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Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

Flu has disappeared worldwide during the Covid pandemic

Scientific American reports: Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread, influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization have dropped to minuscule levels. The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading also stop the flu. Influenza viruses are transmitted in much the same way as SARS-CoV-2, but they are less effective at jumping from host to host. As Scientific American reported last fall, the drop-off in flu numbers was both…

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‘It’s all Taliban country now’: New militant checkpoints on key roadways choke off parts of Afghanistan

‘It’s all Taliban country now’: New militant checkpoints on key roadways choke off parts of Afghanistan

The Washington Post reports: Taliban checkpoints have proliferated across key parts of Afghanistan as U.S. forces have withdrawn over the past year, leaving Afghan towns and cities increasingly isolated and impeding the Afghan government’s ability to function. Dozens of temporary Taliban checkpoints now dot the main highways leading into and out of the Afghan capital, according to eight local officials, and more than 10 permanent outposts have been established by the militants along the country’s main north-south highway. Many of…

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Fierce foes, Iran and Saudi Arabia secretly explore defusing tensions

Fierce foes, Iran and Saudi Arabia secretly explore defusing tensions

The New York Times reports: In a prime-time television interview four years ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia dismissed the idea that his kingdom could somehow find an accommodation with its archrival, Iran. “How do we communicate?” he asked. “The mutual points that we can agree on with this regime are almost nonexistent.” Now, Prince Mohammed is finding those points as he embarks on a diplomatic effort to defuse tensions between the two regional powers that have…

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Brazilian Amazon released more carbon than it absorbed over past 10 years

Brazilian Amazon released more carbon than it absorbed over past 10 years

AFP reports: The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed, according to a startling report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world’s largest tropical forest to help absorb manmade carbon pollution. From 2010 through 2019, Brazil’s Amazon basin gave off 16.6bn tonnes of CO2, while drawing down only 13.9bn tonnes, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study looked at the volume of…

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GOP seeks to empower poll watchers, raising intimidation worries

GOP seeks to empower poll watchers, raising intimidation worries

The New York Times reports: The red dot of a laser pointer circled downtown Houston on a map during a virtual training of poll watchers by the Harris County Republican Party. It highlighted densely populated, largely Black, Latino and Asian neighborhoods. “This is where the fraud is occurring,” a county Republican official said falsely in a leaked video of the training, which was held in March. A precinct chair in the northeastern, largely white suburbs of Houston, he said he…

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In rural America, fear more than politics shapes attitudes to Covid vaccine

In rural America, fear more than politics shapes attitudes to Covid vaccine

The New York Times reports: “So have you gotten the vaccine yet?” The question, a friendly greeting to Betty Smith, the pastor’s wife, lingered in the air as the four church women sat down for their regular Tuesday coffee and conversation at Ingle’s Market. Mrs. Smith hesitated, sensing a chilly blast of judgment from a never-mask, never-vax companion. She fumbled through a non-reply. Recalling the moment later, she sighed, “We were there to get to know each other better but…

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Manchin says he doesn’t support D.C. statehood bill, dealing advocates a major blow

Manchin says he doesn’t support D.C. statehood bill, dealing advocates a major blow

The Washington Post reports: Sen. Joe Manchin III told reporters in his home state of West Virginia on Friday morning that he does not support the bill to make D.C. the nation’s 51st state, according to audio provided by the Democrat’s office and a report from WVNews. Manchin, a key swing vote in the closely divided Senate, said he believes a constitutional amendment, rather than legislation, would be required to admit D.C. as a state. His stance deals a major…

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How the Pentagon started taking UFO’s seriously

How the Pentagon started taking UFO’s seriously

Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes: Leslie Kean is a self-possessed woman with a sensible demeanor and a nimbus of curly graying hair. She lives alone in a light-filled corner apartment near the northern extreme of Manhattan, where, on the wall behind her desk, there is a framed black-and-white image that looks like a sonogram of a Frisbee. The photograph was given to her, along with chain-of-custody documentation, by contacts in the Costa Rican government; in her estimation, it is the finest image…

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The plan to kill Osama bin Laden, as told by the people in the room

The plan to kill Osama bin Laden, as told by the people in the room

Garrett M. Graff writes: On the morning of May 1, 2011, most Americans had never heard of Abbottabad. By that night, the dusty midsize city near the mountains of northwest Pakistan was the center of the biggest story in the world. A team of U.S. Navy SEALs had just descended by helicopter on a high-walled mansion there in the dark of night, located the globe’s most hunted man and killed him. The effort to track and execute Osama bin Laden,…

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Has Tucker deposed Trump as the troller in chief?

Has Tucker deposed Trump as the troller in chief?

Jack Shafer writes: [W]ith Trump gone, [Tucker] Carlson has become the most audible mouth in the agitation-provocation space. Like Trump, he labors to produce the incendiary and infuriating to attract attention and the very commendations he found himself buried neck-high in after his monologue. He lives to generate outrage from Democrats and the hall monitors at Media Matters for America. Has the #firetuckercarlson hashtag started to trend on Twitter? From Carlson’s point of view, nothing could be better. Has Washington…

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One incredible ocean crossing may have made human evolution possible

One incredible ocean crossing may have made human evolution possible

Yasni/Shutterstock By Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath Humans evolved in Africa, along with chimpanzees, gorillas and monkeys. But primates themselves appear to have evolved elsewhere – likely in Asia – before colonising Africa. At the time, around 50 million years ago, Africa was an island isolated from the rest of the world by ocean – so how did primates get there? A land bridge is the obvious explanation, but the geological evidence currently argues against it. Instead, we’re left…

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‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe

‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe

Arundhati Roy writes: During a particularly polarising election campaign in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, waded into the fray to stir things up even further. From a public podium, he accused the state government – which was led by an opposition party – of pandering to the Muslim community by spending more on Muslim graveyards (kabristans) than on Hindu cremation grounds (shamshans). With his customary braying sneer, in which every taunt and barb…

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Biden gave the most ideologically ambitious speech of any Democratic president in generations

Biden gave the most ideologically ambitious speech of any Democratic president in generations

John Harris writes: President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session Congress was the most ambitious ideological statement made by any Democratic president in decades—couched in language that made it sound as if he wasn’t making an ideological argument at all. Make no mistake that he was. He called for trillions in new spending in a robust expansion of government’s role in multiple arenas of American life in ways that would have been impossible to contemplate in Barack Obama’s presidency….

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Can Democrats avoid a wipeout in 2022?

Can Democrats avoid a wipeout in 2022?

Ronald Brownstein writes: The good news for Democrats who watched Joe Biden unveil a historically ambitious agenda last night is that newly elected presidents have almost always passed some version of their core economic plan—particularly when their party controls both congressional chambers, as Biden’s does now. The bad news: Voters have almost always punished the president’s party in the next midterm election anyway. The last two times Democrats had unified control—with Bill Clinton in 1993–94 and Barack Obama in 2009–10—they…

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