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Xi’s dictatorship threatens the Chinese state

Xi’s dictatorship threatens the Chinese state

George Soros writes: Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, suffers from several internal inconsistencies which greatly reduce the cohesion and effectiveness of his leadership. There is a conflict between his beliefs and his actions and between his public declarations of wanting to make China a superpower and his behavior as a domestic ruler. These internal contradictions have revealed themselves in the context of the growing conflict between the U.S. and China. At the heart of this conflict is the reality…

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Delta has changed pandemic endgame

Delta has changed pandemic endgame

Ed Yong writes: In September 2020, just before COVID-19 began its wintry surge through the United States, I wrote that the country was trapped in a pandemic spiral, seemingly destined to repeat the same mistakes. But after vaccines arrived in midwinter, cases in the U.S. declined and, by summer’s edge, had reached their lowest levels since the pandemic’s start. Many Americans began to hope that the country had enough escape velocity to exit its cycle of missteps and sickness. And…

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Current public-health messaging on Covid breakthrough cases may understate the scale and risk

Current public-health messaging on Covid breakthrough cases may understate the scale and risk

David Wallace-Wells writes: The term itself, perhaps, is a problem. “Breakthrough” sounds bad — implying an immune-escape mutation, likely rare, and therefore alarming. The vaccines were never tested to prevent transmission, only symptomatic disease, and those who knew the science expected, from the outset, that we would see some number of such cases, and that they would be, overwhelmingly, mild. But Delta appears to have changed things. Not everything: The vaccines are working to suppress severe outcomes from COVID infection…

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The UN climate panel tries to cut through the smog

The UN climate panel tries to cut through the smog

Bill McKibben writes: We all live in two worlds: a physical one and a social one. The new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released on Monday, is ostensibly about the physical world. It states—even more clearly and forcefully than it has stated in all its reports back to 1995—that humans are wrecking that physical world. Setting it on fire. But precisely because none of that is news, especially after the climate events of this northern-hemisphere…

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The Texas governor surrenders to the coronavirus

The Texas governor surrenders to the coronavirus

Adam Serwer writes: A year and a half into the pandemic, Texas is running out of hospital beds. The Texas Tribune reported on Tuesday that nearly 10,000 COVID-19 patients are in intensive-care units, some in areas where hospitals are close to capacity. Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order asking hospitals to delay elective procedures and authorizing local facilities to seek out-of-state medical staff to help with the coronavirus surge, which is approaching levels not seen since winter. Despite…

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Having lost the war in Afghanistan, U.S. hopes to avoid a repeat of its ignominious flight from Saigon

Having lost the war in Afghanistan, U.S. hopes to avoid a repeat of its ignominious flight from Saigon

The New York Times reports: American negotiators are trying to extract assurances from the Taliban that they will not attack the U.S. Embassy in Kabul if the extremist group takes over the country’s government and ever wants to receive foreign aid, three American officials said. The effort, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American envoy in talks with the Taliban, seeks to stave off a full evacuation of the embassy as they rapidly seize cities across Afghanistan. On Thursday, the…

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Great ape interactions indicate that bonobos and chimps follow certain social customs, much like humans

Great ape interactions indicate that bonobos and chimps follow certain social customs, much like humans

Gizmodo reports: You don’t walk up to a coworker without some sort of greeting, and you don’t end conversations simply by turning heel. There are rules to the game of social behavior, and now a research team studying chimpanzees and bonobos say those great apes have social habits that look a lot like what we humans call “hello” and “goodbye.” The research team observed over 2,000 interactions between chimpanzees as well as bonobos, another ape species closely related to humans….

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‘We’re in trouble’: Rural America can’t escape Delta

‘We’re in trouble’: Rural America can’t escape Delta

Politico reports: Steven was finally getting his Covid-19 shot because Mama told him to. And nobody crosses Mama. Standing between the fried bread and slushie stands at the Uinta County fairgrounds in southwestern Wyoming, the 42-year-old in the Trump 2020 hat said “Mama” — his wife — forced him to get vaccinated because of the Delta variant. “The missus is worried about me going out on a trucking trip,” said Steven, who declined to give his last name. “I don’t…

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Virus misinformation spikes as Delta cases surge

Virus misinformation spikes as Delta cases surge

The New York Times reports: In late July, Andrew Torba, the chief executive of the alternative social network Gab, claimed without evidence that members of the U.S. military who refused to get vaccinated against the coronavirus would face a court-martial. His post on Gab amassed 10,000 likes and shares. Two weeks earlier, the unfounded claim that at least 45,000 deaths had resulted from Covid-19 vaccines circulated online. Posts with the claim collected nearly 17,000 views on Bitchute, an alternative video…

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Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Ronan Farrow writes: In April, 2014, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo placed a call to the White House and reached Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. Cuomo was, as one official put it, “ranting and raving.” He had announced that he was shuttering the Moreland Commission, a group that he had convened less than a year earlier to root out corruption in New York politics. After Cuomo ended the group’s inquiries, Preet Bharara, then the U.S. Attorney…

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Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Politico reports: Donald Trump asked the country’s top legal official in late December about a conspiratorial draft complaint aimed at overturning the 2020 election results, according to a previously unreported account of Trump’s phone call with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen persuaded Trump the lawsuit wasn’t a good idea, he told Senate investigators last weekend, two sources familiar with his testimony said. The previously unreported details underscore how hard DOJ lawyers worked to shoot down the increasingly harebrained…

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‘Reign of Terror’ brilliantly traces the course from 9/11 to President Trump

‘Reign of Terror’ brilliantly traces the course from 9/11 to President Trump

Jennifer Szalai writes: Spencer Ackerman’s barnburner of a new book, “Reign of Terror,” reminded me of that moment in 2015 (remember then?) when Donald J. Trump descended his golden escalator to announce his long-shot candidacy for the highest office. Instead of starting with the usual heartwarming clichés about the country’s better angels, Trump came out swinging, declaring that the United States was in trouble: “When was the last time the U.S. won at anything?” It certainly hadn’t been winning any…

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‘Expert mathematician’ on election fraud actually a a convicted drug dealer with no college degree, lawsuit says

‘Expert mathematician’ on election fraud actually a a convicted drug dealer with no college degree, lawsuit says

Motherboard reports: On January 27, the pro-Trump channel OAN broadcast a segment interviewing an “expert mathematician” named Ed Solomon who claimed to have found evidence within precinct-level reporting that the election was rigged by an algorithm. The basis of Solomon’s claim is that he found several precincts throughout the country reporting exactly the same results at various times throughout the vote tabulation process. Asked by host Christina Bobb what the likelihood of what Solomon claimed to have found being a…

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Why your sleeping brain replays new rewarding experiences

Why your sleeping brain replays new rewarding experiences

Jim Davies writes: During this Olympics, I’ve been rooting for Kelleigh Ryan, who is on the women’s foil team. She’s from Ottawa, where I live. Whenever she scored a point, she’d emit a victory scream, probably feeling a rush of pleasure. Watching her on television, I did, too. Getting better at something involves emotion. When we do well, we have good feelings—pride, pleasure, excitement—and these emotions help reinforce whatever behaviors we just engaged in. Similarly, the pain of failure makes…

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