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‘This is really scary’: Kids struggle with long Covid

‘This is really scary’: Kids struggle with long Covid

The New York Times reports: Will Grogan stared blankly at his ninth-grade biology classwork. It was material he had mastered the day before, but it looked utterly unfamiliar. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blurted. His teacher and classmates reminded him how adeptly he’d answered questions about the topic during the previous class. “I’ve never seen this before,” he insisted, becoming so distressed that the teacher excused him to visit the school nurse. The episode, earlier this year,…

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As Taliban capture cities, U.S. says Afghan forces must fend for themselves

As Taliban capture cities, U.S. says Afghan forces must fend for themselves

The New York Times reports: If the Taliban had seized three provincial capitals in northern Afghanistan a year ago, like they did on Sunday, the American response would most likely have been ferocious. Fighter jets and helicopter gunships would have responded in force, beating back the Islamist group or, at the very least, stalling its advance. But these are different times. What aircraft the U.S. military could muster from hundreds of miles away struck a cache of weapons far from…

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Too many people are dying right now

Too many people are dying right now

David Wallace-Wells writes: A few weeks ago, in a back-of-the-envelope calculation during an interview with Eric Topol of Scripps, I suggested that because of widespread vaccination of the most vulnerable elderly, we may have reduced overall mortality risk in the country by 90 percent. Topol thought that was a little high, but agreed that vaccines were delivering great protection against death and hospitalization, and while we would likely see some of each during the Delta wave, “it won’t be like…

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Neighbors’ deaths from Covid-19 have an Arkansas town reassessing vaccines

Neighbors’ deaths from Covid-19 have an Arkansas town reassessing vaccines

The Wall Street Journal reports: Michael Lejong fully intended to get vaccinated for Covid-19, his wife said, standing in the pavilion that the prominent architect designed for his hometown. But he was relatively young, very healthy and not overly concerned about the virus. He wanted to get his shots separately from his wife, so he could care for her if she had adverse side effects. She got hers immediately in April and he put his off. In late June, he…

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Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Rebecca Solnit writes: Some of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and…

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Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

The New York Times reports: Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews. Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee…

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Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

The New York Times reports: The Taliban seized the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said. It is the first major city to be overtaken by the insurgents since they began their sweeping military offensive in May, and it happened just weeks before U.S. forces were set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was also the third provincial capital to be overtaken by Taliban in three days, and a major blow to the Afghan government….

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Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

The Wall Street Journal reports: Taliban fighters seized the capital of northern Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province Saturday, the second such provincial center to fall to the insurgency in two days, as the U.S. Embassy advised American citizens to leave the country immediately. The fall of the city of Sheberghan is particularly important because Jowzjan has long been the traditional stronghold of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the country’s main anti-Taliban leaders who served as Afghanistan’s vice president until…

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9/11 families to President Biden: Don’t come to our memorial events

9/11 families to President Biden: Don’t come to our memorial events

NBC News reports: Nearly 1,800 Americans directly affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are opposing President Joe Biden’s participation in any memorial events this year unless he upholds his pledge to declassify U.S. government evidence that they believe may show a link between Saudi Arabian leaders and the attacks. The victims’ family members, first responders and survivors will release a statement Friday calling on Biden to skip 20th-anniversary events in New York and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the…

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What misspellings reveal about cultural evolution

What misspellings reveal about cultural evolution

Helena Miton writes: Something about me must remind people of a blind 17th-century poet. My last name, Miton, is French, yet people outside of France invariably misspell it as “Milton”—as in the famed English author, John Milton, of the epic poem Paradise Lost. It is not uncommon for people to misspell an unfamiliar name—yet 99 times out of 100 people misspell mine as “Milton.” That is the name that shows up on everything from my university gym card to emails…

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Russia’s vast wildfires could pump a record amount of climate-warming CO2 into the atmosphere

Russia’s vast wildfires could pump a record amount of climate-warming CO2 into the atmosphere

The Wall Street Journal reports: The smoke from the fires in Russia’s northeast is so thick it has blotted out the sun, plunging swaths of the region into darkness during the brief summer. A state of emergency has been declared in the city of Yakutsk, where freezing winter temperatures have given it the reputation of being the coldest constantly inhabited city on the planet. Residents have been told to stay indoors while volunteers and firefighters brave temperatures surpassing 100 degrees…

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The complexity of the biodiversity crisis

The complexity of the biodiversity crisis

Nature reports: Scientists say it’s clear that there’s a biodiversity crisis, but there are many questions about the details. Which species will lose? Will new communities be healthy and desirable? Will the rapidly changing ecosystems be able to deal with climate change? And where should conservation actions be targeted? To find answers, scientists need better data from field sites around the world, collected at regular intervals over long periods of time. Such data don’t exist for much of the world,…

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Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

The Guardian reports: Facebook failed to enforce its own rules to curb an oil and gas industry misinformation campaign over the climate crisis during last year’s presidential election, according to a new analysis released on Thursday. The report, by the London-based thinktank InfluenceMap, identified an increase in advertising on the social media site by ExxonMobil and other fossil-fuel companies aimed at shaping the political debate about policies to address global heating. InfluenceMap said its research shows the fossil-fuel industry has…

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Facebook killed research into the Capitol riot to protect itself — not its users

Facebook killed research into the Capitol riot to protect itself — not its users

Dell Cameron writes: When the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion for deceiving its users on privacy, it celebrated the fine as “record-breaking and history-making.” Two years and $200 billion in revenue later, Facebook has found a way to turn lemons into lemonade, deceiving its users once again and using a seemingly powerless FTC to do it. Facebook’s Tuesday night crackdown on research into the dangerous falsehoods perpetuated by its platform was predicated on the lie that the FTC…

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