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What the San Francisco Bay Area can teach us about fighting a pandemic

What the San Francisco Bay Area can teach us about fighting a pandemic

Jay Caspian Kang writes: On March 10th, the day before Tom Hanks announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19, I drove my three-year-old daughter to her day care in Berkeley, California. The drive took us up College Avenue, where white-haired professors huddled at sidewalk café tables; we passed the fraternity houses where students gathered on the lawns. Just a few blocks from my daughter’s school, there’s a coffee shop with a clientele split equally between students and senior citizens….

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How the Department of Defense could help win the war on climate change

How the Department of Defense could help win the war on climate change

Politico reports: President-elect Joe Biden has warned that climate change will pose future threats for the U.S. military as it worsens unrest in volatile regions and creates new dangers to its facilities from rising seas, powerful storms and harsh droughts. But the Defense Department also offers a silver lining on climate change for the new president: a huge appetite for clean energy sources and a massive budget to help accelerate the development of new technologies needed to curb greenhouse gases…

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Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to tamper with the election result

Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to tamper with the election result

The Washington Post reports: President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at…

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Involving the military in election disputes would threaten our republican, says every former defense secretary

Involving the military in election disputes would threaten our republican, says every former defense secretary

Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld write: As former secretaries of defense, we hold a common view of the solemn obligations of the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Department. Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party. American elections and the peaceful transfers…

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Trump challenge to Biden win exposes massive democracy flaw

Trump challenge to Biden win exposes massive democracy flaw

Chris Truax writes: If members of Congress vote to reject valid presidential electors for invalid reasons, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. While we’ve never fully appreciated it until now, the ugly truth is that, despite a nationwide vote fenced with elaborate legal and technical safeguards, the president of the United States is actually elected on the honor system by 535 members of Congress. Despite the unprecedented number of Republicans willing to uphold a challenge, the House is controlled…

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Leading health officials reject Trump’s false claim that the Covid death toll is exaggerated

Leading health officials reject Trump’s false claim that the Covid death toll is exaggerated

CNN reports: US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams on Sunday said he has “no reason to doubt” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 death toll, contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim that the agency has “exaggerated” its numbers. “From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers,” Adams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked about Trump’s claim. “And I think people need to be very aware that it’s not…

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Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers

Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers

The Observer reports: Israel is celebrating an impressive, record-setting vaccination drive, having given initial jabs of coronavirus shots to more than a 10th of the population. But Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza can only watch and wait. As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push – with people in richer nations first to be inoculated – the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example…

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Covid-19 pandemic drives new cases of polio in Afghanistan

Covid-19 pandemic drives new cases of polio in Afghanistan

By Ruchi Kumar When Saidgul was around 6 months old this past March, his parents decided to take him to Herat, a city about 80 miles from their hometown in Shindand District in Herat Province in western Afghanistan. The road between the two towns is partially unpaved and can be treacherous, infested with Taliban checkpoints. In Herat, they hoped to get Saidgul vaccinated against polio, since clinics in their district had shut down without warning due to the Covid-19 pandemic….

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What new science techniques tell us about ancient women warriors

What new science techniques tell us about ancient women warriors

Annalee Newitz writes: Though it’s remarkable that the United States finally is about to have a female vice president, let’s stop calling it an unprecedented achievement. As some recent archaeological studies suggest, women have been leaders, warriors and hunters for thousands of years. This new scholarship is challenging long-held beliefs about so-called natural gender roles in ancient history, inviting us to reconsider how we think about women’s work today. In November a group of anthropologists and other researchers published a…

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As understanding of Russian hacking grows, so does alarm

As understanding of Russian hacking grows, so does alarm

The New York Times reports: On Election Day, General Paul M. Nakasone, the nation’s top cyberwarrior, reported that the battle against Russian interference in the presidential campaign had posted major successes and exposed the other side’s online weapons, tools and tradecraft. “We’ve broadened our operations and feel very good where we’re at right now,” he told journalists. Eight weeks later, General Nakasone and other American officials responsible for cybersecurity are now consumed by what they missed for at least nine…

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With limited surveillance of Covid-19 variant, it’s déjà vu all over again

With limited surveillance of Covid-19 variant, it’s déjà vu all over again

Helen Branswell writes: As health officials in the United States announced a second and possibly a third person infected with a new, more transmissible strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, infectious diseases experts are feeling a sense of déjà vu all over again. A little less than a year ago, the early response to the coronavirus crisis was stifled by an inability to scale up testing to detect the virus and curb its spread. Now, once again, it’s unclear how prevalent…

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Covid-19 vaccine’s slow rollout could portend more problems

Covid-19 vaccine’s slow rollout could portend more problems

The Wall Street Journal reports: Three weeks into the most ambitious vaccination campaign in modern U.S. history, far fewer people than expected are being immunized against Covid-19, as the process moves slower than officials had projected and has been beset by confusion and disorganization in many states. As a result, the federal government came nowhere close to vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020, as it had promised. Of the more than 12 million doses of vaccines from…

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Airline workers battle mask resistance with scant government backup

Airline workers battle mask resistance with scant government backup

The Washington Post reports: As the man returned from the lavatory with a mask dangling from one ear, a flight attendant asked him to put it on properly. “Why? Is something going on that I should know about?” the passenger asked, before grabbing the mask and ripping the string. “Damn it, I guess I can’t wear it now.” Other passengers have verbally abused and taunted flight attendants trying to enforce airline mask requirements, treating the potentially lifesaving act as a…

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Revolutionary archaeology reveals the deepest possible Anthropocene

Revolutionary archaeology reveals the deepest possible Anthropocene

Lucas Stephens, Erle Ellis, and Dorian Fuller write: Humanity’s transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is one of the most important developments in human and Earth history. Human societies, plant and animal populations, the makeup of the atmosphere, even the Earth’s surface – all were irreversibly transformed. When asked about this transition, some people might be able to name the Neolithic Revolution or point to the Fertile Crescent on a map. This widespread understanding is the product of years…

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