CLEVELAND COUNTY, Okla. (KFOR) – An Oklahoma veterinarian is facing new trouble after 168 animals, some of which are exotic, were seized from his farm.
Norman Animal Welfare took the animals from Aaron Stachmus’ farm about a month ago. New court documents revealed that among the animals seized were draft horses, emus, ostriches, tortoises and dogs.
The Norman Police Department said the animals weren’t provided adequate access to water, food and appropriate shelter.
A full list of the animals seized, according to court documents filed in Cleveland County. (Credit: Cleveland County)
“We all work closely together to make sure animals whether they’re native or non-native, everybody’s following the rules and those animals will be treated fairly,” said Micah Holmes, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife.
Last year Stachmus found himself in a similar situation, when Norman Police took more than 350 animals off of this same property. In that case from July of 2021, the veterinarian is facing charges of animal abuse and animal cruelty.
The animals are now in the care of various animal rescue groups.
Nexstar’s KFOR reached out to Stachmus at his clinic and was told he wasn’t available for comment.
The Oklahoma Veterinary Board says he still has his license, but they’re waiting to see how his court case pans out. For now, he’s facing 10 years of probation.
Alok Sharma will return to Glasgow to say world leaders must show that ‘though the world has changed, our resolve has not’.Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA
Fiona HarveyEnvironment correspondentSun 15 May 2022 17.58 EDT
Failure to act on the promises made at theGlasgow Cop26 climate summitlast year would be “an act of monstrous self-harm”, the UK’s president of the conference will warn today in Glasgow.
Alok Sharma, the cabinet minister who led the UK-hosted summit that ended with agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C, will say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and rising energy and food prices, have changed the global outlook drastically in the six months since.
But responding to those changes by reneging on climate commitments would only result in worse damage, he will say…
Discussions around the threat of nuclear war have escalated in recent weeks, as Sweden and Finland look set to join NATO—and Russia saying it would not accept their membership.
Commentators have been divided on whether Russian presidentVladimir Putinwould ever go so far as to use these weapons, with some calling them “empty threats,” while others saying therisk is realif he feels backed into a corner.
But what would happen if a bomb detonated? What would be the immediate impact and how far would the radiation zone extend?
Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear weapons, who is an associate professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, New Jersey,created a nuclear bomb simulatorto show just that.
TheNUKEMAPis designed to show the effect of a nuclear detonation in any given…
Avirus that shows no signs of disappearing, variants that are adept at dodging the body’s defenses, and waves of infections two, maybe three times a year — this may be the future of Covid-19, some scientists now fear.
The central problem is that the coronavirus has become more adept at reinfecting people. Already, those infected with the first Omicron variant are reporting second infections with the newer versions of the variant — BA.2 or BA2.12.1 in the United States, or BA.4 and BA.5 in South Africa.
Those people may go on to have third or fourth infections, even within this year, researchers said in interviews. And some small fraction may have symptoms that persist for months or years, a condition known as long Covid.
“It seems likely to me that that’s going to sort of be a long-term pattern,” said Juliet Pulliam, an epidemiologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
“The virus is going to keep evolving,” she added. “And there are probably going to be a lot of people getting many, many reinfections throughout their lives.”
It’s difficult to quantify how frequently people are reinfected, in part because many infections are now going unreported. Dr. Pulliam and her colleagues have collected enough data in South Africa to say that the rate is higher with Omicron than seen with previous variants.
This is not how it was supposed to be. Earlier in the pandemic, experts thought that immunity from vaccination or previous infection would forestall most reinfections.
The Omicron variant dashed those hopes. Unlike previous variants, Omicron and its many descendants seem to have evolved to partially dodge immunity. That leaves everyone — even those who have been vaccinated multiple times — vulnerable to multiple infections.
“If we manage it the way that we manage it now, then most people will get infected with it at least a couple of times a year,” said Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. “I would be very surprised if that’s not how it’s going to play out.”
The new variants have not altered the fundamental usefulness of the Covid vaccines. Most people who have received three or even just two doses will not become sick enough to need medical care if they test positive for the coronavirus. And a booster dose, like aprevious bout with the virus, does seem to decrease the chance of reinfection — but not by much.
At the pandemic’s outset, many experts based their expectations of the coronavirus on influenza, the viral foe most familiar to them. They predicted that, as with the flu, there might be one big outbreak each year, most likely in the fall. The way to minimize its spread would be to vaccinate people before its arrival.
Instead, the coronavirus is behaving more like four of its closely related cousins, which circulate and cause colds year round. While studying common-cold coronaviruses, “we saw people with multiple infections within the space of a year,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York.
If reinfection turns out to be the norm, the coronavirus is “not going to simply be this wintertime once-a-year thing,” he said, “and it’s not going to be a mild nuisance in terms of the amount of morbidity and mortality it causes.”
Reinfections with earlier variants, including Delta, did occur but were relatively infrequent. But in September, the pace of reinfections in South Africa seemed to pick up and was markedly high by November, when the Omicron variant was identified, Dr. Pulliam said.
Reinfections in South Africa, as in the United States, may seem even more noticeable because so many have been immunized or infected at least once by now.
“The perception magnifies what’s actually going on biologically,” Dr. Pulliam said. “It’s just that there are more people who are eligible for reinfection.”
The Omicron variant was different enough from Delta, and Delta from earlier versions of the virus, that some reinfections were to be expected. But now, Omicron seems to be evolving new forms that penetrate immune defenses with relatively few changes to its genetic code.
“This is actually for me a bit of a surprise,” said Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute. “I thought we’ll need a kind of brand-new variant to escape from this one. But in fact, it seems like you don’t.”
An infection with Omicron produces a weaker immune response, which seems to wane quickly, compared with infections with previous variants. Although the newer versions of the variant are closely related, they vary enough from an immune perspective that infection with one doesn’t leave much protection against the others — and certainly not after three or four months.
Still, the good news is that most people who are reinfected with new versions of Omicron will not become seriously ill. At least at the moment, the virus has not hit upon a way to fully sidestep the immune system.
“That’s probably as good as it gets for now,” Dr. Sigal said. “The big danger might come when the variant will be completely different.”
Each infection may bring with it the possibility of long Covid, the constellation of symptoms that can persist for months or years. It’s too early to know how often an Omicron infection leads to long Covid, especially in vaccinated people.
To keep up with the evolving virus, other experts said, the Covid vaccines should be updated more quickly, even more quickly than flu vaccines are each year. Even an imperfect match to a new form of the coronavirus will still broaden immunity and offer some protection, they said.
“Every single time we think we’re through this, every single time we think we have the upper hand, the virus pulls a trick on us,” Dr. Andersen said. “The way to get it under control is not, ‘Let’s all get infected a few times a year and then hope for the best.’”
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LUCKNOW, India May 14 (Reuters) – Three Indian policemen were shot dead by wildlife poachers in central India, a police official said on Saturday, adding that the poachers had opened fire after refusing to surrender when confronted by the officers.
One poacher was killed in the shootout, senior police official Rajiv Kumar Mishra said, giving an account of the incident at a tribal hamlet set in a forested area of Madhya Pradesh state. Police found the carcasses of deer and peacock close by.Report ad
The peacock is the national bird and a protected species in India, and hunting them carries a penalty of up to seven years in jail.
FILE – In this Oct. 21, 2015, file photo, cage-free chickens walk in a fenced pasture at an organic farm near Waukon, Iowa. Some farmers are wondering if it’s OK that eggs sold as free-range come from chickens being kept inside. It’s a question that arises lately as farmers try to be open about their product while also protecting chickens from a highly infectious bird flu that has killed roughly 28 million poultry across the country. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
OLYMPIA, Wash. (KOMO) – Two more flocks have come down with the bird flu, according to Washington state officials.
The two new flocks were found in Clallam County and makes it six identified outbreaks since a week ago.
Washington State Department of Agriculture officials and state veterinarians are urging anyone with a flock to be hyper-vigilant.
It’s likely the foxes contracted the virus after eating or coming into contact with infected birds in their natural environments.
This detection in wild red foxes is the first report of HPAI infections in mammals in the United States, though infections of fox kits have since been reported in Minnesota and Michigan. It was also detected in foxes in Ontario, Canada, earlier this month.
The virus was identified at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories, a diagnostic testing lab in the USDA’s Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service.
Grocery stores across the nation all have something in common right now: a lack of chicken on the shelves.
The country is feeling the effects of a shortage of poultry due to a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza.
Almost 38 million birds in 34 states have been affected by the strain of avian flu, according to data from theUSDA.
According to theCDC, this virus occurs naturally in wild bird populations across the world.
While wild birds can carry this virus and often not get sick, the infection of domesticated birds can become deadly.
“There is just no recovery from it if it infects domesticated birds,” said Christi Miller, communication director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.
It is hard to pinpoint how exactly the spread to domestic…
NEW YORK:Four red baby foxes in the US reportedly died in what is known as the first case of devastating bird flu H5N1 detected in wild mammals in the country.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirmed that three red fox kits died from highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Earlier, Minnesota officials announced a fox kit in their state had died of the virus as well.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is a virus known to affect birds and is highly contagious. Besides affecting poultry, this viral strain also affects waterfowl, raptors and scavengers (like turkey vultures, eagles and crows).
“Wild animals can sometimes transmit diseases to humans, and while we typically think of rabies or other well-known diseases as the primary concerns, this shows that there are other risks to keep in mind as well, ” said Dr. Joni…
Courtesy WV DNR PoliceRead More »
Courtesy WV DNR Police
