February 19, 2017
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:38 EST (14:38 GMT) on Sunday. The Falcon 9 is carrying a cargo ship loaded with supplies, as well as an antibiotic-resistant bacterium which is set to be tested aboard the International Space Station.
Source: Sputnik News
Originally, the blastoff was scheduled on Saturday, but it was scrapped just seconds before liftoff due to a technical issue.
On Friday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted that the organization was investigating a "very small leak" of helium in the rocket.
Follow Sputnik's live feed to see the launch for yourself.
The first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon cargo rocket has landed not far from the launch pad after the spacecraft blasted off on Sunday to the International Space Station (ISS), the space tech and transport firm announced."Dragon is on its way to the International Space Station. Capture by Space Station crew set for early Wednesday morning," SpaceX tweeted.
February 18, 2017
The next deadly worldwide epidemic could happen at the hand of a terrorist, employing biotechnology for an attack, Bill Gates has warned at the Munich Security Conference. The Microsoft founder also compared the pandemic to nuclear war and climate change.
Source: RT News
“The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus ... or a super contagious and deadly strain of the flu,” he warned in a speech published by Business Insider.
“Whether it occurs by a quirk of nature or at the hand of a terrorist, epidemiologists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year. And they say there is a reasonable probability the world will experience such an outbreak in the next 10 to 15 years,” he warned.
Gates said the link between health security and international security is underestimated adding that governments are not paying enough attention to this threat. “We ignore the link between health security and international security at our peril."
The absence of deadly epidemics in recent history shouldn’t lull the world into a false sense of security as such “doomsday scenarios” can occur. Gates reminded the audience of the scale of the 1918 flu pandemic which infected around 500 million people and claimed between 50-100 million lives according to various estimates.
“Most of the things we need to do to protect against a naturally occurring pandemic are the same things we must prepare for an intentional biological attack.”
February 18, 2017
Mysterious microbes and viruses discovered in a meandering Mexican cave system could be up to 50,000 years old, according to new research.
Source: RT News
The ancient specimens were discovered by researchers from NASA’s Astrobiology Institute in an abandoned lead and zinc mine in Naica, northern Mexico. If as old as scientists believe, the microbes have likely survived the extremely harsh conditions for millennia on minerals such as iron and manganese.
“It’s super life,” said the head of the Astrobiology Institute, Penelope Boston, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Boston on Friday, reported AP.
The archaic life forms consist of 40 different strains of microbes and viruses and are so rare their closest relatives still differ genetically by 10%, leading Boston to say it’s like comparing humans to mushrooms.
"They're an example, at very high temperatures, of organisms making their living essentially by munching down inorganic minerals and compounds," said Boston. "This may be the deep history of our life here."
The discovery is the culmination of nine years of research, although it has yet to be peer reviewed, or published in a scientific journal, as Boston did not offer her work for review before Friday’s announcement.
January 01, 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Though largely not reported by the mainstream media, George Soros has invested in Google as it stepped up its “Fake News” campaign designed to depress the vote of anti-globalist Marine Le Pen, leading candidate of the conservative National Front (FN) party in the French presidential election scheduled for April 23.
Source: Infowars.com
On Nov. 15, 2016, Market Watch reported George Soros’ hedge fund, Soros Fund Management LLC, invested in Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.
On Feb. 16, 2012, Forbes reported that Soros had been trading in Google prior to 2007, but had completely sold out in the second quarter of 2011, at $550 a share.
Then, in the fourth quarter 2011, Soros bought his largest share in Google to date, purchasing 258,900 shares at about $592 per share for a total investment of $154 million. Soros’ investment in Google in 2011 was made by Soros’ predecessor Quantum Fund, then the best-performing hedge fund in history that in 2011 was closed to the public, focusing only on managing assets held by Soros and his family.
Soros’ purchase of Google stock in 2011 made Google his fifth largest holding, totaling approximately 7.3 percent of his Quantum Fund portfolio.
Then, in the first quarter of 2013, Soros Fund Management LLC increase its position in Google once again.
In December 2016, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which had invested over $1 million to the campaign, joined Google investing between $50-100 thousand in the leftist Washington-based think-tank founded in 2003 by former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.
On Dec. 15, 2016, the Daily Caller reported Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, declared the goal of her organization is “to be the central hub of the Trump resistance and to hold Trump accountable for the promises he made.”
On Feb. 6, 2017, Google News Lab announced CrossCheck, a new “Fake News” project billed as a collaborative effort between journalists, newsrooms and social media companies that appears aimed at censorship so as to impede the chances of Le Pen of to win the French presidential election.
In a press release dated Feb. 6, 2017 Google announced from Paris a partnership between Google News Lab and First Draft to help “the French electorate make sense of what and who to trust in their social media feeds, web searches and general news consumption in the coming months.”
First Draft is a technology company, in part funded by Google News Lab in June 2015, with a purpose to monitor online news “to raise awareness and address challenges relating to trust and truth in the digital news.”
The Google News Lab press release also noted the CrossCheck project, in conjunction with Facebook’s Crowd Tangle would start by working with newsrooms across France to monitor news concerning the French election.
February 14, 2017
China’s next generation nuclear vision includes rolling out a series of floating marine power plants to light up offshore initiatives by 2020, a government spokesperson for science and technology has confirmed.
Source: RT News
A five-year-plan published in March 2016 detailed China’s desire to boost its nuclear generating capacity. The development plan also pledged to “strengthen” sea oil and gas exploration, a goal that would be buoyed by offshore nuclear sites.
According to Wang Yiren, a director at China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, floating nuclear stations will help provide the extra juice necessary for powering China.
Yiren told China’s Science and Technology Daily that offshore energy supplies such as diesel generators are inefficient for offshore initiatives such as oil drilling.
He confirmed floating power platforms are a major component of China’s latest five-year plan, while the Atomic Energy Agency has conducted research into key technology for the development.
China currently has 36 nuclear power plants in operation, while another 21 are being constructed.