Rich countries signed away a chance to vaccinate the world

Rich countries signed away a chance to vaccinate the world

The New York Times reports: In the coming days, a patent will finally be issued on a five-year-old invention, a feat of molecular engineering that is at the heart of at least five major Covid-19 vaccines. And the United States government will control that patent. The new patent presents an opportunity — and some argue the last best chance — to exact leverage over the drug companies producing the vaccines and pressure them to expand access to less affluent countries….

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How ‘owning the libs’ became the GOP’s core belief

How ‘owning the libs’ became the GOP’s core belief

Derek Robertson writes: For a political party whose membership skews older, it might be surprising that the spirit that most animates Republican politics today is best described with a phrase from the world of video games: “Owning the libs.” Gamers borrowed the term from the nascent world of 1990s computer hacking, using it to describe their conquered opponents: “owned.” To “own the libs” does not require victory so much as a commitment to infuriating, flummoxing or otherwise distressing liberals with…

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How to collect $1.4 trillion in unpaid taxes

How to collect $1.4 trillion in unpaid taxes

In an editorial, the New York Times says: When the federal government started withholding income taxes from workers’ paychecks during World War II, the innovation was presented as a matter of fairness, a way to ensure that everyone paid. Irving Berlin wrote a song for the Treasury Department: “You see those bombers in the sky? Rockefeller helped to build them. So did I.” The withholding system remains the cornerstone of income taxation, effectively preventing Americans from lying about wage income….

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Under Biden, a new kind of family separation

Under Biden, a new kind of family separation

Jack Herrera writes: Each night as Janiana tries to sleep, she wonders about what’s going to happen to her baby grandnephew. The woman, a 26-year-old from Honduras, lives in a tent together with her 20-year-old niece, the baby’s mother, in a tent village of hundreds of asylum seekers like them that formed right next to the pedestrian bridge that leads from Mexico into California. They’re among the tens of thousands of people crowded in dire conditions across the length of…

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Extremists in police ranks spark growing concern after Capitol riot

Extremists in police ranks spark growing concern after Capitol riot

USA Today reports: Charges against police officers, public safety workers and military veterans in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol have reignited concerns among lawmakers and law enforcement officials about violent extremists infiltrating government agencies. Out of 324 arrests in the Capitol riot so far, 43 are current or former first responders or military veterans, according to USA TODAY analysis. At least four police officers and three former officers face federal charges. Two have been fired, one resigned and…

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Bringing Assad to justice after a decade of war in Syria

Bringing Assad to justice after a decade of war in Syria

In an editorial, The Observer says: He turned his country into a graveyard. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, including 25,000 children. Millions more have been forced to flee. Terrible crimes – war crimes, crimes against humanity, widespread torture, indiscriminate bombing, chemical attacks – have been committed in his name, and continue to this day. Syria lies in ruins. So why, 10 years after the war began, is Bashar al-Assad still in power? It’s a question with many…

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The Nazi-fighting women of the Jewish resistance

The Nazi-fighting women of the Jewish resistance

Judy Batalion writes: In 1943, Niuta Teitelbaum strolled into a Gestapo apartment on Chmielna Street in central Warsaw and faced three Nazis. A 24-year-old Jewish woman who had studied history at Warsaw University, Niuta was likely now dressed in her characteristic guise as a Polish farm girl with a kerchief tied around her braided blond hair. She blushed, smiled meekly and then pulled out a gun and shot each one. Two were killed, one wounded. Niuta, however, wasn’t satisfied. She…

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The Amazon rainforest could die in your lifetime — here’s why

The Amazon rainforest could die in your lifetime — here’s why

Anna Funk writes: Deforestation in the Amazon has long been the poster child of man-made environmental destruction. But recent trends reveal that the changing climate will likely come for this beloved rainforest long before the last tree is cut down. One researcher has even put a date on his prediction for the Amazon’s impending death: 2064. That’s the year the Amazon rainforest will be completely wiped out. Dramatic? Yes. “I’m a doom-sayer,” admits Robert Walker, a quantitative geographer at the…

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How scientific taxonomy constructed the myth of race

How scientific taxonomy constructed the myth of race

By Brittany Kenyon-Flatt, SAPIENS As a graduate assistant in biological anthropology at the University at Buffalo, I was tasked with curating the primate skeletal collection. The collection of skeletons—taken from cadavers studied during a primate anatomy class—had been neglected for a few years. Most of the specimens had lost their labels. So, when I began re-cataloguing the collection in 2016, I ran into trouble. I knew that the skeletons were from three different species of macaques, but I didn’t know…

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Where Europe went wrong in its vaccine rollout, and why

Where Europe went wrong in its vaccine rollout, and why

The New York Times reports: The calls began in December, as the United States prepared to administer its first batches of Covid-19 vaccine. Even then, it was clear that the European Union was a few weeks behind, and its leaders wanted to know what they could learn from their American counterparts. The questions were the same, from President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, and Alexander De Croo, the prime minister of Belgium….

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Republicans fear the prospect of too many Americans exercising their right to vote

Republicans fear the prospect of too many Americans exercising their right to vote

ABC News reports: In the aftermath of the GOP’s assault on the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and amid a torrent of Republican measures aimed at restricting voting rights in the name of security, Democrats are pushing for a far-reaching solution to counter attempts at narrowing access to the ballot box. H.R. 1, known as the For the People Act, seeks to abolish hurdles to voting, reform the role of money in politics and tighten federal ethics rules. Among…

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‘Democracy Pledge’ aims to put businesses on the spot over Trump’s election lie

‘Democracy Pledge’ aims to put businesses on the spot over Trump’s election lie

HuffPost reports: A former federal prosecutor has launched a campaign to press American businesses to openly reject the core assertion that former President Donald Trump and many in his party continue to make, that the 2020 election was somehow illegitimate. “The 2020 presidential election was free and fair, and produced accurate, reliable results,” reads the explanation behind the “Democracy Pledge” that Glenn Kirschner hopes to put before “every company in the country” in the coming months. “Those who sought to…

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‘Fundamentally at odds’: China, U.S. retreat to their corners after Alaska talks

‘Fundamentally at odds’: China, U.S. retreat to their corners after Alaska talks

Politico reports: The first showdown is over, and each side came out throwing punches. Now China and the United States will huddle with their partners in hopes of building international support to pressure the other on multiple fronts. Senior officials from the two countries held three sessions in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday and Friday — the first high-level gathering of U.S. and Chinese officials since President Joe Biden took office. The gathering began with bitter exchanges, and ended with somber…

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Five reasons why Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

Five reasons why Covid herd immunity is probably impossible

Nature reports: As COVID-19 vaccination rates pick up around the world, people have reasonably begun to ask: how much longer will this pandemic last? It’s an issue surrounded with uncertainties. But the once-popular idea that enough people will eventually gain immunity to SARS-CoV-2 to block most transmission — a ‘herd-immunity threshold’ — is starting to look unlikely. That threshold is generally achievable only with high vaccination rates, and many scientists had thought that once people started being immunized en masse,…

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