Op-Ed: The US Is Funding A Massive Virus Hunt That Might Cause Another Pandemic. Great Idea!

I just learned that the US Agency for International Development, USAID, is pouring $125 million into an effort to seek out novel viruses in remote areas of the world. This is pretty much exactly what many scientists, including me, have been warning against for years.

The USAID’s announcement seems utterly oblivious to the enormous dangers posed by this program. Their own headline says they want to find viruses that could cause pandemics! The program, called DEEP VZN (”deep vision,” get it?) is funding scientists in the US and in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to venture (”deep”) into unpopulated areas of the jungle, and to find animals carrying viruses that might infect humans. They’re particularly interested in viruses that could cause the next pandemic.

What could go wrong? Oh nothing, says USAID and the scientists who are happily taking the $125 million in funding. They’ll be super careful! So we should all be pleased with how the government is preparing for the next pandemic.  Source: Forbes

NASA Warns China Planning to Build a Lunar Base With Russia to ‘Occupy The Moon’

China is teaming up with Russia to compete against the United States in space, top NASA officials are warning, including plans to build a lunar base on the moon, attempting to claim Earth’s satellite for its own.

Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported on the comments from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Wednesday, saying that there were “real fireworks this week coming from Beijing” in response to his warning about a new space race and China’s intentions to “occupy the moon.”

“We must be very concerned about China is landing on the moon and saying: It’s ours now and you stay out,” Nelson said this weekend in an interview with German newsmagazine Bild. China was doing well because “they steal ideas and technology from others,” said Nelson, accusing China of using their space station to study how to destroy other nations’ satellites. Source: Mediaite

Georgia Guidestones: Rural monument that some call satanic damaged in bombing, police say (Video)

State and local officials are investigating a bombing at a rural Georgia monument that some conservative Christians have dubbed satanic and previously called for its demolition.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported that just before dawn Wednesday, someone detonated an explosive device and damaged the Georgia Guidestones, dubbed by some as “America’s Stonehenge.”

It’s 19-feet-high and bears a 10-part message in eight languages for living in an “age of reason.” One part calls for keeping world population at 500 million or below, while another calls to “guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.” Source: USA Today

US Court Ruling May Take 70,000 Truckers Off Road, Spur Jams

A US Supreme Court decision that could force California’s 70,000 truck owner-operators to stop driving is set to create another choke point in already-stressed West Coast logistics networks, a truckers’ organization said.

“Gasoline has been poured on the fire that is our ongoing supply-chain crisis,” the California Trucking Association said in a statement following the Supreme Court’s decision to deny a judicial review of a decision of a lower court, a process known as certiorari.

“In addition to the direct impact on California’s 70,000 owner-operators who have seven days to cease long-standing independent businesses, the impact of taking tens of thousands of truck drivers off the road will have devastating repercussions on an already fragile supply chain, increasing costs and worsening runaway inflation,” the CTA said. Source: Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia Largely Eliminates Antisemitism from Textbooks

Antisemitism was by in large deleted from Saudi Arabian textbooks, The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) revealed in its annual report on education in the Kingdom.

The report, published last week, discovered that content that portrayed Jews as insubordinate and teachings of antisemitic stereotypes, including Jews being wealthy, was eliminated from the country’s curriculum.

Riyadh has experienced a trend of progress in deleting antisemitism from its curriculum recently, IMPACT-se reported. Source: Israel365

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has successfully started to Collide Particles at 13.6 Trillion Electronvolts, Setting a New World Record

A round of applause broke out in the CERN Control Centre on 5 July at 4.47 p.m. CEST when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) detectors switched on all subsystems and started recording high-energy collisions at the unprecedented energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts (TeV), ushering in a new physics season. Source: CERN

Mice Cloned Using Freeze-Dried Cells Which Could Pave the Way From Saving Animals from Extinction

Endangered animal species could be saved from extinction after a new study has shown that mice cloned from freeze-dried cells are able to successfully grow into adults and become parents.

Researchers in Japan have used freeze-dried somatic cells – animal cells other than sperm and egg cells – to clone mice.

Cloned males and females were able to mate with other normal mice and produce their own healthy offspring.

The team’s method could bring animal species back to life after they’ve gone extinct in the wild, as long as their cells have already been ‘banked’. Source: Daily Mail