Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

The false and misleading claims President Biden made during his first 100 days in office

The false and misleading claims President Biden made during his first 100 days in office

The Washington Post reports: After four years of a presidency that swamped Americans with a gusher of false and misleading claims, the Joe Biden era has offered a return to a more typical pattern when it comes to a commander in chief and his relationship with the facts — one that features frequent spin and obfuscation or exaggeration, with the occasional canard. Among the most notable falsehoods of President Biden’s first 100 days in office was his claim — which…

Read More Read More

Facebook stopped employees from reading an internal report about its role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection

Facebook stopped employees from reading an internal report about its role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection

BuzzFeed News reports: Last Thursday, BuzzFeed News revealed that an internal Facebook report concluded that the company had failed to prevent the “Stop the Steal” movement from using its platform to subvert the election, encourage violence, and help incite the Jan. 6 attempted coup on the US Capitol. Titled “Stop the Steal and Patriot Party: The Growth and Mitigation of an Adversarial Harmful Movement,” the report is one of the most important analyses of how the insurrectionist effort to overturn…

Read More Read More

Republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across U.S.

Republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across U.S.

The Guardian reports: It was an abrupt end to two decades as a partner at legal giant Foley & Lardner for the influential and conservative election lawyer Cleta Mitchell. Days after Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s controversial 2 January phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state where the then president pressured him to “find” him more votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win, Mitchell resigned her post in the midst of an internal firm review and mounting criticism. But Mitchell, a…

Read More Read More

Iran’s foreign minister, in leaked tape, says Revolutionary Guards set policies

Iran’s foreign minister, in leaked tape, says Revolutionary Guards set policies

The New York Times reports: In a leaked audiotape that offers a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes power struggles of Iranian leaders, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Revolutionary Guards Corps call the shots, overruling many government decisions and ignoring advice. In one extraordinary moment on the tape that surfaced Sunday, Mr. Zarif departed from the reverential official line on Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of the Guards’ elite Quds Force, the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s security apparatus, who…

Read More Read More

Natural GM: How plants and animals steal genes from other species to accelerate evolution

Natural GM: How plants and animals steal genes from other species to accelerate evolution

Grassland in Uganda. Luke Dunning, Author provided By Luke Dunning, University of Sheffield Little did biologist Gregor Mendel know that his experiments with sweet peas in a monastery garden in Brno, Czech Republic, would lay the foundations for our understanding of modern genetics and inheritance. His work in the 19th century helped scientists to establish that parents pass their genetic information onto their offspring, and in turn, they pass it on to theirs. Indeed, this premise forms the basis of…

Read More Read More

More action, less talk, distinguish Biden’s 100-day sprint

More action, less talk, distinguish Biden’s 100-day sprint

The Associated Press reports: The card tucked in President Joe Biden’s right jacket pocket must weigh a ton. You can see the weight of it on his face when he digs it out, squints and ever-so-slowly reads aloud the latest tally of COVID-19 dead. Sometimes he’ll stumble on a digit — after all, flubs come with the man. But the message is always clear: The toll of the virus weighs on him constantly, a millstone that helps explain why the…

Read More Read More

Young adults’ relocations are reshaping political geography

Young adults’ relocations are reshaping political geography

The Associated Press reports: The choices by … members of the millennial generation of where to live have reshaped the country’s political geography over the past decade. They’ve left New York and California and settled in places less likely to be settings for TV sitcoms about 20-something urbanites, including Denver, Houston and Orlando, Florida. Drawn by jobs and overlooked cultural amenities, they’ve helped add new craft breweries, condominiums and liberal voters to these once more-conservative places. The U.S. Census Bureau…

Read More Read More

Michigan’s Covid wards are filling up with younger patients

Michigan’s Covid wards are filling up with younger patients

The New York Times reports: At Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, in one of America’s worst coronavirus hot spots, entire units are still filled with Covid-19 patients. People weak with the virus still struggle to sit up in bed. And the phone still rings with pleas to transfer patients on the verge of death to units with higher-tech equipment. But unlike previous surges, it now is younger and middle-aged adults — not their parents and grandparents — who are taking up…

Read More Read More

Millions of Americans are skipping their second doses of Covid vaccines

Millions of Americans are skipping their second doses of Covid vaccines

The New York Times reports: Millions of Americans are not getting the second doses of their Covid-19 vaccines, and their ranks are growing. More than five million people, or nearly 8 percent of those who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, have missed their second doses, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than double the rate among people who got inoculated in the first several…

Read More Read More

Halting the vast release of methane is critical for climate, UN says

Halting the vast release of methane is critical for climate, UN says

The New York Times reports: A landmark United Nations report is expected to declare that reducing emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, will need to play a far more vital role in warding off the worst effects of climate change. The global methane assessment, compiled by an international team of scientists, reflects a growing recognition that the world needs to start reining in planet-warming emissions more rapidly, and that abating methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, will…

Read More Read More

CEO pay remains stratospheric, even at companies battered by pandemic

CEO pay remains stratospheric, even at companies battered by pandemic

The New York Times reports: Boeing had a historically bad 2020. Its 737 Max was grounded for most of the year after two deadly crashes, the pandemic decimated its business, and the company announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers and reported a $12 billion loss. Nonetheless, its chief executive, David Calhoun, was rewarded with some $21.1 million in compensation. Norwegian Cruise Line barely survived the year. With the cruise industry at a standstill, the company lost $4 billion and…

Read More Read More

Ottoman cosmopolitanism and the myth of the sectarian Middle East

Ottoman cosmopolitanism and the myth of the sectarian Middle East

Ussama Makdisi writes: The Arab East was among the last regions in the world to be colonised by Western powers. It was also the first to be colonised in the name of self-determination. An iconic photograph from September 1920 of the French colonial general Henri Gouraud dressed in a splendid white uniform and flanked by two ‘native’ religious figures captures this moment. Seated to one side is the Patriarch of the Maronite Church, an Eastern Christian Catholic sect. On the…

Read More Read More

One billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, but mostly in wealthy countries

One billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, but mostly in wealthy countries

Forbes reports: The Associated Press reported last week that 87% of doses had been administered in rich countries, with 1 in 4 people in wealthy nations having received a jab, versus 1 in more than 500 in impoverished countries. According to the New York Times‘ vaccination tracker, only 0.2% of doses have been dispensed in low-income countries. Up to 60 of those nations might not receive any additional supply of the vaccine until June. Conversely, the supply of available shots…

Read More Read More

As Covid-19 devastates India, deaths go undercounted

As Covid-19 devastates India, deaths go undercounted

The New York Times reports: India’s coronavirus second wave is rapidly sliding into a devastating crisis, with hospitals unbearably full, oxygen supplies running low, desperate people dying in line waiting to see doctors — and mounting evidence that the actual death toll is far higher than officially reported. Each day, the government reports more than 300,000 new infections, a world record, and India is now seeing more new infections than any other country by far, almost half of all new…

Read More Read More