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‘Umbrella Man’ went viral. He was a white supremacist trying to spark violence, police say

‘Umbrella Man’ went viral. He was a white supremacist trying to spark violence, police say

The Washington Post reports: With an umbrella in his left hand and a hammer in his right, the man in black lobbed his weapon so nonchalantly into an auto parts shop’s windows that it surprised many others in Minneapolis marching nearby in a May 27 protest after George Floyd’s death. Soon after the abrupt attack, the mostly calm demonstration near a police precinct erupted into looting and arson — the first fire in riots that eventually caused $500 million in…

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From the start, federal agents demanded a role in suppressing anti-racism protests

From the start, federal agents demanded a role in suppressing anti-racism protests

The New York Times reports: From the earliest days of the recent protests against police brutality and racism, some top federal law enforcement officials viewed the demonstrators with alarm and called for an aggressive federal response that two months later continues to escalate. A memo from the deputy director of the F.B.I., dated June 2, demanded an immediate mobilization as protests gathered after George Floyd’s death while he was in police custody a week earlier. David L. Bowdich, the F.B.I.’s…

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America’s coronavirus epidemic had one epicenter but now it has many

America’s coronavirus epidemic had one epicenter but now it has many

The New York Times reports: Once again, the coronavirus is ascendant. As infections mount across the country, it is dawning on Americans that the epidemic is now unstoppable, and that no corner of the nation will be left untouched. As of Wednesday, the pathogen had infected at least 4.3 million Americans, killing more than 150,000. Many experts fear the virus could kill 200,000 or even 300,000 by year’s end. Even President Trump has donned a mask, after resisting for months,…

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School closures in spring linked to drastic decrease in Covid-19 cases and deaths

School closures in spring linked to drastic decrease in Covid-19 cases and deaths

STAT reports: When state officials were deciding whether to shutter their schools back in March, the evidence they had to work with was thin. They knew kids easily catch and spread influenza — and that school holidays and closures have helped slow its spread. But they weren’t sure if the same was true for Covid-19. Now, a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that closing all of a state’s schools was associated with a…

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When the first farmers arrived in Europe, inequality evolved

When the first farmers arrived in Europe, inequality evolved

Laura Spinney writes: Eight thousand years ago small bands of seminomadic hunter-gatherers were the only human beings roaming Europe’s lush, green forests. Archaeological digs in caves and elsewhere have turned up evidence of their Mesolithic technology: flint-tipped tools with which they fished, hunted deer and aurochs (a now extinct species of ox), and gathered wild plants. Many had dark hair and blue eyes, recent genetic studies suggest, and the few skeletons unearthed so far indicate that they were quite tall…

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White supremacy across America is sustained by white Christianity

White supremacy across America is sustained by white Christianity

Robert P. Jones writes: Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches. A close read of history reveals that we white Christians have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the…

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Trump making illegal secret payments, including to his own family, election watchdog group alleges

Trump making illegal secret payments, including to his own family, election watchdog group alleges

HuffPost reports: President Donald Trump’s campaign is violating federal election law by funneling close to a quarter-billion dollars to date through private companies in order to hide the ultimate recipients of the money, including the wife of one of his sons and the girlfriend of another, a watchdog group charged in a complaint filed Tuesday. “The money is being laundered through corporations run by top Trump campaign officials,” said Brendan Fischer, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center. “That has…

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Why Trump doesn’t have time for empathy

Why Trump doesn’t have time for empathy

The New York Times reports: The Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was packed with developers, politicians and New York celebrities, more than 600 in all, for the funeral of Fred C. Trump, the builder whose no-frills brick rental towers transformed Brooklyn and Queens. Three of his four living children, who had grown up listening to the sermons of the church’s most famous minister, Norman Vincent Peale, offered loving eulogies to their father. Then it was Donald Trump’s…

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Poland considers leaving treaty combating domestic violence, spurring protests

Poland considers leaving treaty combating domestic violence, spurring protests

The New York Times reports: The Polish government, emboldened by a narrow election victory this month and undeterred by criticism from European Union leaders, is considering withdrawing from a treaty aimed at curbing domestic violence and protecting women’s rights, with the country’s minister of justice filing paperwork on Monday to start the process. The move came just one week after European Union leaders, bowing to pressure from Poland and Hungary, relaxed demands that were supposed to tie funding in the…

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Kelp extracts show promise in blocking Covid-19

Kelp extracts show promise in blocking Covid-19

The Fish Site reports: A range of polysaccharides extracted from edible seaweed have been shown to at least match the efficacy of remdesivir, the current standard antiviral used to combat Covid-19, in new lab-based trials. The study, the results of which have recently been published in Cell Discovery, tests antiviral activity in three variants of heparin (heparin, trisulfated heparin, and a non-anticoagulant low molecular weight heparin) and two fucoidans (RPI-27 and RPI-28) extracted from the seaweed Saccharina japonica. All five…

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The tragedy of vaccine nationalism

The tragedy of vaccine nationalism

Thomas J. Bollyky and Chad P. Bown write: Trump administration officials have compared the global allocation of vaccines against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 to oxygen masks dropping inside a depressurizing airplane. “You put on your own first, and then we want to help others as quickly as possible,” Peter Marks, a senior official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who oversaw the initial phases of vaccine development for the U.S. government, said during a panel discussion in June….

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Hong Kong was a pandemic poster child. Now it’s a cautionary tale

Hong Kong was a pandemic poster child. Now it’s a cautionary tale

The Washington Post reports: At the start of this month, restaurants here had wait-lists, bars were overflowing, and beaches were dotted with umbrellas and sand seekers. Three weeks had elapsed since the last locally transmitted novel coronavirus case, and the pandemic appeared to be down, if not entirely beaten. All of that progress has come to a halt, as government missteps and a mutated strain of the coronavirus have led to the most severe wave of infections in Hong Kong…

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Far-right groups now pose the greatest terrorist threat in the U.S. and Europe

Far-right groups now pose the greatest terrorist threat in the U.S. and Europe

NBC News reports: The threat of terrorism — particularly from the far right — should be a major concern for governments on both sides of the Atlantic as coronavirus restrictions continue to ease, according to multiple experts and former law enforcement officials who have experience monitoring violent extremist activity. High unemployment levels due to the pandemic, poor economic prospects and the spread of disinformation through the internet and social media could accelerate radicalization, they said. And after a major drive…

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Trump’s response to protests in Portland is damaging to our government and our democracy, says former DHS spokesperson

Trump’s response to protests in Portland is damaging to our government and our democracy, says former DHS spokesperson

David Lapan writes: I believe deeply that how our government’s security forces are seen by the American public is critical to their ability to protect us and our ability to maintain a healthy democracy. That belief comes from experience: I served for decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, as a Department of Defense spokesperson, and as the Trump administration’s first Department of Homeland of Security spokesperson. It’s as an American who cares profoundly about the missions of both DOD and…

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