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Omicron is fast moving, but perhaps less severe, early reports suggest

Omicron is fast moving, but perhaps less severe, early reports suggest

The New York Times reports: The Covid-19 virus is spreading faster than ever in South Africa, the country’s president said Monday, an indication of how the new Omicron variant is driving the pandemic, but there are early indications that Omicron may cause less serious illness than other forms of the virus. Researchers at a major hospital complex in Pretoria reported that their patients with the coronavirus are much less sick than those they have treated before, and that other hospitals…

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What helped Biden get elected is now harming his ability to be heard

What helped Biden get elected is now harming his ability to be heard

Lili Loofbourow writes: How many speeches would you guess that President Joe Biden has made—since Nov. 1, say—on the landmark infrastructure bill that just got passed in Congress? How many have you heard or caught snippets of or had someone mention to you? If your answer to the former is nowhere near the correct number (six), and your answer to the latter is somewhere closer to zero, you are not alone. Biden isn’t a major attraction, and that may be…

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Justice Department sues Texas over Republican-approved redistricting maps

Justice Department sues Texas over Republican-approved redistricting maps

CNN reports: The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Monday challenging legislative maps adopted by Texas Republicans in recent weeks that it says fail to recognize growth in the Latino population. The lawsuit alleges that the redistricting plan drawn by Texas lawmakers violates the Voting Rights Act. “The Legislature refused to recognize the State’s growing minority electorate,” the lawsuit, states. “Although the Texas Congressional delegation expanded from 36 to 38 seats, Texas designed the two new seats to have Anglo voting…

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Israel and Iran are on a ‘collision course,’ says Israel’s ex-head of Military Intelligence research

Israel and Iran are on a ‘collision course,’ says Israel’s ex-head of Military Intelligence research

The Times of Israel reports: Several months after the 2013 election of former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, Aviv Kohavi submitted a position paper to then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he pointed to a significant, strategic shift underway in the Islamic Republic. Kohavi, who currently serves as IDF chief of staff, was the head of the Military Intelligence unit at the time, and he relayed his assessment that Iran was becoming more moderate and willing to negotiate an agreement with…

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New brain maps can predict behaviors

New brain maps can predict behaviors

Monique Brouillette writes: Last summer a group of Harvard University neuroscientists and Google engineers released the first wiring diagram of a piece of the human brain. The tissue, about the size of a pinhead, had been preserved, stained with heavy metals, cut into 5,000 slices and imaged under an electron microscope. This cubic millimeter of tissue accounts for only one-millionth of the entire human brain. Yet the vast trove of data depicting it comprises 1.4 petabytes’ worth of brightly colored…

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Facing economic collapse, Afghanistan is gripped by starvation

Facing economic collapse, Afghanistan is gripped by starvation

The New York Times reports: One by one, women poured into the mud brick clinic, the frames of famished children peeking out beneath the folds of their pale gray, blue and pink burqas. Many had walked for more than an hour across this drab stretch of southern Afghanistan, where parched earth meets a washed-out sky, desperate for medicine to pump life back into their children’s shrunken veins. For months, their once-daily meals had grown more sparse as harvests failed, wells…

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China seeks first military base on Africa’s Atlantic coast, U.S. intelligence finds

China seeks first military base on Africa’s Atlantic coast, U.S. intelligence finds

The Wall Street Journal reports: Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials. The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at…

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Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

NPR reports: Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden. That’s according to a new analysis by NPR that examines how political polarization and misinformation are driving a significant share of the deaths in the pandemic. NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across…

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Carbon inheritance

Carbon inheritance

James Balog writes: Do any of us really have a right to be angry or frustrated about the climate- and-energy crisis without considering how we ourselves have contributed to it? Honestly? Truly? With eyes wide open? I don’t think so. We all play a role in producing the problem. No one inhabits a righteous, pure-and-holy aerie above the human condition. Not me, not you, not anybody. We all drive our chariots of carbon fire. We all rely on carbon fuels…

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Why I stopped writing about Syria

Why I stopped writing about Syria

Asser Khattab writes: When the war broke out in 2011 and many of us quickly grew accustomed to its horrors, programming my days around the possibility of rockets or mortar shells falling around me became increasingly ordinary, like picking clothes appropriate for the weather. And when I had to escape, it was just another thing that I had to do. The night before I left, I went to the bar, raised a glass to the good old days with the…

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What happened to the ideal of multi-religious Arab modernity?

What happened to the ideal of multi-religious Arab modernity?

Ussama Makdisi writes: By the time I was born in 1968, my grandfather was an emeritus professor and a pillar of Ras Beirut’s small and highly educated Protestant community. But by then, as well, the optimism of the first half of the 20th century had receded dramatically. European empires had long since cynically partitioned the Ottoman Empire and created several new states including Lebanon. The Arab East, of which the small Mediterranean country was an inseparable part, witnessed the vibrant…

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The James Webb Space Telescope will rewrite cosmic history — if it works

The James Webb Space Telescope will rewrite cosmic history — if it works

Natalie Wolchover writes: To look back in time at the cosmos’s infancy and witness the first stars flicker on, you must first grind a mirror as big as a house. Its surface must be so smooth that, if the mirror were the scale of a continent, it would feature no hill or valley greater than ankle height. Only a mirror so huge and smooth can collect and focus the faint light coming from the farthest galaxies in the sky —…

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A billion shellfish and other marine animals baked to death

A billion shellfish and other marine animals baked to death

Julia Rosen writes: During this summer’s stifling heat wave, Robin Fales patrolled the same sweep of shore on Washington’s San Juan Island every day at low tide. The stench of rotting sea life grew as temperatures edged toward triple digits—roughly 30 degrees above average—and Fales watched the beds of kelp she studies wilt and fade. “They were bleaching more than I had ever seen,” recalls Fales, a Ph.D. candidate and marine ecologist at the University of Washington. She didn’t know…

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Snow may vanish for years at a time in Mountain West with climate warming

Snow may vanish for years at a time in Mountain West with climate warming

The Washington Post reports: A new study provides a glimpse into the future of Western U.S. snow and the picture is far from rosy: In about 35 to 60 years, mountainous states are projected to be nearly snowless for years at a time if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked and climate change does not slow. Due to rising temperatures, the region has already lost 20 percent of its snowpack since the 1950s. That’s enough water to fill Lake Mead, the…

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