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US and Chinese scientists were planning to create a new coronavirus before the pandemic erupted, leaked proposals show. Last month, a grant application submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an international team of scientists had planned to mix genetic data of similar strains to create a new virus. The grant application was made in 2018 and leaked to Drastic, the pandemic origins analysis group. 'We will compile sequence/RNAseq data from a panel of closely related strains and compare full length genomes, scanning for unique SNPs representing sequencing errors. 'Consensus candidate genomes will be synthesised...

With news of a second strain in the UK that has shuttered London, U.S. leaders are starting to take precautions. Experts predict that the second variant of the virus is reportedly 70 percent more transmissible than the original strain. "We will have a new approach, given the new strain we're seeing there," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said in a press conference on Wednesday.

Hazardous weather outlook [Front Range Colorado]

A woman in St. Louis has a frightening tale to tell after she was attacked and the suspect was apparently allowed to walk free. Her name is Alicia Clarke and she was attacked by her neighbor who tackled her, pulled her hair, broke her nose, and stabbed her with a metal rod. This was all over an incident where she lost her phone, used the 'Find My Iphone' to locate it, and confronted the teenage neighbor who responded by attacking her and leaving her a mess.

Congresswoman Lois Frankel (D-FL) made a drastic statement on Wednesday to enunciate her opposition for Brett Kavanaugh‘s nomination to the Supreme Court. Ever since Kavanaugh was tagged by President Trump, Congressional Democrats have promised staunch opposition to Kavanugh’s confirmation — arguing that the nominee would rollback abortion rights along with many other progressive Supreme Court rulings. Kavanaugh’s position on Roe v. Wade is not as easily defined as it is for others who were on Trump’s SCOTUS short list. But nonetheless, Frankel is making her opposition to Kavanaugh crystal clear. How you ask?

As part of his proposed budget, President Trump will instruct federal agencies on Monday to assemble a spending plan for the coming fiscal year that includes sharp increases in Defense Department spending and "drastic cuts" to domestic agencies such as the State Department, the EPA and other non-defense programs, so that he can keep his promise to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, according to four senior administration officials cited by the NYT. The budget outline will be the first move in a campaign this week to reset the narrative of Mr. Trump’s turmoil-tossed White House. Coming one day before...

Opposition head MK Yitzhak Herzog (Zionist Union) on Wednesday afternoon met with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Rome, and in the course of the meeting presented his "separation" peace plan involving a regional effort to create a Palestinian state in Israel. During the meeting, which is the fourth between the two in the last half-year, Kerry expressed interest in Herzog's plan, which would form a regional security committee consisting of Egypt, Jordan and Israel together with other Arab states. This committee would coordinate a joint fight against radical Islamic terror, according to Herzog, and likewise advance "confidence building...

"Tea party" activists are exhibiting a fervor for budget cuts not seen in years, pushing to slash everything from Social Security to unemployment benefits in their drive to cut the burgeoning federal debt. But while applauding their budget-cutting zeal, economists are divided over whether their prescription is good medicine for a weak economy. Some say it's reminiscent of President Hoover's drive to balance the budget during the Great Depression — and would backfire this time as well. Tea party groups and candidates, while fractious at times, are mostly united

Now that we have been painted into a corner with the passage of this Constitution-trampling explosion of government, we have only 4 options left before things get ugly: 1) Vote them out in 2010. This option requires much patience and will not actually mean anything unless those elected actually reverse all the spending, bailouts and takeovers. Most likely, Democrats will be punished for a few years while Republicans ride the tidal wave of public outrage into office, at which point they will throw us some symbolic scraps from the table, rather than making a serious commitment to uprooting federal tyranny....

<p>The Legislative Analyst's Office on Wednesday proposed an overhaul of state school programs that is more drastic, and more refined, than a similar plan announced by the governor in January.</p> <p>In particular, Wednesday's report makes the controversial recommendation that the state's massive and popular Class Size Reduction program for kindergarten through the third grade be dismantled -- a move that would be fought by education interest groups, including the powerful California Teachers Association.</p>

March 4, 2001 An Epidemic of Gas Sniffing Decimates Arctic Indian Tribe By MARY ROGAN Photographs by ARLENE GOTTFRIED ate last fall, in a remote village in the north of Labrador, native leaders took the extraordinary step of asking the government to take their children away. "The safety of these children is the paramount issue," explained Paul Rich, Innu tribal chief, in a statement to the provincial government requesting the removal of nearly two dozen of the village's children. "The ongoing situation is drastic, and we need to take drastic measures," the plea continued. "We insist that these children...