When Delta swept across the United States last year, the extremely transmissible and deadlier variant threw us into pandemic limbo. The virus remained a danger mostly to unvaccinated people, but they largely wanted to move on. Vaccinated people also largely wanted to move on. The virus did not want to move on. So we got stuck in a deadly rut, and more Americans died of COVID-19 in 2021 than in 2020.
Trump shot back at Sen. Mike Rounds by calling the 67-year-old Republican from South Dakota “woke.
The Atlantic is welcoming three new editors to the Culture team as it begins an expansion of Books coverage. Joining The Atlantic are Gal Beckerman as senior editor for Books, coming from The New York Times Book Review; Maya Chung as an associate editor, most recently with The New York Review of Books; and Emma Sarappo as an associate editor, previously the arts editor at Washington City Paper.
The Omicron variant’s transmission rate is exponentially higher than Delta, leaving healthcare workers across the U.S. in dire straits. Waves of doctors, nurses and other health professionals are unionizing, and some have quit the profession over exploitative conditions.
As an Australian judge allows unvaccinated tennis star Novak Djokovic to be released from immigration detention amid controversy over his COVID vaccine exemption, we look at how his case has intensified international scrutiny over Australia’s inhumane treatment of refugees jailed in the same rundown hotel.
Kazakhstan’s authoritarian President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has described last week’s protests as an attempted coup and defended his call for Russian-led troops into the country to put down the unrest. Demonstrations were triggered by a rise in fuel prices and widened to broader anti-government protests. Over 160 people were killed in the violence, including a 4-year-old girl, and thousands were detained.
U.S. and Russian officials are meeting today in Geneva as NATO calls on Russia to remove its troops from along the Ukrainian border. The Russian military has also mobilized soldiers to suppress protests in Kazakhstan. We go to Moscow to speak with Nina Khrushcheva, professor of international affairs at The New School, who says President Vladimir Putin is expanding Russia’s sphere of influence but will not invade Ukraine. “It’s not that he wants to take more territory.
To be on the internet today is to confront unsettling images—of war, climate change, humanitarian crises. Weird visuals crop up too. A YouTube algorithm provides me, for instance, with videos of a pimple-popping bonanza, or a series of videos in which young men eat glue.
Sign up for Caleb’s newsletter here.English words constantly evolve, not only in terms of what they mean, but how they mean. They transform their parts of speech all the time without so much as a changed syllable. The adjective green came to mean the part of the golf course that can be described by this adjective. The prepositions up and down came to mean the experiences in life that feel like the spatial relationships that these prepositions describe—life’s ups and downs.
Heightened frustration among Americans about soaring prices is fueling congressional pressure on the Fed chief over how the Fed will respond.
While the supply chain for once-scarce equipment remains intact, the sheer demand for testing is stretching sample collection sites and laboratory staff.
The advisory panel signed off on the recommendation following presentations by doctors suggesting boosters are likely to increase antibodies in young teens.
The recent guidance, updated Dec. 29, said individuals who test positive for Covid-19 and whose symptoms are resolving need only isolate for five days as long as they continue to wear masks for an additional five days.
The agency will also allow some immunocompromised children as young as age 5 to get an additional dose.
To the world, the new telescope that recently launched to space is one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in history. It is the next Hubble, designed to observe nearly everything from here to the most distant edges of the cosmos, to the very first galaxies.To Jane Rigby’s son, it’s “mama’s telescope.”Rigby, an astrophysicist, used to bring her young son to the NASA center in Maryland to watch the James Webb Space Telescope being assembled.
The four-week average, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, fell to just above 199,000, the lowest level since October 1969.
The results, which covered Nov. 1 through Dec. 24, were fueled by purchases of clothing and jewelry.
Nearly the entire increase came from the burst of federal spending as the government mobilized to contain the spread of the virus.
The Fed plans to cease its bond buys entirely by March, rather than its earlier target of June to give itself room to begin raising interest rates as early as the second quarter of next year.
Costs for key goods and services soared 0.8 percent for the month and 6.8 percent for the year, the highest since 1982, the Labor Department reported Friday.
We get an update from Sudan, where at least three pro-democracy protesters were killed by security forces on Thursday, bringing the death toll to at least 60 since the military coup on October 25. Thursday’s protest came four days following Abdalla Hamdok’s resignation as Sudan’s prime minister, after he was deposed in the October coup and then shortly restored to power by the military in November.
We look at the skyrocketing number of COVID infections. Coronavirus cases hit record highs this week, with global cases climbing 70% from last week to 9.5 million and the U.S. reporting a single-day record of 1 million new cases on Monday. In the U.S., the extraordinary volume of cases is filling up emergency rooms nationwide and exhausting healthcare workers, says emergency room physician Dr. Craig Spencer, who has been treating coronavirus patients since the pandemic began.
President Joe Biden warned about the looming threat of autocracy during his speech marking the first anniversary of the January 6 Capitol attack on Thursday and denounced his predecessor Donald Trump for inciting the rioters. In a statement responding to Biden’s speech, Trump continued to falsely claim the 2020 election was rigged.
Former Pentagon adviser Ryan Goodman says former President Trump could have used the Insurrection Act to hold onto power during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. “There needs to be reform of the Insurrection Act,” says Goodman, who authored the report “Crisis of Command: The Pentagon, the President, and January 6” for Just Security, where he is co-editor.
Brian Kilmeade also dismissed Trump’s complaints of election fraud.
Recently released texts underscore right-wing Fox News hosts’ astounding influence on the former president.
In the news today: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is instituting new policies that will seek jail time only for the most serious offenses. That’s consistent with research showing that incarceration for minor crimes is both expensive and ineffective—but the city’s police commissioner is furious. A lawsuit accuses Facebook of abetting a murderous insurrectionist group with algorithms that effectively work as recruitment tools for those groups.
by Alexandra Martinez
This article was originally published at Prism
From the outside, the Greenidge power plant in Seneca Lake, New York, looks like a 1950s-era relic of New York’s coal-fired past. But behind the facade of the once moth-balled power plant, there are now 8,000 churning high-powered computers running software 24/7 to solve complex math problems.
Remember Glenn Beck? He’s still around and he’s still doing what he’s always done: grifting away. His modern look includes spectacles and a sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders look. Surprising no one, Beck’s evidence-free conspiracy theory stylings, now common on the right, are focused on all of the same tropes of misinformation, disinformation, and anti-vaxxer clickbait that allows for making money on his BlazeTV network.
It’s hard to believe the media training Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, allegedly sought out from a Democratic consultant is paying off. The director, who started her position last January, has been criticized time and time again for ever-changing CDC guidance issued in light of the coronavirus pandemic and more poignantly how she communicates said guidance.