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Environmentalists intent on finding new ways to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions to curb climate change have proposed a novel method: feed cows seaweed to diminish methane in flatulence, belches, and manure.

Ermias Kebreab, an zoology professor at the University of California–Davis, led a team in producing a bovine meal regimen containing varying levels of Asparagopsis armata, a strain of red seaweed, and fed it to 12 dairy cows over a two-month period. In a mix containing just 1 percent seaweed, the cows’ methane emissions went down by a stunning 60 percent.

“In all the years that I’ve worked in this area, I’ve never seen anything that reduced it that much,” Kebreab said.

A 2012 United Nations report revealed that the earth’s cattle population produces more carbon dioxide than automobiles, planes, and all other forms of transport combined. Moreover, the cow pies they drop and the wind they break produce a third of the world’s methane emissions, which traps 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

In the summer of 2016, EcoWatch published an article confirming that greenhouse gas emissions from livestock actually account for a higher percentage of total global emissions than the world’s 1.2 billion automobiles.

Kebreab’s cow experiment sought to replicate results from researchers at Australia’s James Cook University, who mixed bacteria from cows’ digestive systems with red seaweed and discovered a significant decrease in methane production. Their experiment suggested that tweaking a cow’s diet to include 2 percent seaweed could reduce its methane emissions by as much as 99 percent.

Last March, Kebreab and his team initiated a more expansive version of his cow study, using 21 steers over a period of six months. Preliminary results reportedly mirror those of the earlier experiment, but the final analysis will not be ready until December.

Paul Dobbins, a senior specialist at the World Wildlife Fund and former president of a kelp farm in Maine, said that seaweed could provide a key remedy for bovine gas emissions.

“You don’t have to rebuild 10,000 power plants in the world. You basically create a modest feed additive that has a big leverage effect,” he said.

According to Dobbins, seaweed farming may be a “triple win.” It furnishes a way to grow nutritious food for both cows and people, provides coastal jobs, and improves the marine environment.

“Everything you do in food production has pluses and minuses relative to the environment,” he has claimed. “Seaweed farming, if done correctly, actually comes out more on the plus side.”

While flatulence is an issue, studies have suggested that cow belching is a much bigger problem because of the methane produced in cows’ stomachs.

“Despite misconceptions, most cow methane comes from burps (90%) rather than farts (10%),” Michael Battaglia wrote in October, 2016, in the Conversation.

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A North Carolina sheriff who has refused to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials but last month said he wanted to build a relationship with ICE has not made good on his word, according to ICE officials.

Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary McFadden has refused to cooperate with ICE since taking office last December. In September, he publicly asked ICE officials to sit down with him to achieve a form of cooperation.

“This is when you sit down and talk to someone. This is when you come into town and say, ‘how can we help with that problem?’” McFadden said then, according to WBTV.

ICE said that McFadden has not followed those words with action.

“Since our last news conference in Charlotte on September 26, ICE leadership has made multiple attempts to communicate with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office in an effort to reach a mutually agreeable solution to the county’s ICE non-cooperation policy, which knowingly releases violent criminal offenders back onto the streets of Charlotte,” Bryan Cox, the acting press secretary for ICE, said, according to The Daily Caller.

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“ICE senior leadership has sent email, and made multiple phone calls, over the past four weeks in an attempt to do so. This agency’s efforts to engage in dialogue have received no response,” Cox said.

WBTV said that it was shown documentation that ICE reached out to McFadden.

“Hello Sheriff McFadden, it was good speaking with you today regards to coming up with an agreeable solution on the ICE warrants and Detainers issue. Please contact me once you have discussed with your staff and perhaps we can set up a follow-up call or meeting,” Field Office Director John Tsoukaris wrote in an email, according to WBTV.

Cox said the email was followed up with phone calls to McFadden’s office. No response was received to the calls, Cox said.

The non-partisan, but conservative-leaning, Center for Immigration Studies lists Mecklenberg County as one of many jurisdictions nationally that are considered “sanctuary” areas because of their opposition to working with federal agencies.

McFadden, however, told WBTV that ICE never contacted him after one phone call in which McFadden said he needed to contact organizations of fellow sheriffs to guide him going forward.

“No,” McFadden told the station when asked of has received a phone call from ICE.

”I have not received an email,” he also said.

“I see how they play these games. We had one conversation. One,” McFadden said.

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“We had a conversation on the phone and here’s what I said: ‘I can’t create something that no other sheriff’s office is doing,’” McFadden said.

“I said, ‘let me check with the national sheriff association and the local sheriff association.’”

ICE is also highlighting individuals ICE has sought to detain who are now in the Mecklenburg County Jail who it fears could be released, despite felony charges against them.

“We don’t have a crystal ball. They could post bond, if they have a bond set against them. They could complete their sentence. They could be released early. By not having that cooperation with the local sheriffs, ICE has no way of knowing when they’re going to be released,” Henry Lucero, Acting Deputy Associate Executive Director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said.

Lucero and Cox said that they still want to work with McFadden to find a solution to the ongoing problem of local officials failing to cooperate with ICE.

“The only persons protected by these misguided policies are criminals,” Matt Albence, the acting director of ICE, said in a statement.

“It is past time to put aside all the political rhetoric and listen to the facts – and the fact is, people are being hurt and victimized every day because of jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with ICE,” said Albence.

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President Trump on Sunday shared with the American people details of the U.S. military operation that led to the death of terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a nearly 50-minute live press conference in which he described the operation, Baghdadi’s purported last moments, and answered journalists’ questions about the raid and his strategy.

It was a contrast to the statement from former President Obama when he announced the operation that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, which was about nine minutes and contained few details about the operation. He took no questions from the media. In fact, he described the operation in five sentences:

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

In contrast, Trump gave a detailed description of the raid, what he purportedly saw and heard while watching the operation from the Situation Room, details of al-Baghdadi’s death, and answered numerous questions.

“He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering, crying, and screaming all the way. The compound had been cleared by this time with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. Eleven young children were moved out of the house and are uninjured. The only ones remaining were Baghdadi in the tunnel,” he said.

“He had dragged three of his young children with him. They were led to certain death. He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased them down. He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children. His body was mutilated by the blast, the tunnel had caved in on it in addition. Test results gave certain, immediate, and totally positive identification. It was him,” he continued.

“The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, and total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him. We were in the compound for approximately two hours, and after the mission was accomplished we took highly sensitive material and information from the raid. Much having to do with ISIS origins, future plans, things that we very much want,” he said.

Trump also talked about the details leading up to the raid, telling reporters al-Baghdadi was under surveillance for a couple of weeks before, shedding insight into U.S. intelligence capabilities.

“We knew about where he was going, where he was heading. We had very good information that he was going to another location. He did not go,” he said. “Two or three efforts were canceled because he decided to change his mind, constantly changing his mind.”

He said finally they saw he was held up in a compound — which U.S. intelligence knew a lot about.

“We knew it had tunnels. The tunnels were dead ends for the most part. There was one we think wasn’t, and we had that covered just in case,” he said.

He described the breach of the compound.

“When we landed with eight helicopters, a large crew of brilliant fighters ran out of those helicopters and blew holes into the side of the building, not wanting to go through the main door because that was booby-trapped,” he said.

“They blasted their way through the house in a very heavy wall. It took them literally seconds. By the time those things went off they had a beautiful big hole and they got everyone by surprise.” He said 11 children were taken custody. He also said that a number of adults died, and some were taken into custody. He said the number of those killed would be announced soon.

Trump said the flight to the compound took about an hour and 10 minutes, including travel over dangerous territory. He said the aircraft took gunfire coming in, which was “immediately terminated.”

“Meaning, they were shot from the airships,” he said.

He described al-Baghdadi’s last moments.

“He died like a dog, he died like a coward. He was whimpering, screaming, and crying,” he said.

Trump also revealed that a canine was involved in the operation, and was hurt in the tunnel, but was evacuated. “A beautiful dog, a talented dog, was injured and brought back.”

He said the raid began at 5 p.m. ET on Saturday. “The liftoff started moments after that.”

Trump also described efforts to identify al-Baghdad after his death.

“They went in with lab technicians,” he said. “They brought body parts back with them. There was not much left. The vest blew up. They did an on-site test and it was a very quick call that took place about 15 minutes after he was killed and it was positive.”

Trump also revealed there were two wives with Baghdadi who were killed. He said they were wearing vests that did not detonate, making it difficult for U.S. forces.

He also revealed there was a robot that went into the tunnel. “We had a robot just in case because we were afraid he had a suicide vest on and if you get close to him and he blows it up, he’s going to die. He had a very powerful suicide vest.”

He said back in the situation room, he and the team were getting full reports literally on a minute-by-minute basis.

“They gave us a report: ‘Sir, there’s only one person in the building. We are sure he’s in the tunnel. Trying to escape. But it’s a dead-end tunnel’…when he blew himself up the tunnel collapsed on top of everything and his children. So he led his three children to death.”

He talked about the uncertainty of the situation as it was unfolding.

We weren’t 100 percent sure about the tunnel being dead-ended. It’s possible there could have been an escape hatch somewhere along we didn’t know about. So we moved very, very quickly. These people, they were moving — they were chasing.”

Follow Breitbart News’ @Kristina_Wong.

New York City is spreading its homeless crisis across the nation by quietly sending homeless people to other cities in the U.S., all without giving the receiving cities a heads up.

The city has deployed local homeless families to 373 cities across the U.S.— from Honolulu to Louisiana— with a year’s worth of rent as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program,” without alerting local officials in those cities, the New York Post reported.

The Post reported that city taxpayers spent $89 million on rent to ship 5,074 homeless families—or 12,482 individuals— out of the city since the program started in August 2017.

The families, initially housed in the city’s shelters, were sent to 32 states and far-flung locales such as Puerto Rico.

The city also doled out money for travel expenses through another city taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but there was no word on how much the city spent on this program.

The Department of Homeless Services defended the high costs of the program, saying that housing the homeless in city-run shelters costs $41,000 per family per year compared with the average yearly rent of $17,563 to transplant families elsewhere.

Even though the agency claims it is saving money, the cities on the receiving end of the program are reportedly not happy.

Newark city spokesman Mark Di Ionno said that the city—home to 1,198 families who are part of the program— is “in the process of passing an ordinance to ban New York from sending us SOTA clients.”

New York’s state senate also opened an investigation into New York City’s program to ship the homeless to cities in upstate New York.

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, 63,839 men, women, and children in New York City slept in homeless shelters for the night in January 2019.

A suspect has been charged with felony assault after he allegedly hit a man outside President Trump’s rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10.

Authorities said they identified 31-year-old Dwight Pierre Lewis through news videos posted online of the incident that occurred at Target Center.

Lewis turned himself in on Monday and admitted to police that he was the suspect in the video.

Following the alleged assault, the 22-year-old victim told police that he required several stitches after Lewis punched him in the mouth as he was leaving the rally.

“Lewis has a criminal history in Minnesota that includes some violent acts and spans his entire adult life. He has been convicted four times for disorderly conduct, twice for assault and once each for property damage and making terroristic threats,” the Star-Tribune reported.

Before his court appearance on Thursday, Lewis was being held on a $40,000 bond. The criminal complaint stated that he could face a maximum of five years in prison or be forced to pay up to $10,000 in fines.

On October 10, Breitbart News reported that left-wing rioters had assaulted Trump supporters outside the rally in Minneapolis.

Breitbart News’ Joel B. Pollak wrote:

The Target Center had attempted to charge the Trump campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars for additional security. The rally itself — with a capacity crowd inside and tens of thousands outside — passed without serious incident, but local police seemed unprepared for the violence by anti-Trump rioters after the event was over.

Despite the protests, President Trump tweeted the evening of the rally that he was confident he will win Minnesota in 2020:

Over the next 13 months, we are going to fight with all of our heart and soul – and we are going to win the Great State of Minnesota in 2020! #TrumpMinneapolis #KAG2020 pic.twitter.com/c3FQnrPJWr

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2019

On October 7, Breitbart News reported that Democrats were worried that the president will flip the state from blue to red in 2020.

“Minnesota, one of the last bastions of progressivism in the Midwest, has been trending more and more red in the last few presidential elections,” the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (Minnesota DFL) tweeted. “If Trump flips MN red by flooding our state with money and campaign staff, we are guaranteed to have four more years of President Donald Trump.”

For pure unintentional laughs, The Atlantic’s fawning profile of Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney, published last Sunday, is worth reading. It shows just how much temporary redemption can be bought by a Republican in the eyes of the media if one just decides to bash Donald J. Trump.

Consider this open, which is right up there with monster truck results in terms of things you never thought you’d see in The Atlantic: “Mitt Romney is leaning forward in his chair, his eyes flashing, his voice sharp,” McKay Coppins’ piece begins.

“It’s a strange look for the 72-year-old senator, who typically affects a measured, somber tone when discussing Donald Trump’s various moral deficiencies. But after weeks of escalating combat with the president — over Ukraine, and China, and Syria, and impeachment — the gentleman from Utah suddenly appears ready to unload.”

Or consider these few paragraphs in, in which Romney grapples with the Twitters (a paragraph which, may I add, ended up with the doxing of Romney’s Carlos Danger-esque pseudonym, “Pierre Delecto“):

“While the president spent a too-online Saturday earlier this month unloading on Twitter — launching #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY into the canon of viral Trump taunts — Romney enjoyed a quiet afternoon picking apples with his grandkids in Utah and refusing to take the bait. When I met him in his office a couple of weeks later, I asked if the Twitter insults bothered him,” Coppins wrote.

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“‘That’s kind of what he does,’ Romney said with a shrug, and then got up to retrieve an iPad from his desk. He explained that he uses a secret Twitter account — ‘What do they call me, a lurker?’ — to keep tabs on the political conversation. ‘I won’t give you the name of it,’ he said, but “I’m following 668 people.’ Swiping at his tablet, he recited some of the accounts he follows, including journalists, late-night comedians (‘What’s his name, the big redhead from Boston?’), and athletes. Trump was not among them.”

I really wish I could just paste the entire piece here and let it stand as a combination of summary judgment and Duchamp-ian commentary. Alas, plagiarism is generally frowned upon and I kind of think Duchamp was a hack anyhow. However, there’s nary a critical word in it. Even the parts where Coppins takes Romney to task are so mild they could practically pass as a profile of Mitt Romney written by Mitt Romney. (“With his neat coif, square jaw, and G-rated diction, Romney has always emanated a kind of old-fashioned civic starchiness. In the past, this quality has been the object of occasional ridicule … But in these decidedly more vulgar times, there is a certain appeal to the senator’s wholesomeness.”)

Mitt might even be more self-flagellating, come to think of it.

As for McKay Coppins’ positionality on this, it’s probably worth noting that he covered Romney’s 2012 campaign for BuzzFeed and has been a longtime adversary of Donald Trump’s, having engaged in Twitter kumite with him before he became president. His experience in this department is probably different from most writers’. However, this is hardly the only uncritical piece to come out about Mitt now that he’s NeverTrumper #1 — and he’s certainly getting a lot more media adulation than I remember from the past.

You wonder how much of this is conscious. Romney is the kind of Republicans certain media types like to flatter themselves into thinking they might have tolerated. Secretly admired, even.

They were civil, played fair, would turn the other cheek. They were different. They were the good Republicans. George H.W. Bush. John McCain. Charles Krauthammer. Jeff Flake. They were remnants of a GOP of a bygone era, one which Trump has crushed to bits under his heel. If only we could go back to those genteel, civilized days.

You know, the days back when they used to call Romney a racist, cancer-pushing, dog-abusing pig.

It’s only been seven years since Romney ran for president. In between that time, we’re supposed to have forgotten how much the media raked him over the coals for his “47 percent” or “corporations are people” remarks. That’s pretty standard stuff if you’re a Republican politician, although we shouldn’t pretend he was treated with any degree of fairness in either teapot-contained tempest. We can forget the number of times that Bain Capital got mentioned. We can forget all of that.

Instead, I’d like to go back to some of the more ugly, despicable labels that Romney was branded with.

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Bigot? Take Alex Kane’s “Nine most racist moments of the 2012 election” from Salon in October of 2012, which promised readers that “The ’47 percent’ is only the tip of the iceberg — and the election is still weeks away.”

Most of these didn’t deal with Romney directly, but one of them noted that “Romney has been touring the country and spouting this totally false talking point: that President Obama has gutted the work requirement required by President Clinton’s welfare reform.” This, noted AlterNet’s Joshua Holland, was “the big, racist lie at the center of the Romney-Ryan campaign.” Several other points were little more than guilt-by-association smears against Romney and his supporters.

But you don’t even have to lie about entitlement programs to be a racist: According to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, even talking about entitlement reform made Mitt a racist, in addition to an obvious joke he made about Obama’s birth certificate conspiracies.

“Are there a lot of people that say, ‘You know what, the number one issue that I want to hear about from either presidential candidate is about his policy on welfare reform?’” she told U.S. News and World Report in August of 2012.

“I mean, why else — it’s so shockingly transparent — why else would Mitt Romney make a supposedly casual joke about the president’s place of birth, you know, juxtaposed against his own place of birth? Why else would he spend millions of dollars of Mitt Romney campaign money talking about — putting out a lie, and then repeating it over and over and over when there isn’t a single fact-checking organization that has said that it’s accurate, that it has any accuracy — in fact it’s the opposite — except to be a dog whistle for voters who consider race when casting their ballot?”

There was even an academic paper titled “Mitt Romney’s racist appeals: How race was played in the 2012 presidential election,” which focused “on a particularly salient form of racist appeal, one based on the long-standing stereotypes of black laziness and taking advantage.”

But you know what isn’t an appeal that goes too far? Tacitly blaming Mitt Romney for someone’s wife dying.

“The Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action is unveiling perhaps the harshest, most personal ad of the 2012 presidential race, featuring a former worker at a Bain-owned company talking about the death of his wife after their family lost health insurance,” Politico reported in August of 2012.

And what an ad it was:

“I don’t think Mitt Romney understands what he’s done to people’s lives by closing the plant. I don’t think he realizes that people’s lives completely changed,” the plant worker said. “When Mitt Romney and Bain closed the plant, I lost my health care and my family lost their health care. And a short time after that my wife became ill.

“I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance. And then one day she became ill and I took her up to the Jackson County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia and that’s when they found the cancer and by then it was Stage 4. It was — there was nothing they could do for her. And she passed away in 22 days.

“I do not think Mitt Romney realizes what he’s done to anyone,” he said. “And furthermore, I do not think Mitt Romney is concerned.”

Far from calling this out as blatant demagogy, Politico said it was “among the gravest criticism of Romney’s business record and personal character delivered in the 2012 cycle.”

Oh yes, and let’s not forget Mitt Romney’s dog. Just in case you’ve forgotten, Romney, nearly 30 years before the race, put the family dog on the roof of his car in a carrier specifically designed for that on a trip up to Canada. But that’s not what it sounded like from the media.

Take this, um, evocative lede from HuffPost: “When Mitt Romney strapped his Irish setter to the roof of his car in 1983 and drove all the way to Canada as the dog defecated in fear, he couldn’t have guessed his decision would follow him for decades, enraging animal lovers and raising questions about his character and management style.”

So now, “in these decidedly more vulgar times, there is a certain appeal to the senator’s wholesomeness”? But I thought this guy was a racist who let people die of cancer and abused his dog.

Again, I don’t even know if this is a conscious thing on the media’s part.

Many in the media establishment love patting themselves on the back, thinking that they all didn’t mind Republicans of the not-too-distant past. Romney, after all, probably isn’t going to run for president again. Rest assured if he does, assuming the opponent isn’t Donald Trump in this year’s primary, all the Trump-bashing in the world won’t have bought him a moment’s respite from the same kind of battering he got just seven years ago.

Romney’s redemption is temporary, contingent on his attacking Trump. Media hostility to anyone opposing the Democratic agenda isn’t going anywhere.

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