The Chauvet cave, in the south of France, is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world, filled with art that’s tens of …
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley called on the Biden administration to take a stronger stance and demand Russia release a detained Wall Street Journal reporter.
Evan Gershkovich, a Moscow-based correspondent, was detained Thursday by Russia’s security service, the FSB, on allegations of spying.
Haley said the Brittney Griner-Viktor Bout prisoner swap in December emboldened Russia to take more Americans.
FILE – This combo of images shows Viktor Bout, left, a suspected Russian arms dealer at the criminal court in Bangkok, on Aug. 20, 2010 and WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner, right, in a court room prior to a hearing, in Khimki, outside of Moscow, Russia, on July 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong, left, and Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
“This comes from the weakness of the Biden administration. Putin should be scared to do this, and he’s not. And he’s getting really desperate,” she explained on “The Story” Thursday.
“We know he’s getting drones from Iran, he’s getting missiles from North Korea. They are running out of the money. The sanctions are setting in. And it’s, you know, he’s getting desperate. This is what he’s going to start to do. But this is a reminder to the American people, whenever you doubt whether Ukraine needs to win, look at this mafia-type dictator who basically does not value human life and does not value freedom. And this is another example of that.”
Haley said the Biden administration needs to let Russia know they are not allowed to “wrongfully detain” an American and if they don’t “fix this now…we’re going to fix it.”
“If that means we go and we start putting more sanctions, that means we squeeze them more. We do that. But they do have Americans there. They need to give them back,” she told anchor Martha MacCallum.
She added that Gershkovich’s detainment was a way for Putin to distract from his losses in Ukraine and was a way for him to get “attention again.”
“I think we’re going to see more of it. And now he had China show up and President Xi show up and shake his hand and talk about how they’re going to change the world order for the first time in 100 years. And they’re going to do it together. This is how they’re going to do it,” she said.
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The Wall Street Journal released a statement saying it “vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB” and seeks the “immediate release” of Gershkovich.
FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Governor of Magadan Region Sergey Nosov via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia, on Oct. 21, 2022. The International Criminal Court said Friday, March 17, 2023 it has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine. ((Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP))
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the Kremlin was attempting to “intimidate, repress, and punish journalists and civil society voices.”
London
CNN
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President Vladimir Putin has conceded that Western sanctions designed to starve the Kremlin of funds for its invasion of Ukraine could deal a blow to Russia’s economy.
“The illegitimate restrictions imposed on the Russian economy may indeed have a negative impact on it in the medium term,” Putin said in televised remarks Wednesday reported by state news agency TASS.
It is a rare admission by the Russian leader, who has repeatedly insisted that Russia’s economy remains resilient and that sanctions have hurt Western countries by driving up inflation and energy prices.
Putin said Russia’s economy had been growing since July, thanks in part to stronger ties with “countries of the East and South,” likely referring to China and some African countries. He also stressed the importance of domestic demand to the economy, saying it was becoming the leading driver of growth.
Russia’s economy has showed surprising resilience to unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West, including an EU ban on most imports of oil products. Preliminary estimates from the Russian government show that economic output shrank by 2.1% last year — a contraction more limited than many economists initially predicted.
Yet while China has thrown the Kremlin an economic lifeline by buying Russian energy and providing an alternative to the US dollar, cracks are starting to appear.
The Russian government’s revenue plunged 35% in January compared with a year ago, while expenditures jumped 59%, leading to a budget deficit of about 1,761 billion rubles ($23.3 billion).
The World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are forecasting contractions of 3.3% and 5.6%, respectively, in 2023. The International Monetary Fund expects Russia’s growth to remain flat this year, but for the economy to shrink by at least 7% in the medium term.
In response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Western countries have announced more than 11,300 sanctions since the February 2022 invasion, and frozen some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves.
An outspoken Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, said earlier this month that Russia could find itself with no money as soon as next year.
Separately, Austrian bank Raiffeisen Bank International said Thursday it was looking to sell or spin off its Russian business. In a statement, the bank called market conditions in the country “highly complex” and said it was “committing to further reducing business activity” there.
Raiffeisenbank Russia made just over $2 billion in profit last year. But due to strict local rules, Raiffeisen is unable to take any profits from its Russian business out of the country.
— Rob North and Livvy Doherty contributed reporting.
Are these structures ACTUALLY from out of this world? See more in this compilation from Ancient Aliens. 00:00 – Carnac Stones …
New research digs into how runners stay upright on uneven or bumpy terrain.
If you go running over a trail in the woods or a grassy field, there are countless bumps and dips in the terrain, each with the potential to trip you up. But typically, runners manage just fine. It’s a remarkable physical feat that we tend to take for granted, but researchers may have some answers.
With a specially made running track and mathematical modeling, the lab of Madhusudhan Venkadesan found that when running on uneven terrain, humans mostly rely on the body’s mechanical response for stability rather than consciously plot out their footsteps to find level ground.
Further, the researchers found that the runners were just as efficient in their movements and physical exertion as when running on flat ground.
The findings appear in eLife.
Even without occasional hazards like steep drops, runners must contend with gentler, but still uneven ground that can be destabilizing. So why aren’t trails typically littered with toppled runners?
One possibility is that visual cues allow runners to carefully observe the land to step on mostly level areas. On the other hand, running played a huge role in human evolution, particularly in how it benefited humans in hunting. That means sight cannot be devoted solely to find areas to step on; it’s also needed to watch out for the prey, trees, or other obstacles to avoid, and decide which path to take.
“Imagine running and constantly looking at the ground right in front of you to decide where to place your step,” says Venkadesan, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale University. “You can’t be devoting all your attention just to that problem, because your vision is needed for many things.”
Because an actual trail in the woods doesn’t have the controlled conditions necessary for a scientific study, Venkadesan commissioned the construction of an uneven trackway from a company that specializes in climbing walls.
The researchers heuristically designed different levels of unevenness of the terrain to mimic the kind of uneven trail that outdoor runners often encounter. They outfitted the 70-foot-long, 3-foot-wide track with technology that can track and measure where on the terrain the runners’ feet were landing. This included a sensor in one area part of the track to measure the forces experienced by the foot.
“With this, we could measure in a few of those steps how forces are felt by the runner,” he says. “In addition, we measured key landmarks on the body using 3D-motion capture. So we could ask, what does the center of mass movement look like? Are they meandering around and trying to find a path, or just going straight down the middle?”
Nihav Dhawale, a recently graduated PhD student from Venkadesan’s lab, developed a mathematical model of a runner who would try to find the most level path through the uneven bumps, while still matching the runner’s step length and width. This model would ask whether there’s a feasible path through the trackway that can minimize the unevenness, and thus ask whether the real runners find that path.
As it turns out, the runners weren’t choosy about where they put their feet.
“What we found was people appear to land their feet wherever they like,” Venkadesan says. “They don’t seem to care about the unevenness.”
So, in that case, how do runners manage to stay upright? The researchers found that, rather than trying to find specific level areas, the runners minimized the horizontal forces experienced when they land, and therefore used their body’s intrinsic mechanics to reduce the destabilizing influence of the terrain’s unevenness.
The mathematical modeling showed that the runners kept their legs as compliant as they could, and doing so allowed them to minimize the horizontal forces when their feet touched down (that is, the sliding, scuffing forces upon impact). The same authors had predicted in an older paper that low horizontal forces would drastically mitigate the instability associated with running on uneven terrain. As a result, the runner has several steps to make small corrections to regain full stability.
“The corrective action doesn’t have to occur in milliseconds or within a single step,” Venkadesan says. “It could occur over a few steps, and that’s adequate to maintain stability. So in a sense, we are letting the mechanical response of our body buy the brain extra time to control stability.”
Source: Yale University
The Pentagon’s education wing for the children of military members – the Department of Defense Education Activity – privately announced that it was gutting an entire unit devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion as Republicans mounted pressure, criticizing what they said was a “woke agenda” in the military, Fox News Digital uncovered.
DoDEA’s director, Tom Brady, said he will be dispersing the DEI specialists into existing units as part of a “reconfiguration of talent.”
The DEI unit was created after Biden directed all federal agencies by executive order to “establish or elevate Chief Diversity Officers,” among other priorities. A few months later, Kelisa Wing was selected to lead the DEI unit, and involved in curriculum, professional development and hiring.
Kelisa Wing was the former chief of the DEI office at DoDEA. (Getty | YouTube/screenshot | Kelisa Wing)
Less than a year after her promotion, Wing was placed in a six-month government probe after Fox News Digital reported on her tweets, which were criticized as “racist” and hostile to White people.
Matt Gaetz, R-Fla, asked why Wing was not fired, calling her “the racist person that works for you.”
The Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness – Gil Cisneros – was responsible for determining the outcome of the Wing probe. He said no disciplinary action would be brought against Wing since it “determined the employee was speaking in a personal capacity.”
The Pentagon told Fox News Digital in a statement, explaining why it was disbanding the unit, that, “The Department of Defense Education Activity’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts for our employees and in support of high achievement for our 67,000 military-connected students remains unchanged.”
“Department of Defense DEIA Strategic Plan, DoDEA reconfigured within the headquarters staff to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion expertise into key areas to continue addressing barriers to inclusion, closing gaps in representation, and incorporate the institutional insights we have gained over the past two years,” a spokesperson continued.
Reps. Stefanik and Gaetz question the Pentagon’s Gil Cisneros, March 23. (Fox News Digital | Getty)
According to the email announcing the dissolved DEI unit, existing DEI specialists will be placed into other units to further entrench a DEI agenda in every aspect of the Pentagon’s schools.
“Within the next month, we will integrate our DEI specialists into four key divisions at headquarters: Research, Accountability, and Evaluation; Strategic and Organizational Excellent; Professional Learning; and Human Resources. This will bring specialized knowledge and skills into areas that reach across our agency and aid in addressing barriers to inclusion, closing gaps in representation, and incorporate the institutional insights we have gained over the past two years,” the email said.
Cisneros had previously claimed in a letter to Congress that Wing was involved in a restructuring, and that she was no longer involved in “DEI-specific responsibilities.” When Fox News Digital followed up, pressing to confirm that Wing – a DEI specialist – was not involved in DEI, it refused to provide additional information relating to personnel matters.
According to sources, Wing continues to be listed as DEI internally.
Pentagon has 30 days to probe diversity chief accused of anti-White social media posts (FOX NEWS)
The Pentagon’s Cisneros was forced to read one of Wing’s posts verbatim at last Thursday’s hearing, which said, “So exhausted at the White folks in these PD sessions. This lady actually had the caudacity to say Black people can be racist, too. I had to stop the session and give the Karen the business. We are not the majority. We don’t have power.”
Gaetz proceeded to criticize Cisneros for failing to answer what he believed were basic facts relating to the investigation.
“What does ‘Caudacity’ mean?” Gaetz asked.
“I have no idea,” Cisneros said.
“You took six months to investigate one tweet. You didn’t even figure out what the words meant?” Gaetz asked. “I think every person that’s going to watch this exchange knows, you know, it’s she’s trying to lash audaciousness with someone being Caucasian, isn’t she?”
“I have no idea,” Cisneros said. “We do not support racist tweets. We do not support racism.”
Kelisa Wing, a diversity chief at the Department of Defense, posts disparaging posts about White people on Twitter. (Kelisa Wing/Twitter)
The decision to gut the DoDEA DEI unit was made as Republicans in both the Senate and the House Armed Services committees have criticized the Pentagon for ramping up DEI efforts as recruitment numbers dwindle, failing to meet critical targets.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), said last Wednesday, “The military’s purpose is to fight and win—not crusade for social causes. As a combat veteran, this is personal to me… Our adversaries are watching.”
“If President Biden wants to know why he has a recruitment problem and low morale, he need look no further,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., had said about the report on Wing’s posts.
Rep. Chip Roy, Texas, and Sen. Marco Rubio, Fla., released a report entitled, “Woke Warriors,” documenting examples of “critical race theory” in the military. One of the examples included Wing’s posts about White people.
A report by GOP documented critical race theory in the military. (iStock / Amazon)
While she was chief, Wing’s “antiracist” book collection was placed into DoDEA school libraries, leading to pushback at recent House Armed Services Committee hearing. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) alleged Wing illegally promoted her materials in her capacity as a government employee, including at an official meeting.
The Pentagon previously denied Wing was involved in selecting her books for DoDEA schools.
“White privilege hurts a lot of people. If you are White you might feel bad about hurting others or you might feel afraid to lose this privilege,” Wing’s book “What is White Privilege?” said.
It also said, “Overcoming White privilege is a job that must start with the White community.”
“What Does it Mean to Defund the Police” by Jessica Henry with Kelisa Wing. (Jessica Henry and Kelisa Wing)
“[W]ill you really feel good at the end of the race when you look back and see others fighting obstacles that you didn’t even have?” the book added.
The Pentagon’s eduction wing appeared to endorse books written by Wing, praising her for “authoring several books on the topic” of diversity, equity and inclusion.
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Cisneros denied knowledge of Wing’s books in DoDEA schools.
“You seem to not know a lot of what’s happening in the department,” Stefanik said. “So my expectation is that we’ll continue educating you on what’s happening in the Biden administration, Department of Defense. But this is absolutely unacceptable. We expect that report and I will take it as a result that we delivered, making sure that she should have been fired completely, but she was at least moved somewhere else, not dealing with our kids educational system.”
Fox News’ Patrick Hauf and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
CNN
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Donald Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, according to two sources familiar with the case – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.
Trump is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been investigating the former president in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election. Grand jury proceedings are secret, but a source familiar with the case told CNN that a witness gave about 30 minutes of testimony before it voted to indict Trump.
The decision is sure to send shockwaves across the country, pushing the American political system – which has never seen one of its ex-leaders confronted with criminal charges, let alone while running again for president – into uncharted waters.
Trump released a statement in response to the indictment claiming it was “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”
“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” the former president said. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump was caught off guard by the grand jury’s decision to indict him, according to a person who spoke directly with him. While the former president was bracing for an indictment last week, he began to believe news reports that a potential indictment was weeks – or more – away.
“Is this a shock today? Hell yes,” the person said, speaking on a condition of anonymity as Trump’s team calculated its response.
Bragg’s office said it is in touch with Trump’s lawyers.
“This evening we contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement Thursday. “Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected.”
The legal action against Trump jolts the 2024 presidential campaign into a new phase, as the former president has vowed to keep running in the face of criminal charges.
Trump has frequently called the various investigations surrounding him a “witch hunt,” attempting to sway public opinion on them by casting himself as a victim of what he’s claimed are political probes led by Democratic prosecutors. As the indictment reportedly neared, Trump urged his supporters to protest his arrest, echoing his calls to action following the 2020 election as he tried to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden.
Trump has long avoided legal consequences in his personal, professional and political lives. He has settled a number of private civil lawsuits through the years and paid his way out of disputes concerning the Trump Organization, his namesake company. As president, he was twice impeached by the Democratic-led House, but avoided conviction by the Senate.
In December, the Trump Organization was convicted on multiple charges of tax fraud, though Trump himself was not charged in that case.
Trump’s Republican allies – as well as his 2024 GOP rivals – have condemned the Manhattan district attorney’s office over the looming indictment.
“I think the unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview Thursday night. “It appears to millions of Americans to be nothing more than a political prosecution that’s driven by a prosecutor who literally ran for office on a pledge to indict the former president.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has vowed to launch an investigation into the matter, and congressional Republicans quickly rallied to Trump’s defense, attacking Bragg on Twitter and accusing the district attorney of a political witch hunt.
“Outrageous,” tweeted House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republican committee chairmen who has demanded Bragg testify before Congress about the Trump investigation.
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, called the indictment “completely unprecedented” and said it is “a catastrophic escalation in the weaponization of the justice system.”
But at least one moderate Republican told CNN he trusted the legal system.
“I believe in the rule of law. I think we have checks and balances and I trust the system,” said Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska.
“We have a judge. We have jurors. There is appeals. So I think in the end, justice will be done. If he’s guilty it will show up. But if not, I think that will be shown too,” Bacon told CNN.
‘An outrage’: Pence reacts to Trump indictment
Bragg’s office had signaled as recently as early March that they were close to bringing charges against Trump after they invited the ex-president to testify before the grand jury probing the hush money scheme. Potential defendants in New York are required by law to be notified and invited to appear before a grand jury weighing charges. But Trump ultimately declined to appear before the panel.
The long-running investigation first began under Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance, when Trump was in office. It relates to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels in late October 2016, days before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair.
At issue in the investigation is the payment made to Daniels and the Trump Organization’s reimbursement to Cohen.
According to court filings in Cohen’s own federal prosecution, Trump Organization executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000 to cover his original $130,000 payment and tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus. The Trump Organization noted the reimbursements as a legal expense in its internal books. Trump has denied knowledge of the payment.
This story has been updated with additional details.
Austria’s capital is building one of Europe’s biggest (and smartest) urban developments. ALLPLAN’s Planbar is helping create the …
Researchers have developed a process for marking transplanted donor bone marrow cells so that the immune cells only attack cancerous cells and not healthy tissue.
One of the reasons bone marrow transplants are often a last resort for patients with blood cancers is graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a common occurrence where transplanted donor immune cells attack both malignant and healthy cells in the recipient.
“Our ability to biologically label these donor immune cells so that they will attack cancerous cells in the host and then stop themselves from attacking healthy tissue offers new hope that bone marrow transplants can be safer and more effective for patients,” says co-lead researcher, Esma S. Yolcu, professor of child health and molecular microbiology and immunology at the University of Missouri.
“The stem cells in bone marrow have tremendous potential to combat autoimmune diseases, such as type-1 diabetes and blood cancers, such as leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. It is critical to solve the puzzle of GVHD to unlock the full potential of bone marrow cell transplant treatment regimens.”
Yolcu and Haval Shirwan, also a professor of child health and molecular microbiology and immunology and associate director of the immunomodulation and regenerative medicine program at Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, developed the ProtEx platform technology to generate recombinant biologics that instruct immune cells to achieve a desired treatment outcome.
Engineered donor cells display on their surface instructions for the transplanted immune cells to attack only the cancerous cells and then self-destruct before attacking healthy tissue in the host, thus preventing GVHD.
“This approach has significant potential as a treatment on its own or in combination with other clinical regimens to increase the efficacy of stem cell transplants,” says Shirwan. “The process of engineering the donor cells is straightforward and efficient, making it suitable for clinical translation.”
In their research to date, the ProtEx engineered immune cells have been effective in overcoming GVHD following transplantation in mice as well as in a humanized mouse model.
Transplantation with the engineered cells was effective in preventing acute GVHD without a detectable negative impact on the recipient immune system. The concept is presently being pursued for testing in a large animal model of GVHD as a prelude to clinical translation for the treatment of hematological cancers.
The study appears in the journal Blood Advances. The lead authors disclosed that they have a provisional patent on using SA-FasL-engineered cells as a prophylactic approach for acute GVHD.
Source: University of Missouri
Russell Crowe revealed Thursday his 16-month-old puppy died in his arms this week after being hit by a truck.
“This is Louis the Papillion,” the “Gladiator” actor wrote on his Twitter along with a closeup of the black and white dog. “16 months old. Tiny, cheeky, brave. He won my heart.
“Unfortunately today, on the second anniversary of my fathers passing, Louis was hit by a truck. We tried to get him to the vet, but he died in my arms while I was telling him how much we loved him.”
Crowe told Australian radio show “Kyle & Jackie O” this week that it’s going to take some time to get over Louis’ death.
RUSSELL CROWE, GIRLFRIEND REFUSED SERVICE AT AUSTRALIAN RESTAURANT FOR NOT MEETING DRESS CODE
Russell Crowe says his puppy Louis died in his arms while he tried to get him to a vet. (Russell Crowe/Twitter)
“He was such a beautiful little pup, and he kind of wrapped us around him and we shaped our lives around him. So that’s going to take a little time to get past.”
Last December, Crowe posted a picture of the two of them wearing matching polo shirts.
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“I’m not at all a fan of dressing dogs up, but, a friend bought little Louis a @RalphLauren polo so he can match with dad,” Crowe tweeted. “I think the other dogs on the farm are going to get jealous. Pretty funny.”
Crowe lost his 85-year-old father John March 30, 2021.
“I arrived back in the bush last night. Today, although the sun is shining and the torrential rain has abated, this date will forever be tinged with sadness,” he wrote on Twitter. “My dear old man, my beautiful dad, the most gentle of men, has passed away.
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“I’m posting this because I know there are people all over the world who’s heart he touched and who’s ribs he tickled with his sparkly eyes and his cheeky attitude to everyone, and everything.”
