FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—After pro-life leaders rejected President Donald Trump’s admonition to be “a little bit flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, some White House officials are looking to walk back that statement, three sources familiar with the administration’s thinking told The Daily Signal. Many pro-life leaders objected to the call to be flexible on Hyde, which bans taxpayer-funded abortion, and the administration has received their message, the sources said. One White House official disputed the idea that the administration is walking Trump’s comment back, but said it is rather clarifying it. The president has delivered the pro-life movement its biggest win in history with the overturn of Roe v Wade, the official said.  The Hyde Amendment is longstanding policy prohibiting funding of elective abortions in federal health care spending. Trump told House Republicans at their Members Retreat Tuesday they need to be a “little bit flexible on Hyde” when making a deal with Democrats on health care. Many Republicans in Congress have said they will not support a health care deal without the policy in place to prevent federal subsidies from funding abortion coverage in health plans. When asked about the president’s statement on Hyde at Wednesday’s briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt also clarified the president’s comments. “The president did not change the administration’s policy,” Leavitt said at a press briefing on Wednesday. “It was President Trump who signed an executive order protecting the Hyde Amendment. It’s the Trump administration that has taken multiple actions on various fronts to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not funding the practice of abortion.” Trump signed an executive order titled “Reinforcing the Hyde Amendment” in his fourth day in office, which ends “the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.” “What the president was saying yesterday was Republicans, and frankly Democrats, too, need to show a little bit more flexibility so we can actually get something done with respect to the issue of health care,” Leavitt continued. After the president’s statement on Hyde, elected officials and pro-life leaders said the policy was a red line for them. “We are not going to change the standard that we’re not going to use taxpayer funding for abortion,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said. “I’m just not going to allow that to happen.” “To suggest Republicans should be ‘flexible’ is an abandonment of this decades-long commitment,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of leading pro-life group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “If Republicans abandon Hyde, they are sure to lose this November.” One source reported hearing from the administration that it has been “inundated” with messages from the pro-life community in support of Hyde. A source familiar with the White House’s thinking says that now that the administration has received the message that pro-lifers will not compromise on Hyde, the pro-life movement is more concerned about the Senate compromising on the policy. On Thursday, 17 House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a three-year extension on Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies which do not include Hyde protections against abortion funding. Pro-lifers are concerned that a few Senate Republicans will break ranks to pass a health care deal without Hyde protections. “We’ve got to hit the Senate with everything we’ve got and make them know that we’re going to be strong and be firm on this issue,” a pro-life movement leader said. The post SCOOP: Some White House Officials Want to Walk Back Trump’s Statement on Abortion Funding, Sources Say appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Renee Good's Wife Admits They Were There to Protest

On February 16, 2009, tragedy struck when Travis the Chimp, a chimpanzee who had gained national celebrity over the years, viciously attacked his owner’s close friend, Charla Nash. Travis’ behavior had become increasingly erratic, and the attack left Nash severely disfigured and Travis dead. Charla Nash knew Travis since he was a baby, but he attacked her in 2009. Today, Nash continues to heal from the attack, and conversations around the ownership of exotic animals have only gained more traction following the shocking attack. Travis The Chimp’s Early Years Travis The Chimp was born at what’s now called the Missouri Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Festus, Missouri, on Oct. 21, 1995. He was taken from his mother, Suzy, when he was 3 days old and was sold to Jerome and Sandra Herold for $50,000. Suzy was later killed after she escaped from the sanctuary. Travis — named after country music star Travis Tritt — lived in the Herolds’ home in Stamford, Connecticut. He became something of a local celebrity, going everywhere with the couple and often accompanying them to work. Travis The Chimp was a local celebrity in the 1990s. Raised alongside humans, Travis paid close attention to the directions the Herolds gave him. Their neighbor once told them, “He listened better than my nephews.” Travis, in many ways, was like their child. He dressed himself, did chores, ate meals with the family, used a computer, and knew all the times that local ice cream trucks made their rounds. It was said that he was also a big fan of baseball. Travis and the Herolds had many good years together, but soon tragedy struck and Travis struggled to understand. Sandra Herold Treated Travis The Chimp Like Her Child Public DomainTravis was taken from his mother, Suzy, three days after his birth in Festus, Missouri. In 2000, the Herolds’ only child was killed in a car accident. Four years later Jerome Herold lost his battle with cancer. Sandra Herold used Travis as a comfort for her losses and began pampering him. The pair ate all their meals together, bathed together, and slept together every night. Travis began having fits of erratic behavior just before Jerome died. In October 2003, he escaped their car and ran loose in Stamford for a period of time after someone threw trash at him through the car’s window. The incident was the force behind the state’s passage of a law limiting primates to 50 pounds if they were pets and requiring owners to have a permit. Travis was exempted from the rule because the Herolds had him for so long. Six years later, Travis made national headlines when he attacked Sandra Herold’s friend, Charla Nash, after a seemingly normal encounter. Travis The Chimp’s Gruesome Attack On Charla Nash Charla Nash was a frequent visitor to Herold’s home as the pair had been friends for many years. On Feb. 16, 2009, she was visiting the duo when Travis escaped the house with Herold’s car keys. In an attempt to lure him back into the house, Nash held out his favorite toy — a Tickle Me Elmo doll. Though Travis the Chimp recognized the doll, Nash had recently changed her hair which may have confused and scared him. He attacked her outside the home, and Sandra Herold had to intervene. She hit him with a shovel before resorting to stabbing Travis in the back with a knife. She later recalled, “For me to do something like that — put a knife in him — was like putting one in myself.” She frantically called 911 and told the operator that Travis may have killed Nash. Emergency services waited until the police arrived to help Nash. When they arrived, the chimp tried to get into the police car, but the door was locked. Scared, injured, and enraged, Travis circled the police cruiser until he found an unlocked door, smashing a window in the process. Officer Frank Chiafari opened fire and shot Travis multiple times. Travis made his way back into the house and to his cage, likely his safe space, and died. Charla Nash’s Long Road To Recovery Nancy Lane/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via GettyCharla Nash lost virtually her entire face and required extensive surgery following Travis’s vicious attack. In the days following the attack, Travis the Chimp’s victim, Charla Nash, required many hours of surgery by multiple surgeons. Travis had broken nearly all the bones in her face, torn away her eyelids, nose, jaw, lips and most of her scalp, rendered her blind and fully removed one of her hands and most of the other. Her injuries were so severe that the Stamford hospital offered the staff that treated her counseling sessions. After they saved her life and successfully reattached her jaw, she was flown to Ohio for an experimental facial transplant. Travis’ head was taken to a state lab to be examined as the investigation of the attack continued. He did not have any diseases, though he was on medication for Lyme disease prevention. The toxicology report revealed that Travis had been given Xanax the day of the attack, as Sandra had told police. The drug may have fueled his aggression as side effects like hallucination and mania were sometimes reported in humans. On Nov. 11, 2009, Nash appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss the event, the experimental procedure, and her future. She said she wasn’t in any sort of pain and was looking forward to returning home. By then, attorneys for the former friends were embroiled in a $50 million lawsuit, which was settled for $4 million in 2012. National Changes That Followed Travis The Chimp’s Attack In 2009, Rep. Mark Kirk co-sponsored the Captive Primate Safety Act, which was supported by the Humane Society of the United States and Wildlife Conservation Society, The Hour reported. The bill would have prohibited apes, monkeys, and lemurs from being sold as pets, but it died in the Senate. Struggling to get therapy for the depression and anxiety caused by shooting Travis, Officer Frank Chiafari’s experience led to a 2010 bill that called for mental health care to be covered for police officers who were forced to kill an animal. Travis’ attack on Charla Nash sparked a long road of discussion over the ownership of exotic pets — one that continues today. After reading about Travis the Chimp, learn about the elephant that trampled a woman to death in India, then attacked her funeral. Then, read about Timothy Treadwell, the man who devoted his life to grizzly bears — until they ate him. The post The Harrowing Story Of Travis The Chimp’s Attack That Left A Woman Without A Face appeared first on All That's Interesting.

T. Ettema, et alA sediment coring device at work in the Norwegian-Greenland sea during the expedition. The deepest reaches of the Arctic Ocean contain one of the most desolate environments on our entire planet. It is known as Loki’s Castle, a large field of hydrothermal vents on the sea floor that’s extremely low in oxygen and high in pressure — and a very difficult place for any organisms to survive. But to the surprise of scientists recently digging in the sediment there, they found what appear to be new species of bacteria: the kind commonly related to chlamydia. Scientists collected the new strains of chlamydia-related bacteria from sediment several feet beneath the Arctic Ocean’s floor — which is two miles below the surface. They analyzed DNA from 68 samples and found that 51 of them contained Chlamydiae, the collective term for chlamydia and other related bacteria. According to Smithsonian, researchers found multiple strains of chlamydia bacteria that are typically known for causing sexually-transmitted infections in humans and animals. It’s an unexpected discovery that has left scientists baffled. “Finding Chlamydiae in this environment was completely unexpected,” Jennah Dharamshi, the lead author of the new study and a PhD researcher at Sweden’s Uppsala University, said. “And of course begged the question, what on earth were they doing there?” ShutterstockScientists unexpectedly uncovered several new species of chlamydia-related bacteria from the seabed of the Deep Arctic. Because Chlamydiae typically depend on living host organisms to survive, researchers are astounded that the newly discovered strains had learned how to live in isolation. According to the new study published in the journal Current Biology, the Chlamydiae bacteria found on the floor of the Arctic Ocean were in fact “abundant, diverse and active.” Furthermore, the researchers happened upon this abundance of Chlamydiae by accident. The international team of scientists had been using probes to find microbes that live well below the ocean’s surface. They used metagenomic data, which collectively sequences the genetic makeup of all organisms that live in an environment. This allows them to scope out diverse microbial life without the need to grow them in the lab. “The vast majority of life on earth is microbial, and currently most of it can’t be grown in the lab,” Thijs Ettema, a microbiology professor at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands who was involved in the research. “By using genomic methods,” Ettema added, “we obtained a more clear image on the diversity of life. Every time we explore a different environment, we discover groups of microbes that are new to science. This tells us just how much is still left to discover.” T. Ettema, et alThe expedition boat in Loki’s Circle, a deep-sea field of hydrothermal vents in the Arctic. In addition, the exceptional abundance of the chlamydia-related bacteria suggests that they could have a significant role in the deep Arctic sea’s ecosystem. “Chlamydiae have likely been missed in many prior surveys of microbial diversity,” co-author Daniel Tamarit, a biologist at Uppsala University, explained. “This group of bacteria could be playing a much larger role in marine ecology than we previously thought.” But how did the Chlamydiae survive the harsh environment of the deep Arctic in the first place? Researchers suspect that the strains of bacteria living deep in the frigid ocean might “require compounds from other microbes living in the marine sediments.” Researchers were unable to conduct further tests since it would be difficult to replicate the deep Arctic environment in a lab setting. Nevertheless, the study has certainly challenged the scientists’ notions of how Chlamydiae can survive in our world. Not only that, the discovery will also help researchers understand the evolution of Chlamydiae and how it adapted to become the disease that affects humans around the world today. Next, learn about how scientists are discovering organisms like 40,000-year-old worms in the Arctic ice — and bringing them back to life. Then, take a look at some of the most incredible Arctic animals. The post Researchers Discover Chlamydia In The Deepest Reaches Of The Arctic Ocean appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage ResearchThe ring’s ornate construction suggests that it once belonged to a woman of high status. Laborers were recently hard at work in Tønsberg, Norway, during an excavation project related to stormwater management, when a glint of gold caught one of their eyes. They had spotted a tiny, delicate, gold ring, which experts believe dates back to the Middle Ages. Given its ornate gold band, archaeologists believe that it likely once belonged to a woman of the upper class, and that the blue color of its stone was meant to cool “inner heat” and promote chastity. A “Dream Find”: Uncovering The Medieval Ring In Tønsberg According to the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, the medieval gold ring was first verified by Linda Åsheim, one of the onsite archaeologists in central Tønsberg affiliated with the stormwater project. Åsheim said she had an “out-of-body” experience when she first laid eyes on the ring. Linda Åsheim/Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage ResearchThe medieval ring, shortly after its discovery in Tønsberg. “I was completely shaken, and had to ask the construction guys if they were messing with me,” Åsheim remarked. She added, “And now I just have to quit being an archaeologist, because now I’ve reached the top.” The ring that Åsheim identified is small and delicate, a tangle of spiraled gold filigree and small round balls known as granulation. It’s set with a dark blue stone the color of a sapphire or opal, but appears to actually be made of glass. Archaeologists believe that it was likely meant to mimic the more precious stones, possibly through the addition of cobalt. Though the archaeological layer where the ring was found has not been dated, a spruce twig in an upper layer was dated to between 1167 and 1269. And experts agree that the ring has a medieval design. Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage ResearchThe excavation site in Tønsberg where the medieval gold ring was found. “The design of the spirals at the top of the ring rail in particular resembles finger rings dating to the 9th-11th centuries,” Marianne Vedeler, a professor at the Museum of Cultural History, explained. “The combination of filigree and granulation came to Norway in the early Middle Ages from the Byzantine area, partly via Carolingian [era] (750 to 900) goldsmithing.” But who did this stunning ring belong to? While the identity of the ring’s owner may remain a mystery, the ring itself offers some clues about the type of person who once wore it centuries ago. The Story Behind The Gold Ring From The Middle Ages Found In Tønsberg Tønsberg was an important town during the Middle Ages, located in the shadow of the royal castle complex known as Tunsberghus, or Tønsberg Fortress. As such, the ring could easily have belonged to a royal or a member of the clergy. But the small size of the ring (it has an estimated ring size of 50-55) suggests that it belonged to a woman, likely of the upper class. Johanne Torheim/Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage ResearchLinda Åsheim with the gold ring she found during excavations in Tønsberg. What’s more, the ring’s blue stone had special meaning during the Middle Ages. Blue stones symbolized divine powers, and were thought to have healing properties. Medieval people also believed that blue stones could help cool someone’s “inner heat” and thus help them to remain chaste. The ring shape itself, an unbroken circle, was also possibly seen as a protection from evil. And given its delicate decorative properties, and blue stone, it likely also symbolized power and social status. But while the identity of the ring’s owner remains a mystery, it stands as one of the most thrilling archaeological finds in Norway in recent memory. Some 200 historical rings are in the country’s national database, though just 63 of them come from the Middle Ages. “It has been 15 years since we last found a gold ring in Tønsberg,” project manager Hanne Ekstrøm Jordahl remarked, “and this one is a fantastically beautiful and rare specimen.” After reading about the medieval gold ring that was found in Norway, look through these surprisingly raunchy images from medieval manuscripts. Then, learn about some of the strangest customs that existed during the Middle Ages. The post Medieval Ring Made Of Gold Accidentally Uncovered During A Drainage Project In The Center Of A City In Norway appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Francisco Garrido and Catalina MoralesX-rays and CT scans of the mummified man revealed the extent of his injuries. New forensic analysis of a mummified man discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert has revealed that the individual seemingly died around 1,100 years ago following a catastrophic accident inside a turquoise mine. CT scans and X-ray imagery showed signs of blunt force trauma on the man’s skeleton, suggesting he died because of a rockfall or mine collapse. These findings, published recently in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, are providing new insight into the history of turquoise mining in Chile. New Technologies Reveal Centuries-Old Injuries The mummified remains were originally excavated in the 1970s near El Salvador, Chile, located in the heart of the Atacama Desert. Archaeologists recovered the body, along with an array of grave goods, just outside the entrance of a pre-Hispanic turquoise mine. The burial items included a bow and arrow, leather pouches containing ore fragments, beads, and a snuff kit typically used for hallucinogenic drugs. While a visible fracture in the mummy’s lower left leg bone initially suggested a traumatic event, a comprehensive analysis was not completed until 2023, and the results have now been released. Francisco Garrido and Catalina MoralesEvidence suggests the man was killed in a mine collapse. Researchers led by archaeologists Francisco Garrido and Catalina Morales of the National Museum of Natural History in Santiago utilized CT scans and X-ray imagery to examine the internal injuries of the mummy. The results painted a grim picture of a mining disaster. “We found extensive injuries to the man’s back, ribs, collarbone, shoulder blades and lower limb bones,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Considering the archaeological context, this individual likely died while extracting turquoise, when a rock fell on his back from the ceiling of the mine.” The lack of healing on the bone fractures confirmed that all injuries occurred immediately prior to death. Radiocarbon dating indicated that the man died sometime between 894 and 1016 C.E. He was between 25 and 40 years old and stood just over five feet tall. Now, his untimely death is revealing more about life in the Atacama Desert some 1,100 years ago. Unique Insight Into Pre-Hispanic Turquoise Mining Turquoise mining took place in the Atacama Desert for 2,000 years, but most of the mines were open-air and shallow. As such, protective equipment was not typically used. However, the researchers noted that the mine at El Salvador was one of the few that had subterranean galleries. “It is likely that a miner would have entered the mine and used stone hammers to extract turquoise from the surrounding rock,” Garrido and Morales told Live Science. “In the event of a rockfall, there was no form of protection.” The discovery came as part of a broader effort to understand the trade networks of the South-Central Andes. The turquoise extracted from these mines was turned into beads, which were traded across the region. Researchers emphasized that further study is needed to better understand the living conditions and physical toll placed on miners who extracted these valuable stones for trade and ritual use. The mummy, meanwhile, serves as a preserved reminder of the risks involved in one of humanity’s oldest professions. After reading about the mummy of this Chilean turquoise miner, learn about the Llullaillaco Maiden, the mummified woman found at the summit of a volcano in the Andes. Then, discover the stories of nine more famous mummies. The post New Analysis Of An 1,100-Year-Old Mummy Found In Chile Suggests The Man Died When A Turquoise Mine Caved In appeared first on All That's Interesting.

The social media response to the deadly ICE shooting in Minneapolis proves yet again that so-called internet ‘experts’ do not deserve the moniker.

Nebraska State Senator Says She 'Didn't Look' While Tearing Down Founders' Portraits – Sure, Jan

Vehicle Shortages? Russian Army Is Now Mounting Starlink Panels on Horses.

Comedian John Mulaney has postponed three shows scheduled for this weekend in Minneapolis, saying the city feels "unsafe" in the aftermath of Wednesday's fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by a federal immigration officer.