Free Republic

New And Deadly Viruses Passed Through Sweet Food And Domestic Animals ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2008) — Nipah virus is a new and deadly brain and lung disease that emerged from Singapore and Malaysia ten years ago. It is now spreading into rural India and Bangladesh killing up to three-quarters of the people who become infected in some outbreaks, scientists heard April 3, 2008 at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting. "People are catching this disease by drinking date palm juice or probably by eating fruit contaminated by the virus, or through contact with infected animals. We have seen nine...

The swamp is back in full force we have a thousand-page Bill of $1.2 trillion filled with all manners of spending priorities that are at odds with the American people. This bill is over a thousand pages long, contains hundreds of pages of report language, 1,400 ear marks, and we've had about 24 hours to review it. That is not the way to do business, and the American people and American families are the ones left holding the bag. This is business as usual in the swamp, and here's the deal to my Republican colleagues: You will own every single...

Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic? This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason. In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010. So...

Police also wrongly cited him for "improper hand signal" after the man flipped them off.Last year, Delaware police prevented 54-year-old Jonathan Guessford from holding a sign warning drivers about a speed trap and wrongfully cited him for "improper hand signal" after he flipped off the officers who seized and tore up his sign. Police have now agreed to pay Guessford $50,000 as part of a settlement reached in a lawsuit alleging that police violated his civil rights. Following several run-ins with the police, Guessford decided to "stage protests whenever he saw police officers stopping unsuspected vehicles using a radar gun,"...

Rafah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Cold winter rains lashed war-battered Gaza on Wednesday, compounding the suffering of Palestinians forced from their homes and now huddling in flooded tents. Aziza al-Shabrawi tried in vain to get the rainwater out of her family's tent, pointing to her two children living in such precarious conditions. "My son is sick because of the bitter cold and my daughter is barefoot. It's like we're beggars," said the 38-year-old. "No one cares, and no one helps." Rafah has become a vast camp for the displaced beside the Egyptian border, with hundreds of tents erected using wood...

A simple question

In the city of Madison, pigs won't be flying anywhere after the Common Council amended the city ordinance to allow them to be kept as pets. The council voted 11-8 on the change late Tuesday night, allowing one pig per dwelling unit in the city, as long as it's under 24 inches tall at the shoulder, weighs 300 pounds, is up to date on shots and is microchipped. The vote came after roughly 30 minutes of discussion. The swine that started it all was Rudi. He lives along the Southwest Commuter Bike Path. "I think he belongs here," Karen Peterson...

its seems Canadian farmers breeding to produce a hardier pig may have been a bad idea. Northern states may end up having the same issue southern states have with feral pigs. "In April 13, a farmer in Nelson Country, North Dakota, was attacked by a feral pig*but not just any old swine. The perpetrator was what authorities and wildlife experts are calling a *super pig,* or a hybrid between a European wild boar and a domestic pig. The beast made repeated attempts to maul the farmer until it was finally shot dead. This attack is just the latest development in...

[H/T grey_whiskers]On TwitterApr 1, 2023

Super hybrid pigs invading. Originally bred to tolerate the Canadian cold, they are now invading America. More at link.

A cross-bred “super pig” from Canada is poised to wreak havoc on the environment in the United States and must be dealt with aggressively and immediately, a wildlife expert told Fox News Digital. “These pigs are easily the worst invasive large mammal on the planet,” said Dr. Ryan Brook, an assistant professor in the department of animal and poultry science at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. These “super pigs” are actually a cross between a European wild boar and a domestic pig, Brook said. The pigs “cause crop damage, destroy natural environments, get into cities, destroy water quality and...

Wild pigs on the Central Coast continue to be a growing problem as they extend their range of damage and county park leaders now looking at hiring a private hunter to help eradicate the problem. “It gets very very frustrating. Our parks are the jewels of our community,” said Mike LeBarre, mayor of King City. LeBarre is referring to San Lorenzo Park in King City which was the latest target of the wild hogs. They ripped up the grass this week in search of grubs, insect larvae hidden beneath the grass. The damage is estimated to be thousands of dollars...

This is my promise to Arizona. This an experimental shot. Our Children are NOT guinea pigs. When I'm Governor, the Covid Vax will NEVER be mandatory for our precious children. NEVER. Video: https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1582816744363552768?cxt=HHwWgMCjhazcpfcrAAAA

Los Angeles Rams linebackers Bobby Wagner and Takkarist McKinley tackled an animal rights activist who disrupted the team’s game against the San Francisco 49ers during Monday Night Football. Just before halftime, a member of Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights group, who were attending Monday night’s game ran across the 49ers Levi’s Stadium with a device releasing red and pink smoke to raise awareness about a massive pig factory farm allegedly hiding its abuses inside the facility. The nonprofit reports Allison Fluty and Alex Taylor were cited, with one still in police custody, after running onto the field at separate...

New rules on pork production will lead to regional shortages. Bay State voters in 2016 approved a referendum that would prohibit the sale of products from farms that confine “any breeding pig [sow], calf raised for veal, or egg-laying hen in a way that prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending its limbs, or turning around freely.” Hog farmers would be most affected since nearly all are housed in individual pens. “There’s so many things that there’s shortages on, it’s almost like throwing salt on a wound,” ...If Massachusetts can prohibit the sale and mere distribution of...

Researchers in China say they have developed a process to clone pigs entirely through the use of robots — a development that may help the world's largest pork consumer reduce its reliance on imported breeding pigs. In March, a surrogate mother gave birth to seven cloned piglets at the College of Artificial Intelligence at Nankai University in Tianjin. "Each step of the cloning process was automated, and no human operation was involved," Liu Yaowei, a member of the team that developed the system, said. Liu added the use of robots had also increased the success rate of the cloning process...

The discovery of pottery from the ancient Lapita culture by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) has shed new light on how Papua New Guinea (PNG) served as a launching pad for the colonization of the Pacific—one of the greatest migrations in human history.The new study makes clear the initial expansion of the Lapita people throughout PNG was far greater than previously thought.The study... is based on the discovery of a distinctive Lapita pottery sherd, a broken piece of pottery with sharp edges, on Brooker Island (200km east of mainland PNG) in 2017 that lead researcher Dr. Ben Shaw...

A British actress who starred in Doctor Strange with Benedict Cumberbatch and her husband are accussed of having sex with a 13-year-old girl after they groomed her. The girl, now an adult, says that Zara Phythian and Victor Marke filmed the abuse in a bid to recreate pornographic scenes. The abuse is claimed to have happened between 2005 and 2008 when the couple were martial arts instructors. Jurors heard a police interview from the woman, who was aged between 13 and 15 at the time of the alleged abuse, describing the details of the sexual offences before the pair married....

This Tuesday, March 15, the fourth death of a Russian general in the invasion of Ukraine has been reported, in this case Major General Oleg Mityaev... Mityaev was commander of the Russian Army’s 150th Motorized Rifle Division, a mechanized infantry unit... On March 3, the death of Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, the first member of the Russian Army Generalate killed during this invasion, was confirmed. He was deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Ground Forces... On Monday, March 7, Ukrainian sources reported the death of Major General Vitaly Gerasimov, 44, chief of staff of the...

Researchers trained an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm with 7,414 recordings of pig noises, gathered throughout the life stages of 411 pigs – including slaughter. The algorithm could potentially be used to build an app for pig farmers that detects whether the animals are happy just from the noise they're making. As already revealed in previous research, there are more high-frequency calls from pigs (such as screams and squeals) in negative situations. At the same time, low-frequency calls (such as barks and grunts) occurred both in situations where the pigs experienced positive or negative emotions. With an even more thorough analysis...