Anonymous shuts down Dark Web sites for hosting Child Porn
It is a widely-known fact that Anonymous is a dedicated group that always targets and attacks service providers, organizations and institution that somehow negate or violate human rights.
So, when Anonymous got a hint about the child porn services on the Dark Web, there was bound to be some fireworks.
The Anonymous-affiliated hacker group has managed to take down the Freedom Hosting II servers affecting more than 10,000 child pornography and drugs dealing websites.
It must be noted that Freedom Hosting II is regarded as one of the largest hosting services on the Dark Web with hosting rights of around 20% of all the sites on this underground platform.
According to researcher Sarah J Lewis, the websites bear the domain .onion and therefore, can be accessed through Tor browser. The stolen information includes email ID’s of more than 380,000 users.
The Freedom Hosting II databases were stolen and the websites being hosted by the service were defaced.
Hackers demanded ransom in exchange for the data although a small amount of data had already been leaked online on another website that was being hosted through the Tor network.
The information was revealed by Troy Hunt, the owner of breach notification website HaveIBeenPwned.
Anonymous also posted a message informing users that all the data has been copied and dumped online. This includes 74 GB of files and 2.3 GB database.
It was also noted in the message that the data dump also includes private keys. Furthermore, the dumped data includes plain text emails, usernames and hashed passwords.
The only reason behind the targeting of this hosting service was that Anonymous is strictly against facilitating or offering child pornography.
The hacktivists associated with Anonymous or any other associated groups show zero tolerance when it comes to child porn.
As per the hackers, more than half of the files hosted by Freedom Hosting II servers were linked to child porn. Since child pornography is illegal, therefore, Anonymous believes that it has carried out a social service by attacking the server.
However, this is not the first time when Anonymous has done something like this. In 2015, the hacktivists shut down world’s largest x-rated animal abuse forum and also deleted several animal abuse websites from the Internet.
Hack Read. com / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
China offers EU a way out to escape Economic Bankruptcy
Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping has concluded his European tour. While the Western press accuses him of seeking to drive a wedge within the EU, what were his primary objectives?
Chairman Xi Jinping visited France, Serbia, and Hungary during his five-day tour of Europe, with a focus on trade, investments, and promoting a new multi-polar vision of global politics.
Xi’s meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen coincided with a looming trade war between the EU and China, as well as the bloc’s attempts to force Beijing to exert pressure on Russia over its special military operation in Ukraine.
The Chinese leader hasn’t shifted his stance towards Moscow, whereas the EU has continued to accuse the People’s Republic of what it calls unfair trade practices.
Nonetheless, China and France agreed to enhance cooperation in agricultural-food, finance, aviation, civil nuclear energy and other fields, as well as reiterate their commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
The trade war has no obvious easy resolution. Von der Leyen said that China should reduce its production and exports to help EU manufacturing and she wants a more balanced trade with greater access for European products to the Chinese market.
However, the EU will also have to be more competitive to redress the imbalance. Otherwise, protectionism is the only way to revive and stimulate EU productivity.
The Serbian capital of Belgrade was the next leg of Xi’s trip. The Chinese leader met with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on May 8 in his second visit former Yugoslavia in eight years.
In 2016, China and Serbia signed a joint statement on the Establishment of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, whereas eight years later, the two agreed to build a community with a shared future that was called an upgrade of relations between Belgrade
and Beijing by the Chinese press. Serbia is the first European country – and an EU membership candidate – to ink an agreement on a shared future with China.
In addition, Xi announced that a Free Trade Agreement with Serbia will come into force on July 1 with China expanding imports of agricultural products from the Balkan state.
The two countries agreed to increase mutual settlements in local currencies with their central banks embarking on inking a clearing agreement in yuan to bolster bilateral cooperation.
Belgrade also signaled that it is interested in keeping part of its foreign reserves in yuan.
The Western press was quick to criticize Serbia for cozening-up with China and joining Beijing’s effort to build a coalition that challenges the US-led world order.
Xi’s decision to conclude his European tour in Hungary and meet with Prime Minister Viktor Orban stirred even greater annoyance in the mainstream media.
Despite governing a country that has been a member of the European Union for 20 years, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban identifies more closely with Xi than with his peers in the bloc.
Orban and Xi had much to talk about, given that China is seeking to make Hungary a new electronic vehicle (EV) production hub. Major Chinese car manufacturer Great Wall Motor (GWM) is due to build its first European plant near the Hungarian city of Pécs.
Another Chinese industrial giant, BYD, is going to open its first European electric car factory in Szeged, Hungary, to produce an estimated 200,000 electric cars and plug-in hybrids a year.
Szeged Television’s news claimed earlier this year that production could start in the second half of 2025. Remarkably, Szeged is located close to the Hungarian border with Serbia.
Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), a Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company, likewise invested over €7 billion ($7.5 billion) in a 100-gigawatt battery plant in Debrecen, the capital of Hungary’s Northern Great Plain region.
Orban announced that China was investing 6,400 billion forints (€16.5 billion) in Hungary during a joint press conference with Xi on May 9, 2024.
By making Hungary an EV hub within Europe, China would get access to the bloc’s market amid the European Commission’s efforts to slap huge tariffs on Chinese EV’s?
Politico admitted, however, that the proposed tariffs that range from 15 to 30 percent, are unlikely to render Chinese carmakers uncompetitive, given their cost-effective production methods and strong supply chains.
China sees Hungary, a transportation hub in the heart of Eastern Europe, as an important partner because PM Orban’s government is not following EU policies and is committed to keeping strong relations with Russia, China, and other Eastern countries.
Hungary has a strong scientific and industrial tradition, ancient Eastern cultural and political connections, a reliable labor force, and does not wish to fall deeper into the orbit of Germany like the rest of ‘Mitteleuropa’.
Budapest’s desire for neutrality makes it a desirable partner at a time when Switzerland has all but in name given up its neutrality.
While Hungary’s upcoming presidency of the EU won’t give Hungary much power to make other European states change their policies towards China.
But, the increasingly visible decline of the USA and Western European powers might prompt the European bloc to improve ties with Beijing, according to the expert.
Xi’s European tour offered an alternative path for the EU to boost its growth by strengthening economic development agreements with Beijing and reopening trans-Eurasian trade corridors.
Hungary can become, together with Serbia (which has just entered into a wide-ranging partnership with the PRC) and other Balkan and Visegrad nations a trailblazer in that direction.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Offshore Wind Turbine Parks endanger Maritime Life & Shipping Safety
Wind turbine farms are deliberately positioned off major shipping routes but this is bound to raise concerns in an industry that is ramping up installations around the globe, while most accidents are censored by the mainstream media.
One could say that the larger the wind farms grow, the less space is left for navigation, the director of the Federal Bureau of Maritime Casualty Investigation in Germany told Maritime Journal.
Furthermore, the traffic of offshore supply vessels will increase as well. More traffic and less space may lead to a greater risk. Time will tell.
Dutch maritime research institute MARIN tested three innovative barriers aimed at averting collisions between ships and wind turbines. The research was prompted by the incident involving the Julietta D on 31 January, 2022
This drifting bulk carrier initially collided with a tanker before hitting a transformer platform and a turbine foundation for the Hollandse Kust Zuid windfarm currently under construction.
A collision with an installed wind turbine carries a real risk of the turbine toppling onto the vessel, seriously endangering crew, passengers, the ship itself and the environment.
Some 2500 wind turbines are set to be installed on the North Sea in the period to 2030, taking the risk of a turbine being hit by a ship to around 1.5 to 2.5 times a year, research1 by the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) for the Dutch government shows.
To give an idea: vessels going adrift on the North Sea number around eighty each year.
Accidents can be avoided in various ways: drifting vessels can put down their anchors, for example. But this requires active intervention by the ship’s crew in often difficult circumstances.
Alternatively, emergency towing vessels (ETV’s) can be deployed to tow the drifting ship to safety, while shipping supervision can be upgraded to include some form of vessel traffic management2.
The accident involving the Julietta D shows the real dangers posed by vessels adrift, says MARIN’s Traffic & Safety team leader Yvonne Koldenhof. Even with current resources such as ETV’s, it’s difficult to avoid these kinds of incidents.
The first concept involves a string of surface buoys secured by drag anchors. The second concept comprises a smart suspension net between fixed poles and the third is an anchored underwater hook line designed to catch the anchor of the drifting vessel.
The various concepts and all test results are being shared as an open innovation project to enable further development of the most promising concepts. The initiative has also sparked widespread international interest.
Representatives of the following Dutch maritime and offshore organizations were involved in this project: Heerema Marine Contractors, Boskalis, GustoMSC, Pinkster Marine Hydrodynamics, Huisman Equipment, Orca Offshore en SBM Offshore.
Maritime Professionals / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Nigeria bringing back the Zombie Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline
Nigeria’s oil industry has been confronted with a plethora of challenges, endless litigation, social unrest, majors regularly mulling a country exit, and all this against the background of a genuine societal demand to make oil revenues more equitable, more accessible and transparent for the Nigerians themselves.
The recently adopted Petroleum Bill might be utilized to the resuscitation of NNPC, the soon-to-be full-blown national oil company, or the restart of the country’s idled refineries, there is every reason to believe that Nigeria might mis-allocate the solid momentum that it currently has.
The Trans-Saharan gas pipeline is essentially composed of two separate projects, one that would link the country’s gas-rich south to the populous areas of the north and one that would see Nigeria’s gas being exported to generate much-needed currency.
Considering the socio-economical importance of the intra-Nigerian conduit, especially so that President Buhari hails from the north, construction works on the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano pipeline (often abbreviated as AKK) started last year so the idea was really about finding a potential continuation thereof.
The public utterances of Nigeria’s Oil Minister Timipre Sylva insinuate concerns with regards to the entire pipeline’s viability, having stated that if the federal government “can get it to Kano, it can (just as well) continue all the way to Algeria”, insinuating that the government sees even the intra-Nigerian pipeline section as fraught with risks.
The reasons for Nigeria to push for such projects is fairly straightforward, Africa’s most populous country is well-endowed with oil and gas reserves, however the intra-national allocation of those hydrocarbons is oftentimes shaky as half of the populace lacks stable power supply.
Crudely put, Nigeria would be much better off if it could extract and market its gas reserves which heretofore were mostly either flared or just left undeveloped.
Needless to say, the lost revenue from burning away natural gas is massive, estimated by Price Waterhouse Coopers to total $0.8-1 billion on average per year.
The Nigerian government estimates its own gas reserves at 203 TCf (5.85 TCm), meaning that roughly 3% of global gas reserves are located in Nigeria and most of them have heretofore been flared.
At the same time, Nigeria’s nationwide consumption stands at around 700 BCf per year (slightly below 20 BCm), equivalent to 40% of the country’s total output.
The reasons why the Trans-Saharan Pipeline is sub-commercial are plentiful, yet it is always worth it to reiterate the main arguments.
First and foremost, there is almost no way Nigeria can guarantee the security of the pipeline all the way through the territory of Niger and southern Algeria, a region as impossible to control as one can only get through.
Nigeria cannot even properly control its own territory with the CIA backed Boko Haram insurgency remaining an ever-present threat after more than 12 years.
Second, the pipeline was initiated when gas prices were still predominantly pegged to oil prices and has not been dovetailed to the realities of today’s gas trading.
Third, even in the 2000’s the pipeline’s price tag was assumed to be north of $20 billion; with NNPC as strained as a national oil company can get, funding for such an adventurous endeavor would be allowed to come from the Zionist oil giants.
The strained financial stature of NNPC brings us to the fourth weakness of the Trans-Saharan Pipeline, but its reliance on Chinese financing could change that.
Nigerian authorities understand well enough that they need external sources of funding – that is why the Nigerian section of the pipeline was to be financed by the Bank of China and Sinosure, the two reportedly committing $2.6 billion towards the project.
This has prompted NNPC to start working on the AKK pipeline, presenting it as new form of a debt-equity financing model that could render it economically viably, yet the Chinese help never arrived.
Media reports emerging lately seems to insinuate that Chinese financial institutions do not want to expose themselves too much with such a risky endeavor and NNPC has started seeking out other potential project partners to keep the ball rolling.
At the same time, the Algerian-Nigerian relationship can hardly be described as cloudless.
In the late-2000’s Algerian officials even went as far as to ask NNPC to prove its gas reserves, demanding a third-party assessment which, of course, was not received very well by Algeria’s Yar’Adua administration.
Nigeria simultaneously launching the same project towards two potential partner countries, Morocco and Algeria. The two nations had a very strained relationship, aggravated by a long-standing dispute over the future of Western Sahara.
Its main problem is the incongruity between whatever is written in official documents, policy papers and government manifestos implemented by bribing Western oil companies which control the reality of corrupted day-to-day operations.
Oil Price.com / ABC Flash Point OPEC News 2021.
Europe will eventually have to choose between the USA and BRICS
The days when an external power dominated Eurasia are coming to an end. Countries in the far west of the continent will soon need to wake up and make choice.
Just two decades ago, for the first time ever, the great continent of Eurasia was dominated by one power – which, as it happened, wasn’t even Eurasian itself.
Indeed, in the continent’s West, NATO, led by the USA, was going through a Big Bang expansion, admitting seven new members between the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Adriatic.
US-inspired and -supported color revolutions, first in Georgia and then in Ukraine, were pointing to the next candidates to join the alliance. In the south of Eurasia, the United States, having invaded Iraq, was ruling the region supreme from Baghdad.
Having routed the Afghan Taliban, US forces were also entrenched in Kabul, supported as they were by military bases in the neighboring Central Asian nations, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Of Eurasia’s own premier powers, China was happily integrating into the global economy, where the Washington consensus was still law; India was shedding the last vestiges of Fabian socialism, and ready to embrace globalization.
This logically prioritized relations with America. As Russia, recovering from the economic, social and technological collapse that resulted from the downfall of the Soviet Union, was still hoping to build strategic partnerships with the USA and NATO.
American power was at its peak; Washington literally had the world in its hands.
Alas, the USA, the only power in world history to achieve the position of a global hegemon while unchallenged by any other major player, has miserably misused its mightily strong hand – and its vaunted soft power.
Rather than setting out to organize a genuine multi-polar system based on mutual recognition of each nation’s core interests, with itself, at least initially, as a primus inter pares (which would be Franklin D Roosevelt’s method), it proceeded to enhance its exclusive and comprehensive dominance.
Washington was pushing Russia ever harder with each step in NATO’s creeping enlargement to the east; it wrecked arms control with Moscow and the nuclear deal with Tehran; and it continued to constantly provoke China over Taiwan – while launching a trade and technology war against Beijing to hamstring its prime economic competitor.
In the meantime, Russia, India and China – the three leading non-Western countries in Eurasia, as well as many of the continent’s other important independent players, continued to rise economically, as well as consolidate their cooperation.
In purchasing-power terms, they currently represent, respectively, the fourth-, -third, and the top largest economies in the world.
For about a decade, China has been also promoting its massive Belt and Road Initiative; India began exploring and then expanding its world role; and Russia, with four other former Soviet republics, built a Eurasian Economic Union.
Moscow, Beijing, and Delhi, along with Brasilia, became the founding members of BRICS.
This year, at the BRICS summit in Russia’s Kazan, the group will for the first time include the leaders of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Another major Eurasian institution is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which began as a forum for China, Russia, and the Central Asian states, but now includes also India, Pakistan, and Iran, with Belarus to be admitted soon.
A number of other Eurasian countries, from Turkey to Thailand and from the Maldives to Mongolia, have voiced their intention to join either BRICS or SCO.
To counter that trend among the members of what we increasingly call the World Majority, Washington has raised the profile of NATO in the Indo-Pacific; strengthened its Cold War-era bilateral and trilateral alliances in the Western Pacific, and founded a new one, AUKUS, in the South Pacific.
The Americans are also seeking to cultivate India, as a pivotal great power, within the Quad group.
All these multiple arrangements are completely dominated by the USA and are aimed at containing and deterring Washington’s designated primary adversaries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – with one overriding goal of defending America’s hegemonic position.
In contrast to that, neither BRICS nor the SCO is dominated by a single power, or a tandem/triumvirate of nations.
BRICS’s recent expansion also suggests that it does not aspire to become a version of the West’s G7, as an elitist steering group, or directoire, for the non-Western world.
The SCO includes no less than four nuclear powers, each of which pursues a clearly independent foreign policy, inspired by a distinct mode of strategic thinking and serving a set of well-defined national interests.
Indeed, the BRICS/SCO diplomatic culture features sovereign equality, dialogue, respect for national interests and civilizational values, and consensus.
In contrast to that, neither BRICS nor the SCO is dominated by a single power, or a tandem/triumvirate of nations.
BRICS’s recent expansion also suggests that it does not aspire to become a version of the West’s G7, as an elitist steering group, or directoire, for the non-Western world.
The SCO includes no less than four nuclear powers, each of which pursues a clearly independent foreign policy, inspired by a distinct mode of strategic thinking and serving a set of well-defined national interests.
Indeed, the BRICS/SCO diplomatic culture features sovereign equality, dialogue, respect for national interests and civilizational values, and consensus. Yet, Americans have a good reason to fear Russia prevailing in Ukraine.
This will deal a heavy blow to their leadership position inside the Western bloc, as well as to their residual hegemonic role elsewhere in the world. Washington would not take this lightly, and can be relied upon to do everything in its power to prevent it.
Apart from the 16,000 sanctions imposed so far on Russia, and the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war in Ukraine, the USA and its friends will try to drive wedges among BRICS/SCO nations, and undermine the domestic positions of leaders not to their liking – something they are experienced in and well-equipped for.
One obvious issue the USA will exploit is the Sino-Indian relations, which could give them a chance to turn Delhi against Beijing, and to weaken Indo-Russian relations.
So far, they haven’t succeeded: much as Indians need foreign investment and advance technology to fully develop their nation’s vast potential, they see their country as a great power, not an instrument in someone’s schemes.
With Indian self-image and self-esteem rising fast, it is hard to imagine that Delhi will do Washington’s bidding. The countries of Eurasia have little to fear from Russia achieving its goals in Ukraine.
The emerging mutual security space within the SCO will make the continent – minus Western Europe, for the time being – far more stable, whether in terms of strategic stability in major-power relations, regional security systems (like the one proposed by Russia in the Gulf), or the risks of terrorism.
New financial arrangements within the BRICS group will make dollar-free transactions among the members safer; new Eurasia-wide logistics can provide for better connectivity within the world’s largest and most diverse continent.
Eventually, the countries of Western Europe – or far western Eurasia, if you like – will have to make a choice between staying in the USA orbit as America’s power continues to shrink, or reaching out east to a vast and vibrant new world next door.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Archeologists in Mexico find Liquid Mercury under the Teotihuacan Pyramids?
Archaeologists recently announced the discovery of large quantities of mercury at the entrance of a burial chamber sixty feet below the pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacan.
The find is a recent development in a six year-long excavation of the ruins of the Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent. Now, the question remains what in the world is it doing there?
So far, the sacred tunnels have yielded about 50,000 artifacts, such as stone sculptures and obsidian knives—the mercury, however, may be a key to unlocking an even greater mystery.
Why might royals have their tombs placed around quicksilver? Lead archaeologist Sergio Gomez has a theory about the Teotihuacan pyramids.
Unsure why the mercury was put there, Gomez says the metal may have been used to symbolize an underworld river or lake. Previously uncovered in small amounts at a few Maya sites much further south, it had never been found in Teotihuacan.
Let’s remember that the same Roman god Mercury, patron of speakers, travelers and merchants, is also a psycho-pomp, a god tasked with carrying souls to the afterlife.
The element Mercury has also been found in Egyptian tombs, and is rumored to surround the underground necropolis of Chinese emperor Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì.
Mercury’s “immortal” nature was also prized by early modern alchemists and was often alluded to in their references to the philosopher’s stone.
Although the link between the Mercury in other cultures and Meso-American customs is entirely coincidental, there’s probably a simple reason why the element was so favored by high society—it was simply hard to come by.
Difficult to mine and prized for its reflective properties, mercury was rare in ancient Mexico. Archaeologists believe may have lent it a supernatural significance for ritual ends.
Every person couldn’t afford surrounding his or her corpse and riches with rivers of liquid metal. To the ancients, it may have been the perfect symbol for the watery abyss of the underworld, a barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
Ultra Culture Organization / ABC Flash Point Ancient History News 2022.
The Humanitarian Wasteland around a Chemical Factory
Growing up, a group of nine friends living downwind a industrial production facility, had never heard of ethylene oxide, the carcinogenic gas that poured out from a chemical plant in their neighborhood.
Now three of them are fighting cancer, three of them are finalizing the terminal process according to the doctors, while the other three already crossed the line and hopefully live in peace now?
Black Hole Zoo obtained an air study of ethylene oxide emissions from that chemical plant, now owned by another entity. It reveals that the plant’s emissions of the toxic gas pose a cancer risk that far exceeds Environmental Protection Agency safety standards.
How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different by a different news outlet. Consider how the world of media would look like without, news sites like the Millennium Report, Voltaire, Global Research California, Strategic Culture, RT, Sputnik or Mondoweiss.
Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? How many bloody covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our shared reports weren’t on the grid.
The kind of reporting the real media does is essential to democracy, but is not easy, cheap or profitable. Cosmos Chronicle is an independent non-profit blog news site.
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Joining us is simple and is for free. You can become a supporting member to keep on reading the feeds offered to you on a daily bases since 2010. Click on any topic in the header of the article and find your interests regarding our global environment standards.
Cosmos Chronicle / ABC Flash Point Freedom News 2021.
Facebook Metaverse will Manipulate your Reality into the Virtual World
The Metaverse has been peddled as a futuristic place where we all — sitting in our living rooms with goggles strapped to our noggins — can interact, buy things, date, and more in a virtual world.
But what if, in addition to being a place, the Metaverse also represents something else: a point in time when we live more in the digital world than we do in the physical one?
Such a moment is a long-held theory among the augmented reality community, including Louis Rosenberg, a 30-year veteran of AR development and the CEO of Unanimous AI.
Although virtual reality and AR are both key aspects of the Metaverse structure, it’s AR glasses that will become ubiquitous within 10 years, replacing the cell phone as our primary means of interacting with digital content.
That’s the moment when the lines between the real and digital worlds will blur more than ever before. Once you present a virtual object that is indistinguishable from a physical one, that’s the last step.
We’ve seen points in time like this before, like how the printing press revolutionized how we share information or the telephone how we can communicate across distances.
Fast forward to the smartphone age, and “we use our phones more times than we speak to our spouse,” Vipp Jaswal, CEO of Interpersonal Intelligence Advisory — a consulting firm that looks at human behavior across real and digital platforms — told Business Insider.
You’ll go to the store, and you won’t be able to see the prices on things” if you don’t have AR glasses.
The Metaverse itself is the point in time and is the name given to the transition moment when the virtual landscape becomes more “real” than the natural world. In Hebrew, Meta means death.
That moment to the singularity theory in the world of artificial intelligence, posits that the time could come when AI becomes smarter than humans.
Social media’s woes will be amplified in this futuristic virtual world. Polarization, divisiveness, and misinformation will grow tenfold, and now the Metaverse will fracture back reality ones and for all.
Being in this Metaverse will be a bigger part of our lives than being in the outside world, Rosenberg said. And there are all kinds of things that are terrifying about that.
Facebook’s announcement that it is changing its name to Meta has caused quite the stir in Israel where the word sounds like the Hebrew word for “dead”. To be precise, Meta is pronounced like the feminine form of the Hebrew word.
Business Insider Blog / ABC Flash Point News 2021.
Space Travel rewires the Brain of Astronauts due to Low Gravity
The human body must overcome many different obstacles in order to travel in space, and this includes what amounts to rewiring the brain, according to a new study conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA) and international research team Roscosmos.
The peer-reviewed academic journal Frontiers in Neural Circuits, showed the first-ever analysis of changes in the structural connectivity of the brains of astronauts caused by long-term spaceflights.
A number of studies have pointed out the many physiological effects that can be caused by a long duration in space. According to NASA, the main stressors in space, specifically on hypothetical Mars missions, have been collectively designated under the acronym of RIDGE.
RIDGE stands for Radiation, Isolation and Confinement, Distance from Earth, Gravity fields and Hostile/Closed Environments.
These various factors impact the body in many ways. For example, due to the difference in gravity, astronauts’ weight-bearing bones lose on average 1%-1.5% of mineral density per month, and bone loss might not be able to be fully healed after they land.
Astronauts also lose muscle mass faster, and the fluids shifting to the head due to gravity can cause vision problems. The entire change messes with hand-eye and head-eye coordination and balance and is known to cause motion sickness.
Furthermore, the effects of gravity can also cause increased calcium excretion from bones and dehydration, which in turn can lead to developing kidney stones.
But while scientists are well aware of all of this, how spaceflight impacts the brain is something less understood. They have, however, theorized some sort of effect was likely.
A few prior studies have been done, using MRI scans, and these have found some evidence of changes in the brain, but more research was still needed.
Firstly, the results supported the concept of the learned brain, which means that the brain adapts to spaceflight and the many challenges it has, such as the weightlessness of micro-gravity.
We found changes in the neural connections between several motor areas of the brain. Motor areas are brain centers where commands for movements are initiated.
In weightlessness, an astronaut needs to adapt his or her movement strategies drastically, compared to Earth. Our study shows that their brain is rewired, so to speak.
These changes weren’t exactly temporary either. When looking at the follow-up scans, these changes could still be seen.
Considering the fact that, at minimum, a flight to Mars would last nine months, it is possible that longer trips in space could have even more pronounced impacts on the human brain. Without a countermeasure in place, it could become considerably difficult.
However, it does once again reinforce the importance of finding what would be, in theory, an ideal solution, Artificial gravity.
However, as of yet, no way to actually have functional and viable artificial gravity has emerged. As such, other countermeasures will likely be needed.
Ultimately, learning more about how the brain is impacted by time in space can help us understand more about space travel and how humanity can begin spreading further into the universe around us.
Jerusalem / ABC Flash Point News 2022.
European Ski resorts expierencing a major Snow crisis
Skiers across Europe are arriving at resorts to find historically low levels of snow following an exceptionally mild winter. Even snow cannons have stopped working due to the high temperatures.
Stark images from resorts in the likes of France, Austria and Bosnia show huge swathes of mountains almost entirely bare. It’s a striking contrast to how they usually look in mid-to-late February – typically the peak season for winter sports.
In the popular French resort of Saint-Colomban-des-Villards in the Alps, ski lifts have stopped running completely.
That’s thanks to a significant lack of snow following temperatures climbing up to 13C; its average February temperature is, in contrast, just over 4C.
Further south, the Artouste ski resort in the Pyrenees Atlantiques – also well known as the home of Europe’s highest train, a narrow-gauge tourist line – is facing a similar situation. If you google the destination, you’ll be told it’s temporarily closed.
Local reports say piste grooming machines are lined up in a field next to ski lifts, also motionless for an indefinite period.in Austria, the Tyrolean ski area of Mutterer Alm was forced to close, according to Kronen Zeitung, the country’s largest newspaper.
Famous for its view of Innsbruck and the Karwendel mountain range, the resort’s website says it’s shut indefinitely. The rise in temperatures is particularly painful for Bosnia.
This year, they should be celebrating 40 years since the capital Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics. Instead, the Women’s Ski Super G European Cup, set to be held last week at Bjelasnica, was cancelled due to lack of snow.
Skiers at Bosnia’s Mount Bjelasnica have been dragging their kit through mud to reach ski lifts. It’s not just ski lifts out of service at a number of resorts – but snow cannons, too.
Known as one of Europe’s cheapest ski destinations, many winter sports fans have decided to plough ahead with their trips to Mount Bjelasnica, despite the less-than-ideal conditions.
The snow cannon job is to pump the pistes with artificial snow but their effectiveness is also temperature-dependent – a real concern for destinations battling shortages of fresh powder.
Earlier in February, at Mount Terminillo in Italy’s Apennine Mountains, the cannons were abandoned after it became too hot to run them.
The resort is a favorite of skiers from Rome and usually has no problem with snowfall, considering it is some 2,217 meters high.
In Switzerland, too, the Leysin resort has seen its cannons lay idle on particularly warm days – something rarely experienced by the famously snowy nation.
The lack of snow across Europe comes as scientists announced it was the hottest first week of February on record.
The month is now on course to become the hottest since records began, with climate scientists warning that the planet is heating up at an ‘accelerating’ rate.
Global warming could put paid to ski slopes in the near future – but it isn’t just man made issues causing the so-called ‘big melt’.
Currently, the planet is in the midst of an El Niño – a phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean where changes in pressure cause warm water to flow East, bringing with it excessive heat.
It happens naturally on a fairly regular basis and is often followed by an El Nina which, in contrast, has a global cooling effect.
Skiers will be hoping the El Nina arrives soon to counter the desolate picture coming out of some of Europe’s favorite resorts.
Euro News / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Wind Turbines create deadly impact on Wildlife and Public Health
Seven countries now generate 100% of their electricity from renewable energy – two are in Europe. Last year was the best year on record for new wind energy installation. That is a 50% increase from 2022 making it the best year on record for new wind projects.
Harnessing power from the wind is one of the cleanest and most sustainable ways to generate electricity as it produces no toxic pollution or global warming emissions.
Wind is also abundant, inexhaustible, and affordable, which makes it a viable and large-scale alternative to fossil fuels. Despite its vast potential, there are a variety of environmental impacts associated with wind power generation that should be recognized and mitigated.
As the world begins its large-scale transition toward low-carbon energy sources, it is vital that the pros and cons of each type are well understood and the environmental impacts of renewable energy, small as they may be in comparison to coal and gas, are considered.
For solar energy, the average power density (measured in watts per meter squared) is 10 times higher than wind power, but also much lower than estimates by leading energy experts.
This research suggests that not only will wind farms require more land to hit the proposed renewable energy targets but also, at such a large scale, would become an active player in the climate system.
The next question, as explored in the journal Joule, was how such large-scale wind farms would impact the climate system.
The impact of wind turbines on wildlife, most notably on birds and bats, has been widely document and studied.
A recent National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC) review of peer-reviewed research found evidence of bird and bat deaths from collisions with wind turbines and due to changes in air pressure caused by the spinning turbines, as well as from habitat disruption.
Wildlife biologists have found that bats are most active when wind speeds are low.
Using this information, the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative concluded that keeping wind turbines motionless during times of low wind speeds could reduce bat deaths by more than half without significantly affecting power production.
Other wildlife impacts can be mitigated through better siting of wind turbines.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services has played a leadership role in this effort by convening an advisory group including representatives from industry, state and tribal governments, and nonprofit organizations that made comprehensive recommendations on appropriate wind farm siting and best management practices.
Wind farms located offshore will also impact fish and other marine wildlife. Some studies suggest that turbines may actually increase fish populations by acting as artificial reefs.
The impact will vary from site to site, and therefore proper research and monitoring systems are needed for each offshore wind facility.
Sound and visual impact are the two main public health and community concerns associated with operating wind turbines. Most of the sound generated by wind turbines is aerodynamic, caused by the movement of turbine blades through the air.
There is also mechanical sound generated by the turbine itself. Overall sound levels depend on turbine design and wind speed.
Some people living close to wind facilities have complained about sound and vibration issues, but industry and government-sponsored studies in Canada and Australia have found that these issues do not adversely impact public health.
It is important for wind turbine developers to take these community concerns seriously by following good neighbor best practices for siting turbines and initiating open dialogue with affected community members.
Additionally, technological advances, such as minimizing blade surface imperfections and using sound-absorbent materials can reduce wind turbine noise.
Under certain lighting conditions, wind turbines can create an effect known as shadow flicker. This annoyance can be minimized with careful siting, planting trees or installing window awnings, or curtailing wind turbine operations when certain lighting conditions exist.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that large wind turbines, like all structures over 200 feet high, have white or red lights for aviation safety.
However, the FAA recently determined that as long as there are no gaps in lighting greater than a half-mile, it is not necessary to light each tower in a multi-turbine wind project. Daytime lighting is unnecessary as long as the turbines are painted white.
When it comes to aesthetics, wind turbines can elicit strong reactions. To some people, they are graceful sculptures; to others, they are eyesores that compromise the natural landscape.
Whether a community is willing to accept an altered skyline in return for cleaner power should be decided in an open public dialogue.
While there are no global warming emissions associated with operating wind turbines, there are emissions associated with other stages of a wind turbine’s life-cycle.
Including materials production, materials transportation, on-site construction and assembly, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning and dismantlement.
The world installed 116 gigawatts of new wind power capacity in 2023, according to the latest Global Wind Report from industry trade association the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).
China led for both offshore and onshore wind installation followed by the USA, Brazil and Germany. Thanks to strong growth in the Netherlands, Europe also had a record year in 2023 with 3.8 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity.
The report notes that, while wind power growth is highly concentrated in a few big countries, some other regions and nations saw record growth.
Africa and the Middle East installed nearly 1 gigawatt of wind power capacity in 2023, almost triple that of the previous year.
Seven countries now generate all of their energy from renewable sources, according to figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
More than 99.7% of electricity in Albania, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iceland, Nepal, Paraguay and the Democratic Republic of Congo comes from geothermal, hydro, solar or wind power.
Norway came close with 98% of its energy from wind, water or solar, according to the data compiled by Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson.
Another 40 countries got at least half of their electricity from renewables in 2021 and 2022 including 11 in Europe. Others, like Germany or Portugal, are capable of running on 100% wind, water and solar for short amounts of time.
Though many of these countries currently use a large amount of hydro-power or wind energy, experts predict solar could take over as a major source in the near future. Technology has improved and costs are rapidly dropping.
Solar dominated the expansion of renewable energy capacity in 2023, accounting for 73% of all growth, followed by wind power at 24%. It now makes up 37% of the world’s total renewable energy capacity.
A 2023 study from the University of Exeter and University College London predicts that solar will reach an irreversible tipping point, becoming the world’s primary source of energy by 2050.
Green Euro News / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Luxor Temple complex in Egypt
Constructed over hundreds of years by Amenhotep III, Ramses II, Tutankhamun, and other pharaohs, Luxor Temple was the largest and most significant religious center in ancient Egypt.
In what was then Thebes, Luxor Temple was the place of the First Occasion, where the god Amon experienced rebirth during the pharaoh’s annually reenacted coronation ceremony.
Today, remains of this vast complex include the colossal Great Colonnade Hall, almost 61 meters long, with 28 twenty-one-foot-high columns, its decoration largely undertaken by Tutankhamun around 1330 B.C.
Many of the temple’s sidewalls were torn down after the time of the pharaohs and recycled for building materials. Before excavation in the 1960’s, the temple’s sandstone fragments were in direct contact with salt-laden groundwater that leached into the stone.
After excavation, exposure to changes in humidity mobilized these salts and accelerated deterioration. Between 2001 and 2007, World Monuments Fund directed a grant from the Robert W. Wilson Challenge to Conserve Our Heritage to the conservation of Luxor Temple.
Over 1,000 deteriorating blocks and inscribed wall fragments underwent consolidation and treatment, which arrested their decay and allowed for early stages of reconstruction.
An outer section of the eastern wall of the Colonnade Hall was stabilized with a brick buttress concealed with sandstone slabs in order to blend into the original stone of the temple.
Another major group of 48 fragments, which completes the depiction of the divine barge and towboats of the hawk-headed moon-god Khonsu, was inserted into the base of that buttress where it joins the wall.
A life-size statue of Ramesses II’s chief wife Queen Nefertari, intact to the knees, was recovered, cleaned, and protected. Missing portions of her legs were located, carefully returned to the statue, and also protected.
The thousands of sandstone fragments retrieved from the vicinity of Luxor temple contain carved and painted details of hieroglyphic texts and temple ritual scenes.
Once identified, documented, and consolidated, many have been joined and reassembled into whole wall scenes, as part of the Wilson Challenge Ancient Thebes Initiative.
Also funded by this challenge initiative were the portico added to the Karnak Temple by Thutmosis III in 1400 B.C. and the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III in the Theban Necropolis.
World Monuments Fund / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Global Gambling Casino Wraps around the World like a Money-Sucking Octopus
Of particular concern, presently, is the mammoth global gambling casino that wraps around the world like a money-sucking octopus.
It’s no wonder that all of the casino resorts in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Macau and other gambling centers are owned and operated by agents (such as the zealous Zionist Sheldon Adelson) of the International Banking Cartel.
These gambling operations also provide countless opportunities to develop other illicit businesses such as prostitution, extortion, weapons and drug dealing, as well as some legitimate enterprises looking to evade taxes.
Perhaps the most important function of the gambling industry worldwide is to provide critical money-laundering services for so much illegal cash generated from the IBC’s outlawed business activities.
The global industry for casinos and gaming holds down a current net worth of over $500 billion. About $300 billion flows through a Dutch telecom business registered in Curacao. These offshore licenses were granted by UTS for a couple of thousand guilders per year.
The growth in the industry is driven by the introduction of legislation by governments that formerly banned casinos to operate and the lifting of some bans on foreign investment and ownership of casinos.
Also relevant is the emergence of many new establishments in these areas which are mega-casinos with hotels and other major entertainment elements attached to attract their domestic as well as international guests.
ABC Flash Point News 2020.
Crickey Amigu di Natura 