"You need meat, OK? We're going to have meat in Florida," DeSantis said during a press conference.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made a name for himself backing culture-war-focused legislative proposals that have taken aim at everything from Disney to college professors' academic freedom. However, DeSantis has a new target in his sights: lab-grown meat.

Last Friday, DeSantis came out in support of Florida legislation that would ban the sale of lab-grown meat in the state.

"I know the Legislature's doing a bill to try to protect our meat. You need meat, OK? We're going to have meat in Florida," DeSantis said during a Friday press conference.

"We're going to have fake meat? That doesn't work. We're going to make sure to do it right. But there's a whole ideological agenda that's coming after, I think, a lot of important parts of our society."

Boeing whistleblower and former Spirit AeroSystems quality auditor Joshua 'Josh' Dean (45) died on Tuesday morning, his family have confirmed. He is the second Boeing whistleblower to pass away in the span of two months.

Dean was fired from Spirit AeroSystems (one of Boeing's main suppliers) shortly after alleging management ignored complaints of serious manufacturing quality defects on the Boeing 737 Max. He then filed an official complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alleging "serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management".

"After I was fired, Spirit AeroSystems [initially] did nothing to inform the FAA and the public," he wrote in his initial complaint.

Investigators say they could not gather enough evidence to charge the suspects accused of blowing up multiple arms warehouses

Police in the Czech Republic have shelved a probe into the destruction of ammunition warehouses that took place ten years ago. Despite all of their leads turning up cold, the investigators maintain that Russian military intelligence blew up the structures.

The explosions occurred in October and December 2014 at arms depots in Vrbetice in the south of the country, killing two Czech nationals. Prague said at the time that the warehouses had been storing ammunition that was to be sent to Ukraine. The authorities claimed that Russia sent operatives to destroy the consignment in an attempt to disrupt the shipment.

In April 2021, the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian diplomats over the incident, a move to which Russia responded in kind.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, The Associated Press has learned, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country.

The proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation's most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.

The agency's move, confirmed to the AP on Tuesday by five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive regulatory review, clears the last significant regulatory hurdle before the agency's biggest policy change in more than 50 years can take effect.

Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public comment period and a review by an administrative judge, the agency would eventually publish the final rule.

Pro-Palestinian students have occupied some university campuses in the UK, to protest against the war in Gaza.

Students in Leeds, Newcastle and Bristol set up tents outside university buildings, on Wednesday, and called for supporters to donate food, drinks and hygiene products. Elsewhere, student activists held marches and one-off protests. One camp, at Warwick University, has been set up in the town's piazza for a week.

The UK protests follow much larger demonstrations on campuses across the US, most prominently at Columbia University, in New York. More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested in the US - dozens on Tuesday night, after police raided a Columbia building occupied by students for almost two weeks.

Seasoned veterinarians and livestock producers alike have been scratching their heads trying to understand the media's response to the avian flu. Headlines across every major news outlet warn of humans becoming infected with the "deadly" bird flu after one reported case of pink-eye in a human.

The entire narrative is predicated upon a long-disputed claim that Covid-19 was the result of a zoonotic jump — the famed Wuhan bat wet-market theory.

While the source of Covid is hotly contested within the scientific community, the policy vehicle at the center of this dialectic began years prior to Sars-CoV-2 and is quite resolute in force and effect.

In 2016, the Gates Foundation donated to the World Health Organization to create the OneHealth Initiative. Since 2020, the CDC has adopted and implemented the OneHealth Initiative to build a "collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach — working at the local, regional, national, and global levels — with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment."

American is set to get a new fleet of 'doomsday planes' that some have said signal the nation could be preparing for World Ward III.

The US Air Forced announced a $13 billion contract to develop craft to replace the aging Boeing planes that are used to protect the president during a nuclear attack.

The funds were awarded to Sierra Nevada Corp, which will design a successor to the E-4B 'Nightwatch' that features a mobile command post capable of withstanding nuclear blasts and electromagnetic effects.

Amid a dire need for soldiers, Ukrainian conscription officers have turned to extreme measures, including kidnapping people to force their enlistment with the military.

Ukrainian conscription officers kidnapped a 14-year-old during an attempt to forcibly enlist him with the military.

According to the Bessarabia Info website, the teenager was walking to his friend's house in the village of Priozernoye, Odessa, when a white minivan pulled up next to him. Four officers masked in balaclavas jumped him, pressed a rifle onto his head, and forced him into the van.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a fine totaling $200 million to the nation's four largest mobile carriers after concluding an investigation that found the companies illegally shared access to customers' location data, the agency said Monday.

T-Mobile received the biggest fine of $80 million, along with a $12 million fine for its subsidiary, Sprint, that the company acquired in 2020. AT&T was fined more than $57 million and Verizon was fined almost $7 million, according to the agency's announcement.

The fines follow initial allegations by the FCC in 2020 under the Trump administration of wireless carriers violating laws by not protecting users' location data.

The mobile carriers pushed back on the allegations and said they intend to challenge the fine.

Clashes between opposing activists turned into mass murder. The perpetrators have never been punished.

Eight years ago this Monday, something significant happened in Odessa, a historically important city in the southwest of Ukraine. Although the West didn't see it as such, for Russia and the newly formed Donbass republics, what transpired there became a symbolic episode.

Provincial revolution

From late 2013 into early 2014, a conflict between the government of President Viktor Yanukovich and the pro-Western opposition was unfolding in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The series of events that would ensue were dubbed the 'Euromaidan'. Meanwhile, Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea, was of course affected by these events too, albeit to a lesser extent.

Occasional clashes with police and scuffles between supporters of Euromaidan and those aligned with the government, which became known as the 'Anti-Maidan' movement, were nothing compared to the bloodshed in Kiev, where people were being killed.

Many Ukrainians didn't welcome the Euromaidan, and they had their reasons. Lots of Odessa residents had strong ties with Russia, and still do. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, a large number of ethnic Russians were living in Odessa and many had relatives in the old country. The city was built during the reign of Catherine the Great and has always been seen as an integral part of Russia's history.

Thus, the aggressive nationalism of Euromaidan was largely unpopular there and plenty of locals were frightened by what seemed to be a passion for forming militant units. Euromaidan and Anti-Maidan in Odessa began to form parallel paramilitary organizations. Armed with a primitive array of sticks, biker helmets, and homemade weapons, these groups trained for street fighting. At first, nobody sought a fight to the death - the radicals hadn't yet gained the leading role in either movement.