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Natural immunity as effective as Covid vaccine against severe illness

Natural immunity as effective as Covid vaccine against severe illness

NBC News reports: Immunity acquired from a Covid infection provides strong, lasting protection against the most severe outcomes of the illness, according to research published Thursday in The Lancet — protection, experts say, that’s on par with what’s provided through two doses of an mRNA vaccine. Infection-acquired immunity cut the risk of hospitalization and death from a Covid reinfection by 88% for at least 10 months, the study found. “This is really good news, in the sense that protection against…

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Fox stars privately expressed disbelief about ‘crazy’ election fraud claims

Fox stars privately expressed disbelief about ‘crazy’ election fraud claims

The New York Times reports: Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air. The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers,…

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Mitt Romney warns Trump is ‘by far the most likely’ GOP nominee in 2024

Mitt Romney warns Trump is ‘by far the most likely’ GOP nominee in 2024

NBC News reports: Sen. Mitt Romney is warning his fellow Republicans that former President Donald Trump is best-positioned to emerge from a crowded primary as the party’s presidential nominee in 2024 and that the only way to stop him is to ultimately shrink the field to a one-on-one contest against a viable alternative. “I think President Trump is by far the most likely to become our nominee,” the Republican senator from Utah said in the Capitol on Wednesday. “If there’s…

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Ron DeSantis shouldn’t be covered like just another Republican

Ron DeSantis shouldn’t be covered like just another Republican

Molly Jong-Fast writes: Trumpism without Donald Trump has long been a fantasy of the GOP donor class. Plenty of things about the Trump presidency generally delighted Republicans, like the tax breaks for the wealthy, the desire to shrink the government and drown it in a bathtub. Hell, they may have even enjoyed the cruelty. But the sloppiness, the endless unforced errors—like attacking mail-in-voting and helping Republicans lose Georgia Senate seats in consecutive elections—well, no one likes that. So now Ron…

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Top Russian military official dead after fall from 16th floor

Top Russian military official dead after fall from 16th floor

The Daily Beast reports: A Russian military official in charge of financial provisions for the military district blamed for the Kremlin’s worst losses in Ukraine has been found dead after a nasty fall from a St. Petersburg high-rise. Marina Yankina, head of the department of financial provisions for the Western Military District, was found dead on a sidewalk on Wednesday morning, according to multiple local reports. She is just the latest in a growing list of Russian military officials, defense industry figures, war critics, and gas…

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Hobby club’s missing balloon feared shot down by U.S. Air Force

Hobby club’s missing balloon feared shot down by U.S. Air Force

Aviation Week reports: A small, globe-trotting balloon declared “missing in action” by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10. The club—the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB)—is not pointing fingers yet. But the circumstantial evidence is at least intriguing. The club’s silver-coated, party-style, “pico balloon” reported its last position on Feb. 10…

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Pablo Neruda was poisoned after U.S.-backed coup in Chile, according to a new report

Pablo Neruda was poisoned after U.S.-backed coup in Chile, according to a new report

NPR reports: International forensic experts delivered a report to justice officials in Chile today regarding the death of the South American country’s famous poet Pablo Neruda — some 50 years ago. A nephew of Neruda tells NPR that scientists found high levels of poison in the poet’s remains. Scientists from Canada, Denmark and Chile examined bone and tooth samples from Neruda’s exhumed body. Neruda died in 1973, just days after the U.S.-backed coup that deposed his friend President Salvador Allende….

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The largest structures in the Universe are still glowing with the shock of their creation

The largest structures in the Universe are still glowing with the shock of their creation

Tessa Vernstrom using Planck data, Author provided By Tessa Vernstrom, The University of Western Australia and Christopher Riseley, Università di Bologna On the largest scales, the Universe is ordered into a web-like pattern: galaxies are pulled together into clusters, which are connected by filaments and separated by voids. These clusters and filaments contain dark matter, as well as regular matter like gas and galaxies. We call this the “cosmic web”, and we can see it by mapping the locations and…

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Syria’s silent rubble reproaches the UN’s resounding failure

Syria’s silent rubble reproaches the UN’s resounding failure

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes: On a slab of concrete in the rubble of northwest Syria appears a new graffiti. “We are dead,” it reads, “Thanks for letting us down.” The graffiti speaks for the many who were trapped under fallen structures in the wake of last week’s earthquake, whose lives could have been saved, yet whose voices have since fallen silent. Two days after the disaster struck, the United Nations’ Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths tweeted, “The first 72 hrs…

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A notorious Syria conspiracy theory is definitively debunked

A notorious Syria conspiracy theory is definitively debunked

Brian Whitaker writes: In a long-awaited report, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has blamed the Syrian regime’s air force for a chemical attack in 2018 that killed at least 43 people in Douma, near Damascus. The international watchdog’s findings are not a surprise — it had previously reached the same conclusion about two other attacks involving the same substance. Yet the report is highly significant nonetheless, because the OPCW’s efforts to investigate the Douma attack became…

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In East Palestine, Ohio, where train derailed, anxiety and distrust are running deep

In East Palestine, Ohio, where train derailed, anxiety and distrust are running deep

14 miles from my house, in East Palestine Ohio. Norfolk Southern assures us that the vinyl chloride spilling from the tanks of their derailed train and burning and turning into hydrogen chloride as it rises into the atmosphere and mixes with water vapor and turns into …… pic.twitter.com/Rc8wbpXU8R — 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐂 𝐀𝐭𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐉𝐫 🦺🌍🔥🌹 (@blckndgldfn) February 8, 2023 The New York Times reports: All around the once-thriving industrial town in the quiet hills of eastern Ohio, there were signs this…

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Nikki Haley endorsed by top Trump ally Ralph Norman who says GOP ‘has entered a season of change’

Nikki Haley endorsed by top Trump ally Ralph Norman who says GOP ‘has entered a season of change’

Fox News reports: Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has secured the endorsement of a top Trump ally, House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman, for her first South Carolina delegation show of support as she launches her 2024 run for president. Ralph Norman is the first South Carolina lawmaker to publicly back Haley’s bid for presidency. His support comes despite former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of his re-election the 2022 midterm elections and also after Norman did not vote to…

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U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path

U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path

The Washington Post reports: By the time a Chinese spy balloon crossed into American airspace late last month, U.S. military and intelligence agencies had been tracking it for nearly a week, watching as it lifted off from its home base on Hainan Island near China’s south coast. U.S. monitors watched as the balloon settled into a flight path that would appear to have taken it over the U.S. territory of Guam. But somewhere along that easterly route, the craft took…

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Warming seas are carving into glacier that could trigger major sea level rise

Warming seas are carving into glacier that could trigger major sea level rise

The Washington Post reports: Rapidly warming oceans are cutting into the underside of the Earth’s widest glacier, startling new data and images show, leaving the ice more prone to fracturing and ultimately heightening the risk for major sea level rise. Using an underwater robot at Thwaites Glacier, researchers have determined that warm water is getting channeled into crevasses in what the researchers called “terraces” — essentially, upside-down trenches — and carving out gaps under the ice. As the ice then…

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