Global supply-chain problems escalate, threatening economic recovery

Global supply-chain problems escalate, threatening economic recovery

The Wall Street Journal reports: Global supply-chain bottlenecks are feeding on one another, with shortages of components and surging prices of critical raw materials squeezing manufacturers around the world. The supply shocks are already showing signs of choking off the recovery in some regions. Part of the problem is a global economy that is out of sync on the pandemic, restrictions and recovery. Factories and retailers in Western economies that have largely emerged from lockdowns are eager for finished products,…

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Moderna, racing for profits, keeps Covid vaccine out of reach of poor

Moderna, racing for profits, keeps Covid vaccine out of reach of poor

The New York Times reports: Moderna, whose coronavirus vaccine appears to be the world’s best defense against Covid-19, has been supplying its shots almost exclusively to wealthy nations, keeping poorer countries waiting and earning billions in profit. After developing a breakthrough vaccine with the financial and scientific support of the U.S. government, Moderna has shipped a greater share of its doses to wealthy countries than any other vaccine manufacturer, according to Airfinity, a data firm that tracks vaccine shipments. About…

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It’s not misinformation. It’s amplified propaganda

It’s not misinformation. It’s amplified propaganda

Renée DiResta writes: One Sunday morning in July of last year, a message from an anonymous account appeared on “Bernie or Vest,” a Discord chat server for fans of Senator Bernie Sanders. It contained an image of Shahid Buttar, the San Francisco activist challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 2020 congressional runoff, and offered explicit instructions for how to elevate the hashtag #PelosiMustGo to the nationwide Trending list on Twitter. “Shahid Says…,” read the large print, “Draft some tweets…

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World’s largest companies to pay more under global tax overhaul

World’s largest companies to pay more under global tax overhaul

Politico reports: The world’s biggest companies like Facebook and Johnson & Johnson face an extra collective tax bill of hundreds of billions of dollars after 136 countries on Friday signed a detailed plan to overhaul international corporate tax rules. The U.S., the U.K., China, India and all EU countries signed off on the international accord, negotiated under the stewardship of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were the handful of the 140 nations…

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The debt-ceiling issue isn’t just politics

The debt-ceiling issue isn’t just politics

Rebecca L. Spang writes: At least for the moment, the U.S. Senate has averted a crisis over the federal debt ceiling, after some Republicans in the chamber grudgingly agreed yesterday to help Democrats put off a reckoning until December. That the United States has endured confrontation after confrontation in Congress over the issue—and will almost certainly do so again mere weeks from now—is, as many other commentators have noted, utterly absurd. If you were in the prime of your life;…

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The Taliban’s campaign to rob villagers of their land

The Taliban’s campaign to rob villagers of their land

Der Spiegel reports: The narrow, unpaved road winds though a world of rock for hours on end, navigable only at a snail’s pace. Rocky, weathered crags line the horizon, their color ranging from a pale ochre to dark granite in the glistening sun, as though all life here was extinguished long ago. Only a couple of crows can be seen rising on the thermals along the cliff walls. This makes what appears far below all the more intense as we…

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Report cites new details of Trump pressure on DOJ over election

Report cites new details of Trump pressure on DOJ over election

The New York Times reports: Even by the standards of President Donald J. Trump, it was an extraordinary Oval Office showdown. On the agenda was Mr. Trump’s desire to install a loyalist as acting attorney general to carry out his demands for more aggressive investigations into his baseless claims of election fraud. On the other side during that meeting on the evening of Jan. 3 were the top leaders of the Justice Department, who warned Mr. Trump that they and…

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Christian conservative lawyer had secretive role in bid to block election result

Christian conservative lawyer had secretive role in bid to block election result

The New York Times reports: One of the nation’s most prominent religious conservative lawyers played a critical behind-the-scenes role in the lawsuit that Republican state attorneys general filed in December in a last-ditch effort to overturn the election of President Biden, documents show. The lawyer, Michael P. Farris, is the chief executive of a group known as Alliance Defending Freedom, which is active in opposing abortion and gay rights. He circulated a detailed draft of the lawsuit that Ken Paxton,…

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Biden DOJ shields ex-Trump officials from testifying about election fraud cases

Biden DOJ shields ex-Trump officials from testifying about election fraud cases

Politico reports: A top career official in President Joe Biden’s Justice Department blocked efforts by Senate investigators to probe the handling of voter fraud complaints in the aftermath of the 2020 election, according to transcripts released Thursday. As Senate Judiciary Committee aides investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election questioned top Trump-era Justice Department officials, a DOJ attorney present for the interviews intervened repeatedly to say such questions were outside the scope of the panel’s inquiry. The official,…

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U.S. troops have been deployed in Taiwan for at least a year

U.S. troops have been deployed in Taiwan for at least a year

The Wall Street Journal reports: A U.S. special-operations unit and a contingent of Marines have been secretly operating in Taiwan to train military forces there, U.S. officials said, part of efforts to shore up the island’s defenses as concern regarding potential Chinese aggression mounts. About two dozen members of U.S. special-operations and support troops are conducting training for small units of Taiwan’s ground forces, the officials said. The U.S. Marines are working with local maritime forces on small-boat training. The…

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The brutal trade in enslaved people within the U.S. has been largely whitewashed out of history

The brutal trade in enslaved people within the U.S. has been largely whitewashed out of history

A trade card with printed black type for the domestic slave traders Hill, Ware and Chrisp. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture By Joshua D. Rothman, University of Alabama For my recently published book, “The Ledger and the Chain,” I visited more than 30 archives in over a dozen states, from Louisiana to Connecticut. Along the way, I uncovered mountains of material that exposed the depravity of the men who ran the largest domestic…

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How the world’s biggest brain maps could transform neuroscience

How the world’s biggest brain maps could transform neuroscience

Nature reports: Imagine looking at Earth from space and being able to listen in on what individuals are saying to each other. That’s about how challenging it is to understand how the brain works. From the organ’s wrinkled surface, zoom in a million-fold and you’ll see a kaleidoscope of cells of different shapes and sizes, which branch off and reach out to each other. Zoom in a further 100,000 times and you’ll see the cells’ inner workings — the tiny…

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The brain has a team of conductors orchestrating consciousness

The brain has a team of conductors orchestrating consciousness

Morten L Kringelbach writes: The execution of any musical symphony is a difficult task, demanding significant skills from each musician. Perhaps the hardest task lies with the conductor who must orchestrate the musicians so the music comes alive cohesively and speaks to our deepest emotions. The human brain is like an orchestra: different regions perform different types of processing, much like the individual musicians who must read the music, play their instruments, and also listen and adapt to the sounds…

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Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11 million a minute, IMF finds

Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11 million a minute, IMF finds

The Guardian reports: The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon…

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