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Iran, Saudi Arabia said holding direct talks to mend regional rift

Iran, Saudi Arabia said holding direct talks to mend regional rift

The Times of Israel reports: Five years after severing diplomatic ties, Iran and Saudi Arabia have reportedly been holding direct talks in Baghdad to mend relations and end the Yemen civil war. A Financial Times report on Sunday, which cited three officials familiar with the negotiations, said a first round of talks was held on April 9, with additional discussions slated for next week. The talks were described as positive. “It’s moving faster because the US talks are moving faster…

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What QAnon documentaries reveal about how conspiracies flourish

What QAnon documentaries reveal about how conspiracies flourish

Derek Robertson writes: A media suddenly bereft of the eye-popping right-wing extremism once peddled daily by the 45th president has found its methadone: a seemingly endless stream of QAnon-centric documentaries, books and essays. There’s Vice’s “The Search for Q” series; CNN’s “Inside the QAnon Conspiracy”; Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer’s announcement of his forthcoming book based on the topic; and the buzziest of them all: “Q: Into the Storm,” HBO’s six-episode documentary miniseries produced by Adam McKay, the Oscar-winning auteur…

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At any one time, 20,000 Tyrannosaurus rex roamed the Earth, calculation determines

At any one time, 20,000 Tyrannosaurus rex roamed the Earth, calculation determines

Nature reports: Ever wondered how many Tyrannosaurus rex ever roamed the Earth? The answer is 2.5 billion over the two million or so years for which the species existed, according to a calculation published today in Science1. The figure has allowed researchers to estimate just how exceedingly rare it is for animals to fossilize. Palaeontologists led by Charles Marshall at the University of California, Berkeley, used a method employed by ecologists studying contemporary creatures to estimate the population density of…

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Just 3% of the world’s ecosystems remain intact, study suggests

Just 3% of the world’s ecosystems remain intact, study suggests

The Guardian reports: Just 3% of the world’s land remains ecologically intact with healthy populations of all its original animals and undisturbed habitat, a study suggests. These fragments of wilderness undamaged by human activities are mainly in parts of the Amazon and Congo tropical forests, east Siberian and northern Canadian forests and tundra, and the Sahara. Invasive alien species including cats, foxes, rabbits, goats and camels have had a major impact on native species in Australia, with the study finding…

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Throughout trial over George Floyd’s death, killings by police mount

Throughout trial over George Floyd’s death, killings by police mount

The New York Times reports: Just seven hours before prosecutors opened their case against Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer charged with murdering George Floyd, a Chicago officer chased down a 13-year-old boy in a West Side alley and fatally shot him as he turned with his hands up. One day later, at a hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., officers fatally shot a 32-year-old man, who, the police say, grabbed one of their Tasers. The day after that, as an…

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Least vaccinated U.S. counties have something in common: Trump voters

Least vaccinated U.S. counties have something in common: Trump voters

The New York Times reports: About 31 percent of adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated. Scientists have estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the total population must acquire resistance to the virus to reach herd immunity. But in hundreds of counties around the country, vaccination rates are low, with some even languishing in the teens. The disparity in vaccination rates has so far mainly broken down along political lines. The New York Times examined survey…

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Doctors hone in on cause of blood clots potentially linked with Covid-19 vaccines

Doctors hone in on cause of blood clots potentially linked with Covid-19 vaccines

CNN reports: Doctors say they are honing in on the cause of blood clots that may be linked with certain coronavirus vaccines, and add their findings have important implications for how to treat the condition, regardless of whether vaccines cause it. Even though the link is not firm yet, they’re calling the condition vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia or VITT. It’s characterized by unusual blood clotting combined with a low number of blood-clotting cells called platelets. Patients suffer from dangerous clots…

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How Substack revealed the real value of writers’ unfiltered thoughts

How Substack revealed the real value of writers’ unfiltered thoughts

Jack Shafer writes: What sort of journalist who has been filing brilliant, scoopy copy about technology, privacy and politics for the past two years on the New York Times editorial page would leave that main-course for the side-dish of a newsletter? Charlie Warzel made that leap this week, resigning from the paper to take up residence at the newsletter publisher Substack, where he intends to expand the coverage of his beat with a newsletter titled “Galaxy Brain.” Warzel commented on…

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Marjorie Taylor Greene scraps planned launch of controversial ‘America First’ caucus amid blowback from GOP

Marjorie Taylor Greene scraps planned launch of controversial ‘America First’ caucus amid blowback from GOP

CNN reports: Conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is scrapping the planned launch of her “America First” caucus after receiving blowback from leaders in her own party, despite confirming through a spokesperson on Friday that the caucus would launch. Nick Dyer, Greene’s spokesperson, told CNN in an email on Saturday afternoon the Georgia Republican is not “launching anything.” “The Congresswoman wants to make clear that she is not launching anything. This was an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to…

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Do we have free will? Maybe it doesn’t matter

Do we have free will? Maybe it doesn’t matter

Jim Davies writes: Belief is a special kind of human power. Agustin Fuentes, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, eloquently claims as much in his recent book Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being. It’s the “most prominent, promising, and dangerous capacity humanity has evolved,” he writes, the power to “see and feel and know something—an idea, a vision, a necessity, a possibility, a truth—that is not immediately present to the senses, and then to…

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Restoring the ‘soul of the nation’ means taking in refugees

Restoring the ‘soul of the nation’ means taking in refugees

Adam Serwer writes: One of the Trump administration’s early priorities was engineering a whiter America through immigration restrictions. We know this because it told us so. “U.S. demographics have been changing rapidly—and undesirably in the eyes of top Trump aides, including his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller,” the Los Angeles Times reported in February 2017. The travel ban targeting Muslim nations was the first step in an agenda “to reshape American demographics for the…

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Immigration is a defining asset of the United States. Here’s how to restore confidence in our system

Immigration is a defining asset of the United States. Here’s how to restore confidence in our system

George W. Bush writes: Next week, I’m proud to publish a new collection of my paintings, entitled “Out of Many, One.” The book may not set the art world stirring — hopefully, the critics won’t call it “One Too Many.” I set out to accomplish two things: to share some portraits of immigrants, each with a remarkable story I try to tell, and to humanize the debate on immigration and reform. I hope that these faces, and the stories that…

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The blood-clot problem is multiplying

The blood-clot problem is multiplying

Roxanne Khamsi writes: For weeks, Americans looked on as other countries grappled with case reports of rare, sometimes fatal blood abnormalities among those who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19. That vaccine has not yet been authorized by the FDA, so restrictions on its use throughout Europe did not get that much attention in the United States. But Americans experienced a rude awakening this week when public-health officials called for a pause on the use of the Johnson &…

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Marjorie Taylor Greene forming caucus to promote racism (aka ‘Anglo-Saxon political traditions’)

Marjorie Taylor Greene forming caucus to promote racism (aka ‘Anglo-Saxon political traditions’)

Forbes reports: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) are starting a right-wing caucus in Congress that seeks to “follow in President Trump’s footsteps,” which could prove yet another thorn in the side of Republican leaders already struggling to unite a bitterly divided party. According to a seven-page policy platform published by Punchbowl News, the group wants members to display “a certain intellectual boldness” and be willing to “step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows” – in…

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