A blast rocked an optics and optical electronics factory in the town of Sergiev Posad, 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Moscow, on Wednesday, injuring at least 45 people, local authorities said.

Emergency services said the blast appeared to have occurred in a warehouse containing pyrotechnic equipment, the state news agency TASS reported. The popular online news channel Mash said it had been rented by a pyrotechnics firm.

Twenty-three people were admitted to hospital, including six in intensive care, the Sergiev Posad mayor's office said.

Workers at a munitions plant that supplies Ukraine with missiles are going on strike for two weeks in an escalating dispute over pay and bonuses.

Nearly 50 workers who handle and load missiles at the defence munitions plant at Beith, in Ayrshire, allege they have been significantly short-changed by a pay and bonuses deal given to rocket-assembly staff at the plant.

The Beith site assembles and distributes the Storm Shadow and Brimstone missiles being sent to Ukraine by the Ministry of Defence, which said the strikes would not affect supplies for the war.

The jury has reached a verdict in the trial of investigative journalist Andy Ngo v. Rose City Antifa and its alleged affiliated members, in which they found both defendants John Colin Hacker and Elizabeth Renee Richter not liable in the civil case brought against them.

Ngo filed a complaint in Portland, Oregon in 2020, claiming assault and other injuries over alleged acts of violence carried out by members of Antifa, which began in 2019. Defandants John Colin Hacker and Elizabeth Renee Richter have been accused by Senior Editor of Post Millennial Andy Ngo of assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, which was argued before a civil jury for more than a week at the Multnomah County Courthouse.

Defendants Hacker and Richter, who allegedly work as Antifa's "doxxers," which after identifying Ngo had led to a series of physical beatings on May 28, 2021, were found by the jury on Tuesday not liable for all of these claims. Evidence provided during the trial, along with testimony given by both defendants, asserts Ngo's claims in the complaint.

Open-air drug markets, narcotic tourism, rampant theft and lax camping regulation have made Oakland "unlivable," a neighborhood advocate told Fox News.

"Oakland and San Francisco have become the promised land of milk and fentanyl, and people are coming here," Seneca Scott, founder of Neighbors Together Oakland, told Fox News. "People who are homeless in Oakland now typically are not from here. They're drug tourists."

Recently, people have been flocking to "Fentanyl Island" a patch of land between 7th St. and Brush St. in West Oakland which Scott describes as an open-air drug market that is home to dozens of burned-out vehicles. "They're coming here for the safe and easy access to their drug of choice and the ability to also steal to support those habits, because there's no rule of law."

A secret military-linked U.K. laboratory is making new variants of Covid and working on a vaccine for 'Disease X' in order to stop the next pandemic "in its tracks", according to the BBC. James Gallagher has more:

One of the U.K.'s most secretive centres of scientific research - Porton Down - is aiming to stop the next pandemic "in its tracks".

I have passed through the incredibly tight security at this remote facility to get rare access to its scientists. They are based in the shiny new Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre. Their work builds on the response to Covid, and aims to save lives and minimise the need for lockdowns when a new disease next emerges.

"Covid, of course, is not a one-off," says Prof. Dame Jenny Harries, Chief Executive of the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which runs these laboratories.

"We say it [Covid] was the biggest public health incident for a century, but I don't think any of us think it'll be a century before the next. The combination of climate change, urbanisation and people living closer to animals - the source of many new diseases which transfer to people - means we're facing a 'rising tide of risk.'"

A new American film that reveals the brutal reality of child sex-trafficking has been greeted with muted enthusiasm from the political left, which begs the question: does the silence equal complicity in the unspeakable crime?

Tim Ballard is an American anti-human trafficking activist, author and founder of the non-profit organization Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-sex trafficking organization. A former special agent at the Department of Homeland Security who now works independently, Ballard's life's work is being immortalized in a Hollywood film, entitled Sound of Freedom.

The film, which stars Jim Caviezel in the role of Ballard, leads audiences through the harrowing twists and turns of Ballard's true life experiences where he works to rescue children from the nightmare of sex slavery. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film has grossed over $140 million in the United States against a $14.5 million budget, while audience reception has been highly positive, scoring 99% on the Rotten Tomatoes film review site, and for apparently good reason.

According to estimates by the International Labour Organization, there were 24.9 million victims of human trafficking around the world in 2016. Yet for reasons known only to them, the left-leaning media and other institutions appear to be strangely anxious to draw the curtain on the Angel Studios production.

A survey conducted in the United Kingdom has shown that more than one-third of respondents did not know that transgender women were born biologically male, as campaigners call for greater understanding of the phraseology being used in the ongoing debate over gender.

The poll, which comes from Scottish-based analysis group Murray Blackburn Mackenzie (MBM), showed that 35% of people sampled were of the belief that a transgender woman was someone who was born as a female, or did not know what the term meant.

The results, MBM said, showed that there are "high levels of misunderstanding and confusion" regarding gender-based phrases in the UK. The group added that the survey underscores a need for further clarity on language being used by the media in relation to debates around transgender athletes in sport or gender-affirming care.

The collapse has just ratcheted up.

Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB-InBev) will be selling eight craft beer brands to Tilray Brands, according to a Monday announcement from the anti-American beer giant. The move will cut AB-InBev's craft beer portfolio significantly.

Tilray, a Canadian cannabis company, will be purchasing Shock Top, Breckenridge Brewery, Blue Point Brewing Company, 10 Barrel Brewing Company, Redhook Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Square Mile Cider Company and Hiball Energy. The deal is expected to be finalized in Sept. 2023 for $85 million, according to a Tilray 8-K filing.

In addition to the beer brands, Anheuser-Busch will also be selling off the brands' employees, breweries and associated brewpubs.

Moderna and BioNTech shares both fell to their lowest price in years on Monday as the companies behind the most widely-used mRNA COVID-19 vaccines grapple with investor disappointment with crashing revenues. Forbes has the key points:

• BioNTech and Moderna's stocks fell 8% and 6%, respectively, a decline spurred by BioNTech's earnings report revealing the German firm's sales fell 95% year-over-year last quarter.
• Moderna's fresh decline came after it reported a 93% annual decline in quarterly revenues in its own earnings release Thursday.
• Moderna's $101.20 close Monday was its lowest since November 2020, while BioNTech's $98.50 close was its lowest since March 2021.
• BioNTech, which developed a Covid vaccine with Pfizer, said Monday it expects to generate $5.5 billion in Covid vaccine sales this year, a 70% decline from 2022, while Moderna's $6 billion to $8 billion in forecasted Covid jab sales is similarly about two-thirds below its $18 billion of revenue in the unit last year.
• The stock crashes moved against broader market gains, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average's 408-point, or 1.2%, rally its strongest since June 2nd.

A male student in Norway took advantage of the nation's lenient gender self-identification laws to gain admission to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The student said changing his gender for the purposes of gaining extra admission points was "about as easy as switching mobile plans."

According to their website, NTNU has a "development plan for gender equality and diversity" in which they state that "...there is gender imbalance in many disciplines and women are still under-represented in top-level academic positions."

To combat over-representation of one sex in several programs, the University has adopted a unique policy to award those who apply as "female" extra points towards admission in instances where the program has an extreme gender imbalance. The policy does not apply in programs where there is no gender imbalance.