Category Archives: Viva!

Amazon agrees to stop selling foie gras in California

California prosecutors say Amazon has agreed to stop selling foie gras in the state from birds that have been force fed after state lawmakers banned that form of the fatty duck and goose liver delicacy.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacy announced Friday that a state judge approved a settlement…

Charlottesville: James Fields guilty of murder for driving car into crowd

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  • Jury finds Fields, 21, guilty of first-degree murder
  • Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in August 2017 crash

A jury has found 21-year-old James Alex Fields Jr guilty of first-degree murder for intentionally driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally, killing one woman and injuring dozens.

Fields was charged with first-degree murder and other felonies in the August 2017 crash that killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Her death came after police forced a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville to disband, after participants had clashed with counter-demonstrators earlier.

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Deadly pig virus could hit US in a year, warn experts

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African swine fever has been spreading rapidly in China and has also travelled from Russia and Eastern Europe to Belgium. Experts fear it is only a matter of time before it reaches the US.

A global outbreak of African swine fever will reach the US within a year unless border protections are tightened and imports of high-risk pork products banned, warn biosecurity experts. It would cost the US economy $16.5bn (£12.9bn) in the first year alone, it has been estimated.

An ongoing epidemic of the virus, which is deadly for pigs but cannot yet be transmitted to humans, has prompted the US Department of Agriculture to review and strengthen its border protections. After outbreaks in Belgium and China this year, the USDA has increased the use of sniffer dogs at major ports, airports, land borders crossings, and has also built quarantine stations and increased passenger and cargo inspections on flights from China and Russia, the worst hit countries.

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Hepatitis E in pigs in Israel: seroprevalence, molecular characterisation and potential impact on humans

Introduction

The zoonotic hepatitis E virus (HEV) genotype 3 (HEV-G3) has become a common cause of acute and chronic hepatitis among humans worldwide. In Israel, while HEV-3 sequences have previously been detected in sewage, only the non-zoonotic HEV-G1 genotype has been found in samples from human patients.

Aim

In this pilot study, we aimed to assess the status of HEV in a sample of the swine population and among swine farm workers in Israel.

Methods

Pig blood (n = 141) and faecal samples (n = 39), pig farm sewage samples (n = 8) and blood from farm workers (n = 24) were collected between February 2016 and October 2017. Anti-HEV IgG was detected using the Wantai assay. HEV RNA was analysed with the RealStar HEV kit. HEV open reading frame 1 fragments amplified from representative HEV RNA-positive samples were used for phylogenetic analysis.

Results

Overall prevalence of HEV antibodies in pigs was 75.9% (107/141). HEV RNA was detected in plasma (2.1%, 3/141), faecal (22.8%, 18/79) and pig sewage (4/8) samples. Pig and sewage-derived viral sequences clustered with previously identified human sewage HEV-G3 sequences. Most pig farms workers (23 of 24) were HEV-seropositive; none was viraemic or reported previous clinical signs.

Conclusions

This study showed that domestic pigs in Israel are infected with HEV-G3. The high HEV seropositivity of the farm workers together with the previous identification of this virus in human sewage suggests circulation to humans. The clinical impact of these findings on public health should be further explored.

Remember Pearl Harbor

In Saner Thought

Today is 07 December the day in 1941 when the forces of the empire of Japan attacked our naval fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii…..a day we remember….the day our Greatest Generation went to war.

Too many people know the day but not the situation…..and the old professor is here to help…..too many blow the day off and that is just wrong…….

First some myths about Pearl Harbor…..https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-pearl-harbor/2011/11/23/gIQAbdKrLO_story.html

Why did Japan do it? Doing nothing is a viable strategic option, and oftentimes a good one. Imperial Japan would have been far better off had it forgone the attack on Pearl Harbor and confined its operations to the Western Pacific. Had Tokyo exercised some forbearance, it may have avoided rousing the “sleeping giant” that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto reputedly said he feared so much. And even if it did awaken the American giant, it would have avoided filling him with what Yamamoto…

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