Lee Ardis

100% lab-grown babies in FIVE YEARS: Japanese researchers are on cusp of creating human eggs and sperm that can be grown in a fake womb

Growing human babies from scratch in a lab could be possible in just five years thanks to a new breakthrough.

Researchers in Japan are on the cusp of being able to create human eggs and sperm in the lab from scratch, which would then develop in an artificial womb.

Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi, a Japanese scientist at Kyushu University who has already figured out the process in mice, believes he is just five years away from replicating the results in humans.

But there are ethical concerns, as it means women of any age could have babies. Parents may also want to design their offspring to have certain traits using gene editing tools, giving way to the notion of an assumed perfect child.

Dr Hayashi and his team recently created seven mice with two male biological parents, using skin cells from a male mouse to form a viable egg and then fertilize it.

The ability to produce custom-made human sperm and eggs in the lab is called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG).

It works by taking cells from a person’s blood or skin and reprogramming them to become induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells).

In theory, these cells can become any cell in the body, including egg and sperm cells.

They could then be used to make embryos and implanted into women’s wombs.

Scientists have been able to make very basic human eggs and sperm this way, but have not yet been able to make embryos.

Footage of UFOs over conflict zones seen for first time: ‘This is devastating’

UFOs in conflict zones create a potential for unintended crossfire, because combatants don’t know whose assets they are, investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell told Fox News Digital

The Pentagon released a video of a UFO flying over an active conflict zone in the Middle East in 2022, and its mere existence creates “the probability of unintended crossfire,” according to an expert.

The short clip of a metallic-looking orb flying at a fast pace was shown during Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

The object was first seen moving from the top right of the screen to the bottom left. It temporarily disappears out of view and then briefly reappears.

“This is essentially all the data we have of this event,” said Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). “It’s going to be virtually impossible to fully identify that just based off that video.”

The 2022 Middle East orb is considered an “unresolved case,” Kirkpatrick told lawmakers, and the footage reminded Jeremy Corbell of the “Mosul Orb,” a similar-looking metallic orb recorded by a U.S. spy plane flying over Mosul, Iraq, in 2016.

Parents to appeal in 4-year-old forced Pride parade case

Christian parents Izzy and Shane Montague are to appeal their case after the Central London County Court dismissed their claim against their child’s former school, Heavers Farm, for attempting to force him to participate in an LGBT themed Pride Parade.

Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, the parents brought the claim after a series of events which left them feeling intimidated and discriminated against for challenging the school over the LGBT education of their 4-year-old son, which included mandatory participation in a school run Pride Parade to celebrate Pride Month.

Parents were informed about the LGBT themed Pride celebration only days in advance when they received a rainbow-coloured invitation to attend the event. In preparation for the parade, children were taught the popular ‘gay anthems’, ‘We are Family’ and ‘True Colours’, which they had to sing while marching around the school.

The children were also required to create rainbow themed art, which the school’s lesson plan held out as an assignment to show support for the diverse LGBT community. The march also featured several large and conspicuous Pride flags. A number of members of staff were photographed at the event wearing LGBT campaigning themed t-shirts, with one teacher wrapping himself in a Pride flag.

The school told all parents that holding the parade was a legal requirement and even said to one parent it was against the law for their son not to attend.

182 children were withdrawn by their parents on the day of the parade.

Despite all of this, the Country Court ruled that the event was, in fact, not a promotion of LGBT but part of a general programme to promote equality and inclusivity.

Circuit Court Judge Christopher Lethem went so far as to find that there was little in the parade that was inconsistent with the Montague’s Christian beliefs (paragraph 160 of judgment).

Elsewhere in the judgment, the Court found that a Stonewall campaigning poster that was hung in the school and read “Some people are gay. Get over it!” was not only consistent with Christianity, but is what Church teaching advocates (paragraph 145 of judgment).

Ancient tablet found on Mount Ebal predates known Hebrew inscriptions

An early Hebrew inscription from Mount Ebal near Nablus that was found on a folded lead tablet during an excavation in the 1980s recently underwent x-ray tomographic measurements to reveal hidden text.

Epigraphic analysis of the data revealed a formulaic curse written in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age that predates any previously known Hebrew inscription in Israel by at least 200 years.

The finding has just been published in the journal Heritage Science by Prof. Gershon Galil, a researcher at in Jewish history and biblical studies at the University of Haifa; Scott Stripling of the Archaeological Studies Institute in Katy, Texas; Ivana Kumpova, Daniel Vavrik and Jaroslav Valach of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics the Czech Academy of Sciences; and Pieter Gert van der Veen at the Department of Old Testament and Biblical Archaeology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany.

The inscription was: “You are cursed by the God YHW.”

In December 2019, an expedition on Mount Ebal to wet sift the discarded material from excavations led by Adam Zertal – a prominent but controversial University of Haifa archaeologist who died at the age of 79 in 2015 – from decades earlier, yielded a small, folded lead tablet.

The east dump pile from which the object emerged contained the discarded matrix from two structures that he interpreted as altars dated to the Late Bronze Age II and Iron Age I. The earlier and smaller round altar lay underneath the geometric center of the later and larger rectangular altar.

Nigeria: Islamist Herdsmen Kill Dozens in Latest Anti-Christian Massacre

Nigeria police said on Monday they are investigating no less than 15 murders over the past week in a rural farming community that was attacked by nomadic herdsmen.

Residents of four villages in the state of Nasarawa said they are “under siege” by the herders, who were reportedly enraged when one of their number was killed with a machete early last week.

Central Nigeria is the scene of a long-running conflict between the herders, who mostly hail from a nomadic Muslim tribe called the Fulani, and farmers, who are largely Christian. Christian groups were stunned last year when the Biden administration began insisting there was no strong religious dimension to the violence, and the Biden State Department removed Nigeria from its list of countries that severely violate religious freedom.

Ramhan Nansel, a spokesman for the Nasarawa state police, told Voice of America News (VOA) on Monday that the inciting incident in the current herder-farmer clash was the alleged killing of an 18-year-old herdsman who was struck in the head with a machete last week. Machetes are very common implements of both agriculture and murder in central Nigeria.

Nansel said the official count of reprisal killings stands at 15, although the villagers claim at least 38 people have been murdered, including a church pastor. Nigeria’s Vanguard reported on Monday that the Nasarawa state government supervised a mass burial for 38 victims over the weekend, most of them women and children.

Reas more at: www.breitbart.com

The Prophetic Chess Pieces Are Moving: Iran Supplies Russia Massive Military Aid

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Iran, over the past six months, has supplied Russia with some “300,000 artillery shells and a million rounds of ammunition.” Russian cargo ships are taking these materials by way of the Caspian Sea and Russia is using them for its war against Ukraine. Folks, that’s a pretty massive military supply from Iran to Russia, over just a six-month span.

Of course, it comes on the heels of persistent reports that Russia has received hundreds, if not 1000s, of these suicide drones from Iran. They’re mass-produced inside Iran, packed with explosives, and are flown into the target.

Russia has used these with great and deadly effect in Ukraine, in places like Kyiv, attacking civilians with these Iranian-made drones to the point where Iran plans to open a drone factory in Russia, east of Moscow, very soon, where they will mass produce. No surprise there. Iran views itself as a drone superpower, using them not only for their own ends, but to attack—by the way—US bases in Syria and Iraq.

Iran is also supplying these drones to the likes of Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen, and those Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. Iranian proxies, one-and-all, are armed to the teeth by their masters in Tehran, so it makes perfect sense that Iran would also supply these drones to its good friends in Vladimir Putin’s regime.

The big question is: What does Iran get in return?

There have been reports that Russia may look to replenish its stockpiles with some ballistic missiles from Iran—Russia has also reached out to North Korea on that end.

But Iran is giving a lot here, folks, 1000s of drones, a drone factory on Russian soil, a million rounds of ammunition 300,000 artillery shells in the past half year alone. This begs the question, is this a quid pro quo relationship? The Iranian regime is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts; what do they get in return?

Now, a few things here, Russia is reportedly supplying more up-to-date fighter jets to Iran; the Iranian Air Force is severely outdated. Additionally, Russia could look to provide Iran with nuclear know-how.

‘Pandora’s Box’: Doctors Warn of Rising Plant Fungus Infections in People After ‘First of Its Kind’ Case

The first case of C. purpureum infecting a person has doctors warning of a rising tide of fungus spurred by climate change and urbanization.

A man in India is the first human known to be infected by a fungus called Chondrostereum purpureum, a pathogen that is most well-known for causing a disease called silver leaf in plants, reports a new study.

The patient, who was 61 at the time of the diagnosis, made a full recovery and has not experienced any recurrence of the infection after two years of follow-up observations. However, this “first of its kind” case study exemplifies the risks that fungal pathogens pose for humans, especially now that climate change and other human activities like rampant urbanization, have opened a “Pandora’s Box for newer fungal diseases” by contributing to their spread, according to the study.

Fungal pathogens are having a pop culture moment because they are the source of a fictional disease depicted in apocalyptic game The Last of Us, which was recently adapted into the acclaimed HBO series of the same name. But these microbes are also a real-life scourge that infect about 150 million people every year, resulting in about 1.7 million deaths.

Though millions of fungal species exist, only a very small fraction of them are able to infect animals, including humans, because our bodies present challenges to these invaders such as high temperatures and sophisticated immune systems.

Soma Dutta and Ujjwayini Ray, doctors at Apollo Multispecialty Hospitals in Kolkata, India, have now added one more fungus to that small list of human invaders with their unprecedented report of a C. purpureum infection. The patient, a plant mycologist, had suffered from cough, fatigue, anorexia, and a throat abscess for months before his hospital visit, and was probably exposed to the fungus as a result of his profession.

PETA Teams Up With AI To Rewrite The Bible

Once again, the Left is trying to appropriate the Bible for its own political purposes, this time with the help of artificial intelligence.

Yes, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals last week published a rather milquetoast rewrite of the book of Genesis entitled “The Book: PETA’s Version of the Creation Story.”

The result is inherently offensive, occasionally a tad funny, but ultimately rather underwhelming. Trust me: I suffered through reading it, so you, dear reader, don’t have to waste your time.

PETA–or the AI, which I’m convinced probably provided the best bits of this dilapidated drivel–decided to be slavishly derivative, repeating original locations and keeping the rough structure of Genesis, while simultaneously scrapping the main theological message of the story and the major plot points that give the inspired Word its emotional heft.

In this incredibly sanitized version of the Bible, Cain isn’t a murderer, Nimrod stops being a hunter, Hagar is a chef, a dog takes the place of Isaac on Mount Moriah and there is no sacrifice, Pharaoh’s butler and baker both live, and Pharaoh’s dreams involve vegan preaching, not the famine responsible for reuniting Jacob’s family.

Somewhere between the AI and the wokescolds at PETA, basic details got lost.

For instance, Rachel dies in childbirth with Joseph, rather than with his younger brother Benjamin (Genesis 35), and Benjamin miraculously appears as an elder brother to Joseph. Cain–still the villain of the story–sacrifices animal flesh to God while Abel sacrifices plants, which represents a reversal of the biblical story in which Abel sacrifices his prized sheep. PETA might as well have made Abel the villain, especially since it decided to scrap the murder, anyway.

Vets issue urgent warning over spike in virus that kills up to 90 PERCENT of dogs – with rates rising in New York, Washington DC and Missouri

Pet owners have been urged to look out for a virus that is spiking in some parts of the US and is lethal in dogs.

Parvovirus, often referred to as parvo — a highly-contagious disease that kills up to 90 percent of pooches — is above average levels in at least three parts of the country, New York state, DC and Missouri.

The most common symptoms are vomiting, diarrhea and loss of appetite. The virus is not tracked, so the total number of dogs to have died is not known.

New York health officials released an alert which said the Animal Care Centers (ACC) had diagnosed 14 dogs as of March 14, with the majority in puppies and younger dogs in Bronx and Manhattan facilities.

This far exceeded what is usually seen in a whole year.

And a shelter in Missouri has seen a sharp rise in cases in puppies, with some vets seeing two to three sick parvo-infected dogs every day, and sometimes even five or six. The uptick has been attributed to the warmer weather.

Former Disney actress promotes ‘witchcraft’ in new film about her occult spiritual journey

Former Disney actress Vanessa Hudgens recently released a new film that follows her occult spiritual journey. Hudgens is best known for her role as Gabriella Montez in the Disney movie “High School Musical” and as Candy in “Spring Breakers.”

The actress’ latest project, “Dead Hot,” is an unscripted Tubi film about Hudgens and her best friend, musician GG Magree, exploring witchcraft and ghost hunting.

In the film, Hudgens and Magree travel to Salem, Massachusetts, the setting of the 1692 Salem witch trials, to connect with the spirit world.

The duo, who consider themselves to be self-taught students of witchcraft, regard experimenting and connecting with the spirit world to be their pastime, according to Variety.

Hudgens told the outlet that the recently released film “was a lot more personal than anything I’ve ever done.”

“I’m not hiding behind a character as I normally do in films — this is me, exploring something that I am very passionate about,” she added.

“I knew it would be extremely personal, and I would be sticking my neck out doing so,” Hudgens continued. “But I’m hoping that it makes other curious people out there to be inspired to open their hearts, minds and soul. Trust their intuition and find a bit more peace in the unknown.”