badgerx16

Mad Nad is at it again; the Minister for Culture Media and Sport said that the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham are the biggest event in the UK since the 2012 Olympics, which has pissed off Glasgow, which hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

No. What they are saying is correct, Putin's megalomania is driving Russia to restore it's Tsarist borders. The fact that Russia's military is severely underperforming won't detract from his ambition. He is getting ever closer to an impersonation of Hitler in his bunker in April 1945, ordering 'ghost' divisions around, which exist on the Heer Order of Battle, but can no longer muster a Colour Party.

When he appeared more recently in Dr Who as Donna's grandfather he wore his own Parachute Regiment badge on his character's wooly hat. As a much younger actor he was appearing in a supporting role in a production of MacBeth where real swords were being used. The actor in the title role was stabbed to death in the final fight with MacDuff.

What is the worst thing to hear in a nuclear laboratory ? "Ooops !"

Brass

Don't the Department of Transport run 3 passengerfranchises at the moment anyway ? Shows that the franchise system doesn't work.

A midget pschic escaped from Police custody. They put out a radio message "There's a small medium at large".

That is one of the most horrific videos I have ever tried to watch.

catcher

They'll be fuelling their solid fuel missiles with coal soon.

He is an overtly anti-US propagandist with a history of promoting pro-Russian stories, and among other things denies that the Chinese are oppressing the Uighurs.

I am not denying the possibility of a lab accident, I don't think we will ever know for certain, and the SCIENCE articles linked previously don't, to me, smell of a cover up.

SARS-Covid-2, whilst predominantly found in bats, has also been found in dogs, cats, pigs, mink, and ferrets, among others. Some of these are probably transmission from humans to other host species, but there is evidence for dogs acting as an intermediate host and passing it on to humans. I don't think we will ever know with absolute certainty the truth about how it moved to human hosts, lab release or market, but it certainly is not bio-engineered.

Or it was zoonotically transmitted from another species to humans. This is quite normal, as for instance influenza migrated from water fowl.

Never had you down as owning a tin foil hat.

The women's cricket team did before playing South Africa.

Nature 'created' the virus, it has been around in mammalian populations for centuries. It was not released from a laboratory.

https://bitterwinter.org/donbass-did-ukraine-kill-14000-pro-russians/ https://www.rferl.org/a/death-toll-up-to-13-000-in-ukraine-conflict-says-un-rights-office/29791647.html As for the statement that Russian civilans in Donbas were ' butchered' by Ukraine, unfortunately there has been a state of war in the region since 2014, and regardless of whether Russia or Ukraine is to blame for starting it, there have been both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian civilian casualties there - civil wars are the biggest bastard version of warfare. A lot of Ukrainians did indeed welcome the Wermacht in 1941, they viewed them as liberators from the Bolshevik USSR, and some later joined the Waffen SS. ( Many others soon regretted welcoming the Germans ). However, there were also French, Dutch, Belgian, Bosnian, and many other nationalities and ethnicities in the Waffen SS, it wasn't a uniquely Ukrainian fetish. Europe at that time was rife with Facist leaning nationalist groups, we even had the Black Shirts in the UK, and these tendencies continue to this day, again not something unique to any one country. And why should the fact that Zelensky's first language is Russian be a surprise, he was born in the USSR, and spent time outside Ukraine as his father moved around various universities. He spent some of his earliest years living in Mongolia, in a Russian speaking academic community.

You need to experiment with a virus in order to develop a vaccine; some vaccinations use whole inert virions, others, like the COVID vaccine, only use a part of the virus - in this case the 'spike protein' by which the virus attaches to cell membranes. Understanding how the virus works is as important as decoding it's structure.

Touch

How many of thoise complaining voted to leave the EU ? It seems that people are surprised that other countries also like to express their sovereignty.

I bet the issue of doubling up regulations won't come into the Tory leadership debate.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62307383 "Scientists say there is "compelling evidence" that Wuhan's Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak. Two peer-reviewed studies published on Tuesday re-examine information from the initial outbreak in the Chinese city. One of the studies shows that the earliest known cases were clustered around that market. The other uses genetic information to track the timing of the outbreak. It suggests there were two variants introduced into humans in November or early December 2019." https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715 "Understanding how severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in 2019 is critical to preventing zoonotic outbreaks before they become the next pandemic. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, was identified as a likely source of cases in early reports but later this conclusion became controversial. We show the earliest known COVID-19 cases from December 2019, including those without reported direct links, were geographically centered on this market. We report that live SARS-CoV-2 susceptible mammals were sold at the market in late 2019 and, within the market, SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental samples were spatially associated with vendors selling live mammals. While there is insufficient evidence to define upstream events, and exact circumstances remain obscure, our analyses indicate that the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 occurred via the live wildlife trade in China, and show that the Huanan market was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic." https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 "Understanding the circumstances that lead to pandemics is important for their prevention. Here, we analyze the genomic diversity of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) early in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We show that SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity before February 2020 likely comprised only two distinct viral lineages, denoted A and B. Phylodynamic rooting methods, coupled with epidemic simulations, reveal that these lineages were the result of at least two separate cross-species transmission events into humans. The first zoonotic transmission likely involved lineage B viruses around 18 November 2019 (23 October–8 December), while the separate introduction of lineage A likely occurred within weeks of this event. These findings indicate that it is unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 circulated widely in humans prior to November 2019 and define the narrow window between when SARS-CoV-2 first jumped into humans and when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported. As with other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 emergence likely resulted from multiple zoonotic events."

Our innings has been almost a mirror image of the Tykes' one. Now we have a lead, can we get a batting point ?