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Widespread coronavirus infection found in Iowa deer, new study says

Widespread coronavirus infection found in Iowa deer, new study says

The New York Times reports: A new study of hundreds of white-tailed deer infected with the coronavirus in Iowa has found that the animals probably are contracting the virus from humans, and then rapidly spreading it among one another, according to researchers. Up to 80 percent of deer sampled from April 2020 through January 2021 in the state were infected, the study indicated. Scientists said the findings pose worrisome implications for the spread of the coronavirus, although they were not…

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The hatred of America and of American institutions is going to grow

The hatred of America and of American institutions is going to grow

Anne Applebaum writes: All around you are swirling scenes of violence—explosions in Baghdad, ISIS operatives slitting the throat of an infidel, the chaos around the U.S. Capitol on January 6. You see jarring images of blood and brutality; you hear the grating sound of screaming; you feel the rush of fear and rage. But then a calm, sympathetic man steps forward, dressed in a button-down shirt. He explains all of it. He connects the disconnected images; he makes sense of…

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What Youngkin’s win in Virginia means for the rest of America

What Youngkin’s win in Virginia means for the rest of America

Zachary D. Carter writes: Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election was about schools. It wasn’t about Donald Trump, or inflation, or defunding the police, or Medicare for All, or President Joe Biden’s infrastructure agenda. It wasn’t really about critical race theory or transgender rights—though those issues shaded the situation a bit by highlighting anxieties surrounding the education system. Fundamentally, the contest was about schools—specifically, how many parents remain frustrated by the way public schools have handled the…

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Scientists debate if cosmic pebbles create rocky planets like Earth

Scientists debate if cosmic pebbles create rocky planets like Earth

Jonathan O’Callaghan writes: Bob O’Dell wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. It was 1992, and he had just got his hands on new images from the Hubble Space Telescope that zoomed in on young stars in the Orion Nebula. O’Dell had been hoping to study the nebula itself, an interesting region of star formation relatively close to Earth. Yet something else caught his attention. Several of the stars didn’t look like stars at all, but were instead enveloped…

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Biden administration moves to limit methane, a potent greenhouse gas

Biden administration moves to limit methane, a potent greenhouse gas

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would heavily regulate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that spews from oil and natural gas operations and can warm the atmosphere 80 times as fast as carbon dioxide in the short term. For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency intends to limit the methane coming from roughly one million existing oil and gas rigs across the United States. The federal government previously had rules that aimed to…

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Even as Biden pushes clean energy, he seeks more oil production

Even as Biden pushes clean energy, he seeks more oil production

The New York Times reports: President Biden told a global climate summit on Monday that “we only have a brief window before us” to reduce the emissions from burning oil, gas and coal that pose an “existential threat” to humanity. But only days earlier, he was urging the world’s largest oil producers to pump more of the fossil fuels that are warming the planet. The incongruity was on center stage both at the global climate summit currently taking place in…

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The Toxic Ten: Publishers spreading baseless, unscientific climate denial

The Toxic Ten: Publishers spreading baseless, unscientific climate denial

  Center for Countering Digital Hate reports [PDF]: New analysis shows that posts linking to content from ten “superpolluter” publishers spreading climate misinformation account for up to 69% of Facebook interactions with climate denial content. 1) Breitbart, the disinformation site once run by Steve Bannon 2) Western Journal, whose founder claimed President Obama is Muslim 3) Newsmax, a key promoter of election fraud conspiracies 4) Townhall Media, founded by the Exxon-funded Heritage Foundation 5) Media Research Center, a “think tank”…

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NBC News Poll: 50 percent of Republicans doubt their vote will be counted accurately

NBC News Poll: 50 percent of Republicans doubt their vote will be counted accurately

NBC News reports: There’s been a significant decline over the past year in voters who think their vote will be counted accurately, a trend driven mainly by Republicans — most of whom still believe false claims that President Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, according to a new NBC News poll. Two-thirds of all registered voters, 66 percent, say they are confident their vote will be counted accurately, down from 85 percent in October 2020. And 29 percent…

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Shutting down historical debate, China makes it a crime to mock heroes

Shutting down historical debate, China makes it a crime to mock heroes

The New York Times reports: The young woman in Beijing began her post complaining about mobs gathering online, where recluses vent misogynistic insecurities from the safety of desk chairs. As provocative as it was, it might have passed unnoticed except that she added another beat. She mocked the toxic masculinity of users imagining themselves as Dong Cunrui, a textbook war hero who, according to Chinese Communist Party lore, died valiantly during the civil war that brought the party to power…

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Bosnia is in danger of breaking up, warns top international official

Bosnia is in danger of breaking up, warns top international official

The Guardian reports: The international community’s chief representative in Bosnia has warned that the country is in imminent danger of breaking apart, and there is a “very real” prospect of a return to conflict. In a report to the UN seen by the Guardian, Christian Schmidt, the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that if Serb separatists carry out their threat to recreate their own army, splitting the national armed forces in two, more international peacekeepers would have to…

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Being, feeling, and knowing: Our path to consciousness

Being, feeling, and knowing: Our path to consciousness

Antonio Damasio writes: The history of living organisms began 4 billion years ago. In the phylogenetic branch that led to us, I see three evolutionary stages. A first stage is marked by being; a second is dominated by feeling; and a third is defined by knowing. Curiously, in each contemporary human, something can be gleaned akin to those same three stages, and they emerge in the same sequence. Being, feeling, and knowing arise from separate anatomical and physiological systems that…

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At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

Tina Gerhardt writes: As the sun rose in Glasgow, over 20,000 people—delegates from individual nations, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and activists—gathered in Scotland for the start of the United Nations’ two-week climate conference. Known as the Conference of the Parties or COP 26, it runs from Monday, November 1 to Friday, November 12, 2021. The COP 26 will mainly focus on two things: (1) commitments on greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions; and (2) funding and technology transfers from developed countries…

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This is where the first climate wars will break out

This is where the first climate wars will break out

The Daily Beast reports: Climate-related warfare is a near-term reality—not some far-off boogeyman—according to leading defense thinkers and military strategists. They are still talking about the importance of fighting climate change, but they’re also making plans to fight other human beings because of climate change. So, where will these climate-related battles take place? Some people argue they already have, with controversial academic reports claiming recent conflicts were directly spurred by the effects of climate change. Other military advisers and strategists…

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Almost a third of Republicans say violence may be needed to save U.S., poll shows

Almost a third of Republicans say violence may be needed to save U.S., poll shows

Yahoo News reports: Almost one-third of Republicans say they think violence may be necessary to solve the problems facing the United States, according to a new national survey by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. The finding is part of PRRI’s 12th annual American Values Survey released Monday which, among other things, highlights the continued impact of the same falsehoods and conspiracy theories that fueled the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol nearly one year later. The survey…

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