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Lab leaks happen, and not just in China. We need to take them seriously

Lab leaks happen, and not just in China. We need to take them seriously

David A. Relman writes: If we scientists are not forced to confront the issues of laboratory safety and risky research in a serious and sustained manner, history suggests that we will not do so. In 2012, controversy erupted when it transpired that two sets of researchers — at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands — were altering highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses to enhance their transmissibility among mammals (to understand their potential…

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‘Lean into the culture war’: White conservatives in House push fight against critical race theory

‘Lean into the culture war’: White conservatives in House push fight against critical race theory

Politico reports: The head of Congress’ largest conservative caucus is encouraging Republicans to embrace anti-critical race theory rhetoric, as the GOP looks to lean into the nation’s culture wars ahead of the looming battle for the House. In a memo sent to members of the Republican Study Committee, its chair Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana said the “backlash against Critical Race Theory is real.” Banks framed the GOP’s opposition to the ideology “as an effort to renew American patriotism and…

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House investigates possible shadow operation in Trump’s Justice Department

House investigates possible shadow operation in Trump’s Justice Department

The Guardian reports: Top Democrats in the House are investigating whether Trump justice department officials ran an unlawful shadow operation to target political enemies of the former president to hunt down leaks of classified information, according to a source familiar with the matter. The House judiciary committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, is centering his investigation on the apparent violation of internal policies by the justice department, when it issued subpoenas against Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell in 2018. The use…

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Afghan government may collapse six months or sooner after U.S. withdrawal

Afghan government may collapse six months or sooner after U.S. withdrawal

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. intelligence community concluded last week that the government of Afghanistan could collapse as soon as six months after the American military withdrawal from the country is completed, according to officials with knowledge of the new assessment. American intelligence agencies revised their previously more optimistic estimates as the Taliban swept through northern Afghanistan last week, seizing dozens of districts and surrounding major cities. Afghan security forces frequently surrendered without a fight, leaving their Humvees…

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Same or different? The question flummoxes neural networks

Same or different? The question flummoxes neural networks

John Pavlus writes: The first episode of Sesame Street in 1969 included a segment called “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.” Viewers were asked to consider a poster that displayed three 2s and one W, and to decide — while singing along to the game’s eponymous jingle — which symbol didn’t belong. Dozens of episodes of Sesame Street repeated the game, comparing everything from abstract patterns to plates of vegetables. Kids never had to relearn the rules….

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Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared, says draft UN report

Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared, says draft UN report

AFP reports: Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, according to a landmark draft report from the UN’s climate science advisors obtained by AFP. Species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas — these and other devastating climate impacts are accelerating and bound to become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 30. The choices societies make now will…

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Global herd immunity remains out of reach because of inequitable vaccine distribution – 99% of people in poor countries are unvaccinated

Global herd immunity remains out of reach because of inequitable vaccine distribution – 99% of people in poor countries are unvaccinated

A COVID-19 field hospital in Santo Andre, Brazil. The pandemic has killed over 503,000 people in Brazil; just 11% of the population is fully vaccinated. Mario Tama/Getty Images By Maria De Jesus, American University School of International Service In the race between infection and injection, injection has lost. Public health experts estimate that approximately 70% of the world’s 7.9 billion people must be fully vaccinated to end the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 21, 2021, 10.04% of the global population…

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Chinese Covid-19 genetic data that could have aided pandemic research removed from NIH database

Chinese Covid-19 genetic data that could have aided pandemic research removed from NIH database

The Wall Street Journal reports: Chinese researchers directed the U.S. National Institutes of Health to delete gene sequences of early Covid-19 cases from a key scientific database, raising concerns that scientists studying the origin of the pandemic may lack access to key pieces of information. The NIH confirmed that it deleted the sequences after receiving a request from a Chinese researcher who had submitted them three months earlier. “Submitting investigators hold the rights to their data and can request withdrawal…

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My grandfather helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?

My grandfather helped build Jewish American support for Israel. What’s his legacy now?

Abraham Riesman writes: On February 25, 1986, my grandfather Robert Arnold Riesman Sr. delivered a speech at his synagogue in Providence, Rhode Island. Grandpa was a lantern-jawed, even-tempered man — an industrialist, a philanthropist, and a bona fide war hero — which made it all the more striking when, on occasions such as this, he invoked life’s horrors like a fire-and-brimstone shtetl rabbi. He began with a story of Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous mad scientist of the Nazi camps,…

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Top general fires back at right-wing critics who object to Pentagon’s effort to combat racism

Top general fires back at right-wing critics who object to Pentagon’s effort to combat racism

Politico reports: The military’s top officer on Wednesday pushed back against GOP lawmakers who said the Pentagon’s efforts to combat racism and promote diversity have made the armed forces too “woke.” Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley gave a fiery defense of open-mindedness in the ranks during a House Armed Services hearing, saying he’s offended at the accusation that those efforts have undercut the military’s mission and cohesiveness. Milley, who was testifying alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a hearing…

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Michigan Republican-led investigation rejects Trump’s claim that November 3 election was stolen

Michigan Republican-led investigation rejects Trump’s claim that November 3 election was stolen

Detroit Free Press reports: An investigation led by Michigan Republican lawmakers found no basis for claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, a Michigan Senate report released Wednesday concludes. The results of the inquiry by the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, chaired by a Republican and comprised of a GOP-majority, are the latest repudiation of conspiracies and lies revolving around Michigan’s election results. “The Committee found no evidence of widespread…

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It looks like the real paleo diet often included lots of grains

It looks like the real paleo diet often included lots of grains

Nature reports: On a clear day, the view from the ruins of Göbekli Tepe stretches across southern Turkey all the way to the Syrian border some 50 kilometres away. At 11,600 years old, this mountaintop archaeological site has been described as the world’s oldest temple — so ancient, in fact, that its T-shaped pillars and circular enclosures pre-date pottery in the Middle East. The people who built these monumental structures were living just before a major transition in human history:…

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Voting rights bill will be blocked by the anti-democratic system it seeks to reform

Voting rights bill will be blocked by the anti-democratic system it seeks to reform

Mother Jones reports: Congressional Democrats’ signature voting rights bill, the For the People Act, is set to be defeated on Tuesday by the very anti-democratic system it’s meant to reform. The 50 Democratic senators who support the For the People Act (or least Sen. Joe Manchin’s compromise proposal keeping some key elements of the bill while excluding others) represent 43 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators who oppose it, according to data compiled by Alex Tausanovitch of the…

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Biden’s Justice Dept may defend Trump in Capitol riot lawsuits

Biden’s Justice Dept may defend Trump in Capitol riot lawsuits

Reuters reports: Former U.S. President Donald Trump may have an unlikely ally to defend him against lawsuits alleging he incited the U.S. Capitol insurrection: President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. The Biden administration paved the way for that possibility, say constitutional scholars and lawyers in the cases, by arguing in an unrelated defamation case against Trump that presidents enjoy sweeping immunity for their comments while in office – and the right to a defense by government lawyers. Biden’s Justice Department used…

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