Someone called the Michigan Humane Society from the southwest side of Detroit Tuesday, saying they saw a dog in the area and could tell it was severely wounded.
They might not have realized just how bad the wounds are. The brown and tan rottweiler, which the shelter has named Baron, had his nose and ears cut completely off and his tail and back legs were cut.
“It appears that someone purposely maimed this poor dog, which has caused it a great deal of suffering,” Mark Ramos, one of the Michigan Humane Society’s lead cruelty investigators, said in a press release. “This kind of cruelty is unacceptable. We need to be a voice for these animals and as a community we need to speak through our strong actions to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
The Humane Society is offering a $2,500 reward for anyone who can provide information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible. Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Michigan Humane Society Cruelty Investigation Department at 313-872-3401.
If the offender is convicted, abuse of an animal is a misdemeanor if it is their first animal cruelty offense. Under Michigan law , they could be forced to pay the costs of prosecution, imprisoned for up to 93 days, fined up to $1,000 and ordered to perform a maximum of 200 service hours.
Andy Bissonette, marketing director at the Michigan Humane Society, said he can’t speak to the condition of Baron as of Thursday morning, and the shelter is unsure of what the adoption process will look like for him.
“We get thousands of animals every year, and this is a pretty unique case,” Bissonette said.
He added the Humane Society has gotten a lot of support and attention for Baron on social media and they would have more updates on the dog later in the day.
You can donate to the Michigan Humane Society here .

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© Source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article127399369.html
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US scientists have grown a robotic sleeve that can assistance hearts siphon when they are failing.
The sleeve – done of element that mimics heart flesh – hugs a outward of a heart and squeezes it, mimicking a movement of cardiac muscle.
The early study, published in Science Translational Medicine , shows a judgment works on pig hearts.
The British Heart Foundation describes it as a “novel approach” that requires serve trials. ‘Synchronised movement’
Over half a million people in a UK have heart failure.
It is a long-term condition that gradually gets worse over time.
For people with a illness, a heart is incompetent to siphon blood around a physique scrupulously – many ordinarily since cardiac flesh has been damaged, after a heart attack, for example.
Scientists formed during Harvard and a Boston Children’s Hospital contend their soothing sleeve was desirous by a actions and structure of genuine heart muscle.
The silicon-based device stiffens or relaxes when arrogant with pressurised air.
Fixing it around 6 pig hearts, scientists found they were means to synchronise a sleeve with any heart’s figure and movements.
The investigate shows a robotic sleeve helped boost a volume of blood being pumped around a body.
And when a hearts stopped beating, a sleeves helped revive blood flow.
Currently, automatic inclination can be ingrained in a heart to assistance it pump. But since they are in proceed hit with heart tissue, a physique can conflict to them – heading to a risk of dangerous blood clots.
Researchers disagree their sleeve could assistance cut this risk by “hugging” a outward of a heart rather than being ingrained inside it.
But they acknowledge their investigate is still during an early theatre and most longer-term animal studies and afterwards tellurian studies would need to be carried out before it could be used in patients.
Christopher Allen, comparison cardiac helper during a British Heart Foundation, said: “People vital with end-stage heart disaster are in unfortunate need of sign relief, and some will even need a heart transplant.
“We now don’t have adequate hearts accessible to accommodate a needs of those who need a heart transplant, so we’re always looking for innovative new ways to buy time to give people a best possibility probable of receiving a new heart and a new franchise of life.
“This early investigate suggests a novel proceed to assistance support heart function, and it will be engaging to see if this translates successfully in tellurian trials in a future.”

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© Source: http://headlinenewstoday.net/robotic-sleeve-hugs-failing-hearts.html
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This story has greatly disturbed me. I still want to see this movie because I have grown up around dogs my whole life, and I think they are wonderful animals. If I do see this movie, I will be matching my ticket price with a donation to an anti-animal abuse charity. That charity will NOT be PETA, though. As good as PETA’s intentions are, they put politics before animal welfare, and they’re hypocrites too. Plus they insult people by comparing eating meat to the killing of Jews during the Holocaust.

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© Source: http://variety.com/2017/film/news/peta-calls-boycott-a-dogs-purpose-video-1201963114/
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(CNN) Last year was officially the Earth’s warmest since record-keeping began in the 1880s, the World Meteorological Organization announced Wednesday morning.
2016 was a record in all surface data sets pic.twitter.com/25aQKrOQqb
Track the latest weather story and share your comments with CNN Weather on Facebook and Twitter .
CNN’s John D. Sutter and Judson Jones contributed to this story.

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Best wishes to the former President and his wife. George Bush Sr. worked with Bill Clinton to improve many lives. Wish Repubs and Dems could get along for the betterment of mankind!

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Sentiment rank: -2.4

© Source: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/01/18/george-h-w-bush-hospitalized/
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Donald Trump has chosen former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue to be his secretary of agriculture, completing a protracted search with implications for how the president-elect plans to deliver on his promises to the army of rural voters widely credited with helping him win the election.
A transition official confirmed the pick — the final traditional Cabinet department chief to be selected — which could be formally announced as early as Thursday.
Perdue, a former Democrat who switched to the Republican Party before governing Georgia for two terms from 2003 to 2011, has a strong agricultural background, having grown up on a farm and earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine. As governor of Georgia, he also took conservative stances on immigration and voting rights and drew national headlines for holding a public vigil to pray for rain in 2007 amidst a crippling drought.
Although Perdue’s Georgia is not among the nation’s top 10 agricultural states, it is home to 42,000 farms, with a strong focus in the cattle industry.
Perdue’s pick heads off abundant speculation that Trump was seeking a Latino for the job and aligns with the desires of Trump’s influential agricultural advisory committee, empaneled during the 2016 election and comprising influential Republican representatives, state officials and representatives of the industry. Members of this group reportedly disapproved strongly of Trump’s early consideration of a Democrat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, for the position. Perdue was a member of the advisory committee.
By picking Perdue, Trump has passed on appointing any Latinos to his Cabinet, the first time Cabinet meetings will lack someone from the nation’s largest minority population since 1988. That’s the year Lauro F. Cavazos became Ronald Reagan’s last education secretary and the first Latino ever nominated to the Cabinet.
Asked about the lack of Latino officials in the top ranks of the Trump administration, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday that Trump “has continued to seek out the best and the brightest to fill his Cabinet, but I don’t think that that’s the total reflection. We’ve got 5,000 positions. I think you’re going to see a very, very strong presence of the Hispanic community in his administration.”
Spicer urged reporters to look at the diversity of Trump’s senior White House staffers, but there are currently no Latinos appointed to senior positions. (Trump has yet to name a chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, which has been a Cabinet-rank position in some administrations.)
Eric Tanenblatt, who was Perdue’s first chief of staff in the Georgia governor’s office, has argued that Trump and Perdue have a great deal in common, citing Perdue’s conversion to a Republican shortly before winning the Georgia governorship in 2002. He became the first Republican governor in the state in generations.
“As a successful governor, Perdue has the requisite experience to direct a massive bureaucracy of the sort necessary to conduct the Department’s many programs; as a southern governor and state lawmaker, he’s directly shaped agricultural policy and presided over a state with a $74-billion agricultural sector; and as a businessman with deep experience in agribusiness, he knows the challenges facing today’s farmers,” Tanenblatt said in a statement Wednesday night.
Although not one of the higher-profile Cabinet posts, Trump’s pick of an agriculture secretary took on added significance because his victory was bolstered by several swing states with large agricultural industries including Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Trump has said that environmental regulations are “undermining our incredible farmers,” and some observers expect cuts to environmental and conservation programs at the Agriculture Department on his watch, as a Republican-controlled Congress moves to pass a new farm bill.
“It should be no surprise that the incoming Trump administration, which has proposed putting executives from Big Food and Big Oil in top cabinet positions, would pick someone like Governor Perdue – who has received taxpayer-funded farm subsidies – to lead the Department of Agriculture,” the Environmental Working Group said in a statement Wednesday night. “It’s certainly hard to imagine that a former fertilizer salesman will tackle the unregulated farm pollution that poisons our drinking water, turns Lake Erie green, and fouls the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.”
Many of the core tensions of the presidential campaign run through the agricultural sector: It tends to depend on immigrant labor, and it tends to benefit from and support free trade. For instance, the American Farm Bureau Federation, a top agricultural group, is a big supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, writing that “annual net farm income will increase by $4.4 billion, driven by an increase of direct U. S. agricultural exports of $5.3 billion per year upon full implementation of the TPP agreement.” Trump has staunchly opposed the trade agreement.
How Perdue will play a role in resolving these contradictions remains unclear, but he signed legislation in Georgia that sought to crack down on illegal immigration and drew widespread protests. As for trade, Perdue founded the Atlanta-based company Perdue Partners LLC after his governorship ended, promising to help companies find “new opportunities to sell American products and services abroad.”
The economics of agriculture are particularly pronounced at the moment, with net farm income having declined for three straight years now, from a high of over $120 billion in 2013 down to an expected $66.9 billion in 2016. A major question is likely to be whether, in this context, Congress and the new administration will support more government spending to help soften the blow to the sector.
Two key agricultural industries, cotton and dairy, are seeking government aid in the face of difficult market conditions, and changes to the programs affecting these commodities would likely only increase U. S. agricultural spending further. Both of these industries are strongly represented in Perdue’s Georgia, which is where Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. Perdue himself grew up on a farm where cotton was grown.
If confirmed, Perdue will head a sprawling agency with a $155 billion annual budget and close to 100,000 employees. This makes it one of the largest federal departments, and one that includes branches ranging from the U. S. Forest Service to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and duties ranging from co-publishing the U. S. Dietary Guidelines to running the school lunch program.
The agency naturally supports the U. S. agricultural industry and rural communities, which it does through fighting barriers to agricultural exports, making loans to farmers starting out businesses, supporting the ethanol industry, and operating an enormous crop insurance program that paid out $64 billion from 2009 through 2015.
The agency also plays a major role in food safety, overseeing processing of meat in the United States (the Food and Drug Administration handles food safety related to fruits and vegetables).
Under the Obama administration, the Agriculture Department also became heavily involved in environmental initiatives such as the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector (ruminant livestock, like cows, are a huge source of methane emissions to the atmosphere). And the former secretary, Tom Vilsack, made increasingly loud rumbles about the explosion of the portion of the Forest Service’s annual budget that has been spent on fighting more and more wildfires — a trend linked to climate change.
Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.

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© Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-picks-sonny-perdue-for-agriculture-secretary/2017/01/18/a26abbc0-ddec-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html
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