The Washington Post
Climate change has destabilized the Earth’s poles, putting the rest of the planet in peril
The ice shelf was cracking up. Surveys showed warm ocean water eroding its underbelly. Satellite imagery revealed long, parallel fissures in the frozen expanse, like scratches from some clawed monster. One fracture grew so big, so fast, scientists took to calling it “the dagger.”
“It was hugely surprising to see things changing that fast,” said Erin Pettit. The Oregon State glaciologist had chosen this spot for her Antarctic field research precisely because of its stability. While other parts of the infamous Thwaites Glacier crumbled, this wedge of floating ice acted as a brace, slowing the melt. It was supposed to be boring, durable, safe.
Now climate change has turned the ice shelf into a threat — to Pettit’s field work, and to the world.
Democrats’ $2 trillion spending plan in political peril as talks between Biden, Manchin appear to hit snag
A push by Senate Democrats to pass a roughly $2 trillion tax-and-spending measure before Christmas appeared in dire political peril Wednesday, as talks soured between President Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) over the size and scope of the economic package.
Despite days of negotiations, the gaps between the two sides seemed newly immense. Biden sought to safeguard his economic agenda from significant cuts, while Manchin continued to insist on steep spending reductions. The private wrangling offered a marked contrast with the public proclamations of progress coming from both powerful Democrats in recent weeks.
The impasse left party lawmakers on Capitol Hill impatient and frustrated, after they spent months trying to slim down their original spending ambitions to win Manchin’s still-elusive support.
The Hill
Democrats push Manchin on 'nuclear option' for voting rights
Senate Democrats are escalating pressure on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to get behind using the “nuclear option” to change the filibuster and break a months-long stalemate on voting rights legislation. […]
Underscoring the frustration within the caucus, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) spoke out during the Democratic lunch, and separately on the Senate floor, about the need to pass voting rights legislation before taking up the Build Back Better legislation and that it would be “irresponsible” for Democrats not to act.
Politico
Sinema pops Democrats' filibuster trial balloon on voting rights
Kyrsten Sinema supports the elections reform bill that Democrats are considering a year-end push to pass. She doesn't support a shortcut around the filibuster to get it done.
The Arizona [senator] is making clear that she intends to keep protecting the Senate’s 60-vote requirement on most legislation and she isn’t ready to entertain changing rules to pass sweeping elections or voting legislation with a simple majority. […]
In a statement…, a spokesperson said that Sinema “continues to support the Senate's 60-vote threshold, to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans’ confidence in our government.
Bloomberg
Powell Declares Inflation Big Threat as Fed Signals Rate Hikes
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled on Wednesday that inflation is now enemy No. 1 to keeping the economic expansion on track and returning the labor market to something approaching ebullient pre-pandemic levels.
In an abrupt policy pivot, the Fed sped up the drawdown of its asset-purchase program and laid out a road map for a series of interest-rate increases over coming years, started with three hikes in 2022. Powell also raised the possibility that the U.S. central bank might begin to withdraw liquidity from the financial system before too long by reducing its massive balance sheet.
Covid-19 Response Pushed U.S. Health Spending Past $4 Trillion
The U.S. government’s response to Covid-19 pushed up the country’s total health spending to $4.1 trillion last year, a 9.7% increase that was the biggest in almost two decades.
National health expenditures jumped in 2020 by the most since 2002 even as many Americans deferred addressing their own medical needs during the pandemic, according to actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who tally spending by government, businesses and households each year.
Their analysis, published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs, reflects the fiscal muscle the U.S. exercised to stabilize the health-care system after the shock of Covid-related shutdowns.
Los Angeles Times
More winter weather is on the way as Californian drought persists
The slow-moving storm that dropped a deluge across California this week broke several rainfall records and marked a welcome reprieve for the drought-stricken state, but more precipitation is needed to get conditions on track, officials said. […]
Yet despite the influx of moisture after months of bone-dry conditions, experts said the region’s drought persists. The recent storm was healthy, said UCLA climate scientist Alex Hall, but “not a drought-buster.” […]
Researchers recently found that due to climate change, winters of low snow — or even no snow — could become a regular occurrence in the state in as little as 35 years.
AP News
Biden pledges `whatever it takes’ to assist tornado victims
President Joe Biden on Wednesday pledged to do “whatever it takes, as long as it takes” to help Kentucky and other states after a series of deadly tornadoes that he said left a trail of unimaginable devastation. “You will recover and rebuild,” he said.
“The scope and scale of this destruction is almost beyond belief,” he said as he stood before a home reduced to a few walls and piles of rubble in Dawson Springs, one of two Kentucky towns he visited.
Biden spoke of the stress felt by victims of natural disasters such as the weekend storms that swept across eight states and said it was urgent that people be moved from emergency shelters in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, the president praised the outpouring of support from reeling communities and said the federal support he has committed will keep flowing.
“Something good has to come out of this,” Biden said. “In so many places, destruction was met with compassion.”
White House pushes Republicans to end blockade of ambassador picks
President Joe Biden unveiled two more ambassador nominees Wednesday, but the White House and Democrats warned that maneuvering by some Senate Republicans to block all but a small fraction of diplomatic and other national security appointees is doing serious harm to U.S. efforts around the globe.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has threatened to keep lawmakers who are eager to get home for Christmas at work in Washington into next week if progress isn’t made on the backlog of more than 70 ambassadorial nominees awaiting votes.
The Oregonian
Sonic booms during earthquake swarm rattle Oregon coast nerves; pilot error blamed
Three loud sonic booms that shook buildings and people along the central Oregon coast Tuesday afternoon was caused by a mistake by an Oregon Air National Guard pilot during training exercises, a military spokesman said Wednesday. […]
People who heard or felt it took to various community Facebook pages to ask what happened and speculate – incorrect by a wide margin – that the boom could be linked to a swarm of more than 115 earthquakes that has been occurring for more than a week 250 miles out to sea. […]
Sgt. Steve Conkin, a spokesman for the Portland-based 142nd Wing of the Oregon Air National Guard, told YachatsNews on Wednesday that it was a pilot’s mistake with “very unfortunate timing.”
NPR News
Congress passes a bipartisan defense bill that includes a 2.7% servicemember pay boost
The Senate on Wednesday passed a $778 billion defense bill by a vote of 88-11. The annual defense policy measure, passed for the 61st year in a row, now heads to President Biden's desk. […]
In a win for conservatives, a provision expanding the draft to include women was dropped from the compromise measure, despite being included in both the Senate and House versions of the [National Defense Authorization Act] and earlier bipartisan support for the provision.
An effort to scrap decades-old war authorizations was also left off the final measure.
The bill also includes $27.8 billion for the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons work and $9.9 billion in defense-related activities outside of NDAA jurisdiction.
A NASA spacecraft has flown into the sun's atmosphere for the first time in history
Three years after its launch, the Parker Solar Probe has finally "touched" the sun.
In April, the probe became the first known spacecraft to soar into our nearest star's upper atmosphere – known as the corona – where it sampled particles and magnetic fields, NASA announced on Tuesday.
"Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and [its] impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe," Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a press release.
USA Today
Tornadoes and 100 mph winds hit Central US; region braces for severe thunderstorms and wildfires
A wild weather day was underway Wednesday across the central U.S., with howling winds, severe storms, tornadoes and even wildfires slamming the region. […]
Portions of Oklahoma's panhandle were evacuated Wednesday afternoon and all lanes of U.S. Highway 287 closed down due to extreme winds as crews battled wildfires, and parts of Texas' panhandle saw at least four active wildfires accelerated by the strong winds.
The Weather Service has issued a high wind warning along a swath stretching from New Mexico to upper Michigan – including Wisconsin and Illinois – with sustained winds between 25 mph and 40 mph expected.It also issued severe thunderstorm warnings for parts of Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska.
New York police official Keechant Sewell picked as first woman to lead the NYPD
A Long Island police official will be New York City’s next police commissioner, the first woman to lead the nation’s largest police force.
Mayor-Elect Eric Adams told the New York Post on Tuesday that his choice, Nassau County Police Chief of Detectives Keechant Sewell, “is a proven crime fighter with the experience and emotional intelligence to deliver both the safety New Yorkers need and the justice they deserve.”
Sewell, 49, will replace Dermot Shea, who is retiring from the NYPD after 30 years, the last two as commissioner. She’ll begin when Adams takes office Jan. 1.
Houston Chronicle
Kenneth Copeland is the wealthiest pastor in America. So why does he live in a tax-free 18,000 sq ft Texas mansion?
At his 2015 Southwest Believers’ Convention in Fort Worth, wealthy Texas televangelist Kenneth Copeland explained how he wound up living in a mansion. It all started when God told him years earlier to build that dream home his wife Gloria had described to him. […]
“You may think that house is too big,” Copeland told the believers’ convention. “You may think it's too grand. I don't care what you think. I heard from heaven. Glory to God, hallelujah!”
What he didn’t mention is that his heavenly plans are being underwritten by Texas taxpayers. Under a little-known statute that county appraisers say is too vague and permissive, the $7 million mansion owned by Copeland’s Eagle Mountain International Church is considered a parsonage — a clergy residence — qualifying for a 100 percent tax break.
The Dallas Morning News
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton must stop unilaterally prosecuting voter fraud cases, court rules
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday that Attorney General Ken Paxton may no longer unilaterally prosecute voter fraud, delivering a blow to the Republican who has made prosecuting those cases a mainstay of his office.
The Court of Criminal Appeals, an all-GOP panel, ruled 8-1 Wednesday to dismiss campaign finance violation charges against a southeast Texas sheriff. The ruling effectively strikes a provision of Texas election code that gave Paxton the authority to directly prosecute voter fraud cases. […]
The ruling could have far-reaching consequences in the numerous voter fraud cases his office is pursuing. It could also hinder Paxton’s ability to prosecute a host of new crimes Republicans added to their sweeping rewrite of election law this year. Now, election officials can be criminally charged for obstructing a poll watcher’s view or handing out mail-in ballot applications to people who didn’t request one.
Orlando Sentinel
Calling it ‘state-sanctioned racism,’ DeSantis seeks ban of critical race theory in schools, workplaces
Critical race theory shouldn’t be taught to Florida’s children or workers, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday, and he’ll seek legislation next month to ban a practice that is stirring debate nationwide.
He also wants parents to be able to sue schools suspected of teaching the theory and receive attorney’s fees. […]
DeSantis wants the Legislature to codify that rule into state law when lawmakers convene their 60-day regular session starting Jan. 11. But he also wants them to go further and ban CRT from being used in seminars and training sessions for K-12 school employees and in all workplaces in the state.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AJC Interview: Abrams on the ‘clearest signal’ why she should be Georgia gov
When Stacey Abrams entered the race for governor two weeks ago, she was preparing for a rematch against Gov. Brian Kemp. The race now has a decidedly different dynamic after former U.S. Sen. David Perdue upended the contest. […]
“The reality is we need a leader who is willing to invest in Georgia and keep us together, not someone intent on dividing us,” Abrams said.
“If he intends to use a legislative session – a time we should be serving the people – to focus on dividing us, it’s the clearest signal why I should be the governor.” […]
She also took an unequivocal stance opposing a referendum to create a new city of Buckhead, which has fast become a dividing line in the GOP race. Perdue has endorsed allowing Buckhead to divorce from Atlanta, while Kemp has so far refused to take a stance.
“I absolutely oppose dividing Atlanta,” said Abrams. “I’m running to create one Georgia and I believe in a united Atlanta. This is a vital issue for the future of our state.”
The Guardian
Fall in fertility rates may be linked to fossil fuel pollution, finds study
Decreasing fertility rates may be linked to pollution caused by fossil fuel burning, a review of scientific studies has found.
Over the past 50 years childbirth has steadily decreased. The study focused on Denmark, but the trend is also seen in other industrialised nations. One in 10 Danish children are born with assisted reproduction and more than 20% of men never have children, according to the researchers. This decrease seems to have started at the beginning of industrialisation. Experts have warnedthe trend could lead to an unbalanced demographic with too few younger people to support the older generations.
“We have to realise that we know all too little about infertility in the population so the next step forward would really be to find out why so many young couples do not have children,” said Niels Erik Skakkebæk, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology.
Omicron found to grow 70 times faster than Delta in bronchial tissue
The Omicron Covid variant has been found to multiply about 70 times quicker than the original and Delta versions of coronavirus in tissue samples taken from the bronchus, the main tubes from the windpipe to the lungs, in laboratory experiments that could help explain its rapid transmission.
The study, by a team from the University of Hong Kong, also found that the new variant grew 10 times slower in lung tissue, which the authors said could be an indicator of lower disease severity.
Michael Chan Chi-wai, who led the work, said the result needed to be interpreted with caution because severe disease is determined not only by how quickly the virus replicates but also by a person’s immune response and, in particular, whether the immune system goes into overdrive, causing a so-called cytokine storm.
Vox
Omicron may be less risky for each of us — but more risky for all of us.
The omicron variant, the latest curveball in the pandemic, may lead to less severe cases of Covid-19 than earlier strains of the coronavirus, according to one of the largest real-world studies of omicron released so far.
That’s good news, but it could be overshadowed by other data showing that the variant is far more contagious than any version of the virus to date — and that it can evade some immune protection from vaccines and prior infection.
Taken together, these traits make for a counterintuitive situation: Omicron poses a lower risk to most individuals, at least for those who are vaccinated, but the threat to the overall population is high. The question now is whether omicron will infect so many people that it overwhelms the health care system and drives up hospitalizations and deaths — in spite of the smaller percentage of people who come down with severe disease.
The Atlantic
Don’t Be Surprised When You Get Omicron
My breakthrough infection started with a scratchy throat just a few days before Thanksgiving. Because I’m vaccinated, and had just tested negative for COVID-19 two days earlier, I initially brushed off the symptoms as merely a cold. Just to be sure, I got checked again a few days later. Positive. The result felt like a betrayal after 18 months of reporting on the pandemic. And as I walked home from the testing center, I realized that I had no clue what to do next.
I had so many questions: How would I isolate myself in a shared apartment? And why for 10 days, like the doctor at the testing site had advised? Should I get tested again? Following the doctor’s orders, my partner—who had tested negative—dragged a sleeping bag to the couch. Masks came on, windows went up, and flights were canceled. I ate flavorless dinners on my side of the apartment. One by one, the symptoms I knew so well on paper made their real-life debut: cough, fever, fatigue, and a loss of smell so severe, I couldn’t detect my dog’s habitually fishy breath.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one feeling baffled about what to do. “Oh yeah, people are very confused about breakthrough cases,” Peter Chin-Hong, an expert on infectious diseases at UC San Francisco, told me.
The Future of Work Is a 60-Year Career
If 5-year-olds could read academic research reports, they might be alarmed by what they’d find in a recent one from the Stanford Center on Longevity.
It opened with a bit of promising news: “In the United States, demographers predict that as many as half of today’s 5-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 100.” But that was followed, several pages down, by a haunting prediction: “Over the course of 100-year lives, we can expect to work 60 years or more.”
In the U.S., the average retirement age is 62, according to Gallup polling. For most people, 40 or so years of work is more than enough, so the idea of an additional 20 is disconcerting. But if a 60-year career sounds like a nightmare, perhaps that’s because we’re imagining 60 years of work as it is for many people today: inflexible, all-consuming, poorly matched to the rhythms of life. For the sake of the 5-year-olds and the rest of us, as humans live longer and longer, we should redesign work.
CBS News
Nearly 12% of those charged in the Jan. 6 probe have military ties
More than 80 of the defendants charged in relation to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have ties to the U.S. military — most of those with a military background were veterans.
A CBS News analysis of service records, attorney statements, and court documents has found that at least 81 current or former service members face charges and are accused of participating in the mob that led Congress to temporarily halt its counting of the 2020 presidential election's Electoral College votes. […]
Marine Major Chris Warnagiris is the only active duty member of the military to have been charged for participating in the January 6 Capitol attack so far.
House votes to hold Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress
The House late Tuesday night voted to hold former President Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to appear before the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The final vote was 222-208. Just two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, joined with all Democrats.
The matter will now be turned over to the Justice Department.
Mother Jones
I Compared the New January 6 Texts to Mark Meadows’ Book. It’s Damning.
It seems that Donald Trump’s final White House chief of staff left out some critical information in The Chief’s Chief, his new book chronicling his 10 months as Trump’s number-one factotum. On Monday evening, as the House committee investigating the January 6 attack was deliberating on whether to cite Meadows for criminal contempt for refusing to testify before it, Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the two Republicans on the panel, read a series of text messages that Meadows received during those horrific hours when Trump supporters were violently assaulting the US Capitol and trying to shut down the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. The texts portray a harrowing stretch and indicate that Trump, as Cheney noted, had been derelict in his duty as commander in chief by not taking actions to stop his rioting loyalists. […]
Meadows is lying.
New York Magazine
Mark Meadows Wants to Take Your State Capitol Hostage
Have you been wondering what former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been up to when he wasn’t dodging subpoenas and questions from the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6? Turns out he’s spending some time helping his old friends in the House Freedom Caucus to spread their noxious activities from Washington to state capitals around the country, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports…
Deutsche Welle
Germany expels two Russian diplomats after Tiergarten murder conviction
A Berlin court has sentenced a Russian national, Vadim Krasikov, to life in prison for the 2019 murder of an ethnic Chechen in a park in the German capital.
Prosecutors said Krasikov was acting on the orders of Russia's state security agency, the FSB. They argued at length during the trial that Russian authorities had arranged an alias, Vadim Solokov, for the man, with him traveling across several European borders under that identity in the days leading up to the murder.
His victim, an ethnic Chechen of Georgian nationality, was shot dead at point-blank range in broad daylight on August 23, 2019. Krasikov was arrested later that day.
EuroNews
Ukrainians sign up for military training as Russia tensions ratchet up
Armed with fake wooden assault rifles and rubber knives, a small group of about 30 Ukrainians gather in the woods on the outskirts of Kyiv. They yell “glory to Ukraine” with a fist to their chest before the training begins, which focuses on handling rifles and attacking enemies.
The organisation, Total Resistance, organises this training for those who want to learn to defend themselves in case of a Russian invasion.
Tensions between Moscow and Kyiv have been growing in recent weeks, amid claims Russia has put 92,000 troops near Ukraine's border.
Al Jazeera
Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi hail ties amid tensions with West
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have held a video meeting, as friction persists in both countries’ relations with the West.
In their opening remarks at the virtual summit on Wednesday, Putin and Xi hailed relations between Russia and China, with the Russian leader declaring them “a proper example of interstate cooperation in the 21st century”. […]
“A new model of cooperation has been formed between our countries, based among other things on such principles as not interfering in internal affairs [of each other], respect for each other’s interests, determination to turn the shared border into a belt of eternal peace and good neighbourliness,” Putin said.
Xi said that the Russian president “strongly supported China’s efforts to protect key national interests and firmly opposed attempts to drive a wedge between our countries.”
The New York Times
The Nobel Peace Prize That Paved the Way for War
[…] New evidence shows that Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, had been planning a military campaign in the northern Tigray region for months before war erupted one year ago, setting off a cascade of destruction and ethnic violence that has engulfed Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country.
Mr. Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate seen recently in fatigues commanding troops on the battlefront, insists that war was foisted upon him — that ethnic Tigrayan fighters fired the first shots in November 2020 when they attacked a federal military base in Tigray, slaughtering soldiers in their beds. That account has become an article of faith for Mr. Abiy and his supporters.
In fact, it was a war of choice for Mr. Abiy — one with wheels set in motion even before the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 that turned him, for a time, into a global icon of nonviolence.
The Nobel win stemmed largely from the unlikely peace deal Mr. Abiy struck with Isaias Afwerki, the authoritarian leader of Eritrea, within months of coming to power in 2018. That pact ended two decades of hostility and war between the neighboring rivals, and inspired lofty hopes for a transformed region.
Instead, the Nobel emboldened Mr. Abiy and Mr. Isaias to secretly plot a course for war against their mutual foes in Tigray, according to current and former Ethiopian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals or protect family members inside Ethiopia.
CBC News
Grisly photos of dead giraffes highlight devastation of drought in Kenya
A startling aerial photograph of six dead giraffes, their emaciated bodies gruesomely entangled, is showcasing the dire effects of a drought in Kenya and surrounding countries.
Photojournalist Ed Ram was covering the drought for Getty Images and the Guardian newspaper when the head of the Sabuli Wildlife Conservancy project told him about a group of giraffes that had died just steps away from a water reservoir in the village of Eyrib. […]
Millions of Kenyans face starvation because of the severe drought that's been plaguing half the country for months, according to Kenya's drought management authority.
MercoPress
WMO registers new Arctic temperature record, 38°C, in Verkhoyansk on 20 June 2020
A temperature of 38°C (100.4°F) in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June 2020 has been recognized as a new Arctic temperature record by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The temperature, more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic, was measured at a meteorological observing station during an exceptional and prolonged Siberian heat wave. Average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached as high as 10 °C above normal for much of summer last year, fuelling devastating fires, driving massive sea ice loss and playing a major role in 2020 being one of the three warmest years on record.
NBC News
Antarctic ice shelf could crack, raise seas by feet within decade, scientists warn
An Antarctic ice shelf could crack and disintegrate within the next decade, allowing a Florida-sized glacier to slide into the ocean and raising sea levels by feet, scientists warned Wednesday.
A dramatic chain reaction in the ice could occur by 2031, starting with the Thwaites Glacier, said Erin Pettit, a professor at Oregon State University who studies glacier and ice sheet dynamics.
The glacier, a river of flowing ice, is blocked from falling into the sea by the eastern ice shelf, which sits atop an underwater mountain and is disintegrating.
New research Pettit presented to a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans suggests the final collapse of the ice shelf may occur "within as little as 5 years" and mark the beginning of the end of the Thwaites Glacier.
Agency overseeing Trump's D.C. hotel lease failed to examine ethical, constitutional conflicts, report says
The federal agency managing the government’s lease of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., failed to examine ethical conflicts and constitutional issues posed by … Donald Trump’s refusal to divest from the property, a new congressional report says.
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's report, obtained exclusively by NBC News, found that the General Services Administration did not track foreign government payments to the hotel or identify the origins of more than $75 million in loans made by Trump and his family to shore up its troubled finances.
The GSA “washed its hands of any responsibility” to review whether the emoluments clauses of the Constitution were being followed, the report said, including by trying to ensure that profits from foreign governments didn’t benefit Trump. The agency did not take any steps to identify expenditures by foreign or domestic government officials and implemented "zero checks and balances" to make sure the hotel's calculations of such payments were “fair, complete and accurate,” the committee found.
BBC News
Nasa's Perseverance Mars rover finds its 'baseline' rocks
Nasa's Mars rover Perseverance has identified what are probably the oldest rocks at its crater landing site. They are volcanic in origin, perhaps the product of some ancient lava flow.
It's an important milestone for the mission because it means that when samples of these rocks are returned to Earth next decade, they can be dated. This will tighten our understanding of the history of not only the touch-down location but of Mars generally and the wider Solar System beyond.
Science team-member Briony Horgan, from Purdue University, said the identification represented a "really, really big deal".
Gizmodo
Log4j: Just How Screwed Are We?
In short, the Apache log4j bug is bad. According to Jen Easterly, the director of America’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, it’s “one of the most serious” that she’s seen in her “entire career.” In a recent media appearance, Easterly told reporters that federal officials fully expect “the vulnerability to be widely exploited by sophisticated actors,” and her colleague, Jay Gazlay, of CISA’s vulnerability management office, helpfully revealed that the bug likely affects “hundreds of millions of devices.” […]
Security researchers have taken to calling the vulnerability “Log4Shell” since proper exploitation can result in shell access (also called “remote code access”) to a server’s system. Its official designation, meanwhile, is CVE-2021-44228 and it carries a severity rating of 10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System scale—apparently the worst you can get.
Ars Technica
OSHA probes Amazon warehouse where workers died with no tornado shelter
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced yesterday that it is opening an investigation into the deaths of six workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois that was struck by a massive tornado, one of more than 40 that ripped through the region over the weekend.
Nearly half of the 1.1 million-square-foot building was demolished as winds as high as 150 mph (240 kph) tore through the structure. “The west-facing walls of the warehouse collapsed inward, which was followed by multiple structural failures as the tornado moved through the complex,” the National Weather Service said.