People took cover in their cars as a huge swarm of locusts darkened the sky in Russia.

The arrival of millions of locusts turned a peaceful Sunday into an apocalyptic scene in the southwestern corner of the country.

The grasshoppers swept across a field in the Kizlyar district of Dagestan on Sunday, with the sky almost blocked out as they flew over.

Despite being a frightening sight, the locusts are not directly harmful to humans, although they can inflict devastation on vital crops, making them one of the world’s most harmful agricultural pests.

Dagestan’s ministry of agriculture and food said today that it has taken active pest control measures.

The animals can travel up to 93 miles per day.

https://metro.co.uk/2026/08/05/apocalyptic-scenes-swarm-locusts-fill-sky-29306508/  

The University of California’s grand experiment with “equity” in college admissions is running headfirst into an inconvenient reality: thousands of professors say incoming students are showing up without the basic academic skills needed to handle university coursework.

UC ditched standardized testing requirements in 2020, first going test-optional amid the COVID panic and then fully test-blind, all in the name of “equity.”

Regents claimed the tests discriminated against students of color and lower-income applicants, even though a faculty task force had found the opposite: the SAT and ACT were strong predictors of college success and actually helped identify talented disadvantaged students who might otherwise have been overlooked. The data was ignored. Ideology won.

Six years later, the results are in and they are catastrophic.

According to the LA Times, more than 3,000 UC faculty, including STEM professors and department chairs, have signed open letters demanding the return of the tests.

At UC San Diego, a faculty report documented a roughly 30-fold surge between 2020 and 2025 in incoming freshmen whose math skills tested below high school level.... moreover, 70% of those students fall below middle school levels...

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/woke-failure-more-than-3000-university-california-professors/  

Company representatives for a proposed data center left a city council meeting in Oregon after they discovered protestors had brought a guillotine and displayed it outside during the municipal session.

The company reps departed the late July meeting in Salem prematurely, citing “safety concerns,” Yahoo News reported.

A raucous, vocal crowd also gathered outside of Salem’s Loucks Auditorium to protest a proposed multi-billion-dollar AI data center, according to news reports.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/08/07/watch-protestors-show-up-with-guillotine-at-city-council-meeting-and-scare-off-data-center-reps/  

Scientists at Stanford University have used artificial intelligence to design 16 new viruses capable of being reproduced in a laboratory, a breakthrough intended to help combat antibiotic-resistant infections but one that has prompted warnings from biosecurity experts about the risks of the technology.

The BBC reports that the experiment relied on AI models called Evo1 and Evo2, which differ from text-based systems like ChatGPT in that they are trained to predict the genetic codes of viruses, bacteria, plants and even humans. Researchers used the models to generate hundreds of designs for a type of virus known as a bacteriophage, which targets E. coli bacteria. Of those designs, 16 were successfully produced, according to findings published in the journal Science.

The research marks the first time an entire genome has been successfully designed using AI. Scientists say the development of new bacteriophages could eventually lead to novel treatments for infections that no longer respond to antibiotics.

“This is a next step in the complexity that’s designable by generative AI, this is the first time generative AI has been used to design a complete genome, it’s something that can replicate and have other functions inside cells… this was new territory for us,” Brian Hie, an assistant professor at Stanford University, told the BBC.

The achievement has also raised concerns about the broader implications of synthetic biology, the field focused on engineering new forms of life that do not naturally exist, and its potential for misuse in creating pathogens harmful to humans.

In a commentary accompanying the study’s publication in Science, Dr. Thomas Inglesby and Dr. Moritz Hanke of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security wrote that the findings raise “urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions.”

The two doctors wrote that efforts to design new viruses capable of causing disease “should not be pursued.”

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/08/07/biosecurity-alert-stanford-researchers-use-ai-to-design-16-viruses/  

The force stated: "Following a recent spate of overnight arson attacks on hay stacks in the north of England there appears to be a TikTok challenge to 'set fire to as much stuff as possible.' I know the farming community will be aware of the dangers of the dry weather but if it is possible to send out a message to all your members to be extra vigilant."

Humberside Police are investigating six suspected deliberate bale fires reported overnight on 30 July across North Lincolnshire at East Butterwick, Messingham, Susworth and Kirton in Lindsey. Reports included suspicious dark-coloured vehicles and quad bike tracks near the stacks.

Around the same period, about 1,200 hay bales were destroyed in a major overnight fire near Saxondale Island close to Bingham in Nottinghamshire, treated as suspected arson. In Oxfordshire, a fire involving around 600 hay bales tore through stacks in the village of Hinton Waldrist on 20 July; Thames Valley Police continue to investigate.

Roughly 250 hay bales were deliberately set alight at Hackpen Hill near Swindon in Wiltshire. The blaze, confirmed by police as thought to have been started deliberately, took firefighters more than 28 hours to extinguish. Neighbouring farmer James Hussey described it as "quite a loss" for the owner.

Near South Milford a deliberate hay bale fire spread across 15 acres of fields. North Yorkshire Police stated: "Deliberately setting fire to hay bales not only causes significant financial loss to farmers but also presents a serious risk to life, property, livestock, and the wider countryside, particularly during periods of warm and dry weather."

Farmers already battle weather, regulation and thin margins. Deliberate fires on top of that threaten winter feed stocks, next year's harvest and the basic security of the food chain. Rural communities are left footing the cost while the perpetrators chase likes.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/meanwhile-england-idiocy-knows-no-bounds   

We have been reporting on Europe’s summer from hell, where they are battling high temperatures, wildfires, and droughts.

One of the most dramatic cases if the mythical Danube river that is so low that the Nuclear Power Plants in Hungary and Romania had to be shut.

Now the situation has worsened even more to the point where remnants of the past are arising from the bottom of the river: dozens of WW2 ships and boats...

Reuters reported:

“The remains of what is believed to be an ancient mammoth have been revealed ​in northern Bulgaria, after Danube River water levels ‌receded to a record low level, the BTA news agency reported on Wednesday, citing historians.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/european-drought-danubes-water-level-has-gotten-so/  

AI was branded a 'clear and present danger' yesterday as tests showed every advanced model is trying to beat security safeguards.

In a wake-up call to ministers, Britain's artificial intelligence security experts revealed that all five models they had tested tried to trick their way round the security controls they had put in place.

The revelations come just days after it emerged OpenAI had suffered its own leak – where an AI 'agent' hacked into a tech company of its own accord.

Kemi Badenoch warned AI is now a 'clear and present danger' to Britain's security in her first major speech since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister. The Conservative leader said reports of the OpenAI leak were alarming as she criticised Mr Burnham for relegating AI as a priority in Government.

Responding to the hack, Mrs Badenoch said: 'It is very worrying that this has happened, and this is why I want to see a Government that is very focused on our national security, on our information security.'

'...this is becoming a clear and present danger for global security as well as our security.'

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16001325/Every-single-advanced-model-goes-rogue.html  

The Labour government is heading to court to block the publication of migrant crime statistics.

Following a year-long battle at the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”), it was ruled that the Ministry of Justice must provide the Centre for Migration Control with the most comprehensive dataset on migrant crime in British history.

The Labour government is now trying to stop the public from learning the truth.

The Daily Telegraph has run this story: ‘David Lammy fighting to ‘cover up’ foreigners’ crimes’.

The Centre for Migration Control today announces a campaign to fight back against this cover-up. The public deserves to know the truth; the country requires that this information be published.

https://expose-news.com/2026/08/04/uk-government-launches-legal-action/   

An other area we visited was a shallow river where folks were living in small houses on the river bank washing clothes and dishes and bathing in the river.  Our Chinese guide told us that they would rather have apartments with more modern conveniences, like plumbing, in the city but they were not allowed to leave since they were a tourist attraction.  

China’s economy was praised as the model for the Western world. Then, a few years back, it began to turn sour.  President Trump’s first administration did a number on China, which is why they wanted him gone.  This alone may be why China was involved in the COVID outbreak in 2019-20 (as reported in the book, The Steal – Volume I: Setting the Stage).

In 2023, the world began to see China’s economy falter.  We reported on a report at the Business Insider.

It’s been clear for years that the Chinese real-estate market has been in trouble. China has a population of 1.4 billion, but it has built housing for a population of 3 billion, according to expert estimates. Many of the mega-developments became empty monuments to Beijing’s insatiable desire for growth. In Shenyang, farmers have taken over a development of empty mansions for cattle grazing.

Now the value of real estate in China is collapsing to its lowest prices in at least the last 20 years.

In response, the government instituted a law saying that it will not allow some people to leave the country, maybe.

🚨 China Just Made “Maybe” a Crime. Now Everyone Is a Flight Risk.

That vagueness is the point. The power to stop you at the border has been pushed all the way down the chain, provincial governments, the Commerce Ministry, even county-level offices can now decide who flies and who stays. As geopolitics scholar Chen Wen-chia puts it: you’re no longer flagged for what you did, but for what someone imagines you might do.

Why now? Because the regime is scared. With the economy sagging and public anger simmering, Beijing fears its own people voting with their feet...

The message to 1.4 billion people is chillingly simple: the door is closing, and no one will tell you why.

https://joehoft.com/china-is-cracking-real-estate-is-tumbling-maybe/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=china-is-cracking-real-estate-is-tumbling-maybe