'It's scary to think that something like this could happen in a place where we are supposed to feel safe.'

'Dictate the future of the American energy industry

This Complete List Of Ultravox Albums And Songs presents the full discography of Ultravox studio albums. The band Ultravox was first formed in 1974.  The group hails from the area of  London, England.  All these engaging ahead of their time Ultravox albums have been presented below in chronological order. We have also included all original release dates with each Ultravox album as well as all original album covers. Every Ultravox album listed below showcases the entire album tracklisting. ULTRAVOX STUDIO ALBUMS Ultravox! Released: 1977 Ultravox’s debut album, Ultravox!, was recorded at Island Studios in London and produced by Steve Lillywhite The post Complete List Of Ultravox Albums And Discography appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

News Beetlejuice Beetlejuice The Ghost With The Most Gets Up to Some New Tricks in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Midlife crisis via trickster demon? Okay, cool. By Molly Templeton | Published on May 23, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share This new trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice makes a strong argument for never telling your teenage children about your troubled past. As Lydia (Winona Ryder) tries to explain, in all seriousness, her previous encounter with the trickster demon Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega)—clearly unimpressed—just keeps doing the thing. The thing she really shouldn’t do. Yeah, she says his name three times. Of course she does. And the juice is loose, again, to wreak havoc on the same family and a new generation of moviegoers. Once it gets past the requisite haunted-child “Day-O,” this trailer … is actually a lot of fun. Stripey sandworms! Spiky bangs! Catherine O’Hara’s perfect face! Justin Theroux struggling to take it all in! And, of course, Michael Keaton having a grand old time. An older, tireder-looking Beetlejuice is somehow, maybe, just what this decade needs? Here’s the synopsis: Beetlejuice is back! After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is, of course, directed by Tim Burton. The cast also includes Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe, and Arthur Conti. Wednesday’s Alfred Gough & Miles Millar wrote the screenplay (Seth Grahame-Smith joins them for story credit; the characters were originally created by Michael McDowell & Larry Wilson). The film is in theaters September 6th, because spooky season comes earlier and earlier every year. Not that we’re complaining.[end-mark] The post The Ghost With The Most Gets Up to Some New Tricks in <em>Beetlejuice Beetlejuice</em> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Star Trek: Discovery “Warm fuzzy encouragement that I don’t need” — Star Trek: Discovery’s “Lagrange Point” The crew attempts a classic Star Trek heist in the penultimate episode of Discovery… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on May 23, 2024 Credit: CBS / Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: CBS / Paramount+ Last week, it was a race to get to the Progenitors’ tech, and our heroes had one advantage: a last-minute instruction that wasn’t on the clues themselves, but which Burnham was told when she got the last clue. By the end of “Lagrange Point” we have learned that the last-minute instruction was a specific phrase that Burnham would need to speak at some point. And we also learned that the tech is in a big container that was left at the Lagrange Point between two singularities that are two of the oldest stars in the galaxy, and which is an interdimensional portal, apparently. The episode ends with Burnham following two Breen and Moll into the portal to try to find the tech, with Rayner about to order Discovery to follow them in. Getting to that point really didn’t need to take up an entire episode, but it did. And it was at once very exciting and very annoying. In terms of straight-up action and intrigue and maneuvering and thinking their way out of the problem, the story worked. The Breen snagged the tech and put it in their cargo hold, and Discovery (which has been cloaked the entire time, so the Breen still think they’re destroyed) has to, in essence, pull a heist. Now I loves me a good heist. Two of my favorite TV shows are heist shows: Leverage and Hustle, and I also loved the heist parts of the TV show Animal Kingdom and the movie Solo. And visually, veteran director Jonathan Frakes does his usual excellent job, with mostly perfect pacing. (I say mostly because the script calls for Burnham and Book to have a heart-to-heart in the middle of their time-sensitive away mission. Sure.) But the script, by Sean Cochran and Ari Friedman, is a big honkin’ mess that makes no sense. Credit: CBS / Paramount+ On the face of it, Discovery’s plan seems like a good one: infiltrate the Breen dreadnought, disguise themselves as Breen, and steal the doodad. An advantage to trying to steal something from the Breen is that it should be easy to disguise yourself as one of them. Except for one problem: the Breen are supposed to be (a) incredibly advanced, and (b) completely mysterious. How is Discovery able to perfectly replicate a Breen suit enough so that a real Breen can’t tell the difference? How are they able to suddenly translate the Breen language? And how can they all communicate with each other without the Breen—who are supposed to have superior technology—knowing that they’re doing it? Basically, the notion that Discovery’s away team can so perfectly imitate Breen so that no one notices strains credulity well beyond the breaking point. Having said that, the final bit of the heist did work, mostly because at this point Burnham and Book were exposed and they had to think their way out of the problem. Burnham mentions their first confrontation with Moll and L’ak back in “Red Directive,” which is meant as a hint to Rayner as to how to rescue them. This results in a visually spectacular sequence as Discovery basically rams into the cargo bay and blasts its contents out into space, including both Book and Burnham and the doodad. The idea is to beam them off, although Burnham has entered the portal by this point, following Moll. Credit: CBS / Paramount+ Speaking of Moll, despite Eve Harlow doing the best she can, I remain utterly unconvinced that she’s now the leader of the Breen, and I have yet to see a single reason why anyone would even consider taking orders from her. Meantime, another Breen Primarch is on her way: Tahal, the Primarch who occupied Kellerun during Rayner’s younger days. She doesn’t actually show up—like far too much, that’s being saved for next week’s finale—but it’s obvious that Rayner still has some major PTSD regarding her. One bit of good news: Saru’s back! After an unconscionably long time without Doug Jones, he’s back, and has volunteered to try to negotiate with Tahal to keep her from blowing everything up. But we don’t see him performing that mission, either. However, we do get him and Tara Rosling’s T’Rina being adorable, which is always welcome. Plus Chelah Horsdal is back as President Rillak, which will always make me happy. (Allow me to once again plug my Rillak short story “Work Worth Doing” in Star Trek Explorer #9.) Also, I do want to single out Blu del Barrio and Patrick Kwok-Choon as Adira and Rhys, respectively. Their banter as they work to bring down the Breen shields—Adira using their super brain and Rhys providing support and protection—is hilarious. I especially loved when Rhys hit upon the notion of bullying the low-ranking officer at the console and making him leave so Adira can do her work. Adira just mutters, “Everyone always picks on the ensign…” Last season, Discovery was paced perfectly for its first half, and then slowed to a crawl for its second. It’s happening again, as the season started out well paced, but we kept side-stepping into Breen stupidity and other weird distractions, and now spending an entire episode with a heist that just gets us to where we should’ve been at the beginning of the episode: with Moll and Burnham both chasing the tech in the dimensional portal. Everything else has just been wheel-spinning to get us to where we need to go, and we should’ve gotten there already. It’s like last season when they spent an entire episode getting through the Galactic Barrier (a trip that took Kirk’s Enterprise all of five minutes each of the three times they did it). Once again we’ve got an entire episode that should’ve been a pre-credits teaser. Credit: CBS / Paramount+ And now we have to wait another week for the finale—which will apparently be 90 minutes long, so hopefully there’ll be room for everything…[end-mark] The post “Warm fuzzy encouragement that I don’t need” — <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i>’s “Lagrange Point” appeared first on Reactor.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Thursday that a lower court “clearly erred” when it held that South Carolina racially gerrymandered its congressional district map. The majority held that the “circumstantial evidence falls far short of showing that race, not partisan preferences, drove the districting process” behind the creation of the map. “First, a party challenging a map’s constitutionality must disentangle race and politics if it wishes to prove that the legislature was motivated by race as opposed to partisanship,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “Second, in assessing a legislature’s work, we start with a presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.” “In this case, which features a challenge to South Carolina’s redistricting efforts in the wake of the 2020 census, the three-judge District Court paid only lip service to these propositions,” Alito continued, writing that the court’s findings of fact were “clearly erroneous under the appropriate legal standard.” Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the majority’s opinion “betrays its distance from, and lack of familiarity with, the events and evidence central to this case.” “The majority picks and chooses evidence to its liking; ignores or minimizes less convenient proof; disdains the panel’s judgments about witness credibility; and makes a series of mistakes about expert opinions,” Kagan wrote. “The majority declares that it knows better than the District Court what happened in a South Carolina map-drawing room to produce District 1.” The three-judge panel that initially found the map had been racially gerrymandered already modified its order in March to allow the map to be used during the 2024 election due to the Supreme Court’s delay in resolving the appeal. “The ideal must bend to the practical,” the panel concluded, citing rapidly approaching deadlines for the primary season and the lack of a new plan. The judges initially found in January 2023 that race was the “predominant motivating factor” when lawmakers moved over 30,000 black residents from one district to another, ruling that Congressional District No. 1 on the resulting map was racially gerrymandered in violation of the 14th Amendment. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace won the district in 2022 by nearly 14 points following the redistricting. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate concurrence to express his view that the court “has no power to decide these types of claims.” “Drawing political districts is a task for politicians, not federal judges,” he wrote. “There are no judicially manageable standards for resolving claims about districting, and, regardless, the Constitution commits those issues exclusively to the political branches.” “The Court’s insistence on adjudicating these claims has led it to develop doctrines that indulge in race-based reasoning inimical to the Constitution,” Thomas continued. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Supreme Court Rules South Carolina Did Not Racially Gerrymander Congressional District Map appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Better late than never. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the giant federal agency housing the National Institutes of Health, just suspended a New York-based organization from participating in government procurement programs over its role as a subcontractor for a Chinese research facility connected to the first outbreak of COVID-19. HHS also notified Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, of his organization’s suspension from eligibility for government grant programs for at least three years. Following Daszak’s sworn testimony, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, published an extensive staff report May 1 on EcoHealth Alliance’s research activities. That report recommended suspension and debarment proceedings against Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, which had been a subcontractor for the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. HHS, heeding the subcommittee’s recommendations, did just that. The subcommittee on the COVID-19 pandemic held another hearing Wednesday in which Republicans and Democrats alike questioned David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime chief of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about what a staff memorandum calls “overwhelming evidence” that Morens “engaged in serious misconduct and potentially illegal actions.” Morens testified, in part, that he didn’t realize that deleting certain emails would constitute destroying or tampering with federal records when he wrote about doing so in correspondence related to COVID-19. “I was not aware that anything I deleted like emails was a federal record,” Morens said at one point, as the New York Post reported.  The subcommittee’s staff memo cites previously unreleased emails, obtained by subpoena, that it says incriminate Morens in “undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and repeatedly acting unbecoming of a federal employee.” How did we get to this point? The Record Since 2014, EcoHealth Alliance has received approximately $8 million in federal government grants to study coronaviruses. In 2020, the Trump administration terminated grant funding for the organization. However, despite unresolved controversies, the Biden administration in 2022 approved $650,000 in renewed funding for EcoHealth. In 2023, the HHS Office of Inspector General found that the National Institutes of Health had failed to effectively monitor its grants to EcoHealth for research that incurred “inherent risks.” HHS’ recent Action Referral Memorandum was based on an accumulation of communications between 2014 and 2024 between EcoHealth and NIH that revealed lapses in reporting, absence of lab files and crucial records on viral experiments, regulatory noncompliance, and repeated failures in transmitting critical information to NIH, particularly in the final report. In her May 15 memorandum to Daszak, Henrietta K. Brisbon, deputy assistant HHS secretary for acquisitions, declared: As established in the record, the NIH review of the Year 5 I-RPPR [Research Performance Progress Report] submitted by EHA [EcoHealth Alliance], more than two years late, determined that an experiment by WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology], shown in Figure 13 of the report, had possibly yielded a greater than 1 log increase in viral activity (a tenfold increase in serum viral load), in violation of the terms of the grant. The NIH gave EHA and WIV several opportunities to disprove this finding, but EHA and WIV failed to do so. Due to EHA’s and WIV’s failure to adequately respond to the NIH requests that the required materials to support WIV’s research reported in the grant RPPRs [Research Performance Progress Reports] and the I-RPPRs be provided, the NIH’s conclusion that WIV research likely violated protocols of the NIH regarding biosafety is undisputed. For its part, EcoHealth Alliance not only failed to submit its Year 5 report after almost two years, but Daszak insisted that his organization was, for an inexplicable technical reason, “locked out” of NIH’s reporting system. His claim, however, is unsubstantiated. Thus, the subcommittee concluded in its report: “EcoHealth violated its grant terms and conditions by failing to report a potentially dangerous experiment conducted by the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology].” Word Games Focused on uncovering the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, congressional investigators have tried to determine whether any federal funding inadvertently contributed to the laboratory development of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Certain facts are indisputable. China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the initial outbreak of COVID-19 occurred, was a center of coronavirus research. There were biosafety problems at the institute, a fact reported by U.S. State Department officials as early as 2018. These problems were acknowledged by Chinese authorities, who identified five “categories” where the Wuhan lab failed to meet China’s national safety standards. A top scientist at the lab, Shi Zhengli, known as the Bat Lady of China, was a subcontractor for EcoHealth Alliance and she also engaged in gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses. Such research is designed to enhance the virulence and the transmissibility of pathogens. In 2015, Shi was also a collaborator with microbiologist Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina and other scientists on published research, approved by NIH, about the potential of bat coronaviruses to infect humans. NIH officials nonetheless maintained that EcoHealth’s work with Shi was at the time outside the scope of their restrictions on gain-of-function research. EcoHealth, as noted, had received millions of dollars in government grants over several years and allocated a portion of that funding for research work in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The institute was unquestionably engaged in dangerous gain-of-function research designed, as noted, to enhance the pathogenicity and transmissibility of coronaviruses. The crucial question for the House’s pandemic subcommittee was whether any taxpayer funds were used to facilitate such research. Money, of course, is fungible. In its report, the subcommittee noted that the NIH website, as of Oct. 19, 2021, defined gain-of-function research as “a type of research that modifies a biological agent so that it confers a new or enhanced activity to that agent.” Subsequently, in public statements and congressional testimony, Fauci and other NIH officials used a different definition, the “P3CO Framework,” which they determined to be a framework for research that would be appropriate under government regulation. This framework didn’t encompass all forms of gain-of-function research, but a “subset” of such research focused on enhanced “potential pandemic pathogens.” This is a reference to “highly transmissible” and “virulent” pathogens that are likely to cause “significant” human morbidity and mortality. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., recently asked Dr. Lawrence Tabak, NIH’s former acting director, whether the agency funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab through EcoHealth Alliance. Tabak responded: “It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research. If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did … the generic term is research that goes on in many, many labs around the country. It is not regulated. And the reason it’s not regulated is it poses no threat or harm to anybody.”    The central point of contention, then, is the meaning of gain-of-function research. As House subcommittee staff observed: “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many scientists and government officials categorially denied that taxpayer funds were used for gain-of-function research in Wuhan at the WIV. These assertions rested on semantics and the misapplication of understood definitions.”   Further, subcommittee staff reported, “witness testimony and a plain reading of EcoHealth’s research conducted at the WIV using taxpayer dollars confirm it facilitated an experiment that conveyed new or enhanced activity to a pathogen—thus satisfying the definition of gain-of-function research.” In the interim staff report, the pandemic subcommittee concluded: “EcoHealth used taxpayer dollars to facilitate gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in Wuhan at the WIV, contrary to previous public statements, including those by Dr. Anthony Fauci.” The Big Picture Jim Geraghty, National Review’s senior political correspondent, recently put this set of events in proper perspective. “Stories don’t get any bigger than the origin of a virus that caused a global pandemic that effectively shut down the world for over a year and changed the lives of every human being on the planet,” Geraghty wrote. To be clear, the evidence thus far shows that the Wuhan Institute of Virology indeed did gain-of-function coronavirus research, and Fauci was aware of that fact. The evidence also shows that  EcoHealth collaborated with the Wuhan lab Institute in coronavirus research, including an experiment to infect genetically engineered mice.   But as yet there is no direct evidence that taxpayers funded a specific experiment at Wuhan, resulting in a “lab leak” that caused the global COVID-19 pandemic. That’s why congressional investigators must remain unrelenting in their search for the truth and thwart attempts to ignore, downplay, or rewrite the history of the deadly pandemic. In that connection, Heritage Foundation colleagues have detailed how Washington’s public health establishment promoted the narrative of a natural origin for the novel coronavirus and how NIH officials and grantees worked to discredit the likelihood of a Chinese “lab leak” as a “conspiracy theory.” EcoHealth’s Daszak played a key role in this impressive public relations offensive. He was an organizer and signatory of a March 7, 2020, letter published by The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal. The letter signed by Daszak and 25 others in “solidarity” with China’s scientists warned: “Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors, and prejudice that jeopardize our global cooperation in the fight against this virus.”  Ten days later, on March 17, 2020, several top NIH-funded virologists published a seminal article in Nature Medicine, a prominent scientific journal, emphasizing that the new coronavirus wasn’t a “laboratory construct.” Their article followed a Feb. 1 teleconference with Fauci. It was an odd turn of events, since the authors of the Nature Medicine article had no independent access to Chinese data and, in fact, initially expressed the view that the novel coronavirus appeared to have a lab origin. Nonetheless, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, citing the Nature Medicine article on March 26, 2020, said it provided scientific evidence for the natural origins of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and discredited the notion that the pandemic originated in a lab. The dominant media narrative was set.   For the record, Collins since has told Congress  that the Chinese “lab leak” hypothesis no longer should be considered a “conspiracy theory.” Federal public health officials’ strong affirmation in 2020 that the pandemic had a “natural” origin was, to put it charitably, a big stretch. Beginning in January 2020, officials in Communist China locked down the city of Wuhan, denied outside access to vital information, and punished dissident Chinese scientists while insisting that the deadly coronavirus had a natural origin—probably an infected animal. Speculation on the infected “host” has ranged from a pangolin to a raccoon dog, caged in Wuhan’s “wet market.” To date, however, no such viral host has been identified.  Taxpayer Victory Wenstrup, chairman of the House pandemic subcommittee, issued a statement May 15 on the HHS response. “EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH,” Wenstrup said. “These actions are wholly abhorrent [and] indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action,” the Ohio Republican added. “Eco Health’ s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide.”  Wenstrup announced his intention to deepen the congressional probe into New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, identify discrepancies in Daszak’s sworn testimony, and compel the organization’s leader to produce more documents. Meanwhile, subcommittee investigators found evidence that Morens, the senior adviser to Fauci, deleted federal records related to the pandemic and used his personal email to avoid disclosure of sensitive communications to Congress and the public. This House subcommittee is unrelenting. Up next: Fauci is scheduled to testify under oath June 3 before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Don’t miss it.   The post In COVID-19 Oversight, House Republicans Deliver a Win for Accountability appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sen. Ted Cruz grilled U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn on Wednesday about a case centering on a serial child rapist during a judicial confirmation hearing. Netburn, who was nominated for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was one of five judges testifying at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz, R-Texas, started by asking Netburn if political ideology mattered more than individual rights. “I don’t believe you, and I think this case demonstrates that you are willing to subjugate the rights of individuals to satisfy your political ideology,” Cruz said when Netburn claimed her political views “didn’t matter at all.” “This case involves a male defendant who raped a nine-year-old boy. Was he guilty of that?” Cruz asked. “Yes, the petitioner pled guilty to that,” Netburn responded. Biden’s nominee to be the judge for the Southern District of New York, Sarah Netburn, is an absolute radical. She puts ideology before safety when it comes to housing biological men in women’s prisons.When the Bureau of Prisons WARNED against housing a convicted serial child… pic.twitter.com/4QcMNUbAqC— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) May 22, 2024 Cruz referred to a case where Justine Shelby, a biological male who identifies as female, filed a suit to force the federal Bureau of Prisons to assign him to a women’s prison following a federal conviction on child pornography charges. Netburn ruled that Shelby should be transferred to a women’s prison. Cruz then got Netburn to confirm that the transgender inmate had also pled guilty to raping a 17-year-old girl, before questioning her about an August 2022 ruling ordering the Bureau of Prisons to transfer the biologically male inmate to a women’s facility. “This individual, 6-foot-2, biologically a man, a minute ago, you said that when this man decided that he was a she, you said this individual was, I wrote it down, ‘sober and entirely a female,’” Cruz said. “That phrase struck me as remarkable. Did this individual have male genitalia?” Netburn claimed that she was referring to the inmate being “hormonally a female,” and admitted that the inmate still retained male genitals after Cruz pressed her on the issue. “So you took a 6-foot-2 serial rapist, serial child rapist, with male genitalia, and he said, ‘You know, I’d like to be in a women’s prison,” Cruz responded. “And your answer was, ‘That sounds great to me.’” “Let me ask you something, the other women in that prison, do they have any rights?” Cruz asked. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Cruz Asks Biden Judge Nominee: Why Did You Order Male Trans ‘Serial Child Rapist’ to Be Housed in Women’s Prison? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Fauci Proves That the FOIA System Is Broken

Vibe Shift Afoot?