China's Zhurong Mars Rover

China's Zhurong rover has quietly clocked up 1,900 feet (585 meters) of driving on Mars and has been using its science instruments to check out nearby geologic features in Utopia Planitia.

Zhurong's latest exploits have seen it analyze dunes amid the local rocky Martian terrain and visit the backshell and parachute that helped the rover land safely on the Red Planet.

A new release by the China National Space Administration on July 23, also marking the first anniversary of the launch of China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission, showed Zhurong had visited a second wind-formed sand dune.

The rover used its surface composition detectors, multi-spectral cameras and other science payloads to analyze the formation, according to the update.

Zhurong landed on Mars in May and rolled onto the surface a week later, making China just the second country after the United States to land and operate a rover on Mars. The rover's first feat was driving away from the lander, dropping a small, remote camera, and returning to pose with the lander for an epic selfie.

Later updates have included remarkable roving footage as well as sounds captured by the rover's climate station.

The solar-powered rover has since been making its way south of the landing site. The CNSA released a map showing Zhurong's travels up to July 21 and covering 66 Mars days, or sols. Both Zhurong's parent orbiter, Tianwen-1, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have also been monitoring the journey.

ET's and Earth

Gut Bacteria

People who live to age 100 and beyond may have special gut bacteria that help ward off infections, according to a new study from Japan.

The results suggest that these bacteria, and the specific compounds they produce — known as "secondary bile acids" — could contribute to a healthy gut and, in turn, healthy aging.

Still, much more research is needed to know whether these bacteria promote exceptionally long life spans. The current findings, published Thursday (July 29) in the journal Nature, only show an association between these gut bacteria and living past 100; they don't prove that these bacteria caused people to live longer, said study senior author Dr. Kenya Honda, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo.

"Although it might suggest that these bile-acid-producing bacteria may contribute to longer life spans, we do not have any data showing the cause-and-effect relationship between them," Honda told Live Science.

The community of bacteria and other microorganisms that live in the gut, known as the gut microbiome, is known to play a role in our health and changes as we age. For example, having less diversity in the types of gut bacteria has been linked with frailty in older adults. But researchers suspected that people who reach age 100 may have special gut bacteria that contribute to good health. 

Indeed, centenarians tend to be at lower risk of chronic diseases and infections compared with older adults who don't reach this milestone.  READ MORE

Religious Flowchart

 

It's A PURGE

Maher Torches Woke Culture: ‘This Is Called A Purge. It’s A Mentality That Belongs In Stalin’s Russia.’

HBO host Bill Maher slammed woke culture and people who were complaining about cultural appropriation at the Olympics, saying that the toxic ideology was something that belonged in Stalin’s Russia.

Top lines from Maher’s segment on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” included:


BILL MAHER, HBO HOST: And finally new rule, please don’t make the Olympics into the Oscars. Oh, what’s that? They they did already? Yeah. You know, back in April when the Oscars aired, I commented in this space that the theme of that evening was, we dare you to be entertained lest your mind waver for a few hours from thinking about the sad things and bad people in the world. Well, thank God we found some of those bad people in the Olympics now and not a moment too soon. [Audience claps] No, that was sarcasm. 

The director of the opening ceremony was fired hours before the event because they found out there was a Holocaust joke at a comedy routine he did decades ago. Well, you know, context is everything. Obviously it didn’t strike people as beyond the pale at the time, young people have to stop flattering themselves that they’re Nostradamus and would have foreseen had they’d been around then everything that’s unacceptable now, and for further context, Mel Brooks wrote one of the most successful musicals of all time around the song Springtime For Hitler.

Why do we allow the people who just want to b***h to always win? Days before that firing, the opening ceremonies musical director, musical director, was also forced out because someone dug up an interview with him from 1994 where he admitted to bullying classmates as a child. As a child. Remember when your teacher used to try and scare you by saying this is going to go on your permanent record? Yeah, no longer an empty threat now.

And the creative director of the entire shebang of the whole Olympics got s**t canned because he once made a fat joke in a private conversation. This is called a purge. It’s a mentality that belongs in Stalin’s Russia. How bad does this atmosphere we are living in have to get before the people who say, ‘cancel culture is overblown,’ admit that is, in fact, an insanity that is swallowing up the world.  READ MORE

Morning Smirks

 

Afternoon Comics

 

BREAKING NEWS!!!

Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women in violation of state and federal law, NY AG finds

Investigation found that Cuomo acted improperly with several women from 2013 to 2020, retaliated against former 

employee who complained

Feeling Free

 

Wind - Car - Skateboard

 

Braodway Theaters To Require Vaccinations

Broadway theaters will require all patrons to show proof of vaccination in order to attend shows, while patrons will also be required to wear masks regardless of their vaccination status.

The Broadway League made the announcement in a Friday press release. "[T]he owners and operators of all 41 Broadway theatres in New York City will require vaccinations for audience members, as well as performers, backstage crew, and theatre staff, for all performances through October 2021," the release said.

"Masks will also be required for audiences inside the theatre, except while eating or drinking in designated locations," the announcement continued.

League President Charlotte St. Claire said the new pan-Broadway policy "makes it simple for our audiences and should give even more confidence to our guests about how seriously Broadway is taking audience safety."

Exceptions will be made "for children under 12 and people with a medical condition or closely held religious belief that prevents vaccination," the release noted, stating that in those cases a negative COVID test would have to be presented at the time of admission.

Cats

 

China's New US Ambassador

Qin Gang — China’s new ambassador to the United States — will reportedly assert the nation’s growing power during his tenure in Washington.

On Wednesday, a communication from Qin’s office demanded that China be treated with “equality” as a fellow influential power:

Both China and the United States are major countries with important influence in the world. Since we established diplomatic relations over 40 years ago, China-U.S. relations have gone through an extraordinary journey amidst twists and turns. 

At this new historical juncture, our two countries need to follow the trend of the times and the general expectation of the international community, treat each other with mutual respect and equality, and pursue peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, as this will be the blessing of our two peoples and the whole world. 

The Chinese people will never stop their quest for a better life.

The Communist Party of China and the Chinese government will never stop the endeavor to pursue happiness for the people. 

China is firmly committed to the path of peaceful development, and will continue to advance world peace, contribute to global development, and uphold international order. 

It will work with other countries to build a community with a shared future for mankind.

The New York Times likewise reported that the appointment signals a counter to the Biden administration’s efforts to parry rising Chinese influence across the globe:  READ MORE

Parents Against CRT

 

Church Sex Crimes

FROM BRIETBART...

Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been criminally charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery, for allegedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy in 1974.

In 2018, the Vatican opened an investigation into the serial homosexual abuse of the former U.S. cardinal leading to a guilty verdict and laicization or “dismissal from the clerical state.”

Prior to his canonical trial, Pope Francis had accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the college of cardinals after revelations of sexual impropriety and abuse spanning decades.

The 91-year-old McCarrick was never tried until now of sexual abuse in a criminal court because his alleged crimes took place outside state statutes of limitation.

By Massachusetts law, however, where McCarrick has been charged, the process was allowed to go forward because McCarrick was not a state resident and by leaving the state, the statute of limitations was effectively suspended.

McCarrick is charged with having sexually assaulted a 16-year-old-boy during a 1974 wedding reception at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The wedding reception in question was the alleged victim’s brother’s.

The alleged victim claims that McCarrick was a family friend, asserting that McCarrick molested him on numerous occasions on family trips to several states.

“We will look forward to addressing this case in the courtroom,” Barry Coburn, a lawyer for Mr. McCarrick, said in a statement.

In 2020, a lawsuit was brought against the former cardinal, alleging he ran a sex abuse ring of underage boys at his New Jersey shore house in the 1980s.

The unidentified man who filed the lawsuit claimed that in 1982 and 1983, when he was a 14-year-old, he and other victims would go on overnight trips to McCarrick’s beach house in Sea Girt.

Animals

 

ID's Racist or Not Racist?

 

They Are Just Words

 

China & Wuhan Labs Released Virus

Sen. Tom Cotton was right. What was once a “conspiracy theory” may now be “conspiracy fact.” According to a new congressional report, Chinese scientists altered the COVID-19 virus under unsafe conditions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the coronavirus outbreak.

The report runs contrary to early efforts to stifle the so-called “lab leak theory” by the New York Times, which dismissed the theory by tying the hypothesis to racism and xenophobia. Its most vocal proponent, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, was widely denounced as a conspiracy theorist.

The report, authored by the minority staff on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says that the Wuhan lab was engaged in “dangerous genetic modification research on coronaviruses at unsafe biosafety levels.” The report also reveals unsafe working conditions at the lab and new information which shows the Chinese government sought to mislead the world about the experiments taking place, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Congressional investigators say researchers at the lab “had the ability to genetically modify coronaviruses as early as 2016 without leaving any trace of that modification.”

According to the report, evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic “was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019.”

“It is incumbent upon the United States and like-minded countries around the world to ensure accountability and implement the reforms necessary to prevent the CCP's malfeasance from giving rise to a third pandemic during the 21st century.”  

The findings by congressional Republicans led by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee's ranking member, may increase the mounting pressure the U.S. government is receiving to sanction China and hold the Chinese government accountable for the pandemic.  READ MORE

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