta flight. Steve Kirsch took to Twitter to say he made the anonymous passenger the offer last Friday. "I am on board a Delta flight right now. The person sitting next to me in first-class refused $100,000 to remove her mask for the entire flight," the millionaire wrote. "No joke. This was after I explained they don't work. She works for a pharma company."

Trump-appointed US District Judge Timothy Kelly sided with Attorney General Merrick Garland's DOJ to allow the feds to hide a host of exculpatory evidence from the jury in the Proud Boys January 6th sedition trial after it was mistakenly leaked to the defense by an FBI agent involved in the case. Comment: See: Proud Boys J6 sedition trial halted after leaked chat logs show FBI agent said her boss ordered her to 'destroy evidence' As I reported last week, unintentionally leaked chat logs from FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller revealed she said she was ordered by her boss to "destroy" "338 items of evidence."

The pontiff called for holy sites to be respected after canonical Orthodox Church monks were ordered to leave their Kiev monastery. Pope Francis has voiced concern over the situation in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra following attempts by the Ukrainian authorities to expel monks from the iconic Orthodox Christian site. Speaking at the end of a general audience on Wednesday, the pontiff said he was "thinking about the Orthodox monks in the Kiev Lavra."

A Norwich City youth football coach who hit a man in the head with a metal pole for not wearing a Covid mask has been jailed. Conor Murphy was queuing for food at a McDonald's in June 2021 when he became enraged by a group of four who weren't wearing face coverings. After becoming increasingly irate, the 29-year-old went back to his car where he found the metal pole, before returning to attack one of the men.

Iranian authorities have proposed new measures to enforce the compulsory wearing of the hijab in the country, including the use of surveillance cameras to identify and punish women who fail to comply with the dress code amid months of nationwide unrest sparked by the death of a young woman while in police custody for allegedly not wearing her head scarf properly. In a public session of the Iranian parliament on March 14, Bijan Nobaveh a member of the Cultural Commission revealed that the body has proposed seven new measures related to the hijab, which have been fully endorsed by the leadership and discussed at the National Security Council. Under the new proposals, physical punishment will not be allowed. Violators instead will be punished according to a predetermined table. The surveillance cameras will be used to monitor public spaces for women not wearing the hijab, and offenders will be punished subsequently with measures that include cutting off their mobile phone and Internet...

The Canadian Cancer Society is advising men it describes as "trans women" who have had "bottom surgery" to discuss cervical cancer screenings with their doctors while acknowledging that men do not have cervixes. Men with a "neo-cervix" or "neo-vagina" created via surgery have "a very small risk" of developing cancers in these tissues, claimed the Canadian charity in a section titled "As a trans woman, do I need to get screened for cervical cancer?": If you're a trans woman, you may not have given much thought to Pap tests and cervical cancer. And if you haven't, that makes a fair amount of sense. After all, in order to get cervical cancer, you need to have a cervix that is, the organ that connects the vagina to the uterus. If you're a trans woman and have not had bottom surgery, you aren't at risk for cervical cancer. If, however, you're a trans woman who has had bottom surgery to create a vagina (vaginoplasty) and possibly a cervix, there's a very small risk that you can develop...

San Francisco regulators moved forward with regulations banning future sales of certain natural gas-powered appliances as part of the Democrat-led city's climate agenda. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which oversees air pollution and emissions regulations for the nine counties surrounding San Francisco, greenlighted amendments to regulations Wednesday evening related to eliminating nitrogen oxide emissions from natural gas furnaces and water heaters in the region. The action requires all commercial and residential furnaces and water heaters to be electric by 2027. "The 1.8 million water heaters and furnaces in the Bay Area significantly impact our air quality, resulting in dozens of early deaths and a wide range of health impacts, particularly in communities of color," Dr. Philip Fine, the executive officer of the Air District, said Wednesday in a statement. "This groundbreaking regulation will phase out the most polluting appliances in homes and businesses to...

Moscow will attempt to recover the wreckage of the American MQ-9 Reaper drone that fell into the Black Sea on Tuesday, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, has announced. Speaking live on federal broadcaster Rossiya 1 on Wednesday, the official admitted that he doesn't know if it will be possible to reach to the remains of the UAV but stressed that it was important to make an effort to find and study the wreckage. Patrushev also added that "Americans keep saying that they are not participating in the hostilities" in Ukraine and that this latest incident with the drone is "yet another confirmation that [the US] are directly involved" in the ongoing military conflict. The secretary's statement comes after Washington's European Command (EUCOM) reported that one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones was brought down over the Black Sea on Tuesday morning as a result of "unsafe and unprofessional" actions by two Russian Su-27 fighter jets. The Pentagon insists that one...

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Tuesday he had complained to President Vladimir Putin about "problems" with Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, warning of an escalation in the restive Caucasus region. Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars for control of the Armenian-majority region and the latest conflict in 2020 ended with the deployment of Moscow's forces. Pashinyan's comments are the latest sign that Armenia, which relies on Russia as a security guarantor, is growing frustrated with the Kremlin whose attention is focused on Ukraine and confrontation with the West.

Scientists discovered evidence of active volcanoes on Venus, also known as Earth's "twin", while closely studying the archival images of the planet. The images were captured by NASA Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s while it was circling the planet. A new analysis of the perspective of the orbiter of a region close to the Venusian equator revealed a volcanic vent which changed shape and increased in size in the period of eight months.

New warnings have been applied to dozens of beaches across the UK today after sewage water was discharged into the sea - with the newly-crowned 'best beach in the UK' among those affected Members of the public have been told to steer clear of 83 beaches across the country due to sewage leaking into the water. Comment: 'Leaking' or being dumped into the water by companies that were given the go ahead by the government? New pollution alerts from swimming charity Surfers Against Sewage from been unveiled following heavy rainfall over recent days, which has caused waste water to be discharged into the sea.

Staff from our Newark office have unearthed some exciting archaeology at a new industrial development at Dove Valley Park in Derbyshire, working on behalf of Orion Heritage and Clowes Developments (UK) Ltd. Cropmarks on aerial photographs hinted at the presence of several ring ditches and linear ditches on and close to the site. Our team confirmed the existence of these features through trial trench evaluation. We then conducted a strip, map and sample excavation to fully reveal and investigate the remains, leading to the discovery of a complete ring ditch and a substantial linear ditch. The ring ditch during excavation, with a possible entrance visible in the foreground. There was at least one re-cutting of the ring ditch, suggesting maintenance and possible longevity of use.

The UK has been downgraded in an annual global index of civic freedoms as a result of the government's "increasingly authoritarian" drive to impose restrictive and punitive laws on public protests. The Civicus Monitor, which tracks the democratic and civic health of 197 countries across the world, said the UK government was creating a "hostile environment" towards campaigners, charities and other civil society bodies. The UK's willingness to clamp down on civic freedoms such as the right to peaceful assembly means it is now classified as "obstructed" - putting it alongside countries such as Poland, South Africa and Hungary.

Large U.S. banks injected $30 billion in deposits into First Republic Bank (FRC.N) on Thursday, swooping in to rescue the lender caught up in a widening crisis triggered by the collapse of two other mid-size U.S. lenders over the past week. Banking stocks globally have been battered since Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week due to bond-related losses that piled up when interest rates surged last year, raising questions about what else might be lurking in the wider banking system. Within days, the market turmoil had ensnared Swiss lender Credit Suisse (CSGN.S), forcing it to borrow up to $54 billion from Switzerland's central bank to shore up liquidity.

Farmers-Citizen Movement is projected to become the equal largest party in the senate, in a blow to Mark Rutte's four-party coalition A farmers' protest party angered by new green laws triumphed in shock Dutch election results, prompting its leader to ask: "People, what the f--- happened?" Caroline van der Plas's Farmers-Citizen Movement (BBB) is projected to become the equal largest party in the senate, taking 15 seats from none before the vote. The Left-wing GroenLinks/PvdA is also expected to win 15 seats, in the wake of months of turbulent farmer protests against government plans to cut nitrogen emissions. Mark Rutte, the centre-Right Dutch prime minister, insisted his coalition government would survive, after its four member parties lost eight of their combined 32 seats in the 75-seat senate

In an article yesterday I noted that a peer-reviewed paper published last year in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, titled "Neo-Darwinism Must Mutate to Survive," offered potent probability arguments against the Darwinian evolution of a complex molecular pathway. These arguments, presented by authors Olen R. Brown and David A. Hullender, in many respects resemble intelligent design probability arguments. Importantly, the authors seem aware that intelligent design offers similar arguments, and they appear to agree that these hold some merit: Probability reasoning has been applied to the evolution alternative known as intelligent design by Elliott Sober who argued that 'Darwinian gradualism' and 'random genetic drift' are reasonable 'evolutionary processes' to overcome weaknesses in natural selection by survival of the fittest (Sober, 2007). We challenge these assumptions. Stephen Gould, and Niles Eldredge initiated a controversy described in the book Punctuated...

In the first step toward understanding how dogs and perhaps humans might adapt to intense environmental pressures such as exposure to radiation, heavy metals, or toxic chemicals, researchers at North Carolina State, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, and the National Institutes of Health found that two groups of dogs living within the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, one at the site of the former Chornobyl reactors, and another 16.5 km away in Chornobyl City, showed significant genetic differences between them. The results indicate that these are two distinct populations that rarely interbreed. While earlier studies focused on the effects of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster on various species of wildlife, this is the first investigation into the genetic structure of stray dogs living near the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. The 1986 Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster displaced more than 300,000 people living nearby and led...

Venus appears to have volcanic activity, according to a new research paper that offers strong evidence to answer the lingering question about whether Earth's sister planet currently has eruptions and lava flows. Venus, although similar to Earth in size and mass, differs markedly in that it does not have plate tectonics. The boundaries of Earth's moving surface plates are the primary locations of volcanic activity. New research by University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute research professor Robert Herrick revealed a nearly 1-square-mile volcanic vent that changed in shape and grew over eight months in 1991. Changes on such a scale on Earth are associated with volcanic activity, whether through an eruption at the vent or movement of magma beneath the vent that causes the vent walls to collapse and the vent to expand. The research was published today (March 15) in the journal Science.

The oil transport company says it has uncovered evidence of a plot to attack the connector supplying oil to western European markets Workers at the Russian oil pipeline transport company Transneft have reportedly found several explosive devices at the Novozybkov oil-pumping station of its Druzhba pipeline in the Bryansk region near Ukraine, according to company spokesperson Igor Demin. Speaking to TASS, he stated that on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday morning, the devices were found in destroyed plastic cases of "non-industrial production" with a striking warhead in the form of steel balls. "Presumably, the destruction of the cases occurred after hitting the ground when falling from drones," Demin suggested. He added that on Wednesday afternoon another explosive device was seen being dropped from a UAV, "likely similar to the other two [devices]."

The mortality rate for U.S. children and teens surged to the highest levels in decades between 2019 and 2021, according to research published Monday in JAMA. Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and the University of Washington reported that all-cause mortality increased 10.7% for people ages 1 to 19 between 2019 and 2020, and an additional 8.3% between 2020 and 2021. The excess deaths were not caused by COVID-19, but by injuries, including incidents involving firearms, drugs and car accidents, the researchers said.

Kentucky transgender daycare worker Maria Childers is accused of sexually abusing a baby while changing the child's diaper, according to official documents obtained by WPSD Local 6. The Paducah Police Department got a complaint of the alleged abuse on February 8 from the Kentucky Department for Community Based Services after an anonymous tip came in about trans-identified male Childers, 25, who was employed at the Explore Learning Academy in November when the crime allegedly took place.

The New Scientist carries a story dated 11 March 2023 with this headline: A nationwide shortage of power grid transformers is causing delays across the US for everything from infrastructure for electric vehicles to new homes. Across the US, new houses sit unfinished - construction can't be completed until they are connected to the electricity grid. Utility companies worry about how quickly they can restore power after damage caused by hurricanes and other natural disasters. And nationwide efforts to modernize aging electrical grids face delays of months or even years.

Contagion could spread to Europe and beyond, Paul Craig Roberts warns... The policies of the US Federal Reserve are responsible for the unfolding banking crisis and could lead to more failures in the sector, Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy Paul Craig Roberts believes. The official, who served in the US Treasury in the 1980s, talked to RT about the recent high-profile bank failures that have rattled the US financial system and the potential fallout of those events. "For many years, the Federal Reserve kept the rates very low, so the interest on the financial assets that the banks have on their balance sheet is low. When the rates start rising, the values of their portfolios fall, but their liabilities don't. "The Fed's policy of high interest rates pushes the banks into insolvency. And this is the cause of the problem. If the Fed continues raising interest rates, there will be more failures."

Washington could clash with Moscow's forces if Kiev starts to lose, the veteran journalist argues... The US could get directly involved in the Ukraine conflict if it sees that Kiev's forces are on the back foot, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh suggested on Tuesday. Speaking at an event in Washington, DC hosted by the Committee for the Republic, a non-profit organization, Hersh noted that the US "did stupid things" during the Vietnam War, and suggested that Washington could "start doing something else" in the Ukraine conflict. "I don't know what happens if it goes bad for Ukraine, you have all this manpower," he said, pointing out that the US has dispatched units of its 82nd and 101st elite airborne divisions close to the Ukrainian border, while "a lot of weapons and arms are coming" to Europe. "I'm told the game is going to be: this is NATO, we are supporting NATO in offensive operations against the Russians, which is not going to fool the world... It's us fighting...

Saudi lender acquired a stake of almost 10% in Credit Suisse last year... Credit Suisse lost almost a quarter of its value on Wednesday, dropping to a new record low after its largest investor said it could not provide the Swiss bank with more financial assistance. "We cannot, because we would go above 10%. It's a regulatory issue," Saudi National Bank chairman Ammar Al Khudairy said on Wednesday. The Saudi lender acquired a stake of almost 10% last year after taking part in Credit Suisse's capital raising and committed to investing up to 1.5 billion Swiss francs ($1.5 billion).

A Chinese tycoon wanted in China and closely tied to president Donald Trump's former political advisor Steve Bannon was arrested in New York Wednesday and charged with bilking some US$1 billion from supporters of his anti-Beijing activities. The US Justice Department accused Guo Wengui and still-at-large British co-conspirator Je Kin Ming of stealing funds from participants in an investment scheme so they could buy luxuries, including a yacht, a 50,000 square foot (4,645 square meter) mansion and a US$3.5 million Ferrari. A court official said late Wednesday that Guo pleaded not guilty but consented to detention in an initial arrest hearing. Hours after his 6:00 am arrest at his Manhattan penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, a fire broke out in his building, raising suspicions the two could be linked.

Tyson Foods Inc. plans to shut down two of its poultry plants and lay off nearly 1,700 workers as it tries to improve its chicken operations that produce about one-fifth of the U.S. supply. Tyson notified the nearly 1,000 employees at its Van Buren, Ark., chicken plant on Monday that it would close on May 12, the company said. About 700 workers at Tyson's plant in Glen Allen, Va., also found out on Monday that its plant would close in May, according to the local United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents employees at the Virginia plant. The Springdale, Ark.-based meat company said production would be shifted to other Tyson plants. The company said the closures were part of a broader plan in its chicken division to improve operations and use full available capacity at each plant. "The current scale and inability to economically improve operations has led to the difficult decision to close the facilities," a company spokesman said in a statement.

We might be getting closer to understanding why hundreds of large stone structures were built across the deserts of northwest Saudi Arabia thousands of years ago. According to an in-depth new analysis, the mysterious, rectangular enclosures were used by Neolithic people for unknown rituals, depositing animal offerings, perhaps as votives to an unknown deity or deities. Excavations have revealed hundreds of fragments of animal remains, clustered around an upright slab of stone interpreted as sacred. The roughly 7,000-year-old monuments known as mustatils (an Arabic word meaning rectangles) have baffled archaeologists since attracting scientific attention in the 1970s. It wasn't until 2017, however, that the full extent of their spread across the Arabian Peninsula was revealed in the first scientific paper documenting their discovery. Aerial surveys have aided in the identification of over 1,600 mustatils, sometimes in groups, scattered throughout the desert. Nicknamed 'gates'...

Masculinity has been in crisis for as long as anyone can remember. The usual explanation is that post-industrial society doesn't much care for brawn. We're all office dwellers now, mutely churning out spreadsheets for other spreadsheet producers. The theory makes sense as far as it goes. But something else has changed much more recently: a rejection of the very concept of masculinity. The polling company YouGov found that just 8 per cent of people have positive views of white men in their twenties, by far the lowest of any ethnicity or age group. Males are routinely presented as inherently dangerous, aggressive and animalistic, incapable of controlling their own instincts. You can see it on public transport, where government adverts announce that staring is sexual harassment. Us blokes can't even be trusted to use our eyes properly. Teenage boys are routinely disciplined by their schools for even the most minor infractions of an insurgent sexual politics. A friend's son at a smart...

Is Larry Fink a threat to democracy? As February turns to March, the finance world is waiting with bated breath for one of its most dubious annual traditions: The Larry Fink Annual Letter to CEOs. Since 2012, when the BlackRock chief executive wrote his first letter, the occasion has come to symbolise the growing threat both to shareholder capitalism and American democracy posed by investment houses' crusade to force the principles of ESG, or "environmental, social, and governance" investing, down the throats of companies, investors, and the public. ESG first entered the investment and banking mainstream as a survival strategy. In 2009, BlackRock had acquired Barclay's Global Investors Ltd, making it the largest investment firm in the world with almost $3 trillion in assets under management (AUM), a sum larger than the total revenue of the US federal treasury. Politically speaking, BlackRock's emergence as an investment superpower could hardly have come at a worse time. Amid the...

"Navalny" is a slick production full of highly dubious claims, misinformation, and enough new Cold War propaganda impact to win an Oscar for best documentary. The Oscar-winning 2022 documentary film Navalny tells the story of the opposition figure who has become the West's favorite Russian activist. Despite having garnered the support of about 2% of Russian voters, according to the polling firm Levada, Alexei Navalny is presented in the film as a national hero whose anti-corruption work made him such a threat to Vladimir Putin that he had to be targeted for elimination. The film's authors are Canadian Daniel Roher, who admits to having never visited Russia or speaking Russian; Bulgarian Christo Grozev of Bellingcat, an "open source" media organization openly hostile to the Russian government, and which acknowledges financing by governments of the US, UK and EU. The production team also includes the Russian opposition activist Maria Pevchikh, who has worked for Navalny's...

Weeks of storms have put so much stress on homes and buildings in the Sierra, that roofs are caving in. NBC Bay Area's Raj Mathai spoke to Captain Martin Goldberg, with the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, for some insight.