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Several trees in Northern Ireland made famous by the TV series Game Of Thrones have been damaged and felled by Storm Isha. Work is currently being carried out to clear up the Dark Hedges site in County Antrim. The tunnel of trees became famous when it was featured in the HBO fantasy series and now attracts significant numbers of tourists from around the world. Storm Isha battered the country on Sunday night, with strong winds leaving thousands of properties without power and causing travel disruption. […] Concerns have been raised about the state of several of the ancient beech trees...

Former CDC Director Robert Redfield's biggest fear for a future pandemic is a genetically manipulated bird flu, given that NIH-funded scientists in 2012 published instructions for making such a pathogen cross the "species barrier" to humans, a highly unlikely result from viral evolution. "I didn't think we needed to give terrorists a recipe" for modifying a bird flu to kill 5%-50% of people it infects, Dr. Redfield told "Just the News, No Noise," recalling his argument to then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci — his future antagonist on COVID origins and gain-of-function research — against publishing...

Fifty years ago this November, Nixon buried the hapless George McGovern under the third-largest landslide in the history of American presidential elections. McGovern carried only one of the 50 states, Massachusetts. The benighted American masses wouldn’t stop chanting “four more years,” to the dismay of peaceniks and intellectuals everywhere. Five decades later, we still haven’t absorbed the reasons behind Nixon’s triumph. Few liberals grasp the sources of Nixon’s appeal, which cut across partisan lines and gave him a huge victory, even among voters who wanted out of Vietnam immediately, which was supposed to be Nixon-haters’ signature issue. Until you get...

A Lotta People Watched the Dragon Show HBO’s House of the Dragon is off to a stellar start in the ratings: 10 million viewers across all of the network’s platforms streamed Sunday’s premiere of the first Game of Thrones spinoff series. That’s easily the largest audience for a series in the HBO Max era, and according to the network, it’s the best opening night for any HBO original series ever, though changes in how ratings are tabulated make comparisons tough. But whatever the specifics, the big takeaway seems to be that Dragon took flight right out of the gate and...

As summer comes to an end, two expensive fantasy series filled with sorcery, sword fights and fantastical beasts will premiere on rival streaming services. While it may seem like Amazon Prime Video’s “The Rings of Power” and Warner Bros. Discovery’s “House of the Dragon” should be dueling franchises, as they begin within a couple weeks of each other, the two series serve very different purposes for their respective studios. The stakes may be higher for “House of the Dragon,” which will go first. It starts Sunday on HBO and streaming service HBO Max, arriving as newly minted CEO David Zaslav...

Game of Thrones actor Joseph Gatt has been arrested after allegedly engaging in sexually explicit online communication with a minor in another state. The LAPD served a search warrant at Gatt's home in Los Angeles on April 6 after they received information that he had been engaged in online sexually explicit communication with a minor across state lines. Gatt was taken into custody on Wednesday after authorities served a search warrant at his home in Los Angeles. The LAPD's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force began investigating Gatt after they received a tip that he was engaged in sexually explicit...

The Biden administration's apparent unwillingness to conduct a serious official investigation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 that holds China accountable for its actions and lack of cooperation could result in a pandemic much more lethal that the current one, warns a leading researcher. Dr. Steven Quay, whose research became part of a State Department probe of the origin of COVID-19 under President Trump, told Fox News' Martha MacCallum on Friday that "all of the evidence points toward the lab theory." "There's no evidence that supports a natural origin at this point," he said. "So I think we're done, at this...

The attacker, a known supporter of Islamic State, was shot dead by police. He has now been identified as Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a 32-year-old Tamil, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and sought refugee status. Ardern, who described the stabbings as a "terrorist attack", said...legislation is expected to make it easier to convict someone for planning a terror attack. Samsudeen, whose identity was suppressed by court order until now due to his refugee status, arrived in New Zealand on a student visa in 2011. A surveillance team and a specialist tactics group had followed Samsudeen from his home...

English actress Diana Rigg has died at the age of 82, her representatives have confirmed to the BBC. A celebrated and award-winning performer on stage and screen, Rigg was known for her TV roles in The Avengers and Games Of Thrones, and in film as Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Her theater work included a 1992 production of Greek tragedy Medea, for which she won a Tony in the title role, and a 1987 staging of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Follies.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A Florida man is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State extremist group, including attempting to buy multiple weapons and scouting potential targets for an attack in the Tampa Bay area, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. A criminal complaint charges Muhammed Momtaz Al-Azhari, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, with attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charge carries a potential 20-year prison term. **SNIP** According to the affidavit, Al-Azhari scouted a number of targets in the Tampa Bay region, including beaches, parks and even the Tampa FBI field...

The Thursday morning shooting at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi is being treated as an act of terrorism, according to FBI officials. "We have determined that the incident this morning at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi is terrorism-related," FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent Leah Greeves said in a Thursday media conference. At about 6:15 a.m., security forces responded to an active shooter at the Texas base, and he was quickly neutralized. FBI agents confirmed that the shooter had been shot at the scene. "The subject is deceased, the scene is still being processed," Greeves said. Although the agency declined...

"Following the 2002-2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak, NIH funded a collaboration by Chinese scientists, US military virologists from the bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick and National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists from NIAID to prevent future coronavirus outbreaks by studying the evolution of virulent strains from bats in human tissues. Those efforts included “gain of function” research which is “accelerated viral evolution” to create COVID Pandemic superbugs, enhanced bat borne COVID mutants more lethal and more transmissible than wild COVID. … these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic. Fauci’s studies alarmed scientists...

While the world is absorbed in the Coronavirus drama, yet another caravan of illegal immigrants is heading north to the United States from Central America. The group departed recently from the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula and is making its way to Guatemala en route to the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The final destination is the U.S., according to a Mexican news report that reveals the caravan has some 500 Central Americans but is expected to grow along the way. “They left their country due to a lack of work opportunities and prevailing violence,” according to the...

Six terrorists who carried out attacks were on the FBI's radar previously. The Justice Department's internal government watchdog released a report Wednesday identifying what it described as significant issues with how the FBI handled investigations of extremists based in the U.S. who either sought or successfully carried out attacks against Americans. The report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz scrutinized how agents investigated so-called 'homegrown violent extremists,' or HVE, and found several instances where individuals who went on to carry out attacks had been previously identified by the FBI but had their cases closed with no further action. "Since September...

Sophie Turner was included in the legions of outspoken A-Listers who rallied to criticise the American states of Alabama, Georgia and more in the wake of them passing a near total ban on women accessing an abortion. Two weeks ago, Alabama's senate voted to pass the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States, virtually outlawing a woman's right to an abortion in every circumstance, apart from if the woman's life is in danger. This was then signed by their female governor, Kay Ivey. Turner responded by posting a collage of Republican politicians saying, frankly terrifying, comments about rape. https://www.instagram.com/p/BxiP37rBwAG/?utm_source=ig_embed...

Harrington, who is probably best known for his role as Jon Snow, reportedly checked into the luxury facility in Connecticut called Privé-Swiss several weeks ago ahead of the show’s finale on May 19...The actor broke down in tears when he learned his character on the show would in the end kill his love Daenerys Targaryen.

There’s a well-worn saying on the right: Scratch a progressive, find a fascist. Usually, that’s a bit of hyperbole to point toward the tendency of progressives to embrace top-down, big government solutions to every problem. But in this case, it’s almost literally true, though the real progressive is embracing a fictional fascist from the show Game of Thrones. Vox’s Matt Yglesias published a piece yesterday at Vox arguing that Daenerys was right to burn people alive in the city of King’s Landing because she needed to convince the entire kingdom not to question the dictates of a powerful central government.

With fans still processing the epic Game of Thrones finale that aired on HBO Sunday night, Emilia Clarke has shed some light on the epic victory speech she gave. The 32 year old actress revealed in a new interview with Variety, Clarke revealed that she actually studied dictators like Adolph Hitler.

On Tuesday, 2020 Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) continued her cringe-inducing appeal to millennials with a tag-team video about Game of Thrones. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) joined her, to bash the show for not being feminist enough. Their pop culture analysis mimics the gender pay gap complaints by focusing on equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity and character development. Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6 below. "I feel like we were getting so close to having this ending with just women running the world and then the last two episodes … it’s like, ‘Oh, they’re too emotional....

An emotional Emilia Clarke paid tribute to Daenerys Targaryen, her former cast-mates and her late father on Sunday evening as fans digested the dramatic finale of HBO’s long running fantasy drama, Game Of Thrones. Millions stayed up late to watch as the show came to an end after nine years, eight season and hundreds of brutal deaths, but many were underwhelmed by its final episode, which included plenty of shock moments and one unfortunate editing gaffe.