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FAA directs UFO spotters to call Washington

Official FAA policy directs air traffic controllers wishing to report a UFO sighting to call the state of Washington, specifically the National UFO Reporting Center in Davenport.

Since 1974, the Center has fielded nearly 140,000 reports of UFO sightings from all of North America and overseas. On average, 15 sightings per day have been recorded for more than 20 years, nearly 7,000 from the Evergreen State.

Washington has the highest ratio of UFO sightings in the nation by population with 88 sightings per 100,000 residents. The earliest reports from Washingtonians date back some 70 years.

“It seems as though they started in 1945 over Hanford where they appeared over our nuclear facilities,” said Maurene Morgan of Port Townsend, according to The Leader. Morgan is state director for the Mutual UFO Network.

FAA “Order JO 7110.65Z – Air Traffic Control,” dictates procedures for the nation’s air traffic controllers. Chapter 9, Section 8 defines the procedure for reporting a UFO sighting: “Persons wanting to report UFO/unexplained phenomena activity should contact a UFO/ unexplained phenomena reporting data collection center, such as the National UFO Reporting Center, etc.”

The rule, which has an effective date of June 17, 2021, adds that if there’s any danger to life or property, the controller should call the police instead.

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This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting

In a search for novel forms of longevity medicine, a biotech company based in Israel says it intends to create embryo-stage versions of people in order to harvest tissues for use in transplant treatments.

The company, Renewal Bio, is pursuing recent advances in stem-cell technology and artificial wombs demonstrated by Jacob Hanna, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Earlier this week, Hanna showed that starting with mouse stem cells, his lab could form highly realistic-looking mouse embryos and keep them growing in a mechanical womb for several days until they developed beating hearts, flowing blood, and cranial folds. 

It’s the first time such an advanced embryo has been mimicked without sperm, eggs, or even a uterus. Hanna’s report was published in the journal Cell on Monday.

“This experiment has huge implications,” says Bernard Siegel, a patient advocate and founder of the World Stem Cell Summit. “One wonders what mammal could be next in line.”  

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1st synthetic mouse embryos — complete with beating hearts and brains — created with no sperm, eggs or womb

For the first time, scientists have created mouse embryos in the lab without using any eggs or sperm and watched them grow outside the womb. To achieve this feat, the researchers used only stem cells and a spinning device filled with shiny glass vials. 

The experiment is a “game changer,” Alfonso Martinez Arias, a developmental biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona who was not involved in the research, told The Washington Post(opens in new tab). 

“This is an important landmark in our understanding of how embryos build themselves,” he said.

The breakthrough experiment, described in a report published Monday (Aug. 1) in the journal Cell(opens in new tab), took place in a specially designed bioreactor that serves as an artificial womb for developing embryos. Within the device, embryos float in small beakers of nutrient-filled solution, and the beakers are all locked into a spinning cylinder that keeps them in constant motion. This movement simulates how blood and nutrients flow to the placenta. The device also replicates the atmospheric pressure of a mouse uterus, according to a statement(opens in new tab) from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where the research was conducted.    

In a previous experiment, described in the journal Nature(opens in new tab) in 2021, the team used this bioreactor to grow natural mouse embryos, which reached day 11 of development in the device. “That really showed that mammalian embryos can grow outside the uterus — it’s not really patterning or sending signals to the embryo so much as providing nutritional support,” Jacob Hanna, an embryonic stem cell biologist at the Weizmann and senior author of both studies, told STAT News

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Bank executive pushes personal carbon wallets that allocate “emission rights” to citizens

A senior executive at the multinational banking and financial services company Rabobank has called for personalized carbon wallets that give individual citizens “emission rights” and allow wealthier citizens to buy emission rights from those who can’t afford to fly.

Barbara Baarsma, who is the CEO of Rabo Carbon Bank, a division of Rabobank that allows its customers to buy and sell CO2 credits, announced her proposal for personalized carbon wallets during an appearance on the Dutch radio station BNR Newsradio.

“What if we now have all the remaining rights we still have when it comes to the emission of CO2 equivalents, greenhouse gases?” Baarsma said. “If we just let everyone start the Netherlands distributing emission rights and that every household or every citizen and amount get emission rights until we have money.”

Baarsma continued by proposing that these emission rights could be managed via a personalized “carbon wallet” and noted that wealthier citizens who want to fly can buy emissions rights from citizens that don’t have the money to fly.

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Hypocrite Trudeau Caught Maskless After Flying on Private Jet

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who ensured mask mandates remain in place on planes for Canadians, was caught on camera with his entire family disembarking from a private jet having not worn a mask.

Canada remains one of the increasingly diminishing number of western governments that demands face masks be worn on flights, with the United States ditching the rule nearly four months ago.

When a Florida judge struck down U.S. version of the law, Trudeau’s government moved to insist that masks would still be required on Canadian airlines and on flights that depart from or arrive in Canada.

However, that rule doesn’t seem to apply to Trudeau himself.

A video showing Trudeau and his family disembarking from a private jet after it arrived in Costa Rica shows none of those who were onboard wearing a face mask.

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Anger From Ukraine’s Backers After Damning Amnesty Report Spotlights ‘Human Shields’

Amnesty International has in a surprise shift placed its human rights scrutiny on Ukraine in a fresh report released Thursday. It immediately sparked a firestorm of criticism as both Western pundits and Kiev officials themselves blasted the findings as “unfair”. 

The Amnesty report said investigators had “found evidence of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from within populated residential areas, as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages” in three war-torn regions of the country from April through July.

The report detailed that schools and hospitals, as well as people’s homes, were put in harm’s way, suggesting ‘human shields’ type tactics utilized by the Ukrainian military.

“Such tactics violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilians, as they turn civilian objects into military targets. The ensuing Russian strikes in populated areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure,” Amnesty continued, saying this resulted in Russian attacks on said civilian infrastructure.

The report detailed further that in 22 of 29 schools visited by an Amnesty team between April and July, investigators found evidence of prior military activity. Additionally, five instances of Ukrainian troops using hospitals as bases were documented. The report went so far as to stress Amnesty was “not aware” of instances where Ukrainian troops first tried to evacuate civilians from these locations.

Despite being under pressure to refrain from investigating the Ukrainian side and to not criticize it for human rights abuses, Secretary General of Amnesty International Agnès Callamard said in releasing the report:

“Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.”

Naturally, that so respected a premier human rights organization based in the West condemned these practices of the Ukrainian army resulted in backlash from Kiev leaders, as well as some Western pundits who went so far as to level the usual “Putin-sympathizers!” charge…

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Mysterious Metallic Orb Falls on Mexico, May Contain ‘Valuable Information,’ Meteorologist Says

A prominent meteorologist says that a bizarre metal “orb” emblazoned with a secret code and perhaps containing “valuable information inside” fell from the sky onto a tree in Veracruz, Mexico just before midnight Sunday night, creating a firestorm of intrigue on social media and in local media. The meteorologist, Isidro Cano Luna, called on the Mexican Navy to study the orb.

Luna, a television meteorologist whose catchphrase is “weather is also news” and always types in capital letters, wrote that the “metallic sphere” fell on top of a tree at 10 p.m. in Lomas del Río Medio neighborhood in Veracruz, a city of 600,000 people on the Gulf of Mexico in the southeast corner of the country. In a series of three Facebook posts, Luna speculated that it “APPEARS TO BE MADE OF A VERY HARD PLASTIC OR AN ALLOY OF VARIOUS METALS” and “APPARENTLY IT HAS AN ANTENNA.” 

He said that people who saw it “falling from the sky” said it “emitted a sound, but no fire.” He speculated that it could be part of the Chinese rocket that crashed into Earth over the weekend: “PERSONAL SUGGESTION: DO NOT TOUCH IT OR GET CLOSE TO IT UNTIL IT IS REVIEWED BY SPECIALISTS…IT MAY BE RADIOACTIVE.” The story got far more interesting an hour later, in his second post:

“FOLLOWING UP ON THE METALLIC SPHERE THAT FELL ON TOP OF A TREE,” Luna wrote. “IT SHOULD NOT BE OPENED OR TRIED TO BE OPENED. A SPECIALIZED TEAM AT THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY OF MEXICO AND/OR THE SECRETARY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE NEEDS TO COLLECT IT AND TURN IT IN FOR SPECIAL STUDY.”

“ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE SPHERE THERE IS A CODE, BUT NO HOLE OR SLIT THROUGH WHICH IT COULD BE OPENED …. THESE SPHERES HAVE A TIMING MECHANISM THAT, AT A CERTAIN TIME THEY OPEN BY THEMSELVES AND SHOW THE VALUABLE INFORMATION THEY HAVE INSIDE.”

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Biden paid Taliban more than $1 billion over last year

In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s report that he ordered a military drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, a report has emerged that Biden has paid, over the last year, about $1 billion to the Taliban.

That would be the extremist Islamist organization that took over Afghanistan when Biden last year abruptly pulled American soldiers out.

Biden left behind hundreds of Americans, thousands of America-supporting nationals who likely would be targeted by assassination squads for their work, as well as some $80 billion in American war machinery.

Now a report from Foreign Desk News explains that Biden has been sending, and plans to send more, money to the Taliban.

A columnist also pointed out that it is unlikely that an al-Qaida operative could have set up shop and be working in Kabul without the Taliban knowing that.

The report said American foreign aid might be going to the “wrong places,” including Afghanistan.

“Annually, the U.S. allocates over $51 billion in economic aid and military assistance. $25 billion comes from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), while the Department of Defense and Department of State are close behind. Over 20 percent of this aid is divided among four countries: Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Egypt. While well intentioned, corruption, failing infrastructure, or even cultural misunderstandings can mean that U.S. aid causes more harm than good,” the report explained.

Regarding the Taliban, the report explained, “The U.S. has pledged an additional $55 million in aid to Afghanistan. Over the past fiscal year, this totals to over $1 billion to humanitarian, economic, and military assistance aid to Afghanistan. Foreign aid always comes with criticism, but especially so when the recipient is an enemy of the U.S. and a corrupt, extremist and repressive regime.

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Candidate who railed against ‘dark money’ shown to be funded by ‘dark money’

A Democratic Wisconsin Senate candidate who has railed against “dark money” in politics is being supported by a left-wing dark money network, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

Mandela Barnes, whose top Senate primary opponents dropped out of the race in July, said in February “Dark money has no place in democracy” and pledges on his website “to stand up to the corrupting influence of dark money.” At the same time, Barnes was endorsed Monday by the Family Friendly Action PAC — which is dumping millions in his race to unseat Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and is largely funded by the dark money groups Sixteen Thirty Fund and America Votes, according to FEC filings.

Nonprofits with 501(c)(4) IRS exempt status are often referred to as “dark money” groups because they are under no legal obligation to disclose donors and can funnel unlimited sums to super PACs, according to OpenSecrets. Super PACs have to disclose their donors but can be “effectively dark money groups when the bulk of their funding cannot be traced back to the original donor,” according to OpenSecrets.

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