#2
There are many reasons to think Epstein didn't kill himself from reading this story. Certainly doesn't put the "he was murdered theory to rest." He was 15 feet away from guards. He had a lot of stuff in his cell for such a high profile inmate.
I read somewhere yesterday that Ghislaine Maxwell was in the U.S. shuttling between safe houses and being guarded by former Navy Seals. If true, she seems to fear for her life.
[Kansas City Star] A couple in Tennessee got married Friday at Bass Pro Shops, romantically exchanging their vows near an aquarium stocked with trophy fish.
It was a small affair, with the bride, Pam, "glowing" in a white lace gown with flowing train and the groom, Lonnie Harris, in blue jeans, shirt casually untucked and a boutonniere.
"Here at Bass Pro, we will sell you a boat, a gun, even some clothes. Shoot, you might as well even get married here!!" the store posted Friday on Facebook.
It shared photos of the ceremony, showing the procession came through the Fishing Center, as customers lingered and watched.
Why the couple, who live in Tennessee, chose to marry at a Bass Pro Shops in Kodak, Tennessee, was not explained. However, the store is just west of the Great Smoky Mountains and tourist towns in the region pride themselves on being a wedding and "adventure elopement" destination.
#1
Hunting, fishing, camping, boating, shooting needs at this location. Now weddings? Within a mile or so is the Smokey Mountain Knife Works (also a gun store). Next door to the knife works is Bud's Gun Shop and Range. Nearby is the Smokies minor league stadium if you like baseball. Makes for a fun day.
[Reuters] Andre de Ruyter, appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa in November, will oversee a government plan to split state-owned Eskom into three units - for generation, transmission and distribution - in an attempt to make it more efficient. Taking a 'strategic pause' from Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) are we ?
Ramaphosa is trying to revive Africa’s most advanced economy, which is flirting with recession, and attract new investment.
Eskom, which generates more than 90% of the country’s power, is in its current form widely viewed as the biggest impediment to growth, though the restructuring plan has taken shape against a backdrop of stubbornly high unemployment, and unions have pledged to fight it.
De Ruyter had been due to start work on Jan. 15, but the sense of crisis surrounding the firm, which has been leaderless since July and imposed the latest in a long run of power cuts at the weekend, persuaded him to take the helm early.
Saddled with unreliable coal-fired power stations, Eskom has struggled to meet demand since 2007, forcing it into several rounds of extensive power cuts. Outages last year dented economic output and shook investor confidence in Ramaphosa’s administration.
At the weekend, it cut up to 2,000 megawatts (MW) from the national grid due to a shortage of generating capacity.
The desperate actions of the former Maduro regime, illegally forcibly preventing Juan Guaido and the majority of @AsambleaVE deputies from entering the building, make this morning’s “vote,” which lacks quorum and does not meet minimum constitutional standards, a farce.
FRANKFURT/ZURICH (Reuters) - Dozens of drugmakers are conducting human trials for a record 89 therapies that pair antibodies with toxic agents to fight cancer, evidence of renewed confidence in an approach that has long fallen short of its promise, an analysis compiled for Reuters shows.
These antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, from companies including AztraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, are described by researchers as "guided missiles" packing a powerful anti-cancer punch.
They are engineered to zero in on tumors and then release cytotoxins that deliver up to 10,000 times the potency of standard chemotherapy, while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.
The approach has for decades been a major biotech industry focus. Many experimental ADCs, however, failed due to the complexity of pairing the right antibody with the appropriate toxic agent. Some were abandoned as too weak; others were too harmful.
From 2000 to 2018, only five ADCs won approval. Just one, Roche’s (ROG.S) Kadcyla, approved in 2013 for breast cancer, has surpassed $1 billion in annual sales after data last year showed it boosted disease-free survival for some patients compared with the standard treatment, Roche’s Herceptin.
#5
Initially, not very portable: The system will not compete with the Iridium satellite constellation, which is designed to link directly to handsets. Instead, it will be linked to flat user terminals the size of a pizza box, which will have phased array antennas and track the satellites. The terminals can be mounted anywhere, as long as they can see the sky.
As Starlink moves up the frequency band, the terminals will get smaller.
[War Zone] Directional infrared countermeasure (DIRCM) systems, which use lasers to blind and confuse the seeker on infrared-homing missiles, are becoming an increasingly ubiquitous feature on U.S. military helicopters and other aircraft. Now a picture has emerged that is one of the first to show an MH-47G Chinook from the U.S. Army's elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as the Night Stalkers, with such a defensive suite, known as the AN/AAQ-24.
The U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command, which oversees the 160th, posted the picture of the DIRCM-equipped MH-47G on its Instagram page on Jan. 3, 2020. The caption does not say where or when the picture was taken.
#2
Along with a few others, the Army Research Lab (ARL) has been working the non-trivial aviation countermeasures problem for years. Decoy flares (see graphic above) have been the traditional approach, but you can only put so many flare pods and flares on an aircraft. A farmer using a Lincoln welder on the ground would set off older countermeasures systems and you'd be out of flares in no time. Point A to point B was not so bad, orbiting a designated 'kill box' for hours, yet another (if you're out of flares).
The downing of Extortion-17 may have had something to do with it.
Lastly, decoy flares are very expensive. Dated info, but in 2006 the damn things were over $120. per each.
#3
https://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/DIRCM/Pages/default.aspx
The AN/AAQ-24(V) Directional Infrared Countermeasure (DIRCM) system is the only DIRCM system in production today that will protect aircraft from today's infrared guided missiles. Traditional IR countermeasures are not effective against the modern IR missiles that are growing in popularity among terrorist groups and in third world countries.
#1
Snowflakery can be taken to its limits with this. They haven't even mass produced or tried enough of the Nav1.7 suppressants that block or inhibit the carriage of pain signals. They have progressed straight to editing the SCN9A gene itself - induced mutation. Pain is already manageable quite well by conventional drugs I think, don't you ? For terminal patients there are better signal blockers that negate discomfort to the point where people can't even feel if heat is burning them. How much painless can things get ?
I suggest research in editing out outrage and the urge to be taken seriously.
#3
Children born without the ability to feel pain (congenital analgesia), seldom survive without 24 hr assistance. Sometimes they develop bone disorders from lying in one position for too long, some can get electrocuted or seriously injured while playing, and they never learn to avoid kinesiological errors of movement while doing simple things.
#9
^ what ranture said. Drugs might help but the recent opioid "crisis" put the brakes on sensible pain management. Less than 1% of opioid abuse comes from Rx misuse. Edit out the Fentanyl, Heroin, Coke and street drug stuff. We have a crisis among illegal drug use - like we always have.
#10
I guess I wanted to say that experts have moved on straight to gene editing but the research and testing into Nav1.7 and 1.8 suppressants is still incomplete. I see now that those drugs are still in experimental phase. I had assumed they were available in America. The Netherlands Cancer Institute uses them for some terminal patients I hear, maybe others do too. Total pain negators, these suppressants seem to be unavailable to the public except for trial volunteers. The Nav channels are sodium ion channels that complete the nociception stage, basically pain signals. They've developed stuff since 2015 that could target these channels themselves, even stuff for specific channels.
It's a great way to block out all pain and requires no fiddling with genes. But probably because testing and producing the drug was too expensive, or for some corporate reasons it wasn't carried to it's potential and those drugs are not available. It's just that when a superior sounding tech comes along, research already underway loses steam. I just don't think editing the SCN9A gene itself, or fiddling with the way the channels are expressed is without its pitfalls. Of course to the terminal patient this is not a concern.
A company called Coda explored the concept of chemogenetics, to engineer custom receptors to bind to channels and make them unresponsive. Another company is exploring a technique that injects cerebro-spinal fluid with gene edited viral particles designed to block pain signals, temporarily disabling the Nav channels. These are better and less irreversible techniques to explore with the same effect. That's all I'm saying.
#11
In fact the article is about the last method I mentioned. Good that they've completed their research and in five years they could apply this. The headline said 'alter a patient's DNA', so I thought... huh.
Another case of not reading the full article before shooting off, sorry.
[PageTwo] The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund submitted 211,093 petition signatures December 10 for a ballot measure mandating reintroduction of gray wolves to Colorado. Signature verification is ongoing by the Secretary of State’s office with 124,632 valid signatures required to put the initiative on the 2020 ballot.
The prospect of wolves returning to Colorado alarms rural residents because of the certainty of wolf predation on livestock, big game and even pets.
Wolf predation is a big problem in other states like Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Washington, California and Minnesota, home to more than 2,400 wolves, the largest population of wolves in the lower 48 states.
Last year the cost of predation compensation in Montana was more than $241,000.
According to livestock producers this is only part of the actual losses to wolves. To be compensated requires a timely forensic examination of the carcass by state wildlife officers. Often animals on open range are not found soon enough to be able to prove wolf predation and compensation is denied.
Rick Enstrom, former Colorado State Wildlife Commissioner from 2000 to 2008 and Chairman for three years is an expert on wolves in Colorado. Enstrom also served on the first wolf working group that developed the wolf plan for Colorado in 2004. He warned against the reintroduction measure in an interview with Complete Colorado on Thursday.
"You only have to look at what happened to the Wyoming elk population," Enstrom said. "Their herds have been knocked back to 10 percent of what it was."
"I know folks in Wyoming," Enstrom continued. "The past director of the wildlife commission in Wyoming said there are two big problems; Grizzlies and wolves. ’Don’t do it, don’t let it happen’ he said to me."
Predation is hardly the only problem with wolves in Colorado says Enstrom. The biggest issue is money. The proposed initiative calls for wolf management and predation compensation to be paid out of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) wildlife cash fund "to the extent that they are available."
#2
Down in NM they're trying the same thing. Problem is that in the period of absence, nature stepped in. We have coyotes as big as wolves now. Niche filled.
#10
Add wolves and get major decline in big game like deer & elk, followed by decline in big game hunters with their big rifles and big political influence. Hmmm.
[IsraelTimes] A man on a bicycle rode on several streets in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, shouting threats including "Kill the Jews," local media is reporting.
The man, described as black and in his 30s, attracted the attention of passersby at about 10 p.m. on Saturday, Collive.com reports.
A witness called 911. Another filed a police report about the incident, CrownHeights.info reports.
Police are looking for surveillance video to try to identify the man on the bicycle.
Earlier on Saturday, a black man wearing a hoodie and sweatpants walked on a street in Crown Heights shouting "Hitler did not kill enough of you in the gas chambers" and other verbal abuse, CrownHeights.info reports.
#2
They originally left Europe for friendlier surroundings. Maybe its time to move to friendlier places already available here. That would be Bad Luck(tm) for NYC, but sometimes you make your own luck.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Kansas City Star] A couple in Tennessee got married Friday at Bass Pro Shops, romantically exchanging their vows near an aquarium stocked with trophy fish.
[Reuters] Andre de Ruyter, appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa in November, will oversee a government plan to split state-owned Eskom into three units - for generation, transmission and distribution - in an attempt to make it more efficient.
[PageTwo] The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund submitted 211,093 petition signatures December 10 for a ballot measure mandating reintroduction of gray wolves to Colorado. Signature verification is ongoing by the Secretary of State’s office with 124,632 valid signatures required to put the initiative on the 2020 ballot.
