potential to recombine with human influenza A viruses and increase transmissibility among humans. If these avian viruses evolve to efficiently transmit among humans, the world could face a pandemic with “potentially high rates of illness and death worldwide,” according to the CDC.
potential to recombine with human influenza A viruses and increase transmissibility among humans. If these avian viruses evolve to efficiently transmit among humans, the world could face a pandemic with “potentially high rates of illness and death worldwide,” according to the CDC.
The bird flu outbreak affecting poultry farms across the U.S. isn’t a cause for concern just yet, but disease surveillance specialists are doing their best to stop the spread and prevent any human cases, experts said.
During this wave of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1, the first outbreak in a commercial flock occurred among turkeys in Indiana inearly February, and since then 18 states have reported infections…
This is CNBC’s live blog tracking Thursday’s developments on the war in Ukraine. See below for the latest updates.
Russian forces are continuing to hold their positions and carry out shelling strikes around Kyiv, according to British intelligence, despite promises from Moscow this week to scale back its military activity near the Ukrainian capital.
The head of the U.K.’s intelligence and security agency said in a speech Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “massively misjudged” the situation in Ukraine, and that the Russian leader’s advisors were afraid to tell him the truth about what was happening on the ground.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said Thursday that Russia had agreed to allow a humanitarian corridor to open in the besieged city of Mariupol, which has been largely destroyed by Russian shelling and is facing a severe humanitarian crisis.
President Joe Biden has ordered the release of up 1 million barrels of oil per day from the strategic petroleum reserve for the next six months in a bid to control prices that have spiked since the US and its allies imposed strict sanctions on Russia.
The announcement comes after both the White House and the Pentagon said that they believeVladimir Putinis being misinformed about progress in the war by his senior advisers and warned that Russian troops being pulled back from areas near Kyiv may just be being repositioned for further fighting.
A massive coronal mass ejection erupting from the sun in 2017. (Image credit: NASA)
The dazzling northern lights could light up the skies as far south as the northern United States after the detection of 17 solar eruptions blasting from a single sunspot, two of which are headed straight to Earth.
The two Earth-directed eruptions have merged into a “cannibal coronal mass ejection” and are barreling toward us at 1,881,263 mph (3,027,599 km/h). When it crashes into the Earth’s magnetic field, beginning from the night of March 30 through to April 1, the result will be a powerful G3 geomagnetic storm, according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). G3 storms are classified as strong geomagnetic storms, meaning that the oncoming sun blast could bring the aurora as south as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon.
The sunspot, called AR2975, has been shooting out flares of electrically charged particles from the sun’s plasma soup since Monday (March 28). Sunspots are areas on the sun’s surface where powerful magnetic fields, created by the flow of electrical charges, knot into kinks before suddenly snapping. The resulting release of energy launches bursts of radiation called solar flares, or explosive jets of solar material called coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
Cannibal coronal mass ejections happen when fast-moving solar eruptions overtake earlier eruptions in the same region of space, sweeping up charged particles to form a giant, combined wavefront that triggers a powerful geomagnetic storm.
The “frenzy” of solar flares meant that “at least two full-halo [Earth striking] CMEs emerged from the chaos,” SpaceWeather.com wrote of the event. The second CME is expected to overtake and “cannibalize” the first before hitting Earth’s magnetic field at around 11 p.m. ET time on March 30.
CME’s usually take around 15 to 18 hours to reach Earth, according to the SWPC. When they do, the Earth’s magnetic field gets compressed slightly by the waves of highly energetic particles, which ripple down magnetic field lines and agitate molecules in the atmosphere, releasing energy in the form of light to create colorful auroras in the night sky.
Sun Outburst Goes “Cannibal”
The sun blasted a cannibal coronal mass ejection! An M1-class solar flare on Nov. 2, 2021 generated a fast-moving cannibal coronal mass ejection.
The energy from the storm is expected to be harmlessly absorbed by our magnetic field, but large solar storms still have the potential to wreak havoc. G3 storms can cause “intermittent satellite navigation and low-frequency radio navigation problems,” according to SWPC. A recent storm in February sent 40 Starlink satellites tumbling back to Earth, Live Science previously reported, and scientists have warned that an even larger one could have the potential to cripple the internet across the globe.
Scientists think that the largest ever solar storm witnessed during contemporary history was the 1859 Carrington Event, which carried roughly the same energy as 10 billion 1-megaton atomic bombs. After slamming into the Earth, the powerful stream of solar particles fried telegram systems all over the world and caused auroras brighter than the light of the full moon to appear as far south as the Caribbean. If a similar event happened today, it would cause trillions of dollars in damage and widespread blackouts, much like the solar storm which caused the 1989 Quebec blackout, according to scientists.
The desert mule deer is a common sight in the Trans-Pecos region of west Texas, but when wildlife biologists conducted surveys recently, they came across an extremelyuncommonsight.
In fact, it was what they called “the rarest of rare” animals.
What the Texas Parks and Wildlife—Trans-Pecos Wildlife District spotted from a helicopter and captured in video was a melanistic (black hair) mule deer fawn, “a one-in-a-million anomaly.”
“This special deer appears all black except for quick flashes of white fur as it dashes away from the whirring helicopter,” theFort Worth Star-Telegramsaid. “It stands in stark contrast to the older, larger mule deer running ahead of it, sporting the typical brown and white coloration.”
With the U.S. blocking new purchases of Russian oil, the White House, Republicans and the oil industry are engaged in a disagreement over whether the administration has hampered domestic oil production on federal land or whether the industry is holding back. Both sides are spinning the facts.
The competing claims have erupted after nearly two years of risinggas pricesand as the Russian invasion of Ukraine spotlighted the Russian oil the U.S. has imported for years. In 2021,Russia accounted for7.9%of total U.S. petroleum imports.
U.S. domestic production is still recovering from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused theprice of oilto plummet in early 2020, followed by a reduction in capital expenditures in the industry. Experts say there’s no short-term fix for increasing production or bringing down gas prices, despite political arguments that suggest otherwise.
“Veda Stram has produced an amazingly comprehensive, readable guide to abundant living that leaves animals and their ‘products’ off the menu and out of the house. This guide is both practical and ethical, a joy to savor and share. No one reading it can complain that vegan living is ‘too hard’ or restrictive. Especially important in my view is that the guide shines a light on the lovingness of the animals whose feelings and lives we violate by burying them ‑ needlessly ‑ in commodities.”
[Note: Any donations made through Change.org go directly to Change.org. If you wish to donate to the Irish Council Against Blood Sports to support our campaigns, you can do so at https://www.paypal.me/banbloodsports Thank you]
Ireland is another step closer to a ban on fur farming after the Animal Health and Welfare and Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill passed final stages in the Seanad on Tuesday (29 March 2022). The bill now goes to President Michael D Higgins who will sign it into law.
The owners of the three remaining fur farms in Counties Laois, Kerry and Donegal are set to receive compensation for closing down and demolishing their hellholes where an estimated 120,000 mink were cruelly caged every year and gassed to death at six months of age.
Foxes “who showed signs of fear” had also been subjected to fur farming’s horrors in the past. Department of Agriculture Veterinary Inspector reports obtained by ICABS in 2001 under Freedom of Information, revealed the method of killing of the unfortunate foxes – “The operative [uses] one hand to insert the earth probe per rectum and then to insert the charging probe either into the mouth or onto the ear. When the animal bites the probe it is immediately electrocuted. The operative maintains the charge for 10 seconds approximately.” In the 1998 report, the Department inspector shamefully added: “I can say that I firmly believe that this procedure is humane.” The cruel gassing of mink was also outrageously claimed to have been “carried out in an efficient, humane manner”.
In reality, mink fur farming is in no way humane. It involves confining the animals to cages where – as seen in video footage captured by ICABS – they repeatedly pace back and forth and jump against the bars. They are cruelly denied their ability to express natural behaviours. Eventually, they are pulled out squealing and thrown into a gassing box where they spend their last moments desperately trying not to inhale poisonous Carbon Monoxide. Mink are semi-aquatic and highly evolved physiologically to hold their breath. They are able to detect a lack of oxygen in their blood and are prone to hypoxia, which means they can suffer particularly during gassing.
The upcoming fur farming ban follows long-running campaigns by several groups (including an ICABS campaign over more than 20 years), protests, petitions, political lobbying, a statement from Veterinary Ireland backing a ban and a RED C opinion poll which showed that an 80 per cent majority in Ireland want fur farming banned.
Among those calling for a ban were over 400 from the worlds of film, television, theatre, radio, sport, literature and music. The list of high profile personalities, compiled by Irish actor Rachel Pilkington, included Oscar-nominated actors Saoirse Ronan, Ruth Negga and Stephen Rea, Oscar-nominated directors Lenny Abrahamson and Jim Sheridan, Emmy award-winning director Emer Reynolds, Olympic medallist Sonia O’Sullivan, former international rugby player Alan Quinlan, musicians Sharon Shannon, Damien Dempsey, Mundy, Don Mescall, Mary Coughlan, Josh Gray and Brian Kennedy, author Cathy Kelly, comedians Deirdre O’Kane and PJ Gallagher and many more.
This week’s development comes nearly three years after the then government pledged to ban the practice.
In June 2019, prior to the current FF/FG/Green government coalition, former Agriculture Minister Michael Creed (Fine Gael) agreed that “the farming of mink is counter to good animal welfare” and that “it is considered timely to commence the phasing out of the industry in Ireland.”
“The government will now proceed to bring forward a Bill which will be drafted in conjunction with the Attorney General’s Office,” he stated. “The Government Bill will provide for a phased basis for the ban for existing operators. The Government Bill will make it illegal for any new fur farms to be established. Phase out arrangements will be put in place for the small number of current operators to allow for an orderly wind down of the sector and to allow time for employees to find alternative opportunities.”
Fianna Fáil had previously “agreed to back the proposal to introduce a ban on the farming of mink for the production of fur in Ireland”.
This came after the introduction to the Dail of the “Prohibition of Fur Farming Bill 2018” by Solidarity/People Before Profit TDs Paul Murphy, Mick Barry and Ruth Coppinger and majority political support for a ban. Along with Fianna Fáil, other parties which gave their backing to a ban were Sinn Féin, Labour, Independents 4 Change, the Green Party, the Social Democrats and Aontú.
A big thank you and well done to all the individuals, groups and politicians who campaigned over the years for a ban.
The worst recent bird flu outbreak in the US happened in 2015, when more than 230 farms in 15 states had outbreaks.
The bid flu can spread from infected birds to people, but such infections are rare and haven’t led to sustained outbreaks among humans [File: Francois Lenoir/Reuters]
Iowa agriculture officials announced two more bird flu outbreaks in commercial flocks on Tuesday that will require the killing of more than 1.5 million hens and turkeys.
One of the new outbreaks will lead to the killing of 1.5 million chickens at an egg-laying farm in Guthrie County, about 60 miles (97km) west of Des Moines. The other was at a turkey farm in Hamilton County, about 65 miles (105km) north of Des Moines, where 28,000 birds will be killed.
