Author: Ron Chambers

First case of new Delta mutation AY4.2 diagnosed in Israel

TOI staff and AFP – October 19, 2021

A subvariant of the Delta coronavirus mutation raising alarm bells in the United Kingdom has been found in a child who entered Israel from Moldova, health officials said Tuesday.

The AY4.2 is being closely monitored by officials in the UK, and others have called for urgent research into the subvariant, though health officials say there is no evidence yet that it is driving an uptick in coronavirus cases in some places.

According to reports in Hebrew media, the subvariant was found for the first time in Israel in an 11-year-old boy who entered the country from Moldova. He was flagged at the airport and sent into isolation, Channel 12 news reported.

Health Ministry officials plan to hold a meeting on the worrying new strain, Walla news reported, amid fears that a new strain of the virus in Israel could reverse fading infection numbers after months of being pummeled by the fast-spreading Delta variant.

There were 1,486 new infections on Monday, the Health Ministry said, with another 701 Tuesday as of late afternoon. There were 354 people hospitalized in serious condition and the death toll reached 8,021, a day after crossing 8,000 deaths.

https://www.timesofisrael.com

Pig-to-Human Transplants a Step Closer With New Test

Newsmax – October 19, 2021

Scientists temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants.

Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but among the hurdles: A sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack.

Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient so they could observe it for two days. The kidney did what it was supposed to do — filter waste and produce urine — and did not trigger rejection.

“It had absolutely normal function,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team last month at NYU Langone Health. “It didn’t have this immediate rejection that we have worried about.”

This research is “a significant step,” said Dr. Andrew Adams of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who was not part of the work. It will reassure patients, researchers and regulators “that we’re moving in the right direction.”

The dream of animal-to-human transplants — or xenotransplantation — goes back to the 17th century with stumbling attempts to use animal blood for transfusions. By the 20th century, surgeons were attempting transplants of organs from baboons into humans, notably Baby Fae, a dying infant, who lived 21 days with a baboon heart.

With no lasting success and much public uproar, scientists turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes to bridge the species gap.

https://www.newsmax.com

Schoolkids now pay for lunch by having their faces scanned

Ailan Evans – October 18, 2021

Nine schools in Scotland are using facial recognition technology to charge students for their cafeteria lunches.

The initiative, which debuted Monday in schools in the North Ayrshire area, was developed as a way of processing school lunch transactions faster and more efficiently, as well as eliminating close contact between individuals who may spread COVID-19, the Financial Times reported.

The technology scans the faces of students after they select their meal, identifying them and automatically charging their account, according to a pamphlet distributed by the North Ayrshire school system.

“It’s the fastest way of recognizing someone at the till — it’s faster than card, it’s faster than fingerprint,” David Swanston, managing director of CRB Cunninghams, the company that installed the technology, told the FT. “In a secondary school you have around about a 25 minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils. So we need fast throughput at the point of sale.”

Facial recognition is a controversial technology, with U.S. states including Maine, Washington and New York banning or severely curbing its use. However, the North Ayrshire council said 97% of children or parents consented to the new system.

https://www.wnd.com

Russia and China Hold Joint Naval Drills in Sea of Japan

Newsmax – October 15, 2021

Russia and China held joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan on Friday and practiced how to operate together and destroy floating enemy mines with artillery fire, the Russian defense ministry said in a statement.

The war games are part of naval cooperation drills between the two countries which run from Oct. 14-17 and involve warships and support vessels from Russia’s Pacific Fleet, including mine-sweepers and a submarine.

Moscow and Beijing have cultivated closer military and diplomatic ties in recent years at a time when their relations with the West have soured.

Two Chinese destroyers, a submarine and two corvettes were among the vessels Beijing had sent to take part in the drills, the Russian defense ministry said, saying they had dropped anchor in the Russian far east the previous day.

The combined force would practice shooting at targets designed to imitate enemy surface ships and hold air-defense drills involving Russian SU-30SM multi-functional fighter jets and helicopters, the ministry said.

https://www.newsmax.com

Al-Qaeda Threatens U.S. With Attacks ‘More Painful Than 9/11’

Robert Spencer – October 15, 2021

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse,” Osama bin Laden once famously quipped, “by nature they will like the strong horse.” America during the period in which Old Joe Biden continues to pretend to be president of the United States is decidedly a weak horse, and bin Laden’s old outfit has noticed. Last Wednesday, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a video crowing over the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and promising to inflict damage on the scale of 9/11 in America once again.

The video, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), featured yet another jihadi who was once held at Guantanamo, Ibrahim Al-Qousi, and was entitled “A Message to the American People: You Have Yet to Understand the Lesson.” Al-Qousi showed that he himself has carefully absorbed the lessons of the recent past. He said that “the greatest loss America suffered, besides its material and human losses, is its reputation and prestige as a superpower and the most powerful country in the world.” Thanks, Joe!

The Taliban, Al-Qousi declared, had won a “magnificent” victory, for they “have understood the essence of this religion and the nature of the conflict … they are men whose hands — by the grace of Allah alone — buried a third empire in the soil of Afghanistan and restored the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to rule by the shari’a of Allah, even if America and its allies hate it.”

If there is anything that the State and Defense Departments did not or would not understand, it was the role that religion played in the conflict. Foreign policy experts for years dismissed statements akin to Al-Qousi’s declaration that victory was won in Afghanistan “by the grace of Allah alone” as mere boilerplate, not realizing that for the Taliban, it was the essence of the entire war. That’s why they’re in power today in Kabul, thumping their chests over having defeated the United States.

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Financial Expert Dan Celia Warns of ‘Severe Food Crisis’

  –  October 14, 2021

Dan Celia, CEO of Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries, told the Todd Starnes Show listening audience “the next big crisis” is coming.

Celia believes that the critical lack of truckers and the shutdown of fossil fuel will lead to a significant food shortage.

“I will say that this could be the next big crisis that the administration wants,” Celia told host Todd Starnes Tuesday. “Between the border crisis and the supply chain crisis, we could see severe inflation and head into a much longer, very long-lasting severe recession.”

The host of Financial Issues revealed that the lack of truckers had caused a supply chain crisis. In addition, truckers suffering from wear down due to the number of trips they must make has become a global problem.

Celia’s other concern is with the current administration attempting to shut down fossil fuel, making the transportation of crops more expensive. On top of the transportation costs, if fossil fuel is not produced, farmers will not acquire CO2, a key ingredient in fertilizer.

“We’re going to have a lack of food in general, and we’re going to have no way of getting it to the market, and when we do get it to the market, it’s going to be very costly,” Celia stated. “So, we’re going to have a lot of inflation with it. And that’s going to be a huge problem, a huge problem because people are going to panic.”

https://www.toddstarnes.com

New virus poses ‘an existential threat to life as we know it on this planet’

Art Moore – October 10, 2021

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 point, with the investigation.”

But it’s more vital than ever to stop the dangerous “gain-of-function” research – engineering viruses to make them more transmissible and lethal – going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he said.

Raw data from patient specimens posted in the National Institutes of Health’s gene bank showed researchers at the Wuhan lab in December 2019 were manipulating genes from the highly lethal Nipah virus, Quay said.

The Nipah virus, which causes severe inflammation of the brain or encephalitis, has a death rate of about 80%, Quay warned.

“If you didn’t like the pandemic that was just 1% lethal, this thing they were working on in December 2019 has an 80% lethality,” he told MacCallum. “It needs to be stopped.”

Quay told “Fox Business Tonight” on Thursday that virus research at the Wuhan lab poses “an existential threat to life as we know it on this planet.”

https://www.wnd.com

Biden rejoins U.N. council notorious for ‘unending hostility toward Israel’

Sebastian Hughes – October 14, 2021

The Biden administration announced Thursday that the U.S. would officially rejoin the UN Human Rights Council, a reversal of the Trump administration’s decision to leave the body, in part due to its “unending hostility towards Israel.”

“Starting on January 1, 2022, in our new role as member, we can fully participate in the Council’s work of protecting and promoting human rights,” Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement Thursday. “Our goals are clear: stand with human rights defenders and speak out against violations and abuses of human rights.”

The U.S. left the council during the Trump administration, with then-Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley describing the council itself as a “hypocritical and self-serving” organization with a “disproportionate focus and unending hostility toward Israel,” Reuters reported.

Haley said that members of the council such as Russia, China, Cuba and Egypt have a history of human rights abuses, and she criticized countries sharing U.S. interests that “were unwilling to seriously challenge the status quo.”

Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made similar statements about the decision to leave, accusing the council of “absolving wrongdoers through silence and falsely condemning those that committed no offense,” Reuters reported.

https://www.wnd.com

Methodist Pastor: Killing Babies in Abortions is “Moral” if It’s Done With “Thoughtful Prayer”

Micaiah Bilger  –  Oct 15, 2021

A United Methodist Church leader is promoting the notion that killing an unborn baby in an abortion is okay as long as the mother makes a “thoughtful and prayerful” decision first.

Pastor Robert Vaughn Jr., director of the General Board of Church and Society for the UMC, told Baptist News Global that the denomination takes a “reluctant pro-choice” stance on abortion. And his board is in charge of supporting that position.

“Terminating a pregnancy isn’t just a medical decision; it requires advanced pastoral care so that a person can look at the whole picture,” the Herndon, Virginia pastor said. “The United Methodist principle requires you to think through a decision, to seize the whole complexity of the question. It’s not as simple as some easy slogan.”

Vaughn said he once counseled a young, pro-life woman who became pregnant while she was taking medication that meant “she couldn’t carry the pregnancy to term,” according to the report. Rather than give her child a chance at life, she aborted her unborn child – a decision that Vaughn said was “moral.”

“I remember walking with her as she and her family went through that situation,” he said. “… It was good to be part of a denomination that respected her as an independent moral decision-maker, that gave her the right to choose.”

https://www.lifenews.com

Several asteroids larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza will fly by Earth in coming weeks

ETH – October 14, 2021

Several asteroids bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza will closely pass by Earth in the upcoming weeks, including one this week. According to data from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, the asteroid 2021 SM3, which was discovered just last month, will pass by our planet on Friday.

The diameter of the asteroid is up to 525 feet, just bigger than the 482-foot long Great Pyramid of Giza. An object of that size would be enough to “cause local damage to the impact area” if it were to hit Earth.

2021 SM3 is classified as a near-Earth object, which NASA says “are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighborhood.” The bodies are anything that comes within 120 million miles of Earth.

At its closest point, the asteroid will be about 3.6 million miles from Earth. Though that sounds like a safe distance, it’s much closer than our neighbor Venus, which can be 74.8 million miles away depending on each planet’s orbit. 2021 SM3 won’t be the only large asteroid that passes by Earth soon.

Seven asteroids bigger than SM3 will come close to our planet by the end of November. Of all the recently approaching asteroids, 1996 VB3 will be the closest to Earth at 2.1 million miles on Oct. 20. That asteroid has a diameter of up to 754 feet.

https://endtimeheadlines.org