Esoterica

UFO Bombshell: U.S. Intelligence Whistleblower Says Feds Have 'Intact' Craft

A whistleblower who served in the U.S. military and in several intelligence roles says the federal government has multiple craft of “non-human” origin ― and has been working overtime to cover it up.

“These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed,” David Grusch told NewsNation on Monday evening.

In some cases, agents found more than just vehicles.

“Well, naturally, when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots and, believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it’s true,” he said.

Earlier in the day, The Debrief reported that Grusch has told both Congress and the U.S. Inspector General that this information was illegally withheld from lawmakers, who have recently held hearings on UFO activity.

Our Galaxy's Black Hole Not As Sleepy As Thought: Astronomers

Sgr A* has "always been seen as a dormant black hole," said Frederic Marin, a researcher at France's Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory and the study's first author.

Most supermassive black holes squatting at the middle of their galaxies go dormant after swallowing up all the nearby matter.

"Imagine a bear going into hibernation after devouring everything around it," Marin told AFP.

But the international team of researchers discovered that at around the end of the 19th century, Sgr A* came out of its slumber and consumed any gas and dust unlucky enough to be within its reach.

The feeding frenzy lasted from several months to a year, before the beast went back into hibernation.

I Knew Pat Robertson and He Was a Bad Man

One thing I do not regret is that I missed the “opportunity” to be the so-called big-time evangelical leader I could have been. I was good at speaking. We would never have run out of paranoid delusions with which to stir up the ever-fearful and willfully ignorant. But the idea of “passing up” a chance to become a cross between Pat Robertson, Elmer Gantry and Ralph Reed never bothered me.

After being introduced by Pat Robertson, I had delivered a rousing take-back-America speech to thousands of cheering religious broadcasters. And not long after, I would appear at a huge pro-life rally in Denver. Cal Thomas--once the vice president of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, who later became a Fox News Commentator--would introduce me as “the best speaker in America.” The “anointing” he said, was “clearly on this young man!” They were saying that I was a better speaker than my famous father.

At that moment the Schaeffers were evangelical royalty. When I was growing up in L’Abri, my parents’ religious community in Switzerland, it was not unusual to find myself seated across the dining room table from Billy Graham’s daughter or President Ford’s son, even Timothy Leary. The English actress Glynis Johns used to come for Sunday high tea. I figured it was normal. They were just a few of the thousands who made it through our doors. Only later did I realize that L’Abri attracted a weirdly eclectic group of people who otherwise would not be caught dead in the same room. My childhood was, to say the least, unusual.

Synthetic Human Embryos Have Been Made In A Lab For First Time, Scientists Say

Synthetic human embryos – derived from stem cells without the need for eggs or sperm – have been created for the first time, scientists say. The structures represent the very earliest stages of human development, which could allow for vital studies into disorders like recurrent miscarriage and genetic diseases. But questions have been posed about the legal and ethical implications, as the pace of scientific discovery outstrips the legislation.

The breakthrough was reported by the Guardian newspaper following an announcement by Professor Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz, a developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge and Caltech, at the 2023 annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. The findings have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed paper.

It’s understood that the synthetic structures model the very beginnings of human development. They do not yet contain a brain or heart, for example, but comprise the cells that would be needed to form a placenta, yolk sac, and embryo. Żernicka-Goetz told the conference that the structures have been grown to just beyond the equivalent of 14 days of natural gestation for a human embryo in the womb. It’s not clear whether it would be possible to allow them to mature any further.

Environment activists smear paint on Monet work in Stockholm

Environment activists on Wednesday smeared red paint and glued their hands to the protective glass on a Monet painting at Stockholm's National Museum, police and the museum said.

"Two women around the ages of 25 and 30 were arrested," police said, as the organisation Aterstall Vatmarker (Restore Wetlands) claimed responsibility in an interview with AFP.

The museum told AFP it was "not yet known" if the painting itself had been damaged.

The artwork was "The Artist's Garden at Giverny", painted by French impressionist Claude Monet in 1900.

Anger as pre-historic stones destroyed for French DIY store

Around 40 standing stones thought to have been erected by prehistoric humans 7,000 years ago have been destroyed near a famed archaeological site in northwest France to make way for a DIY store, an angry local historian has revealed.

The stones in Carnac were between 50-100 centimetres (20-40 inches) high and stood close to the main highly protected areas of one of Europe's largest and most mysterious pre-historic tourist attractions.

"The site has been destroyed," local archaeologist Christian Obeltz told AFP on Wednesday, having revealed the clearance of the land in the Ouest-France newspaper.

. . .

Mayor Olivier Lepick told AFP that he had "followed the law" and pointed to the "low archaeological value" of objects found during checks before the construction process began.

What Happened to the Canaanites?

The Canaanites were a Semitic-speaking cultural group that lived in Canaan (comprising Lebanon, southern Syria, Israel and Transjordan) beginning in the second millennium B.C.E. and wielded influence throughout the Mediterranean.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Canaanites are described as inhabitants of Canaan before the arrival of the Israelites (e.g., Genesis 15:18–21, Exodus 13:11). Little of the Canaanites’ textual records remain, perhaps because they used papyrus instead of the more durable clay for writing. Much of the Canaanites’ history is reconstructed through the writings of contemporary peoples in addition to archaeological examinations of the material record.

Marc Haber, Claude Doumet-Serhal, Christiana Scheib and a team of 13 other scientists recently published their DNA findings in The American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG). The researchers sequenced the genomes of five individuals who were buried in the Canaanite city of Sidon in Lebanon around 1700 B.C.E. as well as the genomes of 99 individuals from Lebanon today.

The results of their study demonstrated a connection: “We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age,” wrote the researchers in AJHG.

Scientists Gave a Nazi MDMA and He Renounced Racism

A white supremacist took the party drug MDMA as part of a controlled science experiment, the BBC reports, and it proved so life-changing that he dropped his racist, bigoted beliefs.

"This is stuff you can't really put into words, but it was so profound," the now former white supremacist identified as Brendan told the broadcaster. "I conceived of my relationships with other people not as distinct boundaries with distinct entities, but more as we-are-all-one."

Recently, scientists have been looking at MDMA, also known as "ecstasy" or "molly," in a therapeutic setting to treat PTSD and depression. But experiences like Brendan's, as detailed in a 2021 paper published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, are making some researchers consider whether the drug has the ability to "influence a person's values and priorities" as well.

. . .

"This inquiry has revealed that psychedelic ceremonies have the potential to contribute to peacebuilding," the paper reads. "This can happen not just by 'dissolution of identities,' but also by providing a space in which shared spiritual experiences can emerge from intercultural and interfaith exchanges."

No more rides to Hel on bus 666 in Poland

The bus to the town of Hel on Poland’s Baltic coast has long been popular with tourists. But some Christian conservatives have protested the number signifying the devil on a bus leading to a place that sounds like the word “hell” in English.

The local bus operator, PKS Gdynia, announced this week that bus 666 will no longer run to Hel. It said it had flipped the last number and would now run the line under the number 669 starting on June 24.

Local media said the bus company acted under the pressure of Christian groups who had pushed for the change, but were already thinking of returning to the old number amid a public outcry over the change.

Like dogs, wolves recognize familiar human voices

Like dogs, wolves recognize and respond to the voices of familiar humans more than strangers, according to a study that has implications both for the story of canine domestication and our broader understanding of the natural world.

Holly Root‑Gutteridge of the University of Lincoln, a co-author of the paper that appeared in Animal Cognition this week, told AFP a longstanding theory held that dogs' ability to distinguish human voices was a consequence of generations of selective breeding.

"So we wanted to look at wolves, because obviously nobody has been selecting so that wolves can recognize human voices," she said.

. . .

In terms of implications, Root‑Gutteridge said it was significant that wolves possessed the ability to distinguish between humans despite the fact that our species went our separate evolutionary ways tens of millions of years ago.

Scientists Discover a Virgin Birth in a Crocodile

In January 2018, a female crocodile in a Costa Rican zoo laid a clutch of eggs. That was peculiar: She’d been living alone for 16 years.

While crocodiles can lay sterile eggs that don’t develop, some of this clutch looked quite normal. And one of them — in a plot twist familiar to anyone who has watched “Jurassic Park” — continued to mature in an incubator. In this case, the egg eventually yielded a perfectly formed but stillborn baby crocodile.

In a paper out Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, a team of researchers report that the baby crocodile was a parthenogen — the product of a virgin birth, containing only genetic material from its mother. While parthenogenesis has been identified in creatures as diverse as king cobras, sawfish and California condors, this is the first time it has been found in crocodiles. And because of where crocodiles fall on the tree of life, it implies that pterosaurs and dinosaurs might also have been capable of such reproductive feats.

Here’s how a virgin birth happens: As an egg cell matures in its mother’s body, it divides repeatedly to generate a final product with exactly half the genes needed for an individual. Three smaller cellular sacs containing chromosomes, known as polar bodies, are formed as byproducts. Polar bodies usually wither away. But in vertebrates that can perform parthenogenesis, one polar body sometimes fuses with the egg, creating a cell with the necessary complement of chromosomes to form an individual.