Over 5,100 arrested at pro-Navalny protests across Russia

Over 5,100 arrested at pro-Navalny protests across Russia

The Associated Press reports: Chanting slogans against President Vladimir Putin, tens of thousands took to the streets Sunday across Russia to demand the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, keeping up nationwide protests that have rattled the Kremlin. More than 5,100 people were detained by police, according to a monitoring group, and some were beaten. The massive protests came despite efforts by Russian authorities to stem the tide of demonstrations after tens of thousands rallied across the country last…

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‘It’s a mess’: Biden’s first 10 days dominated by vaccine mysteries

‘It’s a mess’: Biden’s first 10 days dominated by vaccine mysteries

Politico reports: Joe Biden promised he’d bring in a competent, tested team to run the pandemic response, set ambitious vaccination targets and impose strict public health guidelines. His team arrived at the White House with a 200-page response plan ready to roll out. But instead, they have spent much of the last week trying to wrap their hands around the mushrooming crisis — a process officials acknowledge has been humbling, and triggered a concerted effort to temper expectations about how…

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Racial disparity seen in U.S. vaccination drive

Racial disparity seen in U.S. vaccination drive

The Associated Press reports: A racial gap has opened up in the nation’s COVID-19 vaccination drive, with Black Americans in many places lagging behind whites in receiving shots, an Associated Press analysis shows. An early look at the 17 states and two cities that have released racial breakdowns through Jan. 25 found that Black people in all places are getting inoculated at levels below their share of the general population, in some cases significantly below. That is true even though…

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Covid-19 rarely spreads through surfaces. So why are we still deep cleaning?

Covid-19 rarely spreads through surfaces. So why are we still deep cleaning?

Nature reports: When Emanuel Goldman went to his local New Jersey supermarket last March, he didn’t take any chances. Reports of COVID-19 cases were popping up across the United States, so he donned gloves to avoid contaminated surfaces and wore a mask to prevent him inhaling tiny virus-laden droplets from fellow shoppers. Neither gloves nor masks were recommended at the time. Then, at the end of March, a laboratory study showed that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can persist on plastic and…

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The remedy for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s crazy talk is censure

The remedy for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s crazy talk is censure

Jack Shafer writes: Nowhere in the Constitution—and this is excellent news for freshly sworn-in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—does it stipulate that a House member must have the mental capacity to cook on all four burners. This is in keeping with the Framers’ general idea that only the lowest bars should be set for officeholders. They declined to cordon off Congress with credential and qualification roadblocks, stating in Article I, section 2, clause 2 that House members need only be…

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Jan. 6 rally funded by top Trump donor, helped by Alex Jones, organizers say

Jan. 6 rally funded by top Trump donor, helped by Alex Jones, organizers say

The Wall Street Journal reports: The rally in Washington’s Ellipse that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was arranged and funded by a small group including a top Trump campaign fundraiser and donor facilitated by far-right show host Alex Jones. Mr. Jones personally pledged more than $50,000 in seed money for a planned Jan. 6 event in exchange for a guaranteed “top speaking slot of his choice,” according to a funding document outlining a deal between his…

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How Trump’s focus on antifa distracted law enforcement attention from the far-right threat

How Trump’s focus on antifa distracted law enforcement attention from the far-right threat

The New York Times reports: As racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, President Donald J. Trump, struggling to find a winning campaign theme, hit on a message that he stressed over and over: The real domestic threat to the United States emanated from the radical left, even though law enforcement authorities had long since concluded it came from the far right. It was a message that was quickly embraced and amplified by his attorney general and his top homeland…

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In ice age Siberia, a meeting of carnivores may have given us dogs

In ice age Siberia, a meeting of carnivores may have given us dogs

The New York Times reports: Twenty-three thousand years ago, in the cold of the last ice age, some humans found a place where the climate was marginally better: Siberia. While many people associate the region that is now in Russia with forbidding cold today, climate data as well as archaeological and DNA evidence show that this was where horses, mammoths and other prey animals found enough to eat, which attracted humans and other carnivores. Hemmed in by worse conditions, the…

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World’s largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector

World’s largest wealth fund withdraws from oil sector

Bloomberg reports: Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold its entire portfolio of companies focused on oil exploration and production, marking a major step away from fossil fuels for the investing giant. The portfolio, worth about $6 billion in 2019, was fully exited by the end of last year, Trond Grande, the fund’s deputy chief executive, said by phone on Thursday. The move completes a years-long process to reduce the giant investor’s exposure to a sector that has defined Norway’s economy…

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Republican ties to extremist groups are under scrutiny

Republican ties to extremist groups are under scrutiny

The New York Times reports: The video’s title was posed as a question, but it left little doubt about where the men who filmed it stood. They called it “The Coming Civil War?” and in its opening seconds, Jim Arroyo, who leads an Arizona chapter of Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, declared that the conflict had already begun. To back up his claim, Mr. Arroyo cited Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, one of the most far-right members of Congress. Mr….

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Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP

Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP

Politico reports: Three weeks ago, Donald Trump was radioactive, even in the top quarters of his own party. Now, those same Republicans are convinced they can’t live without the energy he gives off, even if it proves toxic. “We need each other. We certainly need him and his input and his voters,” said Jonathan Barnett, an Arkansas RNC committee member. “But again he needs us too. Together, we gotta work this thing out.” Trump’s hold on the Republican Party over…

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The conservative case against the boomers

The conservative case against the boomers

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: Everyone’s fed up with the baby boomers. Younger progressives charge them with a form of generational hoarding—of titles and power but mostly of money. The richest generation in the history of the world, the story goes, has squandered its wealth on vanity purchases and projects while leaving younger Americans with a debased environment and crazy levels of debt. During the Presidency of Donald Trump—a boomer himself, who drew some of his strongest support from other boomers—the generation’s…

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From Michael Lewis, a ‘superhero story’ about the pandemic

From Michael Lewis, a ‘superhero story’ about the pandemic

Alexandra Alter writes: In his 2018 book, “The Fifth Risk,” Michael Lewis posed an unsettling question: What if the government agencies tasked with managing catastrophes — natural disasters, climate change-induced food shortages, epidemics — failed to prepare for some unanticipated, looming crisis? “Many of the risks that fell into the government’s lap felt so remote as to be unreal: that a cyberattack left half the country without electricity, or that some airborne virus wiped out millions,” he wrote. Last year,…

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The hard lessons of modeling the Covid-19 pandemic

The hard lessons of modeling the Covid-19 pandemic

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: For a few months last year, Nigel Goldenfeld and Sergei Maslov, a pair of physicists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, were unlikely celebrities in their state’s COVID-19 pandemic response — that is, until everything went wrong. Their typical areas of research include building models for condensed matter physics, viral evolution and population dynamics, not epidemiology or public health. But like many scientists from diverse fields, they joined the COVID-19 modeling effort in March, when the response…

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