News Round-Up: Trump Bans Gain-Of-Function Research, Ørsted Halts Major North Sea Wind Farm Project, and the Growing Of Antarctica’s Ice Sheet
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Trump signs order restricting gain-of-function research.
Antarctica's ice sheet growing, not shrinking.
Danish Ørsted halts major North Sea wind farm project.
EU Commission sues EU countries for failing to enforce Digital Services Act.
Sweden: “climate-smart” plant based school menus cause iron deficiency in children.
Trump bans funding of gain-of-function research
US president Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that banned federal funding for gain-of-function research that enhances pathogens.
“Dangerous gain-of-function research on biological agents and pathogens has the potential to significantly endanger the lives of American citizens. If left unrestricted, its effects can include widespread mortality, impaired public health system, disrupted American livelihoods, and diminished economic and national security,” the order states, citing how the previous administration allowed this kind of research with insufficient levels of oversight.
According to the fact sheet published by the White House, the order prohibits federal funding from contributing to foreign research likely to cause another pandemic. “These measures will drastically reduce the potential for lab-related incidents involving gain-of-function research, like that conducted on bat coronaviruses in China by the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology,” it says. Doing so would protect Americans from lab accidents and other biosecurity incidents, such as those that likely caused Covid-19 in Wuhan and the 1977 Russian flu.
The order also empowers American research agencies to identify and end federal funding of other biological research that could pose a threat to American public health, public safety, or national security.
Antarctica’s ice sheet growing, not shrinking
Scientists from Tongji University in Shanghai have made a discovery in Antarctica that the continent’s ice sheet has reversed its decades-long trend of melting and gained record amounts of ice in recent years, The Daily Mail reports.
From 2021 through 2023, the study found unusually 'intense snowfall' in Antarctica helped build up layers of fresh ice. Overall, scientists found that this three-year climate reversal cut the annual rise in global sea level rise by nearly 15 percent, a significant difference.
Before this recent change in Antarctica, the study calculated that the ice sheet lost about 120 billion tons of ice per year over the previous two decades. Between 2021 and 2023, the continent gained roughly 108 billion tons of ice each year.
The researchers noted that the results only reflect a temporary change in Antarctica's weather patterns that could eventually change back.
Danish Ørsted halts major North Sea wind farm project
An offshore wind farm has been halted by its developer Ørsted in the North Sea, The Telegraph reports.
The Danish company said it has pulled the plug on the 2.4-gigawatt Hornsea 4 project off the east coast of England, blaming rising costs and interest rates. The company also cited increased ‘execution risk’, suggesting it underestimated the difficulty of installing the planned 180 giant turbines.
UK energy secretary Ed Miliband approved the project last autumn, heralding it as a key step towards decarbonising Britain’s electricity grid by 2030. The machines were expected to generate enough clean electricity to power 2.6 million homes when the wind was blowing.
Rasmus Errboe, chief executive of Ørsted, said: “After careful consideration, we’ve decided to discontinue the development of our Hornsea 4 project in its current form, well ahead of the planned FID [final investment decision] later this year.”
Wind farm operators have complained that soaring supply chain costs have pushed up the price of wind turbines, while increases in global interest rates have raised refinancing costs substantially.
They say this has rendered government subsidy contracts, known as Contracts for Difference, unviable.
A contract for differences is an agreement between a buyer and seller, where the buyer will pay the seller the difference between the current value of an asset and its value at the time the contract was made.
EU Commission sues EU countries for failing to enforce Digital Services Act
The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it is referring five member states to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for failing to properly implement the Digital Services Act (DSA), Remix News reports.
The countries facing legal action are Czechia, Spain, Cyprus, Poland, and Portugal. According to the Commission, these member states either failed to appoint a national Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) or failed to empower the according bodies with the authority required to enforce the DSA.
Additionally, none of the five countries has established penalties for violations of the regulation, as mandated by Brussels.
“The DSA required member states to designate one or more competent authorities for the supervision and enforcement of the DSA, and to designate one of them as their national DSC by Feb. 17, 2024,” the Commission said in its press release. “Member states are also required to empower their DSCs to enable them to carry out their tasks under the DSA.”
Poland is singled out for not appointing or authorizing a national coordinator at all, while Czechia, Spain, Cyprus, and Portugal appointed such bodies, but did not grant them the legal powers necessary to fulfill their responsibilities.
The DSA came into force in August 2023. The new regime imposed a series of obligations on larger internet corporations. For example, companies such as Facebook, X, and others have to act swiftly to take down illegal content uploaded to their services. This could include truly criminal content, but in addition, the platforms have an obligation to fight against information that the authorities might characterise as 'misinformation', therefore effectively limiting freedom of expression. Failing to act on the government's requests to moderate the content would be punished by steep fines.
Sweden: “climate-smart” plant based school menus cause iron deficiency in children
When schools implement “climate-smart” school lunches, by replacing meat with plant-based food, the amount of iron absorbed by the body decreases. Teenage girls are particularly affected, according to a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, The Nordic Times reports.
The thesis collected data through a survey sent to the municipalities’ food services, where 167 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities responded. Furthermore, 76 school menus were analyzed over a four-week period. The results show that none of the analyzed menus provided enough absorbable iron for girls who have a higher need for it than boys. Beef is often replaced with plant-based protein sources such as soy to make them more so-called climate-friendly, but even though soy is high in iron, the body cannot absorb it all. In comparison, the body was able to absorb about 14% of the iron from beef-based dishes, which are thought to have the highest climate impact.
Furthermore, the research shows that it is often women who eat less meat, and eat more food that is said to have less climate impact. This makes them more vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies.
While it is good that gain of function research has been banned, it's also totally pointless research, so too virology, because both sciences are fake! Any virologists need to sack themselves and get a proper job in a scientific field that is not pretend. There are no pathogens. There are known toxins, but none of them are ATOM-sized and naturally-occuring. It just makes me cringe that the latest BS is gain of function nonsense from a lab in China. There was no virus. It is 100 per cent psyops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMkyCn-QXWE&ab_channel=Dr.SamBailey