WORLD NEWS
WHO Discloses How the Recent Monkeypox Outbreak Is Spreading
The recent outbreak of the monkeypox virus in North America and Europe is primarily spreading through sex, according to World Health Organization (WHO) officials on Monday, while confirming about 200 cases so far.
The virus itself is not a sexually transmitted infection, but WHO officials said the recent surge in cases is linked to homosexual men. However, they said that anyone can contract monkeypox, which is generally confined to Central and West Africa.
“We’ve seen a few cases in Europe over the last five years, just in travelers, but this is the first time we’re seeing cases across many countries at the same time in people who have not traveled to the endemic regions in Africa,” Dr. Rosamund Lewis, who runs WHO’s smallpox research, said in a streaming event on social media.
So far, the United States has confirmed at least two cases and a third suspected case is being investigated by officials in Florida. The cases have been reported in New York City and Massachusetts.
“Many diseases can be spread through sexual contact. You could get a cough or a cold through sexual contact, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a sexually transmitted disease,” Andy Seale, who advises WHO on HIV, hepatitis, and other sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs. Seale said monkeypox isn’t considered an STD.
Meanwhile, Dr. David Heymann, who chaired a meeting of the World Health Organization’s advisory group on infectious disease, told The Associated Press that the leading theory to explain the spread of the disease was sexual transmission at events held in Spain and Belgium. Monkeypox has not previously triggered widespread outbreaks beyond Africa, where it is endemic in animals.
“We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission,” said Heymann.
“It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions … and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact,” Heymann said, adding that “these international events … seeded the outbreak around the world, into the U.S., and other European countries.”
Moderna Testing Potential Monkeypox Vaccines
Moderna Inc is testing potential vaccines against monkeypox in pre-clinical trials as the disease spreads in the United States and Europe.
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday there have been 131 confirmed monkeypox cases and 106 further suspected cases since the first was reported on May 7 outside the countries where it usually spreads.
US Starts Process to Release Vaccine for Monkeypox: CDC
Doses of the Jynneos vaccine are being released in the United States to prevent monkeypox amid rising cases in the past few weeks in several countries not endemic for the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There are more than 1,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine that were approved in the United States in 2019 and are in the strategic national stockpile, Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology at the CDC, told reporters at a media briefing on Monday.
The strategic national stockpile stores pharmaceuticals and medical supplies in case of an emergency that causes local supplies to be depleted. McQuiston said the United States has stock of the vaccine because it was preparing for a potential smallpox outbreak. She added that Jynneos vaccine doses are expected to ramp up very quickly in the coming weeks.
The Jynneos vaccine is approved in the United States to be used against smallpox and monkeypox in people aged 18 and over, determined to be at high risk of infection.
It is made by Denmark-based biotech group Bavarian Nordic, which recently announced that the Biden administration has placed an order for millions of doses, which would be manufactured and invoiced in 2023 and 2024.
“Right now we are hoping to maximize vaccine distribution to those that we know would benefit from it,” McQuiston said. “So those are people who’ve had contact with known monkeypox patients, health care workers, very close personal contacts, and those in particular who might be at high risk for severe disease.”
She added: “I can report that there has been a request for release of the Jynneos vaccine from the national stockpile for some of the high-risk contacts of some of the early patients. So that is actively happening right now.”
Russian Sentenced to Life in Connection to Ukraine War
A Russian soldier was sentenced by a Ukrainian court on May 23 to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to killing a civilian.
The soldier, Vadim Shishimarin, said he shot and killed a 62-year-old civilian in late February, just days after the Russia–Ukraine conflict erupted. Shishimarin, who was captured as part of a Russian tank battalion, apologized to the victim’s widow in court.
Shishimarin “saw a civilian on the pavement, Oleksandr Shelipov,” the court stated, according to reports.
“Shishimarin knowing that Shelipov is a civilian and is unarmed and does not pose any threat to him—fired several shots at Shelipov from his AK-gun,” the court stated. “The cause of Shelipov’s death was a shot in the head that resulted in crushing of the skull.”
Shishimarin’s sentence may be appealed within 30 days.
The soldier’s defense attorney, Victor Ovsyanikov, had argued that his client was unprepared for the “violent military confrontation” after Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Shishimarin will appeal the verdict, Ovsyanikov said, according to an Associated Press reporter.
Shishimarin had told the court that he at first disobeyed his immediate commanding officer’s order to shoot the unarmed civilian, but had no choice but to follow the order when it was repeated forcefully by another officer. However, Aarif Abraham, a British human rights lawyer, noted that following orders isn’t a defense under the law.
Prosecutor Andriy Sunyuk suggested that more war crimes trials may be held in the future against Russian soldiers, and he noted that he hopes the verdict will send a message to Moscow.
“I think that all other law enforcement agencies will move along the path that we have traveled,” he told the court on May 23, as reported by CNN. “This will be a good example for other occupiers who may not yet be on our territory, but are planning to come. Or for those who are here now and plan to stay and fight. Or maybe they will think that it’s time to leave here for their own territory.”
Earlier on May 23, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state media outlets that Moscow was concerned about the trial, as Russia doesn’t have the ability to “protect his interests on-site.” The AP reported that Shishimarin’s lawyer was appointed by a Ukrainian court.
“This doesn’t mean that we won’t consider the possibility of continuing attempts [to help the serviceman] through other channels,” Peskov said, without elaborating.
Ukrainian civil liberties advocate Volodymyr Yavorskyy said it was “an extremely harsh sentence for one murder during the war.” But Abraham said the trial was conducted “with what appears to be full and fair due process,” including giving Shishimarin access to an attorney.
U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
State sending kids as young as 10 to sex chatrooms
The Arizona Department of Education (ADOE) directs students to LGBT-themed chatrooms for children as young as ten to discuss gender and sexuality as part of its student resources.
The chatrooms are part of the ADOE’s effort to support LGBT youths, and they were put together with the help of “members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community,” according to the ADOE website. The website directs students to numerous LGBT resources including local clubs, guides for gender transitions and LBGT chatrooms.
Both of the chats linked to by ADOE have moderators, either volunteer or staff, monitoring conversations, some of whom work at LGBT centers.
The Gender Spectrum chatroom advertises online groups for “trans,” “non-binary” and “gender-expansive youth” and can be joined by video, audio or chat. Discussion groups are divided into age groups and facilitated by trained volunteers.
Students aged 13-16 and 17-18 are encouraged to sign up, but the 10-12 age group was at capacity, the website said.
“Gender Spectrum hosts free online groups for pre-teens, teens, parents, caregivers, and other family members and adults,” the description of the chatroom on the ADOE website said. “These groups provide you with the opportunity to connect with others, share experiences, and feel the comfort of a supportive community.”
The other chatroom is called Q Chat Space and is targeted towards LGBT students ages 13 to 19, according to the ADOE website. Chats are facilitated by staff who work at LGBT centers but are not mental health professionals, according to the Q Chat Space website.
The Q Chat Space project is put on in collaboration with Planned Parenthood and two LGBT groups, CenterLink and PFLAG.
State Farm Asked Employees to Donate Transgender Books Aimed at Young Children, Watchdog Group Says
Auto and home insurance giant State Farm has encouraged hundreds of employees to donate books promoting transgenderism to young children to their local schools and libraries, according to an email leaked by a whistleblower.
The email, obtained by nonprofit organization Consumers’ Research, states that the company partnered with transgender youth advocacy group The GenderCool Project in a campaign “to help diversify classroom, community center, and library bookshelves” with a collection of books centered on the “national conversation about Being Transgender, Inclusive and Non-Binary.”
“The project’s goal is to increase representation of LGBTQ+ books and support our communities in having challenging, important and empowering conversations with children Age 5+,” Jose Soto, a corporate responsibility analyst for State Farm in Florida, wrote in the email dated Jan. 18.
One of the three books The GenderCool Project sought to promote is “A Kids Book About Being Transgender,” which encourages readers as young as 5 to “shake off whatever confusion, skepticism, concern, or biases you may have” about “transgender kids.” The book suggests that a child’s feeling that he or she is of a different gender should be validated rather than challenged, arguing that feelings sometimes “work more like our intuition or insight” that “allow us to understand something without having to think about it.”
“One day I look up ‘boy who feels like girl’ and found stories of people who were just like me,” the book reads. “That’s the first time I heard the word transgender. I realized I wasn’t alone. The feeling I had been a girl finally made sense.”
In the email, Soto asked for six State Farm insurance agents in Florida to volunteer to participate in the program by “receiving these books in March, then donating them to their community by the end of April.”
“Agents are key to the success of this program,” the email read. “Nationwide, approximately 550 State Farm agents and employees will have the opportunity to donate this 3-book bundle to their local teacher, community center or library of their choice.”
“Along with donating the books, we would encourage the agent to highlight our commitment to diversity on their social media pages,” it added. “This is a fantastic way to give back and an easy project that will help support the LGBTQ+ community and to make the world around us better.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, which first reported the matter, State Farm defended the voluntary program, saying that it is “strictly voluntary.”
“We embrace diversity and inclusion because it‘s the right thing to do. We work with a variety of organizations and causes that express their own unique views, and support civil and open dialogue on challenging topics,” the company said.
The GenderCool Project describes itself as “a youth-led movement bringing positive change to the world.” The organization’s website highlights a group of young transgender or gender non-conforming “Champions,” who are “helping replace misinformed opinions with positive experiences meeting transgender and non-binary youth who are thriving.”
VIDEO: The Liberty Man John Moore warns Mike Adams about China’s impending INVASION of the United States
Another ‘Presumptive’ Case of Monkeypox Reported in US: Officials
Florida health officials confirmed they are investigating a possible case of monkeypox, making Florida the third possible U.S. state to have potentially reported the virus.
Cases have been reported in New York City and Massachusetts in recent days. Monkeypox has also been confirmed in Canada, a number of European countries, Israel, and Australia so far.
The Florida Department of Health in Broward County said Sunday that it and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are carrying out investigations to see whether there are any possible exposures.
The risk of contracting monkeypox, a virus that sees yearly cases in West and Central Africa, “remains very low to the overall community,” a Florida state health department spokesperson told local outlets. The smallpox vaccine appears to work against monkeypox, said the Broward health department.
“Human-to-human transmission generally requires prolonged, face-to-face contact, direct contact with lesion materials, or indirect contact with lesion materials through contaminated items, such as contaminated clothing,” the Florida Department of Health said. “Therefore, the risk of exposure remains low,” the agency added.
The virus causes body aches, fever, fatigue, rash, and lesions on the face, hands, and other parts of the body. The CDC notes on its website that monkeypox presents milder symptoms than smallpox, which has killed tens of millions of people throughout human history.
On May 19, the CDC issued a health alert after cases were discovered in Massachusetts and New York City, where a patient with symptoms arrived at the city’s Bellevue Hospital. The first case was identified about a week ago in Massachusetts, although it’s not clear what city.
Speaking to reporters in East Asia on Sunday, President Joe Biden said that he hadn’t spoken with his health advisors over the virus, but he remarked that monkeypox is something “to be concerned about.”
“They haven’t told me the level of exposure yet, but it is something that everybody should be concerned about,” Biden told reporters at Osan Air Base in South Korea. Later, the president said that his administration doesn’t see the need to implement strict measures to control the spread of the virus.
”I just don’t think it rises to the level of the kind of concern that existed with COVID-19,” he said in Tokyo on Monday.
Documents from 2021 int’l security exercise showed monkeypox bio attack on May 15, 2022
In March 2021, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organization “focused on reducing nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity,” joined by members of the Munich Security Conference, conducted an exercise which involved a lethal, global monkeypox pandemic.
In a November 2021 report, NTI looked at the outbreak of the monkeypox virus in the fictional country of Brinia on May 15, 2022, which was the focus of the March exercise. Under their imaginary scenario, “the initial outbreak was caused by a terrorist attack using a pathogen engineered in a laboratory with inadequate biosafety and biosecurity provisions and weak oversight.”
In the table below (which can be viewed on page 10 of the report), NTI divided their discussions into three “moves.”
In the first move, 1,421 cases of the virus resulting in four deaths are reported in Brinia.
By Jan. 10, 2023, seven months later, the virus has spread to 83 countries. There are 70 million cases worldwide, and 1.3 million people have died. Researchers have learned that the virus was engineered to be vaccine-resistant.
By May 10, 2023, 480 million cases have been reported, resulting in 27 million fatalities worldwide.
By December 2023, cases have reached 3.2 billion, and 271 million people have died
NTI identifies “gaps” between nations’ current levels of pandemic preparedness and what would be necessary to deal with a catastrophe of this magnitude. Naturally, NTI emphasizes an international response coordinated by a supranational organization, such as the World Health Organization.
I’m not saying the recent, very real outbreak of the monkeypox was engineered. On the contrary, all indications are that it’s naturally occurring.
But it is a remarkable coincidence, isn’t it?
Outspoken Greene and Walker Eyeing Triumphs in Key Georgia GOP Primaries
Both are faithful allies of former president Donald Trump.
Each is outspoken and considered a political lightning rod among Democrats and even many in their own party.
Both attended the University of Georgia, though one gained more prominence there than the other.
On May 24, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and GOP U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker are expected to win their respective primaries, but their opponents are making a Herculean effort to see that doesn’t happen.
Census Bureau Undercounted 5 Red States, Overcounted 6 Blue States
The United States Census Bureau undercounted five red states and overcounted six blue states in the 2020 Census, according to a report issued by the agency this month.
For years, the establishment media and left-wing think tanks went after former President Donald Trump’s administration by accusing officials of using the 2020 Census to undercount constituencies that leaned Democrat.
When Trump sought to put the American citizenship question back on the Census, left-wing Brookings Institute executives accused the administration of trying “to hijack” the process and “imperil America’s future.”
The Washington Post editorial board, in March, alleged that the Trump administration “got exactly what it wanted” when the Census Bureau found that minority communities in the United States had been undercounted in the final tally.
“The Trump administration might have failed in its effort to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S. Census. But it still managed to get exactly what it wanted: a less accurate count that diminishes minority communities in the United States,” the Post editorial board wrote.
Now, the Census Bureau has issued a report detailing how a number of states were undercounted while otherwise were overcounted. The states that were undercounted include Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas — all but one of which voted twice for Trump in the last two presidential elections.
The states that were overcounted include Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah — six of which are Democrat strongholds.
“Achieving an accurate count for all 50 states and DC is always a difficult endeavor, and these results suggest it was difficult again in 2020, particularly given the unprecedented challenges we faced,” Census Bureau Director Robert Santos said in a statement.
The data suggests that voters who twice voted to elect Trump over Democrat candidates were more likely to be undercounted in the 2020 Census than voters who backed Democrats against Trump in the last two elections.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), one of only 11 Senate Republicans who voted against a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, says the “war zone” at the United States-Mexico border is “much worse” than what he witnessed at the Poland-Ukraine border.
While visiting the U.S.-Mexico border over the last few days, Marshall exclusively told SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Daily in an interview that the “human tragedy” he has seen from human smuggling to drug trafficking is “the most threatening situation” facing Americans, not the war in Ukraine.
“We’ve already done more than all the rest of the world has done,” Marshall said of his vote against spending another $40 billion in American tax dollars on the war in Ukraine.
“We have 107,000 American troops on the front NATO line … meanwhile, the biggest, the most threatening situation right now from a national security standpoint … is the southern border,” he continued.
“We need to spend $25 billion right now to fix this border. I’m calling on Joe Biden to come down and see for himself what’s really going on,” Marshall said. “It’s a human tragedy. This place turns into a war zone every night.”
In Fiscal Year 2022, which began October 1, 2021, about 5,300 pounds of fentanyl have been seized at the border. Last year alone, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized 9.6 million counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl. This is more than the number of counterfeit pills seized in 2019 and 2020 combined.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Anne Milgram said last month that there was enough fentanyl trafficked into American communities last year, via the border, “to kill every American” citizen.
“The war is the fentanyl. That’s the real war here,” Marshall said. “Along with just the gang members and the terrorists coming across the border.”
Meanwhile, illegal immigration has hit record-breaking levels under President Joe Biden. Since taking office, the Biden administration has released more than 954,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into the U.S. interior — a foreign population larger than five U.S. states and twice the size of Miami, Florida.
Marshall said that compared to the scenes at the Poland-Ukraine border, which he saw first-hand weeks ago, the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is “much worse.”
“So I just was at the Poland-Ukraine border three weeks ago, and the sea of humanity I’m seeing here [at the U.S.-Mexico border] is much, much worse than what I saw,” Marshall said.
“Just the volume of people, the crisis going on. I’m a physician, I’ve done humanitarian work all across the world,” he continued. “I shouldn’t be emotionally disturbed by what I’m seeing, and what I’ve seen these past four days [at the U.S.-Mexico border] just literally makes me want to vomit. It’s so horrifying.”
Marshall also said that foreign nationals have continued to pile up on the Mexican side in preparation to “rush the border” as they believe Biden is ending the Title 42 public health authority that has stemmed waves of illegal immigration over the last two years.
Goldman Sachs Research Analyst Fatally Shot on NYC Subway
A research analyst with Goldman Sachs was shot and killed on a subway train in New York on May 22, according to the investment banking firm and his family.
Daniel Enriquez, who joined Goldman Sachs in 2013, was shot in the chest at about 11:45 a.m. local time as he was riding on the Q train near the Manhattan Bridge, city police officials and Goldman Sachs told local media.
“We are devastated by this senseless tragedy and our deepest sympathies are with Dan’s family at this difficult time,” Goldman CEO David Solomon said in a statement, adding that Enriquez was a “dedicated and beloved” employee.
The unidentified suspect, who shot Enriquez “without provocation,” is dark-skinned, heavyset, and had a beard, NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey told reporters. Officials also released two photos of the alleged gunman, showing the individual appears to be a black male.
Enriquez’s family, after the shooting, criticized the administration of the city’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.
“No one, no one, no one should have this happen to their family,” Griselda Vile, Enriquez’s sister, told the New York Post on May 22.
“And the worst part is, even if they catch this person, he’s going to be out again,” she said, referring to the state’s lenient bail reform laws.
Vile told the Post: “I wish you guys would go back to Mayor Adams and tell him the city is not safe. My brother just became a statistic on the way to the city. He was shot at close range.”
Her husband, Glenn Vile, had a message for Adams.
“Do your job” and “get crime off the streets” of New York City.
New Hampshire Republican Governor Vetoes Mask Mandate Ban Legislation
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, vetoed legislation on May 20 that would ban public school mask mandates.
“I was shocked, really shocked,” state Rep. Melissa Blasek, a Republican and the measure’s sponsor, told The Epoch Times. “I 100 percent assumed this bill was a done deal.”
Blasek said H.B. 1131 was so popular that it drew a huge crowd of parents during one of the state’s worst snowstorms to a hearing in support of it.
She called Sununu’s veto “a huge political misstep” that “pacified the left” while “alienating parents on the right and in the middle.”
Many state Republicans reacted similarly on social media. State Rep. Leah Cushman, the Republican who led the legislation to make human-grade ivermectin available without a prescription in New Hampshire, posted on Facebook that Sununu’s veto of the statewide mask ban in public schools was “disgraceful.”
“Our Republican-majority house has been kicking butt all session despite the slim majority and members who vote like Dems, only for the senate and governor to kill it all,” Cushman said.
New Hampshire Republicans said they were especially stumped by the veto since Sununu held a press conference in February with the state’s epidemiologist, Dr. Benjamin Chan, announcing that his administration was calling upon schools to end mask mandates.
Asked then if his call to end school mask mandates was an option or a mandate to schools, Sununu said that “ultimately those policies really have to move.” He also promised that the New Hampshire Department of Education “will move any of the remaining districts to get their policies where they need to be to ensure that everyone can attend school without a mask.”
In a statement explaining the reason for his veto of the House- and Senate-supported legislation proposing a ban on school mask mandates, Sununu said it’s important to preserve local governments’ decision-making authority.
“Just because we may not like a local decision, does not mean we should remove their authority,” Sununu said in a statement. “One of the State’s foremost responsibilities is to know the limits of its power. As Granite Staters, we take pride in local control and our bottom-up approach to education. Similar to our fight to retain states’ rights against a bloated and ever-encroaching federal government, we have a responsibility to ensure the State minimizes its infringement on local control.”
JR Hoell, a founder of the Republican political watchdog group RebuildNH, told The Epoch Times that he finds Sununu’s position to be hypocritical.
“For someone who single-handedly ruled the entire state via executive fiat for over a year, issued 21 consecutive executive orders regulating every public and private entity, to then say that one of the foremost responsibilities of a state is to know its limit of power is the ultimate in hypocrisy,” said Hoell, who’s also a former state representative.
Sununu has had his share of political conflicts. Earlier this year, he was accused by Republican party leaders of orchestrating the arrest of eight citizens who had previously protested his push for the state to take federal money to promote the COVID-19 vaccine.
Nationally, Sununu won criticism among party pundits for calling former President Donald Trump “[expletive] crazy.”
However, according to a recent poll, the three-term governor, who’s up for reelection this year, remains one of the most popular governors in the United States.
Official Policies Have Worsened San Francisco’s Homelessness Crisis, Experts Say
The homelessness crisis in San Francisco has gotten markedly worse in recent years, and while some may try to blame the problem on the pandemic, official missteps at the municipal level have seriously exacerbated the crisis, experts say.
San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, has tried to alleviate the homeless problem in her city with funds obtained through Prop C, which passed in 2018 and which Breed initially opposed. Prop C levied a wealth tax on the richest corporations in the city with a view to generating funds to address homelessness.
The mayor has also been a strong proponent of “transitional housing,” or putting the homeless people in hotels as a temporary measure on the way to finding more permanent arrangements. Many support the mayor’s efforts and recently released preliminary figures show a slight—3.5 percent—decline in the total number of homeless within San Francisco over the last three years, to roughly 7,800 people, in the context of a 9 percent rise in the Bay Area overall.
But a closer look at the issue reveals a different story and calls even the modest gain in San Francisco into question, observers and homeless advocates say. During the pandemic, the city’s policy of purchasing hotels and converting them into temporary hotels for the homeless bred conditions that provided neither a safe and stable environment for those who had been living on the street, nor an improved quality of life for people in the neighborhoods in question.
Facilitating Drug Abuse
The hotels tended to turn quickly into dens for drug use, according to Zac Clark, executive director of The HomeMore Project, a San Francisco nonprofit organization focused on homelessness.
Failure to Contain
Even with the Shelter in Place hotels giving some homeless temporary residences, there were still enough people exhibiting anti-social behavior on the street to make life in the Tenderloin district unbearable for many citizens. The crisis prompted Clark to move out of his apartment at 449 O’Farrell Street in October 2020.
A New Approach
Besides prompting him to move from his O’Farrell Street apartment, Clark’s experiences with the escalating crisis led him to found the HomeMore Project and to seek to implement approaches that will avoid repeating mistakes at the official level that he considers have only exacerbated the crisis.
In Clark’s view, the relatively small size of San Francisco does not lend itself to the approach favored by Mayor Breed. Clark noted that in January, Mayor Breed announced the opening of the Tenderloin Linkage Center. Launched as part of the city’s Tenderloin Emergency Initiative, the center’s website says that the facility is “designed to provide a safe space for anyone to easily and quickly access San Francisco health and human services resources.”
The Tenderloin district happens to be the neighborhood with the highest concentration of drug dealers in the city, he said. The problems of trying to run a drug treatment center here should be obvious. The new facility has received sharp criticism for functioning illegally as, in essence, a comfortable space for those with substance abuse problems to take drugs, instead of emphasizing treatment and prevention. Then when people leave, they run into the same temptations that plagued them before.
“After individuals leave the Tenderloin Linkage Center, they are bombarded with all their previous dealers. This creates a challenging environment to overcome addiction,” Clark said.
Recovering addicts who left a center anywhere in the city would run a high risk of encountering their former dealers, Clark said, given the city’s dimensions of about seven by seven miles, or 48 square miles in total.
“We believe that to allocate care and resources to these individuals experiencing homelessness effectively, there is a need to go outside of San Francisco,” he said.
Hence Clark’s organization plans to build a treatment facility of its own in a neighboring city, which it is not yet ready to name. The HomeMore Project also promotes a different approach to treatment, he emphasized.
“Government and other nonprofits emphasize the destination, but we focus on the journey. You develop habits, understand these developments, and set a foundation for your future,” he said.
Chinese Couple Pleads Guilty to Stealing mRNA Vaccine Info, Smuggling Biological Materials: DOJ
A pair of scientists pleaded guilty to illegally importing potentially toxic lab chemicals and forwarding confidential mRNA vaccine research to China, according to a statement released by the Justice Department (DOJ).
Wu Chenyan and Chen Lianchun, a husband and wife who worked as research scientists for a major American pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty on May 19 to charges related to their efforts to illicitly gather confidential mRNA research from that company and use it to advance the husband’s own competing laboratory research in China.
Wu worked for multiple pharmaceutical companies throughout his career, including a major corporation unnamed in court documents. Chen also worked at the same company. Wu moved to China in 2010 and opened a laboratory there in 2012 which focused on mRNA vaccine research.
Chen remained in the United States and continued working for the company while Wu was in China from 2012 through 2021. During that time, her research for the company also focused on mRNA vaccines.
Chen repeatedly accessed the company’s computers and copied confidential materials between 2013 and 2018, according to DOJ. She then emailed those materials to her husband in China using her personal email account. The materials included PowerPoints and Word documents with DNA and mRNA sequencing data, and confidential vaccine research & development information.
“The defendants used their placement and access to obtain and illegally share confidential lab research for their own benefit,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy said in a statement.
Wu first appeared on the FBI’s radar in 2019, when one such PowerPoint with his name on it was discovered by authorities while investigating a Chinese man convicted of violating U.S. export controls.
In 2021, Wu closed his lab in China and attempted to move it to the United States. He packed its contents into five separate suitcases and flew to America. He did not declare any of the biological materials on his customs form, nor to the customs officer while passing through inspection.
Nevertheless, customs agents discovered chemical and biological samples in Wu’s possession, along with medical equipment and research documentation, as it had all been found to be improperly packaged.
In all, Wu was carrying nearly 1,000 unlabeled centrifuge tubes, which appeared to contain proteins, and multiple containers of unknown chemicals, the DOJ said. Some samples were even labeled as hazardous, and one bore a skull and crossbones image and the word “harmful if swallowed … toxic if inhaled.”
“These are serious computer fraud and smuggling crimes,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman. “One defendant failed to protect her employer’s confidential and important research, and instead used it to her and her husband’s advantage.”
“Compounding the harm, the other defendant put travelers in harm’s way by illegally transporting his laboratory’s hazardous chemicals back to the United States.”
The saga is just the latest continuation of the DOJ’s ongoing struggle to curb an ever-rising number of China-related economic espionage and intellectual property theft cases. According to the FBI, there are currently over 2,000 active cases related to China-based attempts to steal vital technology and information from the United States.
The department was engaged in a Trump-era effort to curb such cases in a program known as the China Initiative, but the Biden administration scrapped that initiative following allegations of racial bias. The department clarified that an internal review found no evidence of bias, but that its “harmful perception” meant the initiative had to end.
Wu and Chen are both scheduled to be sentenced in August of this year.
FBI Kept Field Agents in Dark About Clinton Camp Origins of Trump: Alfa Claim
In the final weeks leading up to the 2016 election, FBI agents were sent down a rabbit hole of chasing supposed secret communications between then-candidate Donald Trump and a Russia-linked bank. They ultimately found the claim bogus, but not before launching a full investigation and employing both internal and outside experts. The allegation fueled the FBI’s broader probe of alleged Trump–Russia collusion, which also came out empty-handed, but successfully cast a shadow on the first years of Trump’s presidency.
Things might have gone differently on the FBI’s part if the bureau hadn’t kept its agents in the dark about the fact that the secret communications claim came from a lawyer, Michael Sussmann, on the payroll of the Democratic Party, FBI agent Ryan Gaynor testified during Sussmann’s trial in the District of Columbia on May 23.
Sussmann stands accused of lying to then-FBI general counsel James Baker when he told him in September 2016 that he wasn’t representing any clients when providing him with materials on the supposed secret communications between the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa-Bank. In fact, Sussmann billed his time with Baker to the presidential campaign of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton, according to prosecutors with special counsel John Durham’s team.
While the FBI Cyber Division dismissed the allegation within a day, the FBI Chicago Field Office opened a full investigation—as opposed to a preliminary one—noting that this might have informed the broader FBI Trump–Russia probe launched by the FBI headquarters in July 2016.
Gaynor said that knowing that Sussmann was being paid to provide the info would have affected the decision on whether to open the Chicago investigation and the decision to designate the investigation as “close hold,” which means filed agents aren’t informed of sources’ identities. In this case, it meant agents in the Chicago office didn’t know the allegation came from somebody on the Clinton campaign’s payroll.
Gaynor was asked by another agent working on the case to find out the source of the claim, which he did. After he learned it was Sussmann and that he was working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), he ultimately decided, he said, that it wasn’t necessary to lift the “close hold” designation, since the FBI couldn’t get close to the DNC anyway due to its policy of not interfering in elections.
On a cross-examination, Sussmann’s lawyers noted that it was Gaynor alone claiming the investigation was “close-hold,” suggesting it was he himself who was withholding Sussmann’s identity from the field agents.
Gaynor responded by saying he thought the field agents would be biased against Sussmann if he disclosed to them his DNC ties.
It appears Gaynor was himself a target of the Durham investigation before being reverted back to his status as a witness.
Georgia Secretary of State GOP Primary Could Hinge on Voter Knowledge of Trump Endorsement
Undecided voters and an endorsement from former President Donald Trump could tip the results in the May 24 Georgia primary elections for secretary of state, recent polls suggest.
Researchers with Survey USA found that 60 percent of those planning to vote in the Democratic primary still hadn’t made up their minds about a favorite, so a clear leader was almost impossible to pick.
Results from two polls analyzing the Republican race likewise conflicted with each other.
One poll conducted between April 22 and April 27 suggested that incumbent Brad Raffensperger was ahead with 30 percent of the vote. In second place was Congressman Jody Hice with 20 percent. Nine percent of the remaining voters were split almost equally between two other candidates.
But with 40 percent of voters still undecided, the final result could swing in any direction, the poll suggested.
Another poll suggested that Hice was ahead in the Republican contest with about 30.3 of the vote. Raffensperger trailed with 22.7 percent, according to the polling by M.V. Hood III, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs and director of the school’s Survey Research Center.
Hood’s poll seemed to confirm what’s been illustrated by primary contests around the country: The endorsement of former President Donald Trump could change everything in a race—but only if enough voters know about it.
When respondents in the April 12 study learned that Trump has endorsed Hice, his lead doubled. Hice has joined Trump in alleging the 2020 election results were swayed by widespread fraud, including in Georgia.
Raffensperger’s office oversees elections, so that has made him a target for criticism from Trump and his supporters.
Trump has repeatedly complained that Raffensperger didn’t do enough to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. The results of that election removed Trump as president and installed Joe Biden in the White House.
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Gas Prices Jump 33 Cents in Past 2 Weeks, Some Analysts See $6 per Gallon by August
The average price of regular-grade gasoline spiked 33 cents over the past two weeks to $4.71 per gallon, according to the Lundberg Survey, which comes as some analysts predict that prices will climb to more than $6 per gallon by the end of the summer.
Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said on May 22 that the price jump comes amid higher crude oil costs and tight gasoline supplies.
Nationwide, the highest average price for regular-grade gas was in the San Francisco Bay Area, at $6.20 per gallon, according to the survey, while the lowest average was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at $3.92 per gallon.
Separate data from the American Automobile Association (AAA) show that in the week between May 16 and May 23, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline increased by 11 cents to $4.60.
AAA said in a statement that the current supply and demand dynamic, “combined with volatile crude prices, will likely continue to keep upward pressure on pump prices.”
Andrew Gross, the national spokesman for AAA, told Fox News in a recent interview that he expects gasoline prices to climb further with Memorial Day weekend and the summer peak driving season fast approaching.
Data from GasBuddy indicate that the national average price of gasoline in the United States on May 22 was at $4.57 per gallon, up by 10.5 cents from a week ago, according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
De Haan predicted in a recent Twitter post that U.S. gasoline prices this coming Memorial Day weekend could be not just higher than any other Memorial Day, but a full $1 per gallon higher than the previous Memorial Day record of $3.99 per gallon set in 2014.
Another dire gas price prediction came in a note from JPMorgan analysts, who said on May 17 that prices could surge another 37 percent by August to an estimated national average of $6.20 per gallon.
“Typically, refiners produce more gasoline ahead of the summer road-trip season, building up inventories,” said Natasha Kaneva, head of global commodities research at JPMorgan.
Since mid-April, however, “gasoline inventories have fallen counter seasonally and today sit at the lowest seasonal levels since 2019,” she said.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook that global oil inventory levels in April in developed countries stood at 2.63 billion barrels, up marginally from February, when they fell to their lowest level since April 2014.
EIA stated that the Russia–Ukraine conflict has injected greater volatility into oil markets.
Why It’s Time to Give Up on Government (Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola)
Many are now starting to realize that we’re facing a multitude of catastrophes, sort of pancaked on top of one another
Gas prices are skyrocketing, the crypto market recently cratered, the stock market is starting to cave and inflation is rapidly rising
According to some financial analysts, our only choices now are prolonged inflation or a global economic meltdown
In 2016, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published several “predictions” for the future that are now starting to take shape. This indicates the WEF is responsible for, and is carrying out, an agenda to fulfill its own predictions or wishes
We have now passed over the energy cliff, and are rapidly approaching a situation in which there will be no surplus energy left over for society to function on. This is likely why all the globalist plans converge on the year 2030
Musk Suggests Slashing Twitter Takeover Offer Based on Bot Numbers
Elon Musk has suggested he wants to slash his initial $44 billion takeover bid for social media platform Twitter after accounting for the proportion of bots present on the microblogging site.
“I’m worried that Twitter has a disincentive to reduce spam, as it reduces perceived daily users,” Musk said in a series of tweets on May 21. “They still refuse to explain how they calculate that 5% of daily users are fake/spam! Very suspicious.”
When someone on Twitter pointed out that if 25 percent of users on Twitter are bots, then the acquisition deal should cost 25 percent less, Musk responded, “Absolutely.”
On May 13, Musk wrote on Twitter that the deal is “temporarily on hold” pending details supporting the company’s claim that fake or spam accounts only make up 5 percent of total users.
According to a joint Twitter analysis conducted by SparkToro and Followerwonk that looked at 44,058 public Twitter accounts randomly selected from 130 million-plus accounts, 19.42 percent of them were spam or fake accounts—four times that of Twitter’s claim.
In a May 17 tweet, Musk insisted that his offer for a takeover was based on Twitter’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) being accurate. However, the company’s CEO has refused to show proof of fake accounts being only 5 percent, due to which “this deal cannot move forward until he does.”
However, Twitter filed a proxy statement with the SEC last week, which could complicate Musk’s push to reduce the deal offer. The Musk-Twitter deal was negotiated on April 23 and 24, and signed on April 25.
According to the deal, Musk has to pay $54.20 per share in cash, which is 41 percent more than the $38.29 per share the company was trading on May 23.
The proxy statement counters Musk’s attempt to reduce the offer value via identifying fake accounts by stating that the billionaire made no attempt to get more information on the issue while signing the deal.
“Prior to entry into the merger agreement, Mr. Musk did not ask to enter into a confidentiality agreement or seek from Twitter any non-public info regarding Twitter,” according to the proxy statement.
If Musk were to pull out of the deal, he would be obligated to pay $1 billion. The fact that Musk did not ask Twitter for more information on fake accounts before signing the deal means that he will have to prove that the company’s public filings were wrong, Ann Lipton, a professor at Tulane University Law School, told Reuters. This would be a high legal bar.
“Twitter has long said ‘this is our estimate of spam but we might be wrong.’ So it’s not clear that they said anything false,” Lipton said.
Great Reset: Americans Lost $20 Trillion Since The Start Of 2022
Technocrats are pitted against capitalism and free market economics to replace them with Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy. Wealth destruction of the middle class has been progressing since 2000 and it is now accelerating at a record pace. The WEF predicts that “by 2030 you will own nothing.” ⁃ TN Editor
Citing estimates from JPMorgan, over the weekend Bloomberg wrote that courtesy of a Biden administration terrified of what soaring inflation will mean for the Democrats in the midterms, and a Fed that is determine to do anything – even crash the market and spark a recession – to do Joe Biden’s “kill inflation” bidding, the US faces a new scary threat: a plunge in wealth which JPM estimates at least $5 trillion, and could reach $9 trillion by year-end.
In short, the world’s richest nation is waking up to an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation: It’s getting poorer… and worst of all, it’s getting poorer at the behest of its own leaders.
Since the start of the year, the S&P 500 Index is down 18%, the Nasdaq 100 has lost 27% and a Bloomberg index of cryptocurrencies has plunged 48%. That all amounts to “a wealth shock that is set to drag on growth in the coming year,” JPMorgan economists led by Michael Feroli wrote in a note Friday.
Of course, this is not news to regular readers who have known about this one unpleasant side-effect of Biden’s phobia for higher prices: we pointed out as much almost two weeks ago.
We do however disagree with JPMorgan that “only” $5 trillion has been lost so far: as the following chart shows, US household net worth – which consists almost entirely of financial assets (and a smattering of real estate) – tracks the S&P with an almost 1.000 correlation. Well, that means that with the S&P briefly entering a bear market on Friday and sliding approximately 20% from its all time high, reached just a few days into 2022 when US net worth hit $150 trillion, it means that US households have seen about $20 trillion in net worth disappear in 2022 under Joe Biden, a loss far greater than under any other US president in history.
One reason why Biden hasn’t freaked out over this record crash in US household net worth, is that so far, the richest Americans have borne the brunt, with US billionaire fortunes down $800 billion since their peak amid the sharp losses in stocks, crypto and other financial assets.
Billionaires were the biggest winners of 2020 and 2021. Now they’re losing more than almost everyone else. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily measure of the wealth of the world’s 500 richest people, has dropped $1.6 trillion since its peak in November.
Leading the way are the Americans on the index, who have lost $797 billion since their peak. Perhaps the most humbled by it all is the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. He’s lost $139.1 billion, or 41% of his wealth, since November, when his net worth briefly surpassed $340 billion. Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person, lost $82.7 billion, or 39% of his peak wealth.
But that’s just the beginning, and surging interest rates are also starting to rattle the housing market, where middle- and working-class families have the bulk of their wealth.
It all adds up to the sudden removal of a major prop to confidence: ever-bigger nest eggs, which of course is on purpose: in its attempts to stamp out the highest inflation in decades, the Fed needs Americans to curb their spending, even if it requires an economic slowdown to get there. However, it still remains unclear just how the Fed hopes to snuff out supply-side inflation which the Fed’s actions have no control over.
In any case, neither the rich nor the poor are happy:
“It’s painful to get back to normal after really being in a fantasy world last year,” said John Norris, chief economist at Oakworth Capital Bank. “It’s going to feel a lot worse than it actually is.”
Maybe, but it’s already feeling quite terrible for most, and according to the latest Biden approval poll, things have never been worse, with nearly 70% saying the economy is bad, that the senile president is “slow to react when issues arise”, and that the state of the country is “uneasy ” and “worrying.”
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
World Bank Adopts Geospatial Surveillance And Tracking
GEMS stands for Geo-Enabling Initiative For Monitoring & Supervision, and it is being adopted by the World Bank to monitor and control people throughout its lending world. It promises to “maximize development impacts and human capital”. ⁃ TN Editor
The COVID-19 crisis has not only led to an exacerbation of poverty and the undoing of development gains in many countries around the world, but it has also shed light on the significant access constraints and data gaps on local conditions that the international development community has had to face. However, access to granular ground data remains indispensable to accountably monitor the provision of urgently needed emergency relief for communities in need amidst the pandemic and to build back better in a transparent way.
The Geo-Enabling initiative for Monitoring and Supervision (GEMS) is a global program launched by the World Bank that trains government agencies, donors and development practitioners to systematically leverage field-ready technology for remote real-time monitoring and adaptive risk management related to development activities. GEMS aims to create a Public Good and build capacity with local stakeholders to adapt geospatial open-source tools to specific needs. Through this, GEMS aims to support a democratization of geospatial data collection and analysis, to further enhance accountable service delivery in developing countries around the world.
The innovative GEMS method provides a highly-demanded solution for the problem of limited real-time information from the field, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in situations of Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV), and beyond. A central element of GEMS is to use simple-enough and low-cost tools, such as KoBoToolbox, that are appropriate for any environment and can be owned and scaled sustainably by local stakeholders. The core of GEMS is hands-on support provided to project implementation units to help them create customized geospatial monitoring and risk management systems, in response to local development challenges.
GEMS was launched in 2018 and is supported by the Korea Trust Fund for Economic and Peacebuilding Transitions (KTF) and the World Bank Partnership Fund for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Fund). As of March 2022, GEMS has supported over 800 development projects in 90+ countries and trained more than 5,000 government staff around the world in geospatial monitoring techniques. Also, various Multilateral Development Banks, UN Agencies, bilateral donors, and NGOs, are adopting GEMS for their COVID-19 response and beyond. Therefore, GEMS was listed by the United Nations among the best UN innovations in 2020 and it received a 2021 Geospatial World Excellence Award from the Geospatial World Forum.
Extending the reach of development in the most fragile situations
Fragility and violent conflicts do not only result in destruction, displacement, and devastation, but also entail access constraints on the ground, for security and logistical reasons. Therefore, even long before the COVID pandemic, there has been urgent demand by development practitioners for solutions to remotely supervise projects and improve the capacity of local stakeholders to conduct well-structured and accountable Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). GEMS was launched to close information gaps in such areas with limited access to get eyes on the ground, where we cannot always have boots on the ground.
GEMS is an integral part of the World Bank Group’s FCV Strategy and has been deployed to get real-time insights in FCV settings like Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Haiti, Kosovo, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Yemen. Around the world, GEMS team members have supported projects through a range of effective geospatial monitoring tools, from mobile data collection over interactive dashboards, to remote sensing analyses through satellite imagery.
The real-time field insights created through GEMS have helped enhance urgently needed service delivery in fragile contexts. Moreover, the geospatial tools have supported the provision of relief services for victims of violence, through the systematic mapping of medical, psycho-social and legal service providers for GBV survivors. This helps protect the most vulnerable and maximize development impacts and human capital, while building peace incentives for communities.
HEALTH
This Antioxidant-Rich Supplement Is Like The Fountain Of Youth
With their free-radical-scavenging abilities and cellular protective properties, antioxidants are the cheat code to help add years to your life.* One nutrient, in particular, is a rather vital member of this longevity club. Introducing: vitamin C.
Vitamin C works as a potent antioxidant.
Vitamin C has long been known as an essential nutrient for skin health and immune function, but it turns out its antioxidant activity plays a large role in those properties (among others).*
As the body’s primary water-soluble antioxidant, vitamin C supports beautiful skin, immune response, cellular resilience, cardiovascular health, cognitive function, and more.*
“Vitamin C works as an antioxidant everywhere in the body—it’s found in the blood, body fluids, and all of your cells and tissues,”* explains Alexander Michels, Ph.D., clinical research coordinator at the Linus Pauling Institute.
On a cellular level, C fulfills its free-radical-scavenging duties in the intracellular and extracellular fluid (i.e., inside and outside of cells) rather than in the cell membrane, like fat-soluble antioxidants.*
Vitamin C helps protect an impressive, diverse, and absolutely vital array of enzymes, molecules, and complex compounds in the body—such as proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA)—by combating free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS).*
Vitamin C’s role in recycling vitamin E.
And if all of that antioxidant action wasn’t enough, vitamin C also supports the restoration of other vital antioxidants.* Specifically, vitamin C has the ability to regenerate fat-soluble vitamin E after it has been oxidized.*
“Vitamin E can prevent parts of our cell membranes from becoming oxidized, but when it does so, it gets oxidized itself—meaning that the vitamin E molecules lose electrons. In order for the vitamin E molecular to become functional again, it needs an electron from somewhere. And it just so happens that vitamin C is a great electron donor,”* explains Michels.
As the most potent radical-scavenging, fat-soluble antioxidant, vitamin E plays a big part in balancing oxidative stress, stabilizing the membrane and overall structure of the cell, and supporting immune response. In other words, we need vitamin E, which means we also need the regeneration support that vitamin C offers.*
The takeaway.
When it comes to living a long, healthy life, vitamin C is a fantastic nutrient to have on your side. With its antioxidant power, role in vitamin E regeneration, and overall support of oxidative balance, vitamin C is an essential vitamin you certainly want to maintain sufficient levels of.*
If you’re in the market for a vitamin C supplement that will meet your unique health needs, check out our Power Mall Products of Interest:
GARDENING, FARMING & HOMESTEADING
Curious About Beekeeping? Here’s What It Actually Takes To Get Started
After a season of struggling to grow her vegetable garden, Mika Hardison was in the market for some buzzy allies. That’s when the bees came in.
“I knew that I needed to find a way to increase pollination, which was going to make my yields jump up. And so that’s what interested me in beekeeping,” Hardison tells mbg from her Jacksonville, Florida home. What started as a desire to grow more cucumbers and squash quickly bloomed into a passion for pollinators, and Hardison now oversees multiple apiaries under her urban farming company, The Herban Bee.
For Hardison, beekeeping has become a way to grow fresh food for her family, connect to nature, and teach others how to achieve their own self-sufficient garden to combat food insecurity. Clearly, bees can bring myriad benefits to your yard. Keeping them, however, is a commitment, so we asked Hardison about the beekeeping basics that everyone should know before building their first hive.
- You’ll need to check on your local guidelines before getting started.
In the U.S., each state has its own regulations on beekeeping, Hardison explains. Whether it’s registering your hive with the government, leaving enough room between your hive and your neighbor’s property, or guaranteeing that your bees have their own water supply, these are rules you’ll need to abide by on your beekeeping journey.
It’s also worth checking in with any close neighbors to make sure they’ll be OK with the extra pollinators, just in case!
- Seek support from the beginning.
When Hardison first got started, she’d attend group meetings at her local beekeepers association. While this provided her with valuable early exposure to bees, she considers one-on-one mentorship more helpful for the complete beginner—as you’ll likely have a ton of questions. “Somebody who has had that experience already is just a great resource,” she says.
Whether you find a beekeeper in your area or connect with one on social media (Hardison’s DMs are open!), you’ll be happy you did.
- Know the basics of your hive.
While it doesn’t require a ton in the way of supplies, beekeeping is definitely more complicated than putting some bees in a box. You’ll want to make sure you have a solid setup before you order your first colony. The typical hive contains a hive stand, one to two bottom layers called a brood chamber (where your bees live), a queen excluder (a barrier that keeps the queen bee from laying eggs in the hive’s honey), and at least one honey super (where the honey goes!).
Hardison enjoys the freedom and flexibility of designing her own hive, but you can also shell out for fancier pre-built hives like the Flow Hive, which you can read all about here. While you can’t expand and adjust these hives as needed, they make the honey extraction process a lot easier. (More on that below!).
- Choose your bee format.
There are two main ways to get your (bee suit-protected) hands on thousands of bees at once. First, you can buy a bee package from a company like Mann Lake or Dadant. These screened boxes filled with a queen bee and her started colony get delivered right to your door. However, Hardison notes, it’ll take a while for your bees to acclimate to your hive and start building out frames of honey in their new home. “With that route, you’re probably not going to get honey the first year,” she says.
The other option is to connect with a beekeeper in your area and ask if they have any “nucs” for sale. A nuc, short for nucleus colony, is a starter hive that bees have already built out. “Those are not just a box with bees in it; they’re actual frames with brood, pollen, nectar, eggs, larva, everything,” Hardison says. So while a nuc may be a little bit harder to find, it’ll let you start cultivating honey much faster, likely within a few months.
- Decide how to extract your liquid gold.
Honey flow season, when your hive’s super layer is full of sweet honey ready to be extracted, typically falls during the summer months. The traditional honey extraction process is somewhat labor-intensive: You need to remove the honey layer, brush off any bees on it, and run it through an extractor. These machines, which typically cost around $100 to $200 will forcefully remove the honey from its frame, after which it can be processed and stored.
The benefit of shelling out for a Flow Hive ($600 to $1,000) is that these hives are designed with a built-in extractor system. When the time comes, you can just pull a lever and watch the honey flow out of your hive.
- Above all, be safe and treat the bees with respect.
The best beekeepers know what’s going on with their bees at all times. They are consistently monitoring their hives for issues like diseases, pest infestations, and bee death. And every time they do, they’re careful! Hardison notes that you’ll want to always use personal protective equipment when you’re inspecting your hives to minimize the risk of nasty stings. Remember: bees can get aggressive, so learning as much as you can about their needs is the best way to keep yourself and your hive safe.
And once you get the hang of tending to bees, the results can be really fruitful. Hardison now enjoys a garden filled to the brim with abundant flowers and produce, and a steady supply of fresh honey with flavor profiles that tell the story of her land. “For anyone that is interested in self-sustainability, with a very small space, you can grow enough food and harvest enough honey to completely supplement your family’s diet,” she says of the value of backyard beekeeping. “It’s a great way to keep more money in your household… And that produce and that honey is going to be way superior to anything that you’ll find in the grocery store.
The takeaway.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list, it tells you the basics of beekeeping and what starting your own hive actually entails. Moral of the story: If you’re willing to do your research, use proper equipment, and respect your bees, a pollinator-packed garden may be in your future.
COVID RELATED NEWS
Latest Bad News About COVID Vaccines
A previously healthy 36-year-old mother of two died 11 days after receiving a Pfizer COVID-19 shot; her death was deemed to be caused by myocarditis due to the shot
Emergency calls for cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome increased more than 25% among 16- to 39-year-olds from January to May 2021, compared to the same time period in 2019 and 2020
Pfizer deliberately excluded pregnant women from COVID-19 shot trials; the recommendation that the shots are safe and effective for pregnant women was based on a 42-day study involving 44 rats
Research conducted by the New York State Department of Health found the shots’ effectiveness declined rapidly among 5- to 11-year-olds, falling from 68% to just 12%
Considering the adverse effects and lack of effectiveness, many have called for an immediate withdrawal of the shots
PEOPLE NEWS
Teen Bagger Pays for Struggling Grandma’s $137 Grocery Bill, Says ‘Something Told Me To’
A teen grocery bagger felt compelled to pick up the bill for a struggling grandmother when she fell short of cash at the checkout. After learning of the massive impact her kind deed had, she’s now sharing her story in hopes of prompting others to be kind, too.
Texas A&M University student Maria Balboa, 19, had been working at an H-E-B grocery store for less than two months when an older Hispanic woman and two children approached her checkout on March 28.
“At the time, I didn’t know they were her grandkids,” Maria told The Epoch Times. “She was using a SNAP [government assistance] card to pay for the groceries, and it stated it only had $19 left on it.”
Hearing this, the woman was completely unaware and shocked to know that she had only that much money left on her card.
“She said she would have to put all the groceries back, besides a few items for dinner,” Maria said.
Maria asked the cashier for the outstanding sum: it was $137.
“Immediately, something told me to pay for the groceries,” she said, despite that the sum was a stretch for her. “l felt something telling me to pay, and it wouldn’t stop.
“My heart hurt for this woman, and especially the two kids. I wanted them to have groceries.”
Initially, the woman was embarrassed and reluctant to accept help, but Maria insisted, settled the bill, and bagged the groceries, which included bread, butter, fruit, a rotisserie chicken, and snacks for the kids.
After paying the woman’s bill, Maria went on with her day and never expected to hear from her again. She also didn’t tell anyone about this encounter, since she was just happy to have helped someone.
However, a few days later, unbeknownst to Maria, the grateful customer had sent in a survey to her bosses.
“I got called into the office; I thought I was in trouble, but no, they said someone wrote a survey about me,” Maria said. “I thought it was a bad one at first until he told me it was from the lady whose groceries I paid for.”
“She explained that she had taken in her two grandkids when they were left by their mother,” Maria said. “This was why money had been tight for her, and she had to take a lower-paying job so they wouldn’t go into the foster care system. She thanked me for my kindness that day, because it really helped her out.”
Maria’s managers were tearful and praised the grocery bagger for her heart, she said, and then she listened in shock as they told her they were reimbursing her the $137 and gave her a gift basket to show their appreciation.
The helpful college student said the impact of her kind deed hit her on the way home that day, and she couldn’t hold back her tears.
She then shared the story and the survey on Facebook, reaching thousands of supportive netizens. Amid praise for Maria, the grateful grandmother had written, “God put this young lady at [the] bagging area for us.”
100-Year-Old Man Breaks World Record for ‘Longest Career in the Same Company,’ Shares Life Lesson
As folks working lifetime job tenures go the way of the dinosaurs, one man in Brazil — who just turned 100 — recently claimed the world record for the “longest career in the same company.”
Walter Orthmann has been working at ReneauxView in Santa Catarina state for 84 years and 9 days, Guinness World Records verified on Jan. 6, 2022.
His “passion, discipline, and commitment” motivated him to keep plugging away, doing what he loves, for the last eight-plus decades, the organization stated.
Orthmann’s impressive, longevous career began on Jan. 17, 1938, when at the age of 15 he started working as a shipping assistant at a textile company (then called Industrias Renaux S.A.). According to Guinness, he was always very enthusiastic about learning new things and quickly rose up through the company.
Born in the small town of Brusque, home to a large German population, in his early years he walked to school barefooted, rain or shine, mud or frost, propelled by a tenacity to learn.
He was an exceptional student with a brilliant memory and paid attention to detail; but due to financial strains, he went to work with his mother at a weaving mill where he was hired because of his proficiency in German. He’s been working there ever since.
“Back in 1938, kids were expected to work to help support the family,” Orthmann told Guinness. “As the oldest son of five, my mother took me to find a job at the age of 14.”
He showed exceptional willingness to learn and went above and beyond to perform his duty. He was soon promoted to a position in sales and later became a successful sales manager.
“I was given the opportunity to work as a salesperson,” he said. “I traveled to São Paulo and in less than one week I filled the production with orders equivalent of three month of work.”
A sense of “purpose, commitment, and a routine” are the best parts of having a job, he shared. It also gave him the chance to travel and establish good relationships with clients, who became friends. In the 1950s, he traveled across the country, meeting folks from different places and cultures.
“When we do what we like, we don’t see the time go by,” he said.
Orthmann turned 100 years old on April 19, 2022, and celebrated his centenary with co-workers, friends, and family.
Today, he remains in good health, having excellent mental clarity and memory, Guinness reported. He exercises daily, which helps him maintain enough vigor to drive to the place he finds most meaningful every day — the office.
What working in the same career for over eight decades has taught him about life is to live in the moment.
“I don’t do much planning, nor care much about tomorrow,” he shared. “All I care about is that tomorrow will be another day in which I will wake up, get up, exercise and go to work; you need to get busy with the present, not the past or the future. Here and now is what counts. So, let’s go to work!”
The centenarian actually broke his own previous record of 81 years and 85 days, which he set in 2019.
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