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Imminent Red Sea oil spill could leave 8 million people without water

Imminent Red Sea oil spill could leave 8 million people without water

The Guardian reports: The impact of an oil spill in the Red Sea from a tanker that is rotting in the water could be far wider than anticipated, with 8 million people losing access to running water and Yemen’s Red Sea fishing stock destroyed within three weeks. Negotiations are under way to offload the estimated 1.1m barrels of crude oil that remains onboard the FSO Safer, which has been deteriorating by the month since it was abandoned in 2017. The…

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Why is simplicity so unreasonably effective at scientific explanation?

Why is simplicity so unreasonably effective at scientific explanation?

Johnjoe McFadden writes: It’s May 1964 and, on a low hillside in New Jersey, the physicists Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Allan Penzias are listening in on the Universe. They are standing beneath what looks like a gargantuan ear trumpet attached to a garden shed: the Holmdel Horn Antenna, built by Bell Laboratories to investigate microwaves as an alternative to radio waves for telecommunication. When interest in microwave communication waned, Bell lent out the Holmdel horn to interested scientists. Penzias…

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Arabia was ‘cornerstone’ in early human migrations out of Africa, study suggests

Arabia was ‘cornerstone’ in early human migrations out of Africa, study suggests

Charles Q. Choi writes: The largest-ever study of Arab genomes has revealed the most ancient of all modern Middle Eastern populations and is shedding light on how modern humans may have first expanded across the globe. The Arabian Peninsula — which today includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — has long served as a key crossroads between Africa, Europe and Asia. Recent archaeological, fossil and DNA findings suggest that analyzing the Middle East and…

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The mysterious case of the coronavirus lab-leak theory

The mysterious case of the coronavirus lab-leak theory

Carolyn Kormann writes: Since the coronavirus first appeared, at the end of 2019, four and a half million people have died, countless more have suffered, whole economies have been upended, schools have been shuttered. Why? Did the virus jump from an animal to its first human host, its patient zero? Or, as some suspect, was the catastrophe the result of a laboratory accident in Wuhan, a city of eleven million people in central China? Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease expert at…

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Covid is the most common cause of duty-related deaths among police officers

Covid is the most common cause of duty-related deaths among police officers

The New York Times reports: Over the last year and a half, a majority of the roughly 40 police officers who patrol Baker, La., a suburb of Baton Rouge, tested positive for the coronavirus. All of them recovered and went back to work — until Lt. DeMarcus Dunn got sick. Lieutenant Dunn, a 36-year-old shift supervisor who coached youth sports and once chased down someone who fled the police station after being arrested, died from Covid-19 on Aug. 13. His…

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By attacking me, Justice Alito proved my point

By attacking me, Justice Alito proved my point

Adam Serwer writes: Last month, Justice Samuel Alito insisted that the Supreme Court’s critics are wrong. The Court is not “a dangerous cabal” that is “deciding important issues in a novel, secretive, improper way, in the middle of the night, hidden from public view,” he said. Reading aloud from a piece I wrote in the aftermath of the Court’s recent ruling on an abortion law, Alito insisted that it was “false and inflammatory” to say that the 1973 Roe v….

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A record number of workers are quitting their jobs, empowered by new leverage

A record number of workers are quitting their jobs, empowered by new leverage

The Washington Post reports: The number of people quitting their jobs has surged to record highs, pushed by a combination of factors that include Americans sensing ample opportunity and better pay elsewhere. Some 4.3 million people quit jobs in August — about 2.9 percent of the workforce, according to new data released Tuesday from the Labor Department. Those numbers are up from the previous record set in April, of about 4 million people quitting, reflecting how the pandemic has continued…

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The GOP alliance with Europe’s far-right deepens

The GOP alliance with Europe’s far-right deepens

Ishaan Tharoor writes: Toward the end of last month, a major right-wing summit in Hungary had a conspicuous guest. Former vice president Mike Pence joined Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and a coterie of other illiberal, nationalist leaders from the continent in a two-day conference in Budapest on “family values” and demographics. The forum, which began in 2015, is one of the spaces where Orban champions his brand of Christian nationalism — raging against Western liberalism, non-European migration and LGBTQ…

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Trump won the county in a landslide. His supporters still hounded the elections administrator until she resigned

Trump won the county in a landslide. His supporters still hounded the elections administrator until she resigned

ProPublica reports: An elections administrator in North Texas submitted her resignation Friday, following a monthslong effort by residents and officials loyal to former President Donald Trump to force her out of office. Michele Carew, who had overseen scores of elections during her 14-year career, had found herself transformed into the public face of an electoral system that many in the heavily Republican Hood County had come to mistrust, which ProPublica and The Texas Tribune covered earlier this month. Her critics…

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What if the universe had no beginning?

What if the universe had no beginning?

Paul Sutter writes: In the beginning, there was … well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our universe has always existed — and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could work. “Reality has so many things that most people would associate with sci-fi or even fantasy,” said Bruno Bento, a physicist who studies the nature of time at the University of Liverpool in the U.K. In his work, he employed a new theory of quantum gravity, called…

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‘The president’s decline is alarming’: Biden trapped in coronavirus malaise

‘The president’s decline is alarming’: Biden trapped in coronavirus malaise

Politico reports: In a focus group last week, Pennsylvania Democrats one after another articulated the issue vexing top White House aides, party operatives in Virginia and voters in Georgia: Why isn’t President Joe Biden’s diminished job rating rebounding? All nine participants from Tuesday’s session gave Biden C- grades or lower. And their answers circled back to a similar point: The pandemic and the many ways it continues to hinder normal life is souring their views of Biden. One woman said…

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Washington is getting China wrong

Washington is getting China wrong

Michael Schuman writes: Evergrande Group, one of China’s largest property developers, is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. Its founder, Hui Ka Yan, is scrounging to find the cash to meet payments on the $300 billion his company owes. Beijing has warned local officials to prepare for possible fallout if the gargantuan firm collapses. Around the world, financial analysts are wondering if Evergrande is China’s “Lehman moment,” the starting gun for a destructive wave of defaults that could take down…

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Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Fred Pearce writes: We know how to decarbonize energy production with renewable fuels and land transportation with electric vehicles. Blueprints for greening shipping and aircraft are being drawn up. But what about the big industrial processes? They look set to become decarbonization holdouts — the last and hardest CO2 emissions that we must eliminate if we are to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. In particular, how are we to green the three biggest globally-vital heavy industries: steel, cement, and ammonia,…

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Simple mathematical law predicts movement in cities around the world

Simple mathematical law predicts movement in cities around the world

Scientific American reports: The people who happen to be in a city center at any given moment may seem like a random collection of individuals. But new research featuring a simple mathematical law shows that urban travel patterns worldwide are, in fact, remarkably predictable regardless of location—an insight that could enhance models of disease spread and help to optimize city planning. Studying anonymized cell-phone data, researchers discovered what is known as an inverse square relation between the number of people…

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