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Wasn't it just Prime Day? Well, if you're having deal withdrawal, you're in luck: Amazon just announced Prime Day is returning for a second round on October 7 and 8. Hooray for you — there will be plenty of deals — but boo for me, as it means another 48 hours spent glued to my computer, losing touch with reality, as I sift through the junk to try to find you the very best Prime Day deals.
I'm still coming to terms with this turn of events (isn't one Prime Day enough, Amazon?). Helping with that is, IMO, the best early Prime Day deal out there: free McDonald's.
Yep, now through October 5, Prime members who use their free Grubhub+ benefit (one of the many perks of Prime) can claim a free 10-piece chicken McNugget meal once per day. By my estimation, if you play your cards right, you can net a total of 200 chicken McNuggets, 1,560 fries, and 3.2 gallons of soda.
Of course, there are stipulations. You'll need to add the 10-piece Chicken McNuggets Meal to a Grubhub+ order with a subtotal of at least $20. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think the way to truly maximize this perk is to place your order for pickup (no fees, no need to tip).
You'll also need to be a Prime member with an active Grubhub+ membership (free with your Prime membership). I know I've been giving you a lot of my opinions already, but I think the Grubhub+ membership is one of the very best Prime benefits. I use it multiple times weekly (don't judge), probably more than I actually use free 2-day Prime shipping.
If you're not already a Prime member, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial, which will allow you to shop the sale and get all the chicken nuggies your little heart desires.
Health officials reported the first "severe" human case of the H5N1 virus on December 18.
MATTHEW HATCHER/AFP via Getty Images
A bird flu outbreak has ravaged the world's birds since 2020 and infected cattle earlier this year.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the virus this week.
Health officials also confirmed the first "severe" case of and hospitalization for the H5N1 virus.
The burgeoning global bird flu outbreak continued its flight path across the country this week, with two major developments that point to the virus's increasingly concerning spread.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the virus on Wednesday, citing a worrying number of infected herds throughout the state in recent months and a need for more resources.
Since the state first identified the H5N1 avian influenza virus in cattle in late August, California's agriculture department has confirmed 645 infected dairy herds.
Newsom's announcement, meanwhile, came just hours after health officials confirmed the first severe case of bird flu in Louisiana, saying a person was hospitalized with an infection after being exposed to sick birds in his backyard.
In recent months, infectious disease experts have grown more and more nervous about the possibility of a human pandemic linked to the virus, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has maintained that the public health risk for humans is low.
Here's where things stand.
Bird flu outbreak
The H5N1 virus first reemerged in Europe in 2020 and has since become widespread in birds around the world. The outbreak has killed tens of millions of birds and tens of thousands of sea lions and seals in recent years.
Birds carry the disease while migrating and can expose domestic poultry to the virus while never showing signs themselves, according to the CDC.
The virus jumped to cattle herds for the first time ever earlier this year in a major escalation. Then, in October, a pig in Oregon tested positive for the virus, an especially concerning case as swine can host both bird and human flu viruses.
There has been no known human-to-human transmission yet. Still, the growing pattern of mammal-to-mammal transmission has infectious disease experts on guard against the possibility that H5N1 could eventually become a human pandemic.
"If it keeps spreading in animals, then it is eventually going to cause problems for humans, either because we don't have food because they've got to start exterminating flocks, or because it starts to make a jump in humans," Dr. Jerome Adams, a former surgeon general and the director of health equity at Purdue University, told Business Insider in April.
"The more it replicates, the more chances it has to mutate," he added.
The ongoing multi-state dairy cattle outbreak, which is believed to have started in Texas, has infected 865 herds across 16 states, according to the CDC, and has led to a growing number of human cases among US dairy and poultry workers.
The CDC has thus far confirmed 61 reported human cases and seven probable cases across the US, though some scientists estimate that the real number of infections is higher.
More than half of the human cases are tied to interaction with sick cattle. The remaining infections have been traced to exposure to sick poultry or have an unknown origin, the CDC said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month issued a federal order that requires the testing of the nation's milk supply.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
State of emergency
California's Wednesday announcement will give state and local authorities increased resources to study and contain the outbreak, Newsom said.
"This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak," the governor said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the Agriculture Department said it would start testing the nation's milk supply for traces of the virus, requiring dairy farmers to provide raw milk samples upon request. Up until then, cattle testing for potential infections had been almost entirely voluntary.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and associate chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said the declaration will likely give California a greater ability to surveil dairy farms for signs of the virus.
But declaring a state of emergency could be a double-edged sword.
Phrases "like 'state of emergency,' given that we've just been through a pandemic, can induce panic," Gandhi said.
And it's not time to panic yet, she said.
Gandhi praised the CDC's "very measured" messaging around the virus thus far and said health officials are closely monitoring the spread.
Most of us have understandably and rightly been focused on the new House select committee as the investigation that will get to the heart of the January 6th insurrection and the coup plot that preceded and created it. We're right to. Indeed, before the new committee was impanelled I'd gotten used to hearing about this and that one-off hearing, most focused on security lapses on January 6th itself, and had been semi-tuning them out. But as I've learned from mycolleagues in recent days, there's more going on in the Senate than I realized.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows considered getting a job at the Trump Organization, Politico reported on Monday.
The top aide to former President Donald Trump had looked into the employment opportunity because of a lack of job prospects, the report said.
Meadows joined the White House at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year, and quickly faced immense criticism for the Trump administration's response.
Mark Meadows, a top aide to former President Donald Trump, considered getting a job at the Trump Organization after leaving the White House, according to a Politico report on Monday.
The former White House chief of staff thought about working for the Trump family business because of a lack of other job prospects, two sources familiar with the matter told Politico. The report outlines how many ex-administration officials have struggled to find new gigs after working for Trump, especially in light of the deadly Capitol siege on January 6. Trump faces an impeachment trial in the Senate after the House charged him with incitement of insurrection.
Meadows has evaded the public eye since the attack on the Capitol, though in the days and weeks prior, he had widely promoted Trump's baseless election claims of voter fraud. "We're now at well over 100 House members and a dozen Senators ready to stand up for election integrity and object to certification. It's time to fight back," Meadows said in his last tweet on his personal account, dated January 2.
The former adviser left the White House on Inauguration Day last week and attended Trump's farewell speech before the president departed for his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
A spokesperson for Meadows did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
A staunch supporter of Trump, Meadows joined the White House last spring, as the coronavirus pandemic rapidly began to spread across the country. In the following months, he was criticized for the administration's national response to the virus and its routine flouting of public health guidelines.
In May, Meadows had reportedly hosted a 70-person wedding for his daughter in Atlanta, Georgia, violating the state's COVID-19 restrictions. Meadows himself tested positive for COVID-19 in November, days after attending a packed election night party at the White House.
Meadows also came under scrutiny in October from a government watchdog that accused him of misusing campaign funds for personal spending. Before his White House role, Meadows had served in Congress, representing North Carolina for seven years.
Caspar Haarloev from "Into the Ice" documentary via Reuters
Greenland's ice sheet may have passed a point of no return, setting it on an irreversible path to disappearance, according to researchers at Ohio State University.
Snowfall can no longer replenish the ice lost as Greenland's glaciers retreat, so it will keep melting and cause catastrophic sea-level rise, even if global temperatures stop rising.
The climate crisis could bring about other tipping points in the Arctic and the Amazon, but there may still be time to avoid those.
Greenland's ice sheet may have hit a tipping point that sets it on an irreversible path to completely disappearing.
Snowfall that normally replenishes Greenland's glaciers each year can no longer keep up with the pace of ice melt, according to researchers at Ohio State University. That means that the Greenland ice sheet — the world's second-largest ice body — would continue to lose ice even if global temperatures stop rising.See the rest of the story at Business Insider
Greenland's ice sheet may have hit a tipping point that sets it on an irreversible path to completely disappearing.
Snowfall that normally replenishes Greenland's glaciers each year can no longer keep up with the pace of ice melt, according to researchers at Ohio State University. That means that the Greenland ice sheet — the world's second-largest ice body — would continue to lose ice even if global temperatures stop rising.
“We hypothesize that migraine should be considered a neural disorder of brain function, in which alterations in aminergic networks integrating the limbic system with the sensory and homeostatic systems occur early and persist after headache resolution and perhaps interictally. The associations with some of these other disorders may allude to the inherent sensory sensitivity of the migraine brain and shared neurobiology and neurotransmitter systems rather than true co-morbidity.”
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