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Synthetic human embryos are created in the lab with NO egg or sperm: Scientists announce historic breakthrough raising hopes for new treatments for miscarriage and rare genetical disorders – but development poses huge ethical dilemmas

Human embryos made without eggs or sperm have been created in a scientific breakthrough which is bound to raise serious ethical and legal questions.

They were produced in a joint project between Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology and resemble embryos in the earliest stages of human development.

They do not have the beginnings of a brain or a beating heart, but do include cells which would go on to form the placenta and yolk sac.

Scientists believe that their finding could provide significant insight and aid research into rare genetic disorders and the biological causes of miscarriage.

But the synthetic embryos are not covered by laws in the UK or in most countries around the world, meaning that they come with serious ethical and legal issues regarding the use of human embryos in a lab.

Until this breakthrough, scientists had to adhere to the 14-day rule which meant they were limited to allowing embryos to develop in a lab for a maximum of two weeks.

After this point researchers would have to wait until further along its development to pick up their study, relying on pregnancy scans and embryos donated to research. 

The desire to understand this period of an embryo’s development – which starts at day 14 and ends around day 28 – was the main motivation behind the work to create synthetic human embryos.

Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a fellow at the University of Cambridge, described the work yesterday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston: ‘We can create human embryo-like models by the reprogramming of [embryonic stem] cells.’

Before the talk, she told The Guardian: ‘It’s beautiful and created entirely from embryonic stem cells.’

While it is not yet clear if the synthetic embryos could continue developing beyond their early stages, implanting them into a patient’s womb would be illegal and there is no near-term prospect of them being used for medical purposes.

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The CIA Is Begging Congress to Please Keep Spying on U.S. Citizens Legal

High-level officials from the CIA, FBI, and NSA are testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, asking Congress to continue allowing the agency to spy on the communications of US citizens. They are urging Congress to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—one of the nation’s most hotly contested government surveillance programs. Intelligence agencies have long cited the powerful 2008 FISA provision as an invaluable tool to effectively combat global terrorism, but critics, including an increasing number of lawmakers from both parties, say those same agencies have morphed the provision into an unchecked, warrantless domestic spying tool. The provision is set to expire at the end of this year.

Federal agents urged lawmakers to reauthorize 702 without adding new reforms that could potentially slow down or impair operators’ access to intelligence. The officials danced around advocates’ concerns of civil liberty violations and instead chose to focus on a wide array of purported national security threats they say could become reality without the “model piece of legislation.” Multiple intelligence agents speaking Tuesday invoked the specter of September 11th and warned lawmakers new safeguards limiting agents’ ability to rapidly access and share intelligence on Americans could risk a repeat scenario.

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Men accused of mutilating corpse won’t face trial, a casualty of Antioch police scandal

Contra Costa County prosecutors have dismissed felony charges against two men accused of mutilating a woman’s corpse — the latest case to be fouled by a racist text message scandal that rocked the Antioch Police Department.

Ashton Montalvo and Deangelo Boone were arrested and charged in October 2022 with arson and mutilation after the burned body of Mykaella Sharlman, 25, was found near a hiking trail in Antioch.

Sharlman’s autopsy ruled out homicide, but Montalvo and Boone were charged with setting Sharlman’s body on fire and putting it in a garbage can, according to the Mercury News in San Jose.

Sharlman‘s death was attributed to a fentanyl overdose, according to Bay Area television station KNTV.

In April, the Mercury News reported on an FBI and county prosecutor’s office investigation into the Antioch Police Department that revealed dozens of officers had been sending racist and homophobic messages to one another for years, using anti-Black slurs and other derogatory terms.

The report sent shock waves through the department, with more than 40 officers implicated in the scandal.

The case against Montalvo and Boone “relied heavily” on investigations by several Antioch police officers who were associated with the racist texts, the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office said last week in a statement.

The officers were not identified.

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Amazon shuts down customer’s smart home for a week after delivery driver claimed he heard racist slur through Ring doorbell – even though no one was home

Amazon reportedly shut down a customer’s smart home after the delivery driver claimed he heard a racial slur coming through the doorbell, even though no one was home. 

Brandon Jackson, of Baltimore, Maryland, came home on May 25 to find that he had been locked out of his Amazon Echo, which many devices, including his lights, are connected to. 

He would later learn that Amazon locked him out of his account after a delivery driver dropped off a package the day before. Jackson, an engineer at Microsoft, said ‘everything seemed fine’ after the package arrived at his home and had initially thought he was locked out because someone had tried to ‘access my account repeatedly, triggering a lockout.’ 

But none of that was true. A representative directed him to an email he received from an executive that provided a phone number to call. When he called the number, he was told in a ‘somewhat accusatory’ tone that the driver had reported ‘receiving racist remarks’ from his doorbell.

‘This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions,’ he wrote on Medium. 

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Did You Know That Biden Is in the Midst of Three Lawsuits for Infringing on Free Speech?

Lawsuits and legal battles are everywhere lately.  Trump’s indictment for the mishandling of classified documents has been all over the news, but the Biden White House is also in the middle of a few lawsuits that may be of some interest to First Amendment enthusiasts.

Alex Berenson sues Twitter and Biden

Former New York Times journalist and popular novelist Alex Berenson sued Twitter in December 2021.  Berenson had retweeted Pfizer’s own data about the Covid jabs, but since he did not present the data in a flattering manner, he was booted off the site after being previously told by Twitter that they supported him in his Covid dissidence, as he explains in this interview with Clay and Buck.

Berenson filed his lawsuit in Northern California, and he won.  In July 2022, Alex Berenson was back on Twitter.

But some weird details emerged.  During the discovery phase of his lawsuit against Twitter, where the parties are given access to each other’s documents, Team Berenson got the chance to look over internal Twitter communications.  And Team Berenson found out that Twitter had been pressured by the White House and Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb to kick him off.  So, on April 12, 2023, Alex Berenson filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration.

Berenson v. Biden is moving really slowly, and who knows how it’ll end up.  But the Twitter Files releases look only to strengthen his argument; Michael Shellenberger found more email chains about the internal Twitter arguments over whether or not to ban Berenson and turned the emails over to him to use in his lawsuit against the White House.  The more time goes by, the more it looks like Berenson was correct in suspecting that outside forces were at work in removing him from Twitter.

Alex Berenson was a highly respected writer before Covid, though after 2020 many in the medical field adopted a “stay in your lane” attitude toward anyone not practicing medicine and who didn’t buy into the official narrative.

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Pentagon Personnel Did Not Appropriately Track Weapons Transferred to Ukraine

A report from the Department of Defense Inspector General found Pentagon employees in Poland failed to follow procedures to account for military equipment being transferred to Ukraine. In the shipments of weapons monitored by the office, Pentagon employees failed to properly track the weapons in three of five shipments.

“DoD personnel did not have the required accountability of the thousands of defense items that they received and transferred at Jasionka, [Poland],” it stated. “We observed that DoD personnel did not fully implement their standard operating procedures to account for defense items and could not confirm the quantities of defense items received against the quantity of items shipped for three of five shipments we observed.”

The Pentagon does not “have reasonable assurance that their database of all defense items transferred to the [Ukraine] via air transport in Jasionka was accurate or complete.” The report added, “14 The DoD may risk providing more or less equipment than authorized by [President Joe Biden], and may not be able to verify the quantity of all defense items before they are transferred to [Ukraine].”

One example in the inspector general report explains how weapons are shipped without a manifest. “One shipment containing thousands of small arms, night vision optics devices, and various types of cold weather gear did not include an air manifest.” The report continues, “DoD personnel opened crates to identify the types of defense items contained within the crates, but even then the personnel could not verify whether the number of items they identified represented the true number shipped.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Washington has shipped tens of billions in weapons to Ukraine, including advanced platforms. The Pentagon inspector general report examined arms shipped to Ukraine directly from American stockpiles. 

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‘Fake Melania’ conspiracy reemerges after Fox News misidentifies Trump aide for wife

In 2017, a new conspiracy theory emerged on the far right when MAGA Republicans started claiming that then-First Lady Melania Trump had a body double. And the “fake Melania” conspiracy theory was reignited on June 13 — the day of former Donald Trump’s arraignment in Miami on 37 federal criminal counts — after Fox News reporter John Roberts (not to be confused with the U.S. Supreme Court chief justice) mistook Margo Martin, the former president’s director of communications, for Melania Trump.

According to The Sun’s Caitlin Hornik, the woman in Miami could not have been Melania Trump because the former first lady was in New York City on June 13 and didn’t go to Miami with her husband. Martin, however, was with Donald Trump in the courthouse.

Reporting live in Miami, Roberts saw Martin and said, “There she is.” But around 15 minutes later, Roberts told Fox News viewers, “Apparently, it was not Melania. A day like today with so many comings and goings, it’s easy from a distance to mistake two people.”

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NATO Chief Says Russia Must Lose in Ukraine to Send Message to China

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg met with President Biden in Washington on Tuesday and said Russia must lose in Ukraine to send a message to China as the Western alliance increasingly has its eyes on the Asia Pacific.

“President Putin must not win this war, because that will not only be a tragedy for Ukrainians, but also make the world more dangerous,” Stoltenberg said at the White House before a meeting with Biden.

“It will send a message to authoritarian leaders all over the world, also in China, that when they use military force, they get what they want, and we will then become more vulnerable. So it’s our security interest to support Ukraine,” he added.

Stoltenberg’s comments come as NATO is planning to boost ties with countries in the Asia Pacific. According to a report from Nikkei Asia, the alliance is preparing documents to increase relations with its four main partners in the region, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.

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California’s Latest Tax-the-Rich Scheme: Electric Bills Based on Income

Electric power customers typically pay more if they use more. Under a new law, customers of California’s three largest private utilities will be charged a fixed fee based on their incomes, not just how much power they use. The chief motivation behind this scheme is to provide some relief to low-income customers who are being hammered by escalating electricity rates as the Golden State transitions from fossil fuels to wind and solar power.

The average cost of electricity to residential customers in California is now  $0.27 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). The U.S. average is around $0.16 per kWh. The state’s three big private utilities are proposing to the California Public Utilities Commission to add Income Graduated Fixed Charges (IGFCs) to all of their residential rate schedules. The idea is to pay for the various fixed costs, including those associated with connecting customers to their grids, billing, and meter reading. In addition, they want the fixed fee to cover “the costs of wildfire mitigation and vegetation management, reliability improvements, safety and risk management distribution costs, ongoing distribution operations and maintenance, many regulatory balancing accounts, and various programs and policy mandates through its distribution rates.”

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