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Notre-Dame Cathedral's spire will be back in place by the end of the year, but a full reopening following the devastating fire of 2019 will not happen before next year's Paris Olympic Games. The reconstruction is still on track for completion by the end of 2024, the culture ministry told AFP. SNIP It means the 12th-century cathedral, which previously saw about 12 million annual visitors, will not be able to welcome attendees of the Olympic Games which Paris is hosting in July 2024 and August 2024.

Experts have warned that the recent detection of bird flu in mammals including foxes, otters, minks, seals and even grizzly bears is concerning but emphasised that the virus would have to significantly mutate to spread between humans. Since late 2021, Europe has been gripped by its worst-ever outbreak of bird flu, with North and South America also experiencing severe outbreaks. This has led to the culling of tens of millions of domestic poultry worldwide, many with the H5N1 strain. The global outbreak is also responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of wild birds.

The United States and the Philippines have agreed to restart joint patrols in the South China Sea as the longtime allies seek to counter China's military rise, a US Defense Department statement said. The two countries had suspended maritime patrols in the hotly contested area under the rule of former president Rodrigo Duterte. During a visit to Manila by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, he and Philippine counterpart Carlito Galvez "agreed to restart joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea to help address (security) challenges", the statement said on Thursday (Feb 2).

GOP lawmakers are calling for the United States to shoot down the alleged Chinese spy balloon found floating over Montana on Wednesday. The Pentagon said it would not shoot down the balloon, arguing it "does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground at this time," and China blamed the incursion into U.S. airspace on a civilian aircraft that had deviated off course. Montana is home to sensitive nuclear military installations. "It was a mistake to not shoot down that Chinese spy balloon when it was over a sparsely populated area," Sen. Marco Rubio (FL), the...

(Reuters) - School meals for millions of children in the United States would include less added sugar, more whole grains, and lower sodium content under new standards proposed by the Biden administration on Friday. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the updated standards, which would be rolled out over the next several years, were essential to tackling health concerns like childhood obesity and to preparing young people for adult life. "This is a national security imperative. It’s a health care imperative for our children. It’s an equity issue. It’s an educational achievement issue. And it’s an economic competitiveness issue," he said...

Basically, it's all about money and the US wanting to squeeze Germany out of a major sector of the arms market...This is nearly a must-watch item.

Jewish-Roman War: Nero & the Year of the 4 EmperorsGnostic Informant | 35K subscribers | 7,594 views | July 11, 2022

Mark 6:14-29 Friends, today’s Gospel gives an account of Herod’s murder of John the Baptist. John is a proto-martyr, anticipating the martyrdom of many Christians.Martyrdom has always been an important chapter of the Christian story, from believers in the early Church who refused to sacrifice to Rome’s pagan gods, to great saints of the Middle Ages such as Thomas Becket and Thomas More who refused to compromise their beliefs for the sake of the state, to modern martyrs killed in what St. John Paul II called odium caritatis, “hatred of charity,” such as Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.In the...

A Harvard Medical School committee voted last month to embed climate change into the school’s curriculum. The new climate change curriculum will examine the impact of climate change on health and health inequality, applications of these impacts to clinical care, and the role of physicians and health institutions in arriving at climate solutions. Climate change’s negative health effects include the increased spread of infectious diseases, “heat-related harm” during extreme weather events, and lung disease due to pollution, according to HMS student Julia R. Malits. The curriculum change aims to integrate climate change themes throughout students’ medical school education rather than...

Defense officials told reporters that military leaders refused to shoot the balloon down because a widespread debris field would pose a threat to civilian life in the rural state. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Joe Biden was briefed on the issue on Wednesday. If the Pentagon knew the surveillance tool was on its way to the nuclear arsenal, however, why didn’t the president have it shot down when it was over Alaska? Was Biden’s Wednesday briefing his first? Why wasn’t he told sooner? Why didn’t officials inform the public when it crossed into U.S. airspace? Did our government...

Video at link.

President Joe Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board now includes a top climate scientist. Biden recently announced the appointment of Kim Cobb, an earth sciences professor at Brown University and a lead author of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in 2021, to the White House council that’s tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of the nation’s intelligence community. For years, climate science has been an important consideration for the U.S. intelligence community, a sprawling collection of at least 19 agencies including the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA and the Energy Department’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. “It’s...

A man is back in jail, charged with committing several armed robberies in three days. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said 33-year-old Branon Purcell was targeting convenience stores all across the city. JSO said Purcell faces 11 counts of armed robbery at 10 different businesses. “Purcell is no stranger to criminal activity as he had just been released from Florida State prison 21 days, 21 days before this arrest.” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. Action News Jax told you back in 2016 when Purcell admitted to 10 armed robberies in Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Neptune Beach, according to officers. He served...

WASHINGTON — There’s no Republican plan, let alone a bill, to resolve the debt ceiling problem. But some GOP lawmakers are floating one idea to include in a package: rescinding approved but unspent Covid relief funds. Taking back the unused pandemic response money “certainly could” be in a debt ceiling measure to avert default, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the chair of the powerful Rules Committee, said. “I would hope we look at that,” Cole said. “It’s something that ought to be on the table.” Rep Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who sits on the Ways and Means Committee that oversees taxes and...

The Biden administration’s border policies have led to a mass influx of illegal immigrants, and ranchers are increasingly concerned that they will bring with them a highly contagious virus that could cost billions and decimate the livestock industry. Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is a highly contagious virus that affects cows, pigs, sheep and other animals with cloven hooves. Todd Wilkinson, a South Dakota rancher who also serves as president-elect of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told Fox News Digital it is only a matter of time before FMD makes its way across the southern border.

A List of the Communist Goals 60 Years Later By Mark Schwendau The most remarkable thing is happening on the Internet these days. Some 60 years after reading into the Congressional RECORD by Florida House Rep. Albert Sydney Herlong Jr., a Democrat, people are revisiting the words of his reading with fervor and drawing comparisons between then and now. Herlong was an attorney who served ten terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1949 to 1969. On January 10, 1963, at the request of one of his constituents, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Florida, he read a...

Single women own and occupy more homes than single men in the United States, despite earning only about 83 cents for every dollar that men earn, according to a new study. The report, by the online lending marketplace LendingTree, analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2021 American Community Survey with one-year estimates. It found that 10.76 million U.S. homes were owned and occupied by single women, while 8.12 million were owned and occupied by single men. Single men were found to own and occupy a larger percentage of homes in only two states: North Dakota (about 13 percent, to...

A NOAA air current model shows the China spy balloon is expected to traverse the United States heartland through the Midwest and Southern states on Friday before heading out to the Atlantic Ocean passing over the U.S. Navy base at Newport News, Virginia. Joe Biden refused to shoot down the balloon, however Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled a planned trip to Beijing in protest. The NOAA HYSPLIT* model was used to reverse track the balloon from China. The balloon flew over the Aleutian Islands, then into Canada air space before crossing into U.S. airspace over Montana and a U.S....

A video of two students viciously beating a 9-year-old student on a Florida school bus has surfaced online, alarming the community and prompting a swift reaction from the girl’s parents. The disturbing footage shows two boys repeatedly striking the girl as she is folded over in a seat, barely defending herself with one hand as she tightly grips her backpack with the other. Many of the punches land on the girl’s head, neck and face. No fellow students or adults intervened to stop the brutal assault.

A Macon man who on Tuesday was charged with murder and aggravated assault for his alleged role in the Jan. 20 slaying of a liquor store worker and the wounding of two members of the worker’s family was released from prison last fall. The suspect, Terrell Ugean Mills, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter 20 years ago and has been in and out of prison three times since. He was last freed from prison in September after serving three years of a five-year term for shooting at his brother in an argument in early 2019. In recent days, Mills, 40, was...