Important Takeaways:
- Fury as Columbia University protesters stage insurrection-like takeover of Hamilton Hall after ignoring deadline to leave encampment…but will they be arrested?
- A group of anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University have seized the historic Hamilton Hall, smashing windows, unfurling an intifada banner, and are refusing to leave, with their actions being compared to the January 6 insurrection.
- Protestors stormed and occupied the building on the main campus of the Manhattan University after smashing their way into the school.
- The occupation came nearly 12 hours after the deadline of 2pm on Monday for protestors to leave their protest encampment or face suspension.
- Due to the takeover, the school issued a stay away notice for members of staff telling them to avoid the Morningside campus on Tuesday morning.
- Since footage of the takeover was shared on social media, users have been comparing the scenes to that of the January 6 riots in 2021 when Donald Trump supporters overran the US Capitol.
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Important Takeaways:
- AstraZeneca admits for first time its Covid vaccine CAN cause rare side effect in tense legal fight with victims of ‘defective’ jab
- AstraZeneca has admitted in court for the first time that its Covid jab can cause a deadly blood clotting side effect.
- The exceedingly rare reaction is at the heart of a multi-million-pound class action by dozens of families who allege they, or their loved ones, were maimed or killed by the pharmaceutical titan’s ‘defective’ vaccine.
- Lawyers representing the claimants believe some of the cases could be worth up to £20m in compensation.
- Cambridge-based AstraZeneca, which is contesting the claims, acknowledged in a legal document submitted to the High Court in February that its vaccine ‘can, in very rare cases, cause TTS’.
- TTS is short for thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome – a medical condition where a person suffers blood clots along with a low platelet count. Platelets typically help the blood to clot.
- AstraZeneca’s admission could lead to pay-outs on a case-by-case basis.
- Although accepted as a potential side effect for two years, it marks the first time the company has admitted in court that its jab can cause the condition, The Telegraph reports.
- Taxpayers will foot the bill of any potential settlement because of an indemnity deal AstraZeneca struck with the Government in the darkest days of Covid to get the jabs produced as quickly as possible while the country was paralyzed by lockdowns.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli Leaders Could Face War Crimes Charges as White House Pushes Hostage-Ceasefire Deal
- President Biden has again told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the White House opposes Israel’s planned invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah.
- Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Saudi Arabia for the first leg of a Mideast tour to lobby for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages in Gaza.
- White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told ABC, “That’s going to be right at the top of the list for Secretary Blinken to keep pushing for this temporary ceasefire. We want it to last for about six weeks. It would allow for all those hostages to get out, and of course to allow for easier aid access to places in Gaza, particularly up in the north.”
- The website Axios reports the Israeli government has proposed a possible hostage deal with Hamas that includes discussing an end to fighting in exchange for the hostages.
- Hamas reportedly has no objections to the deal and is sending a delegation to Cairo.
- While ending the war has been a key Hamas demand, right-wing party members of Israel’s governing coalition have threatened to leave if it agrees to what they call a “reckless deal.”
- Today Hamas took credit for launching about 20 rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. The IDF says they were all intercepted.
- Thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday, demanding the release of the hostages and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, after a Hamas propaganda video showed two Israeli hostages in captivity: 47-year-old Israeli Omri Miran and Israeli American Keith Siegel, who said, “I want to tell my family that I love you very much.” He then begins to weep during his message.
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Important Takeaways:
- Philadelphia-based Republic First Bank (doing business as Republic Bank) was closed today by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect depositors, the FDIC entered into an agreement with Fulton Bank, National Association of Lancaster, Pennsylvania to assume substantially all of the deposits and purchase substantially all of the assets of Republic Bank.
- Republic Bank’s 32 branches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York will reopen as branches of Fulton Bank on Saturday (for branches with normal Saturday hours) or on Monday during normal business hours. This evening and over the weekend, depositors of Republic Bank can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on Republic Bank will continue to be processed and loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.
- As of January 31, 2024, Republic Bank had approximately $6 billion in total assets and $4 billion in total deposits. The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) related to the failure of Republic Bank will be $667 million. The FDIC determined that compared to other alternatives, Fulton Bank’s acquisition of Republic Bank is the least costly resolution for the DIF, an insurance fund created by Congress in 1933 and managed by the FDIC to protect the deposits at the nation’s banks. Republic Bank is the first U.S. bank failure this year; the last failure was Citizens Bank, Sac City, Iowa on November 3, 2023.
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Important Takeaways:
- AI is used to compose music, suggests recipes and make investment decisions, but a company has designed a system that can edit human genes.
- California-based Profluent Bio developed a system capable of creating a range of bespoke cures for disease by developing molecules that have never existed in nature.
- com spoke to Ali Madani, CEO of Profluent Bio, who said the AI-made gene editors have been tested in human cells, which demonstrated high levels of functionality while not editing unintended sites in the DNA.
- The AI was trained on a database of 5.1 million CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins, allowing it to create potential molecules that could be used in gene editing.
- The system then narrowed down the results to four million sequences, allowing it to identify the gene editor the team named OpenCRISPR-1.
- Experiments showed OpenCRISPR-1 performed as well as Cas proteins, but it also reduced the impact on off-target sites by 95 percent.
- AI was at the heart of this achievement. We trained large language models (LLMs) on massive scale evolutionary sequences and biological context,’ Madani said.
- ‘Our vision is to move biology from being constrained by what can be achieved in nature to being able to use AI to design new medicines precisely according to our needs.’
- The company believes that AI can work as an ‘interpreter to decode the language of life.’
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Important Takeaways:
- Tornados leave trail of destruction as 4 injured, hundreds of homes damaged
- There were 83 reports of tornadoes across five states in Friday’s storms.
- The multi-day tornado outbreak continued Saturday, with powerful storms expected from Texas to the Great Lakes.
- There is a chance for strong long-track tornadoes as well as very large hail up to 3 inches in diameter and thunderstorm winds up to 80 mph.
- In Iowa, four people were injured Friday and approximately 120 structures were damaged after severe weather…
- Severe damage was also reported across eastern Nebraska, including Douglas County, where hundreds of homes were damaged in the Omaha area Friday.
- One tornado emergency was issued for Knox City, Texas, where a large and damaging tornado was reported near the town. Baseball-sized hail was also reported with this tornadic storm.
- Damaging winds, huge hail, and long-track tornadoes are all in the cards, especially in Kansas, Oklahoma and northeast Texas. Overall, there is a severe weather threat stretching across the central U.S. from Canada to Mexico.
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Important Takeaways:
- China attack on Taiwan ‘imminent’ as island warned invasion coming ‘before end of 2024’
- China won’t listen to the US’ demands and will stop at nothing to take Taiwan back by force, a defense expert has told Daily Express US.
- …according to Brandon Weichert, a National Security Analyst from The National Interest, who says China is dead set on its goal of retaking Taiwan.
- He said: “China will not listen [to the US], especially because I remain convinced that Beijing is readying to strike Taiwan soon–possibly as early as this fall.
- “They don’t care what the Americans say anymore.”
- According to Mr. Weichert, China refuses to listen as it is obsessed with controlling the region.
- He said: “China under Xi Jinping is deeply committed to reshaping the world system away from the maritime democracies of the US-led Western order and toward the continental autocracies of the China-led Eurasian order.”
- But Beijing Xi appeared to take a friendly tone as he sat down with Blinken amid the surging tensions.
- The Chinese President reportedly called for mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, describing these as the “three major principles” for US-China relations.
- He reportedly said: “[The two countries] should make achievements for each other, not do harm to each other.”
- But Beijing has not responded well to US’ stance on Taiwan, calling the issue “the first insurmountable red line” in relations between the two powers.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia has warned that Poland will make itself a ‘priority target’ if it hosts NATO nuclear weapons on its territory. In a Thursday statement Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said “Moves in this direction will not provide greater security (for Poland or other nations that host such weapons).” He was further quoted in Russian media as saying:
- Moscow considers any expansion of NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement as “deeply destabilizing” in nature, “and in fact threatening” Russia, Ryabkov was quoted as saying by TASS on Thursday. This applies to joint missions, where non-nuclear members of the US-led bloc are trained to use American hardware, and even more so to the permanent stationing of such weapons “which hotheads in Warsaw are talking about,” he said.
- In follow-up, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stipulated that “any nuclear weapons deployed to Poland would be legitimate targets in the event of war with the alliance.” Russian media translations said Moscow would see this as a “priority target”.
- While three NATO members are officially nuclear weapons states – the United States, France and the United Kingdom – others are authorized to host nukes (typically ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons). They are Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
- Apparently, Poland is now throwing its name in the hat for NATO’s nuclear-sharing program, which would expand Western nuke placement right up to Russia’s backyard.
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Important Takeaways:
- US Campuses: Incubating Terrorism
- Some of the signs say “pro-Palestine”, “ceasefire now” and “end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world’s leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Even if there were a unilateral ceasefire, accompanied by massive humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, many of these protests would continue, because Gaza is merely an excuse for a much wider agenda: to destroy Israel and destroy America.
- One never sees a sign calling for a two-state solution or for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. These are not the goals. What is demanded is the end of any Jewish presence in the Middle East. “Death to America,” similarly, means the end of America’s influence and Western values.
- Many of the signs call for “revolution.” These are not directed against Israel, but rather against America, American Jews and all other Western democracies.
- As in the 1960s, many of these students are being groomed to be the terrorists of the future — in the manner of Kathy Boudin and Bernardine Dohrn back then – and, in the United States, a fifth column, the aim of which is taking down America.
- That these useful idiots are young does not make them less dangerous. Young students were instrumental in bringing to power tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot and Mao.
- Where are the armed guards escorting Jewish students to class, as there were escorting the threatened Black youths to integrated school in the 1960s in the South?
- Universities are failing not only their Jewish students but all their students by refusing to educate them about what behavior is acceptable and what is not.
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Important Takeaways:
- George Soros is PAYING left-wing activists to head up camp outs at colleges across America – as huge wads of cash they’re getting are shared
- Multiple leaders of the anti-Israel protests at college campuses across the nation have been revealed to be paid fellows of George Soros-connected groups.
- Three of the major figures in the pro-Palestine encampments in universities are fellows at the Soros-funded US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the New York Post reports.
- USCPR ‘community-based’ fellows are paid up to $7,800 for their labor, while ‘campus-based’ fellows are given between $2,880 and $3,660 for spending eight hours a week organizing ‘campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.’
- The organization instructs its fellows to ‘rise up’ and spark ‘revolution,’ while specifically telling them to reject ‘reform.’
- It has received at least $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017.
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