Halos of clay can preserve billion-year-old microbes

Halos of clay can preserve billion-year-old microbes

Meredith Fore writes: Putting together the history of life on Earth has a major stumbling block: Prior to about 540 million years ago, most life was squishy and microbial, which meant it rarely fossilized. This major blind spot makes it difficult for researchers to study ancient life at a key point in Earth’s evolutionary history, and even more difficult to potentially find evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars. But a recent study of kaolinite, an aluminum-rich clay, gives researchers…

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How many needless Covid-19 deaths were caused by delays in responding? Most of them

How many needless Covid-19 deaths were caused by delays in responding? Most of them

Isaac Sebenius and James K. Sebenius write: More than 120,000 Americans have now perished from Covid-19, surpassing the total number of U.S. dead during World War I. Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented? That isn’t a hypothetical question. And the answer…

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N.Y.C. hired 3,000 workers for contact tracing. It’s off to a slow start

N.Y.C. hired 3,000 workers for contact tracing. It’s off to a slow start

The New York Times reports: New York City’s ambitious contact-tracing program, a crucial initiative in the effort to curb the coronavirus, has gotten off to a worrisome start just as the city’s reopening enters a new phase on Monday, with outdoor dining, in-store shopping and office work resuming. The city has hired 3,000 disease detectives and case monitors, who are supposed to identify anyone who has come into contact with the hundreds of people who are still testing positive for…

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Vehicle attacks rise as right-wing extremists target protesters

Vehicle attacks rise as right-wing extremists target protesters

NPR reports: Right-wing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests against police violence erupted nationwide in late May. At least 18 are categorized as deliberate attacks; another two dozen are unclear as to motivation or are still under investigation, according to a count released Friday by Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Weil has tracked vehicle-ramming attacks, or VRAs, since protests…

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Trump allies see a mounting threat: Biden’s rising evangelical support

Trump allies see a mounting threat: Biden’s rising evangelical support

Politico reports: It was June 10, 2008. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama had gathered with dozens of evangelical leaders — many of them fixtures of the religious right — at the urging of campaign aides. If he could offer genuine glimpses of his own abiding faith, they insisted he could chisel away at the conservative Christian voting bloc. At a rally in the Bible Belt, he talked about the church he’d attended for two decades in Chicago. Calling for…

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Bill Barr, not Geoffrey Berman, should have been fired this weekend

Bill Barr, not Geoffrey Berman, should have been fired this weekend

Preet Bharara writes: President Trump has long made clear that, for him, “rule of law” is a limited-utility slogan. By word and deed, he has demonstrated his belief that the law and its instrumentalities exist to serve him, personally and politically. He has pressured individuals and institutions to pervert their usual independent government missions to comply with a mandate of pure self-interest to protect the president’s friends and pursue the president’s adversaries. This explains Trump’s ire at his former attorney…

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Siberia’s record-shattering hot streak, foreshadows more heat elsewhere

Siberia’s record-shattering hot streak, foreshadows more heat elsewhere

The Washington Post reports: A northeastern Siberian town is likely to have set a record for the highest temperature documented in the Arctic Circle, with a reading of 100.4 degrees (38 Celsius) recorded Saturday in Verkhoyansk, north of the Arctic Circle and about 3,000 miles east of Moscow. Records at that location have been kept since 1885. If verified, this would be the northernmost 100-degree reading ever observed, and the highest temperature on record in the Arctic, a region that…

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The Confederacy was an antidemocratic, centralized state

The Confederacy was an antidemocratic, centralized state

Stephanie McCurry writes: Americans are now debating the fate of memorials to the Confederacy—statues, flags, and names on Army bases, streets, schools, and college dormitories. A century and a half of propaganda has successfully obscured the nature of the Confederate cause and its bloody history, wrapping it in myth. But the Confederacy is not part of “our American heritage,” as President Donald Trump recently claimed, nor should it stand as a libertarian symbol of small government and resistance to federal…

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U.S. Attorney investigating Trump cronies gets fired by Trump who nevertheless claims he was ‘not involved’

U.S. Attorney investigating Trump cronies gets fired by Trump who nevertheless claims he was ‘not involved’

The New York Times reports: President Trump on Saturday personally fired the United States Attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, whose office has pursued one case after another that has rankled the president and his allies, putting his former personal lawyer in prison and investigating his current one. It was the culmination of an extraordinary clash after years of tension between the White House and New York federal prosecutors. In a letter released by the Justice Department, Attorney General William…

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When asked repeatedly to say ‘Black lives matter,’ Mike Pence refuses

When asked repeatedly to say ‘Black lives matter,’ Mike Pence refuses

CNN reports: Vice President Mike Pence declined to say the words “Black lives matter” during an interview with an ABC affiliate in Pennsylvania on Friday, instead saying that “all lives matter.” “Let me just say that what happened to George Floyd was a tragedy,” Pence told 6ABC Action News in Philadelphia when asked directly if he would say that Black lives matter. “And in this nation, especially on Juneteenth, we celebrate the fact that from the founding of this nation…

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The North Face becomes the first major company to boycott Facebook

The North Face becomes the first major company to boycott Facebook

Business Insider reports: The North Face has become the first major brand to boycott Facebook on the heels of mounting pressure from civil-rights organizations over the platform’s content-moderation policies and handling of hate speech in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. In a tweet saying “We’re in. We’re Out” the clothing company announced Friday it would stop buying Facebook ads in the US in solidarity with organizations including the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and Sleeping Giants. In a follow-up statement…

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Judge: Bolton can publish book despite White House efforts to block it

Judge: Bolton can publish book despite White House efforts to block it

The Associated Press reports: Former national security adviser John Bolton can move forward in publishing his tell-all book, a federal judge ruled Saturday, despite efforts by the Trump administration to block the release because of concerns that classified information could be exposed. The decision from U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is a victory for Bolton in a court case that involved core First Amendment and national security issues, even as the White House pledged to keep pursuing the onetime top…

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In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm

In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm

The Washington Post reports: As coronavirus cases surge in the U.S. South and West, health experts in countries with falling case numbers are watching with a growing sense of alarm and disbelief, with many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored. “It really does feel like the U.S. has given up,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand — a country that has…

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You may have antibodies after coronavirus infection. But not for long

You may have antibodies after coronavirus infection. But not for long

The New York Times reports: It’s a question that has haunted scientists since the pandemic began: Does everyone infected with the virus produce antibodies — and if so, how long do they last? Not very long, suggests a new study published Thursday in Nature Medicine. Antibodies — protective proteins made in response to an infection — may last only two to three months, especially in people who never showed symptoms while they were infected. The conclusion does not necessarily mean…

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