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<title>13 December, 2023</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>Leveraging Tuberculosis Programs for Future Pandemic Preparedness: A Retrospective Look on COVID-19</strong> -
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<div>
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Worldwide, COVID-19 has decimated healthcare systems and highlighted the pressing need to ensure resilience for future pandemics. Given the almost 30% likelihood of another respiratory disease similar to COVID-19 manifesting in the next 10 years, it is imperative to prioritize pandemic preparedness in the immediate future. To this end, tuberculosis (TB) and its management share many similarities to respiratory disease protection, offering an opportunity to dually strengthen TB programs and protect against future pandemics. Looking at data from the World Health Organization (WHO), Global Fund, Our World in Data, and domestic health ministries. It was hypothesized that countries that had better TB program strength going into the pandemic fared better with COVID-19 than those with poorer TB treatment. It was found that countries that recovered their TB program strength (as measured by TB treatment coverage percentages) to or above pre-pandemic levels fared better in terms of COVID-19 pandemic incidence and death. Case studies helped identify common factors across resilient TB platforms in dually successful COVID-19 and TB countries, including community trust, co-epidemic responses that were able to maintain continuity of care, sustained innovation, comprehensive communication across public and private sectors, and maintenance of donor support for TB programs through the pandemic.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/t23ed/" target="_blank">Leveraging Tuberculosis Programs for Future Pandemic Preparedness: A Retrospective Look on COVID-19</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>EduMap: Navigating a Learning Adventure</strong> -
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<div>
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Directed study maps are often used in order to create an overlay of knowledge relations. However, these connections often have to manually be created by subject matter and IT experts, which, although are a ground truth, limit these user to the topics of the maps at hand. To address this, we propose EduMap, which takes advantage of GPT 3.5 in a few-shot setting to create a study map for any user-provided topic. We conducted two user studies to address various aspects of the map: (1) A quantitative study to test out the effectiveness of this map medium in the context of navigating information concerning COVID-19 in a expert-curated graph, and (2) A quantitative study to test out the accuracy and usefulness of GPT-generated graphs. Our results show that the map medium is effective, and, though the graphs produced make sense, there is work to be done before it can be considered ground truth, with issues of vague topics and improper connections between topics arising. Altogether, our results establish a baseline for AI-generated study maps to be improved upon in the future with ground truth to create a more trustworthy software.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/edarxiv/ez2bk/" target="_blank">EduMap: Navigating a Learning Adventure</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 induces acute neurological signs while Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) signaling blockade reduces interleukin 6 (IL-6) release and weight loss in mouse models</strong> -
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<div>
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COVID-19 can result in neurological symptoms such as fever, headache, dizziness, and nausea. We evaluated whether the Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonist, olcegepant, used in migraine treatment could mitigate acute neuroinflammatory and neurological responses to SARS-COV-2 infection. We infected wildtype C57BL/6J and 129/SvEv mice, and a 129 CGRP-null mouse line with a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 virus, and evaluated the effect of CGRP receptor antagonism on the outcome of that infection. We determined that CGRP receptor antagonism provided protection from permanent weight loss in older (>12 m) C57BL/6J and 129 SvEv mice. We also observed acute fever and motion-induced dizziness in all older mice, regardless of treatment. However, in both wildtype mouse lines, CGRP antagonism reduced acute interleukin 6 (IL-6) levels by half, with virtually no IL-6 release in mice lacking CGRP. These findings suggest that blockage of CGRP signaling protects against acute IL-6 release and subsequent inflammatory events after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.23.563669v4" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 induces acute neurological signs while Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) signaling blockade reduces interleukin 6 (IL-6) release and weight loss in mouse models</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>SARS-CoV-2 nsp15 preferentially degrades AU-rich dsRNA via its dsRNA nickase activity</strong> -
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<div>
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It has been proposed that coronavirus nsp15 mediates evasion of host cell double-stranded (ds) RNA sensors via its uracil-specific endoribonuclease activity. However, how nsp15 processes viral dsRNA, commonly considered as a genome replication intermediate, remains elusive. Previous research has mainly focused on short single-stranded RNA as substrates, and whether nsp15 prefers single-stranded or double-stranded RNA for cleavage is controversial. In the present work, we prepared numerous RNA substrates, including both long substrates mimicking the viral genome and short defined RNA, to clarify the substrate preference and cleavage pattern of SARS-CoV-2 nsp15. We demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 nsp15 preferentially cleaved flexible pyrimidine nucleotides located in AU-rich areas and mismatch-containing areas in dsRNA via a nicking manner. The AU content and distribution in dsRNA along with the RNA length affected cleavage by SARS-CoV-2 nsp15. Because coronavirus genomes generally have a high AU content, our work supported the mechanism that coronaviruses evade the antiviral response mediated by host cell dsRNA sensors by using nsp15 dsRNA nickase to directly cleave dsRNA intermediates formed during genome replication and transcription.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.11.571056v1" target="_blank">SARS-CoV-2 nsp15 preferentially degrades AU-rich dsRNA via its dsRNA nickase activity</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>G6PD deficiency mediated impairment of iNOS and lysosomal acidification affecting phagocytotic clearance in microglia in response to SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
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<div>
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The glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency is X-linked and is the most common enzymatic deficiency disorder globally. It is a crucial enzyme for the pentose phosphate pathway and produces NADPH, which plays a vital role in the regulation of oxidative stress of many cell types. The deficiency of G6PD causes hemolytic anemia, diabetes, cardiovascular and neurological disorders. Notably, the patient with G6PD deficiency was severely affected by SARS-CoV-2 and showed prolonged COVID-19 symptoms, neurological impacts, and high mortality. However, the mechanism of COVID-19 severity in G6PD deficient patients is still ambiguous. Here, using a CRISPR-edited G6PD deficient human microglia cell culture model, we observed a significant reduction in NADPH and an increase in basal reactive oxygen species (ROS) in microglia. Interestingly, the deficiency of the G6PD-NAPDH axis impairs induced nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) mediated nitric oxide (NO) production which plays a fundamental role in inhibiting viral replication. Surprisingly, we also observed that the deficiency of the G6PD-NADPH axis reduced lysosomal acidification, which further abrogates the lysosomal clearance of viral particles. Thus, impairment of NO production and lysosomal acidification as well as redox dysregulation in G6PD deficient microglia altered innate immune response, promoting the severity of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.12.570971v1" target="_blank">G6PD deficiency mediated impairment of iNOS and lysosomal acidification affecting phagocytotic clearance in microglia in response to SARS-CoV-2</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>The complement pattern recognition molecule CL-11 promotes invasion and injury of respiratory epithelial cells by SARS-CoV-2.</strong> -
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Collectin-11 is a soluble C-type lectin produced at epithelial surfaces to initiate pathogen elimination by complement. Given the respiratory epithelium is a source of CL-11 and downstream complement-pathway components, we investigated the potential of CL-11 to impact the pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2. While the SARS-CoV-2 spike trimer could bind CL-11 and trigger complement activation followed by MAC formation, the virus was resistant to lysis. Surprisingly, virus production by infected respiratory epithelial cells was enhanced by CL-11 opsonisation of virus but this effect was fully inhibited by sugar-blockade of CL-11. Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 spike protein expressed at the bronchial epithelial cell surface was associated with increased CL-11 binding and MAC formation. We propose that SARS-CoV-2 pathogenicity is exacerbated both by resistance to complement and CL-11 driven respiratory cell invasion and injury at the portal of entry. Contrary to expectation, CL-11 blockade could offer a novel approach to limit the pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.11.571109v1" target="_blank">The complement pattern recognition molecule CL-11 promotes invasion and injury of respiratory epithelial cells by SARS-CoV-2.</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Whole transcriptome profiling of placental pathobiology in SARS-CoV-2 pregnancies identifies placental dysfunction signatures</strong> -
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<div>
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Objectives: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus infection in pregnancy is associated with higher incidence of placental dysfunction, referred to by a few studies as a ‘preeclampsia-like syndrome’. However, the mechanisms underpinning SARS-CoV-2-induced placental malfunction are still unclear. Here, we investigated whether the transcriptional architecture of the placenta is altered in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods: We utilized whole-transcriptome, digital spatial profiling, to examine gene expression patterns in placental tissues from participants who contracted SARS-CoV-2 in the third trimester of their pregnancy (n=7) and those collected prior to the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic (n=9). Results: Through comprehensive spatial transcriptomic analyses of the trophoblast and villous core stromal cell subpopulations in the placenta, we identified signatures associated with hypoxia and placental dysfunction during SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy. Notably, genes associated with vasodilation (NOS3), oxidative stress (GDF15, CRH), and preeclampsia (FLT1, EGFR, KISS1, PAPPA2), were enriched with SARS-CoV-2. Pathways related to increased nutrient uptake, vascular tension, hypertension, and inflammation, were also enriched in SARS-CoV-2 samples compared to uninfected controls. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate the utility of spatially resolved transcriptomic analysis in defining the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 in pregnancy, particularly its role in placental dysfunction. Furthermore, this study highlights the significance of digital spatial profiling in mapping the intricate crosstalk between trophoblasts and villous core stromal cells, thus shedding light on pathways associated with placental dysfunction in pregnancies with SARS-CoV-2 infection.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.20.524893v2" target="_blank">Whole transcriptome profiling of placental pathobiology in SARS-CoV-2 pregnancies identifies placental dysfunction signatures</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>Birdwatchers’ resilience to perturbation in India buffers citizen science from pandemic-induced biases</strong> -
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<div>
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Most systematic projects to monitor bird populations, like breeding bird surveys, require large and coordinated volunteer networks that are lacking in many parts of the world such as the Global South. Data from less systematic citizen science (CS) programmes offer an alternative to data from systematic initiatives in these regions, but the semi-structured nature of such data also presents several challenges. The utility of semi-structured CS data to monitor bird species abundance is contingent on how, where, and how comparably birdwatchers watch birds, year on year. Trends inferred directly from the data can be confounded during years when birdwatchers may behave differently, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to ascertain how the data uploaded from India to one such CS platform, eBird, was impacted by this deadliest global pandemic of the 21st century. To understand whether eBird data from the pandemic years in India is useful and comparable to data from adjacent years, we explored several quantitative and qualitative aspects of the data (such as birdwatcher behaviour) at multiple spatial and temporal scales. We found no negative impact of the pandemic on data generation. Data characteristics changed largely only during the peak pandemic months characterised by high fatality rates and strict lockdowns, possibly due to decreased human mobility and social interaction. It remained similar to the adjacent years during the rest of this restrictive period, thereby reducing the impact of the aberrant peak months on any annual inference. Moreover, impacts on data characteristics varied widely across states in India, resulting in no strong consistent trend at the national level–unlike results from elsewhere in the world. Our findings show that birdwatchers in India as contributors to CS were resilient to disturbance, and that the effects of the pandemic on birdwatching effort and birdwatcher behaviour are highly scale- and context-dependent. In summary, eBird data in India from the pandemic years remains useful and interpretable for most large-scale applications, such as abundance trend estimation, but will benefit from preliminary data quality checks when utilised at a fine scale.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.11.571083v1" target="_blank">Birdwatchers’ resilience to perturbation in India buffers citizen science from pandemic-induced biases</a>
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<li><strong>A Pan-respiratory Antiviral Chemotype Targeting a Host Multiprotein Complex</strong> -
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<div>
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We present a small molecule chemotype, identified by an orthogonal drug screen, exhibiting nanomolar activity against members of all the six viral families causing most human respiratory viral disease, with a demonstrated barrier to resistance development. Antiviral activity is shown in mammalian cells, including human primary bronchial epithelial cells cultured to an air-liquid interface and infected with SARS-CoV-2. In animals, efficacy of early compounds in the lead series is shown by survival (for a coronavirus) and viral load (for a paramyxovirus). The drug target is shown to include a subset of the protein 14-3-3 within a transient host multi-protein complex containing components implicated in viral lifecycles and in innate immunity. This multi-protein complex is modified upon viral infection and largely restored by drug treatment. Our findings suggest a new clinical therapeutic strategy for early treatment upon upper respiratory viral infection to prevent progression to lower respiratory tract or systemic disease.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.17.426875v4" target="_blank">A Pan-respiratory Antiviral Chemotype Targeting a Host Multiprotein Complex</a>
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<li><strong>Cold Atmospheric Helium Plasma In The Post-Covid Era: A Promising Tool For The Disinfection Of Silicone Endotracheal Prostheses</strong> -
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<div>
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The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a high prevalence of laryngotracheal stenosis. The endoluminal tracheal prostheses used to treat this condition are made of medical-grade silicone (MGS). Despite their excellent properties, the main limitation of these prostheses is the formation of a polymicrobial biofilm on their surfaces that interacts with the underlying mucosa, causing local inflammation and interfering with the local healing process, ultimately leading to further complications in the clinical scenario. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) shows antibiofilm properties on several microbial species. The present study evaluated the inhibitory effect of CAP on multispecies biofilms grown on MGS surfaces. In addition to the MGS characterization before and after CAP exposure, the cytotoxicity of CAP on immortalized human bronchial epithelium cell line (BEAS-2B) was evaluated. The aging time test reported that CAP could temporarily change the MGS surface wetting characteristics from hydrophilic (80.5 degrees) to highly hydrophilic (< 5 degrees). ATR-FTIR shows no significant alterations in the surficial chemical composition of MGS before and after CAP exposure for 5 min. A significant log reduction of viable cells in mono-species biofilms (log CFU/mL) of C. albicans, S. aureus, and P. aeruginosa (0.636, 0.738, and 1.445, respectively) were detected after CAP exposure. Multi-species biofilms exposed to CAP showed significant viability reduction for C. albicans and S. aureus (1.385 and 0.831, respectively). The protocol was not cytotoxic to BEAS-2B. It could be concluded that CAP can be a simple and effective method to delay the multi-species biofilm formation inside the endotracheal prosthesis.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.10.570744v1" target="_blank">Cold Atmospheric Helium Plasma In The Post-Covid Era: A Promising Tool For The Disinfection Of Silicone Endotracheal Prostheses</a>
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</div></li>
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<li><strong>CITY LEADERSHIP IN PARA-DIPLOMACY: DRIVERS OF JAKARTA’S INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN ADDRESSING COVID-19 PANDEMIC</strong> -
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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all the world’s aspects, including the interactions among governments. While some either chose to conflict with others or overlooked the pandemic, the rest attempted to collaborate in addressing the new global threat. Mega-cities in many countries were the most suffering regions due to the enormous virus-confirmed cases, deaths, and economic declines, intertwining with other urban issues. As the largest city in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, Jakarta also experienced an unprecedented crisis. However, apart from the efforts to tackle the crisis at home, the city showed its international engagement in addressing the issue together with other world cities as its para-diplomacy. This research aimed to answer the driving factors encouraging the city for such engagement. This research employed the qualitative method with descriptive analysis and the city leadership theory proposed by Rapoport, Acuto, and Grcheva. This research found that Jakarta’s international engagement in addressing the pandemic as the city leadership action was driven by the role of city leader, decentralization and global city networking, and the regional COVID-19 policies and internet representing three elements in the theory: actor, structures, and tools. This paper argues that cities within the global city networking have demonstrated their stronger role during the pandemic, providing opportunities for nation branding by regional initiatives in handling the pandemic in addition to state foreign policy. As cities have been more consolidated within the networks, seeing the city leadership in responding to global issues merits attention among scholars.
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</div>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/6f3j5/" target="_blank">CITY LEADERSHIP IN PARA-DIPLOMACY: DRIVERS OF JAKARTA’S INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN ADDRESSING COVID-19 PANDEMIC</a>
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<li><strong>Restoring Protein Glycosylation with GlycoShape</strong> -
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During the past few years we have been witnessing a revolution in structural biology. Leveraging on technological and computational advances, scientists can now resolve biomolecular structures at the atomistic level of detail by cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and predict 3D structures from sequence alone by machine learning (ML). One technique often supports the other to provide the view of atoms in molecules required to capture the function of molecular machines. An example of the extraordinary impact of these advances on scientific discovery and on public health is given by how structural information supported the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines based on the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein. Yet, none of these new technologies can capture the details of the dense coat of glycans covering S, which is responsible for its natural, biologically active structure and function and ultimately for viral evasion. Indeed, glycosylation, the most abundant post-translational modification of proteins, is largely invisible through experimental structural biology and in turn it cannot be reproduced by ML, because of the lack of data to learn from. Molecular simulations through high-performance computing (HPC) can fill this crucial information gap, yet the computational resources, the users skills and the long timescales involved limit applications of molecular modelling to single study cases. To broaden access to structural information on glycans, here we introduce GlycoShape (https://glycoshape.org) an open access (OA) glycan structure database and toolbox designed to restore glycoproteins to their native functional form by supplementing the structural information available on proteins in public repositories, such as the RCSB PDB (www.rcsb.org) and AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/), with the missing glycans derived from over 1 ms of cumulative sampling from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The GlycoShape Glycan Database (GDB) currently counts over 435 unique glycans principally covering the human glycome and with additional structures, fragments and epitopes from other eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms. The GDB feeds into Re-Glyco, a bespoke algorithm in GlycoShape designed to rapidly restore the natural glycosylation to protein 3D structures and to predict N-glycosylation occupancy, where unknown. Ultimately, integration of GlycoShape with other OA protein structure databases can provide a much needed step-change in scientific discovery, from the structural and functional characterization of the active form of biomolecules, all the way down to pharmacological applications and drug discovery.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.11.571101v1" target="_blank">Restoring Protein Glycosylation with GlycoShape</a>
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<li><strong>Online holistic program to foster health amongst students: a pilot study in a Portuguese University during COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, several preventive mental health interventions took place to increase the psychological well-being of university students due to the high levels of stress, anxiety and negative emotions experienced in that period. This context reinforced the role of universities in supporting students and preventing the mental health risk factors they faced. In this context a multidisciplinary team of professionals (psychologists, nurses, nutritionists, and artists) in the Portuguese Catholic University, gathered efforts and developed an holistic intervention program for university students based on a mind and body integrated approach. This program of 8 online sessions aims to improve students’ resilience to the psychosocial consequences of COVID-19 pandemic and promote their wellbeing. The twenty university students that participated in this pilot study reported that this intervention improved their emotional self-awareness, their ability to apply self-care strategies, as well as they believed it promoted healthier lifestyle changes. These findings suggest that this program consists in an innovative approach with the potential to promote the psychological health and well-being of university students in adverse circumstances.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/a2f5y/" target="_blank">Online holistic program to foster health amongst students: a pilot study in a Portuguese University during COVID-19 pandemic</a>
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<li><strong>Virological characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 JN.1 variant</strong> -
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The SARS-CoV-2 BA.2.86 lineage, first identified in August 2023, is phylogenetically distinct from the currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB lineages, including EG.5.1 and HK.3. Comparing to XBB and BA.2, BA.2.86 carries more than 30 mutations in the spike (S) protein, indicating a high potential for immune evasion. BA.2.86 has evolved and its descendant, JN.1 (BA.2.86.1.1), emerged in late 2023. JN.1 harbors S:L455S and three mutations in non-S proteins. S:L455S is a hallmark mutation of JN.1: we have recently shown that HK.3 and other "FLip" variants carry S:L455F, which contributes to increased transmissibility and immune escape ability compared to the parental EG.5.1 variant. Here, we investigated the virological properties of JN.1.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.08.570782v1" target="_blank">Virological characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 JN.1 variant</a>
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<li><strong>Distance to Vaccine Sites is Associated with Lower COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake</strong> -
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COVID-19 remains a leading cause of mortality in the U.S., despite widespread availability of vaccines. Conventional wisdom ties failure to vaccinate primarily to vaccine-skeptic beliefs (e.g., conspiracy theories, partisanship). Yet in this research, we find that vaccination is also hindered by travel distance to vaccine sites (a form of friction, or structural barriers). In study 1, Californians living farther from vaccine sites had lower vaccination rates, and this effect held regardless of partisanship. In study 2, Chicago zip codes saw an uptick in vaccination following vaccine site opening. These results proved robust in multiverse analyses accounting for a wide range of covariates, outcomes, and distance indicators. COVID-19 vaccination is hampered not just by vaccine hesitancy, but also structural barriers like distance. Efforts to boost vaccination could benefit from minimizing friction.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/mux5s/" target="_blank">Distance to Vaccine Sites is Associated with Lower COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake</a>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IMMUNERECOV CONTRIBUTES TO IMPROVEMENT OF RESPIRATORY AND IMMUNOLOGICAL RESPONSE IN POST-COVID-19 PATIENTS.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long Covid19; Dietary Supplements; Respiratory Tract Infections; Inflammation <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Dietary Supplement: Nutritional blend (ImmuneRecov). <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Federal University of São Paulo <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study on Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome in Improvement of COVID-19 Rehabilitated Patients by Respiratory Training</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19, Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome, Dyspnea, Incentive Spirometer <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: breathing training <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Tri-Service General Hospital <br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Physical Activity Coaching in Patients With Post-COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-COVID-19 Syndrome <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Self-monitoring; Behavioral: Goal setting and review; Behavioral: Education; Behavioral: Feedback; Behavioral: Contact; Behavioral: Exercise; Behavioral: Report; Behavioral: Social support; Behavioral: Group activities; Behavioral: World Health Organization recommendations for being physically active <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Alcala; Professional College of Physiotherapists of the Community of Madrid <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ensitrelvir for Viral Persistence and Inflammation in People Experiencing Long COVID</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID; Post Acute Sequelae of COVID-19; Post-Acute COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Ensitrelvir; Other: Placebo <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Timothy Henrich; Shionogi Inc. <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Low-intensity Aerobic Training Associated With Global Muscle Strengthening in Post-COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Procedure: muscle strengthening <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Centro Universitário Augusto Motta <br/><b>Completed</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Intravenous Immunoglobulin Replacement Therapy for Persistent COVID-19 in Patients With B-cell Impairment</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Immunoglobulins <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Jaehoon Ko <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Effect of Inhaled Hydroxy Gas on Long COVID Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: Hydroxy gas <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Oxford Brookes University <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Community Care Intervention to Decrease COVID-19 Vaccination Inequities</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Vaccination <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Community Health Worker Intervention to Enhance Vaccination Behavior (CHW-VB) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: RAND; Clinical Directors Network; National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>PROmotion of COVID-19 BOOSTer VA(X)Ccination in the Emergency Department - PROBOOSTVAXED</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Vaccine Messaging; Behavioral: Vaccine Acceptance Question <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of California, San Francisco; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID); Pfizer; Duke University; Baylor College of Medicine; Thomas Jefferson University <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluating a Comprehensive Multimodal Outpatient Rehabilitation Program for PASC Program to Improve Functioning of Persons Suffering From Post-COVID Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-Acute COVID-19; Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome; Post-Acute COVID-19 Infection; Long COVID; Long Covid19; Dyspnea; Orthostasis; Cognitive Impairment <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: Comprehensive Rehabilitation; Other: Augmented Usual Care <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Pennsylvania; Medical College of Wisconsin; National Institutes of Health (NIH) <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Multilevel Intervention of COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake Among Latinos</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Vaccine Hesitancy <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Multilevel Intervention <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: San Diego State University <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Stem Cell Study for Long COVID-19 Neurological Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: Stem Cell <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Charles Cox; CBR Systems, Inc. <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pursuing Reduction in Fatigue After COVID-19 Via Exercise and Rehabilitation (PREFACER): A Randomized Feasibility Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long-COVID; Long Covid19; Post-COVID-19 Syndrome; Post-COVID Syndrome; Fatigue <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: COVIDEx <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Lawson Health Research Institute; Western University <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
|
||||
<ul>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An ncRNA transcriptomics-based approach to design siRNA molecules against SARS-CoV-2 double membrane vesicle formation and accessory genes</strong> - CONCLUSION: Our novel in silico pipeline integrates effective methods from previous studies to predict and validate siRNA molecules, having the potential to inhibit viral replication pathway in vitro. In total, this study identified 17 highly specific siRNA molecules targeting NSP3, 4, and 6 and accessory genes ORF3a, 7a, 8, and 10 of SARS-CoV-2, which might be used as an additional antiviral treatment option especially in the cases of life-threatening urgencies.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Elevated peripheral levels of receptor-interacting protein kinase 1 (RIPK1) and IL-8 as biomarkers of human amyotrophic lateral sclerosis</strong> - Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating fatal neurodegenerative disease with no cure. Receptor-interacting protein kinase 1 (RIPK1) has been proposed to mediate pathogenesis of ALS. Primidone has been identified as an old drug that can also inhibit RIPK1 kinase. We conducted a drug-repurposing biomarker study of primidone as a RIPK1 inhibitor using SOD1^(G93A) mice and ALS patients. SOD1^(G93A) mice treated with primidone showed significant delay of symptomatic onset and improved…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Development of iminosugar-based glycosidase inhibitors as drug candidates for SARS-CoV-2 virus via molecular modelling and in vitro studies</strong> - We developed new iminosugar-based glycosidase inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2. Known drugs (miglustat, migalastat, miglitol, and swainsonine) were chosen as lead compounds to develop three classes of glycosidase inhibitors (α-glucosidase, α-galactosidase, and mannosidase). Molecular modelling of the lead compounds, synthesis of the compounds with the highest docking scores, enzyme inhibition tests, and in vitro antiviral assays afforded rationally designed inhibitors. Two highly active…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Enhancement efficiency delivery of antiviral Molnupiravir-drug via the loading with self-assembly nanoparticles of pycnogenol and cellulose which are decorated by zinc oxide nanoparticles for COVID-19 therapy</strong> - The target of the study is to modify the efficiency of Molnupiravir-drug (MOL) for COVID-19 therapy via the rearrangement of the building engineering of MOL-drug by loading it with self-assembly biomolecules nanoparticles (NPs) of pycnogenol (Pyc) and cellulose (CNC) which are decorated by zinc oxide nanoparticles. The synthesis and characterization of the modified drug are performing successfully, the loading and release process of the MOL drug on a nano surface is measured by UV-Vis…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Combating DC-SIGN-mediated SARS-CoV-2 dissemination by glycan-mimicking polymers</strong> - Many viruses exploit the human C-type lectin receptor dendritic cell-specific ICAM-3 grabbing nonintegrin (DC-SIGN) for cell entry and virus dissemination. An inhibition of DC-SIGN-mediated virus attachment by glycan-derived ligands has, thus, emerged as a promising strategy toward broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutics. In this contribution, several cognate fragments of oligomannose- and complex-type glycans grafted onto a poly-l-lysine scaffold are evaluated as polyvalent DC-SIGN ligands. The…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Discovery of High Affinity Cyclic Peptide Ligands for Human ACE2 with SARS-CoV-2 Entry Inhibitory Activity</strong> - The development of effective antiviral compounds is essential for mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Entry of SARS-CoV-2 virions into host cells is mediated by the interaction between the viral spike (S) protein and membrane-bound angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on the surface of epithelial cells. Inhibition of this viral protein-host protein interaction is an attractive avenue for the development of antiviral molecules with numerous spike-binding molecules generated to…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Molybdenum Nanodots for Acute Lung Injury Therapy</strong> - Acute respiratory disease syndrome (ARDS) is a common critical disease with high morbidity and mortality rates, yet specific and effective treatments for it are currently lacking. ARDS was especially apparent and rampant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Excess reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and an uncontrolled inflammatory response play a critical role in the disease progression of ARDS. Herein, we developed molybdenum nanodots (MNDs) as a functional nanomaterial with ultrasmall size,…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Levocetrizine attenuates cyclophosphamide-induced lung injury through inhibition of TNF-α, IL-1β, TGF-β and MMP-9</strong> - Cyclophosphamide (CP) is an antineoplastic drug commonly used worldwide. Despite its spread, it causes fatal organ toxicity. Lung toxicity is a serious side effect of CP. Actually, in the past three years the world has been facing an un-predicted crisis following COVID-19 pandemic and the associated high-mortality rates attributed to respiratory distress. Accordingly; this study aimed to probe the potential prophylactic role of levocetrizine against CP-induced lung injury. Animals were allocated…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Peroxides Derivatives as SARS-CoV-2 Entry Inhibitors</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the cause of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Host cell invasion is mediated by the interaction of the viral spike protein (S) with human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) through the receptor-binding domain (RBD). In this work, bio-layer interferometry (BLI) was used to screen a series of fifty-two peroxides, including aminoperoxides and bridged 1,2,4 - trioxolanes (ozonides) classes, with the aim of…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bile acids and bile acid activated receptors in the treatment of Covid-19</strong> - Since its first outbreak in 2020, the pandemic caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused the death of almost 7 million people worldwide. Vaccines have been fundamental in disease prevention and to reduce disease severity especially in patients with comorbidities. Nevertheless, treatment of COVID-19 has been proven difficult and several approaches have failed to prevent disease onset or disease progression, particularly in patients with comorbidities….</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Antimicrobial activity of silver-copper coating against aerosols containing surrogate respiratory viruses and bacteria</strong> - The transmission of bacteria and respiratory viruses through expelled saliva microdroplets and aerosols is a significant concern for healthcare workers, further highlighted during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. To address this issue, the development of nanomaterials with antimicrobial properties for use as nanolayers in respiratory protection equipment, such as facemasks or respirators, has emerged as a potential solution. In this study, a silver and copper nanolayer called SakCu® was deposited on one…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An ACE2 decamer viral trap as a durable intervention solution for current and future SARS-CoV</strong> - The capacity of SARS-CoV-2 to evolve poses challenges to conventional prevention and treatment options such as vaccination and monoclonal antibodies, as they rely on viral receptor binding domain (RBD) sequences from previous strains. Additionally, animal CoVs, especially those of the SARS family, are now appreciated as a constant pandemic threat. We present here a new antiviral approach featuring inhalation delivery of a recombinant viral trap composed of ten copies of angiotensin-converting…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Variant-Specific Serum Antibody Post-Vaccination Utilizing Immortalized Human Hepatocyte-Like Cells (HLC) to Assess Development of Immunity</strong> - CONCLUSION: HLC, along with AT-2 cells, provides a useful platform to study the development of neutralizing antibodies post-vaccination. Vaccination with the 3 available vaccines all elicited neutralizing serum antibodies that inhibited binding of each of the variant spike proteins to both AT-2 and HLC cells. This study suggests that inhibition of spike binding to target cells may be a more useful technique to assess immunity than gross quantitation of antibody.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Quercetin improves and protects Calu-3 airway epithelial barrier function</strong> - Introduction: In light of the impact of airway barrier leaks in COVID-19 and the significance of vitamin D in COVID-19 outcomes, including airway barrier protection, we investigated whether the very common dietary flavonoid quercetin could also be efficacious in supporting airway barrier function. Methods: To address this question, we utilized the widely used airway epithelial cell culture model, Calu-3. Results: We observed that treating Calu-3 cell layers with quercetin increased…</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Main and papain-like proteases as prospective targets for pharmacological treatment of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2</strong> - The pandemic caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 led to a global crisis in the world healthcare system. Despite some progress in the creation of antiviral vaccines and mass vaccination of the population, the number of patients continues to grow because of the spread of new SARS-CoV-2 mutations. There is an urgent need for direct-acting drugs capable of suppressing or stopping the main mechanisms of reproduction of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Several studies have shown that the successful…</p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<title>13 December, 2023</title>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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||||
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
|
||||
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
|
||||
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
|
||||
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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||||
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
|
||||
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
|
||||
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
|
||||
<ul>
|
||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Can Guatemalans Save Their Democracy?</strong> - Months after the election, President-elect Bernardo Arévalo’s path to taking office remains uncertain. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/can-guatemalans-save-their-democracy">link</a></p></li>
|
||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How Hamas Used Sexual Violence on October 7th</strong> - Physicians for Human Rights Israel issued a report collecting evidence of sexual and gender-based violence. One of its authors lays out their findings. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-hamas-used-sexual-violence-on-october-7th">link</a></p></li>
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||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Looking for a Greener Way to Fly</strong> - The Treasury Department is about to announce tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel, which raises the question: What fuels are actually “sustainable”? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/looking-for-a-greener-way-to-fly">link</a></p></li>
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||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Colorado Reconsiders Letting Trump on the Ballot</strong> - A Colorado Supreme Court case is one of several considering whether Trump should be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment, but it has proceeded the furthest. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/colorado-reconsiders-letting-trump-on-the-ballot">link</a></p></li>
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||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The War in Gaza Has Been Deadly for Journalists</strong> - The president of the Committee to Protect Journalists explains why Israel’s military campaign has led to an unprecedented number of deaths among members of the press in just two months. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-war-in-gaza-has-been-deadly-for-journalists">link</a></p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
|
||||
<ul>
|
||||
<li><strong>Why we still underestimate what groups like Hamas are capable of</strong> -
|
||||
<figure>
|
||||
<img alt="Workers in yellow vests stand under a destroyed building." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Hpuacpm6_v29kLHIDCdHyQmYDMY=/184x0:3117x2200/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72958457/1724428590.0.jpg"/>
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||||
<figcaption>
|
||||
Rescue workers at a police station that was destroyed after a battle between Israeli troops and Hamas militants on October 8, 2023, in Sderot, Israel. | Amir Levy/Getty Images
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||||
</figcaption>
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||||
</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Two decades after 9/11, extremist groups continue to pull off surprise attacks. Why?
|
||||
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ge8Gfy">
|
||||
On August 6, 2001, George W. Bush was given what may be the most infamous daily intelligence brief ever received by a US president. <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/pdb8-6-2001.pdf">It was titled</a> “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” and it included details on the activities of al-Qaeda operatives in the US, including threats to hijack US aircraft. In response, Bush did virtually nothing. And then, a little over a month later, those predictions came stunningly true with the 9/11 attacks.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="chGOzG">
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||||
Bush would not be the last leader to ignore such a warning. Decades into the “war on terror,” it’s clear that political leaders, as well as some of the world’s most powerful militaries and intelligence, still underestimate the ability and ambition of extremist militant groups to carry out large-scale attacks. There have now been three major instances of such failures in the past decade.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wjYD68">
|
||||
Multiple news outlets, including the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html">New York Times</a> and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-27/ty-article/.premium/chilling-warnings-picked-up-by-israeli-intelligence-months-before-october-7-massacre/0000018c-1261-dd2e-a5ae-d36ba6240000?lts=1702055396430">Haaretz</a>, have now reported that Israeli intelligence agencies had provided officials with extraordinary details about the plans for what became the October 7 attack more than a year before it was carried out. Just a day before the attack, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/politics/us-intelligence-warnings-potential-gaza-clash-days-before-attack/index.html">CIA reported unusual activity</a> by Hamas in Gaza, suggesting an imminent military operation. Hamas militants reportedly trained for the attack in all but plain sight less than a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/12/middleeast/hamas-training-site-gaza-israel-intl/index.html">mile from the Israeli border</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hFk1KU">
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Yet Israeli officials appear to have dismissed these warnings, believing the group had scaled back its military ambitions to the occasional rocket barrage. Instead of reinforcing the border with Gaza, they chose to focus Israel’s military assets on other threats, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the increasingly restive <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080034/west-bank-israel-palestinians">West Bank</a>. Ultimately, some 1,200 Israelis would pay for this miscalculation with their lives, as would thousands more Palestinian civilians in the war that has followed.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ioB6SY">
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But the October 7 attack was far from the first instance of this kind of strategic surprise from an extremist militant group in recent years. In 2014, the terrorist group then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began taking over towns in western Iraq. Even after the group had seized the city of Fallujah, the site of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq War, President Barack Obama felt comfortable using a flip sports metaphor to dismiss ISIS as an amateur imitation of al-Qaeda. “If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/27/going-the-distance-david-remnick?_sp=d4faf83a-8438-4261-a556-23c97c243c30.1702056777987">he told the New Yorker</a> that January.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FcILbO">
|
||||
Six months later, the “jayvees” had taken over Mosul, Iraq’s largest city, were <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/10/world/meast/isis-threat/index.html">threatening</a> Baghdad, and had proclaimed the establishment of a “caliphate” that, at its height, would control a territory the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/09/12/heres-how-the-islamic-state-compares-to-real-states/">size of Great Britain</a>. The US launched a military intervention to defeat the group in Iraq and eventually in Syria as well. US troops remain in both countries today — as does ISIS, which is <a href="https://apnews.com/article/islamic-state-fighters-syria-iraq-875d5ee8a0978f3b28aeec210b33cd5f">still active</a>, albeit much diminished.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y5khIf">
|
||||
In August 2021, the world was stunned again as the Taliban marched into Kabul, meeting almost no resistance as an Afghan state <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022">propped up with tens of billions of dollars in American funding</a> collapsed and US personnel — along with thousands of Afghans — scrambled to evacuate.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D0mHCa">
|
||||
While an eventual Taliban victory was not shocking in itself — the group had been steadily gaining territory in the lead-up to a planned US troop withdrawal — few expected it to happen so rapidly. A month before the withdrawal, President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/#:~:text=Once%20that%20agreement%20with%20the,would%20you%20have%20them%20stay%3F">told reporters </a>at the White House that he trusted “the capacity of the Afghan military” and said he believed that the Afghan leaders “clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place.” He made these statements despite increasingly dire warnings from US intelligence agencies that the Afghan military <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/afghanistan-biden-administration.html">was likely to collapse</a>. While senior administration officials later said these assessments were made with a low degree of confidence, the reality is that the evacuation of Kabul would descend into chaos, <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/hell-at-abbey-gate-chaos-confusion-and-death-in-the-final-days-of-the-war-in-afghanistan">including a bombing</a> that killed 13 US service members and more than 160 Afghans.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n4GqPN">
|
||||
These are three very different examples involving very different countries and militant groups. But in all these cases, extremist militant groups demonstrated previously unseen ambition and destructive capabilities. And in all three cases, governments ignored or dismissed warning signs of an impending catastrophe until it was too late.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Rp6H9C">
|
||||
Analysts and former intelligence agents who spoke with Vox say that a combination of cognitive biases, cultural prejudices, and bureaucratic inertia cause such warnings to be ignored time and again. But just because these problems are well-known does not mean they are easy to address. And given the terrible toll from fighting terror over the past two decades — in lives, dollars, and lost civil liberties, especially for Muslims — the price of success may be just as high as the cost of failure.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h3 id="edJpGL">
|
||||
The signal and the noise
|
||||
</h3>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tN7Il7">
|
||||
The problem of surprise isn’t a new one in intelligence-gathering, nor one unique to extremist groups. In 1962, RAND Corporation analyst Roberta Wohlstetter wrote a <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/pearl-harbor-warning-and-decision-roberta-wohlstetter/7499441?ean=9780804705981">classic account </a>of the intelligence failure leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. It concluded that, though the US military had collected abundant information suggesting an impending attack — including intercepts of decoded Japanese diplomatic cables that indicated preparations for a major rupture in US-Japan relations — they were hampered by diplomatic inertia and a failure to detect the relevant signals within all the noise.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||||
<img alt="A group of men walk across the pavement. Some are armed and wear camouflage. Some wear long tunics." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Hj4xK6I0KAnNX7v7ZElu79oz_Ao=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25158441/GettyImages_1235037294.jpg"/> <cite>Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</cite>
|
||||
<figcaption>
|
||||
Anas Haqqani, center right, gets a tour of the military vehicles captured by Taliban fighters after the militant group seized the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 31, 2021, in the wake of the American forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.
|
||||
</figcaption>
|
||||
</figure>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RCuBAk">
|
||||
“If our intelligence systems and all our other channels of information failed to produce an accurate image of Japanese intentions and capabilities, it was not for want of the relevant materials,” Wohlstetter wrote. “Never before have we had so complete an intelligence picture of the enemy.”
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x6nrAq">
|
||||
That scenario — too much information, not enough understanding of which bits are actually important — has occurred over and over again in the history of intelligence failures, from the outbreak of the Korean War to the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War to 9/11. Erik Dahl, a former naval intelligence officer and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, said that the high-tech surveillance tools available to today’s spies have, in some ways, only made the problem worse. According to a <a href="https://hir.harvard.edu/too-much-information/">2019 estimate</a>, the National Security Agency intercepted and stored an average of 1.7 billion emails, phone calls, and other communications every day.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lqIyn0">
|
||||
“We have too much information and not enough understanding of what’s going on in the world,” Dahl told Vox. As an example, he pointed to the failed 2009 Christmas Day “underwear bombing” attack. A <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/07/terror.report.findings/index.html">White House review</a> later concluded that intelligence analysts had collected enough data to disrupt the plot, but did not act on it because the information was “fragmentary and embedded in a large volume of other data.” The plot only failed because the bomb failed to detonate.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JjTTyl">
|
||||
The problem is compounded when the information counteracts a government’s political preferences. Famously, the George W. Bush administration cherry-picked only the information that supported its preferred narrative when it was building the case for invading Iraq. That was a case of political leaders hearing what they want in order to hype up a nonexistent threat. But political preferences can also cause them to ignore a real one.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i3mKk7">
|
||||
Obama had been elected in large part because of his pledge to take troops <em>out </em>of Iraq. Biden had vowed to bring America’s long and frustrating war in Afghanistan to a close. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government <a href="https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history">had argued</a> that the security threat from Hamas militants in Gaza was contained and the country could focus on other political priorities. Some Israeli officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html">even believed</a> there was an advantage to having a group like Hamas in power, as it reduced pressure on Israel to negotiate over the establishment of a Palestinian state. In each case, warnings of an impending attack were highly inconvenient for the government’s preferred course of action — and thus, tended to be downplayed.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PuAd2c">
|
||||
“Human beings are really, really good at shaping the facts to support their own opinions,” said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h3 id="tcMplc">
|
||||
The militant challenge
|
||||
</h3>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zkzxfX">
|
||||
Religiously motivated, underground, non-state militant groups also pose a particular challenge when state-run intelligence agencies try to analyze their intentions.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iP1IY6">
|
||||
“It is difficult for modern Western intelligence services and national security organizations, which are created and established largely to track other entities that look like themselves, to get a handle on the problem of subnation states or non-state actors,” said Dahl.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yL1OOs">
|
||||
Shiraz Maher, co-director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, pointed out that religiously motivated groups often act with a different set of cost-benefit concerns than secular ones. Hamas, for instance, was willing to carry out its attacks despite every indication that it would ultimately result in massive casualties for both its own fighters and Palestinian civilians. (Israel claims to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-military-civilian-ratio-killed-intl-hnk/index.html">have killed 5,000 of Hamas’s fighters</a>, while estimates are that more than twice as many Palestinian civilians have been killed. Even if the number of Hamas casualties has been exaggerated, it’s safe to say the group’s military losses have been substantial.)
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FUrEtj">
|
||||
“These are rational groups,” Maher said. “But at the same time, they’re rational from a completely different epistemic, sociological, philosophical, ideological premise.”
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4LE2s5">
|
||||
Extremist militant groups, by definition underground organizations that emphasize secrecy and demand fierce adherence to their cause, are also notoriously difficult for intelligence services to infiltrate, compared with traditional national governments. They also tend to issue a lot of threats, making it difficult to know which plots they actually intend on, or are capable of, carrying out.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||||
<img alt="Stone and concrete&nbsp;buildings, some damaged, line a dusty street with rubble along the margins. At the end of the street, billowing smoke rises. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IANuw1iSv07RSjPdCFRF2TnBBYc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25158447/GettyImages_502540448.jpg"/> <cite>Getty Images</cite>
|
||||
<figcaption>
|
||||
Smoke rises as the Iraqi forces’ operation aiming to re-seize Ramadi from ISIS continues in the el-Hoz neighborhood of Ramadi, Iraq, on December 26, 2015.
|
||||
</figcaption>
|
||||
</figure>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ALuFwr">
|
||||
Harding, who served at the CIA during the rise of ISIS, says that because extremist groups don’t look like traditional militaries, it’s easy to believe they lack the ability to carry out grandiose plans. “The intent is always there with these groups. Its capability is what you have to measure,” she said. “They look like a ragtag group of misfits. They don’t look like what we think of as a very capable fighting force.”
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h3 id="1h6fN4">
|
||||
Overestimating your allies
|
||||
</h3>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TUSXIx">
|
||||
In each of these cases, the failure was not only in predicting the actions of the terrorist group, but in the ability of the terrorists’ opponents to meet the threat once it materialized. In Iraq and in Afghanistan, the United States overestimated the ability of the militaries they had spent years and billions of dollars training and arming, and, perhaps even more important, the willingness of those militaries to fight back.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4T7AxX">
|
||||
“The psychology and motivation of a military force: That’s the most difficult thing to assess in intelligence,” said Robert Grenier, former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. “Anybody who tries to make a prediction about that isn’t very likely to be successful.”
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IeyG2J">
|
||||
Conversely, in the runup to the <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia-invasion-ukraine">war in Ukraine</a>, US intelligence agencies <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/04/us/politics/russia-ukraine-biden.html">gathered and publicized</a> what turned out to be stunningly accurate information about Russian intentions and battle plans, but failed to predict the capability and resolve of Ukrainian forces in meeting that threat.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1pH8mW">
|
||||
The October 7 Hamas attacks were different, in part because Hamas is a very different group. In addition to being a militant organization, it’s a governing authority that administers services for more than half a million people and has relations with multiple other states. It’s also engaged in what it views as a nationalist resistance fight, unlike groups such as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Yet Israel was caught off guard by Hamas’s assault, in part because in the months before October 7, Israel relocated military forces away from Gaza, counting on electronic surveillance, autonomous systems, and relatively small groups of troops to deal with whatever threats might emanate from the strip. The Israelis clearly viewed Hamas as a manageable problem, rather than the impending catastrophe it has turned out to be.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IBg6Ch">
|
||||
“I think it shows there’s clearly a kind of arrogance on the part of the state,” said Aki Peritz, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst now at American University.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h3 id="aUyHV1">
|
||||
An inconvenient threat
|
||||
</h3>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FSdqLB">
|
||||
In an essay for Foreign Affairs written before the October 7 attacks — but published shortly after — National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/system/files/pdf/2023/FA_102_6_ND2023_Sullivan_print_edition_version.pdf">described the Middle East </a>as “quieter than it has been for decades.” It’s a line likely to <a href="https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/10/27/23933817/israel-palestine-biden-policy-jake-sullivan">age about as well</a> as Obama’s junior varsity team quip about ISIS.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3VMnIf">
|
||||
Sullivan’s description might be wishful thinking, but the desire to focus on other priorities is hardly irrational. In recent years, leaders of both parties in the United States <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/10/donald-trump-middle-east-consequences/600610/">have</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-hastens-slow-burn-shift-away-overreach-overseas-n1278332">argued</a> that, with the threat from groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS vastly diminished, the country should shift the focus of its national security policy to “great power competition” with countries like <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia">Russia</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/china">China</a>.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cEey53">
|
||||
But some terrorism analysts say the attack by Hamas, a group largely written off as a serious threat by both Israel and the United States, shows that we may have been premature in dismissing the ability of groups that have threatened major attacks to actually turn those plans into reality.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ypahe0">
|
||||
“I do a lot of work with the US government, including with the intelligence community,” said Colin Clarke, a terrorism analyst with the Soufan Group, a security consultancy. “We’ve talked a lot about ISIS, about al-Qaeda and its respective affiliates, about far-right groups, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/10/9/21504910/qanon-conspiracy-theory-facebook-ban-trump">QAnon</a>, you name it. I hadn’t heard anybody mention the name ‘Hamas’ in about 10 years. It wasn’t on anybody’s radar.”
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MIqTQi">
|
||||
The October 7 attack, Clarke said, was a “paradigm shift in how we think about the capabilities of these groups. He added: “We’ve kind of written these guys off, because the big names are gone,” referring to globally famous terrorist leaders like Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n62GA2">
|
||||
Extremist militant groups certainly didn’t disappear with the decimation of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership and the destruction of ISIS’s caliphate. In many parts of the world, they are growing rapidly. West Africa, for instance, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/west-africa-sahel-terrorists-insecurity-mali-932b612a72bc368f9429736b27caf2ce">saw more than 1,800 terrorist attacks</a> resulting in nearly 4,600 deaths in just the first half of this year. But the prevailing assumption has been that these groups are mainly concerned with local conflicts rather than transnational attacks.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u7Wl0z">
|
||||
History has shown, however, that local threats don’t always stay local. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group’s Yemeni offshoot, was largely thought of as a local group until it <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/07/terror.report.findings/index.html">very nearly pulled off</a> the failed “underwear bomber” plot of 2009. ISIS, at its height, carried out numerous high-profile and deadly attacks in Europe.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dJEn6b">
|
||||
“We have batted zero in terms of correctly predicting when a group decides to shift from local to global,” said Katherine Zimmerman, a terrorism analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gffrcn">
|
||||
Going forward, Israel has vowed that its massive military response to October 7 will wipe out Hamas as a military threat, but these groups can almost <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/10/20/23919946/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-ground-invasion-strategy">never be eliminated entirely</a>. And senior officials, including Gen. Charles Q. Brown, America’s new top military commander, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-top-american-general-says-israeli-goal-of-toppling-hamas-a-pretty-large-order/">have expressed concerns</a> that the scale and brutality of the operation could end up creating more terrorists than it eliminates. Discussing the war in Gaza in a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-military-civilian-ratio-killed-intl-hnk/index.html">recent CNN interview</a>, Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton cited a study commissioned by retired US Gen. Stanley McChrystal which found that for every civilian killed, about 10 future fighters are recruited.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BEOYsr">
|
||||
Whatever soul searching goes on in intelligence agencies in the wake of these failures, the answer is clearly not to go straight back to a September 12, 2001, mindset. Western governments, including the United States, have very good reasons for wanting to turn the page on the war on terror. Over the past two decades, the desire to eliminate terrorist threats has led the US into long, bloody, and frustrating wars and a troubling expansion of the surveillance state and discrimination against Muslim Americans. And it’s worth remembering that for every successful attack or military offensive by an extremist militant group, there are many more that never come to fruition. It’s simply neither possible nor desirable for a society to be on full alert at all times. No one wants to go back to the days of color-coded terror alerts.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qw6fEg">
|
||||
But after three significant failures in the past decade to predict a major attack by an extremist militant group, it’s clearly a mistake to assume that these groups are no longer capable of surprising and outwitting the world’s most powerful and technologically advanced states, particularly when, as in the Israeli case, the preparations for that attack are happening in plain view of the state. And there’s no reason to assume it won’t happen again.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XZDxXx">
|
||||
“The curse of the intelligence officer is that we constantly get blamed for bringing the doom and gloom,” said Harding. “There’s a piece, I think, of human psychology, where you do not want to believe that something truly bad will happen.” That is one mistake that governments can’t afford to keep making.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cH1spm">
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nloEIw">
|
||||
</p></li>
|
||||
<li><strong>Tuberculosis kills more people than malaria or HIV. Why haven’t we found a vaccine?</strong> -
|
||||
<figure>
|
||||
<img alt="A doctor holds up a glowing X-ray sheet of a patient’s lungs in a darkened room of a TB clinic in Brooklyn, New York, on November 27, 2002." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/22VWeQgmH_P1w1rLECYNsVuPuuI=/0x0:2607x1955/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72958396/1667722.0.jpg"/>
|
||||
<figcaption>
|
||||
A doctor examines the X-rays of a tuberculosis patient. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
|
||||
</figcaption>
|
||||
</figure>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||||
Volunteers could speed up the race for a cure that works for adults as well as children.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GrOfjd">
|
||||
Few forces have killed off talented people before their time with quite the effectiveness of tuberculosis. There’s <a href="https://sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-death-of-anton-chekhov-told-in-proteins/">Chekhov</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/arts/chopin-heart-tuberculosis.html">Chopin</a>, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-orwell-wrote-1984-while-dying-tuberculosis-180962608/">Orwell</a>, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16463589">Kafka</a>, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/38/7/991/322145">Keats</a>, <a href="https://concordlibrary.org/special-collections/essays-on-concord-history/a-gentle-death-tuberculosis-in-19th-century-concord">Thoreau</a>, <a href="https://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2022/december/reimagining-how-emily-bronte-died-new-research/">Emily Brontë</a> — all brought down by the bacterium before they reached the age of 50.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TLZSYy">
|
||||
Their ranks are still growing. About <a href="https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/373828/9789240083851-eng.pdf?page=18">1.3 million people died of TB</a> in 2022, and while deaths were falling pre-pandemic, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tuberculosis-deaths-who?tab=chart&time=2010..2022">the Covid-19 era saw progress stall</a>. At this point, its annual death toll exceeds that of <a href="https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/number-of-deaths-due-to-hiv-aids">HIV/AIDS</a> or <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria">malaria</a>. The <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/prevention/bcg.htm">one vaccine against it</a> was created in 1921 and <a href="https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/bcg-vaccine-prevents-tuberculosis-in-young-children-but-not-adults/">does not protect adults or adolescents</a>.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wLDRRB">
|
||||
Yet the world has not mustered much in the way of resources against the disease. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/health/tuberculosis-tb-treatment-vaccine-diagnosis.html">The New York Times’s Stephanie Nolen</a> notes that $5.8 billion a year in treatment funds and $1 billion a year in research funds goes to fighting TB in low- and middle-income countries. By contrast, the equivalent figure for HIV/AIDS treatment is <a href="https://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/2023-unaids-global-aids-update-summary_en.pdf">about $20 billion annually</a>. That’s a worthy cause, of course, but considering its enormous death toll, TB has drawn the short straw.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h3 id="EUsl4B">
|
||||
Why is TB so neglected?
|
||||
</h3>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lZTDje">
|
||||
To some degree, the relative neglect of TB (including by me — I <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/6/18/23762606/artesunate-malaria-drug-history-vietnam-war">write</a> much <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23933962/malaria-vaccine-challenge-trials-drugs-tropical-disease-africa-research">more</a> about <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/7/18126123/gene-drive-malaria-convention-biological-diversity">malaria</a>) has to do with the scale of the challenge it poses.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9jo41U">
|
||||
TB is a hard disease to vaccinate against. While most vaccines target viruses, TB is a bacterium, and one with a strange lifecycle. In the vast majority of people it infects, it is “latent,” not causing symptoms or becoming contagious. The population of people carrying around latent TB infections is truly massive. A <a href="https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/54/3/1900655#sec-8">recent study compiling blood test estimates</a> found that about 24 percent of people on Earth have TB, with rates ranging from 12–14 percent in Europe and the Americas to over a third in Africa and Southeast Asia.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jv3HbP">
|
||||
A small share of people with these latent infections (from <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764738/">5 to 15 percent</a>) develop symptomatic, contagious cases. Often these are treatable with antibiotics — but a <a href="https://www.who.int/teams/global-tuberculosis-programme/tb-reports/global-tuberculosis-report-2022/tb-disease-burden/2-3-drug-resistant-tb">significant share of cases are drug-resistant</a>, <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00547-4/fulltext">access to antibiotics is uneven</a> in low-income countries, and <a href="https://www.who.int/teams/global-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-programmes/hiv/treatment/tuberculosis-hiv">mortality is particularly high in people with both HIV and TB</a>.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6hmkPl">
|
||||
These dynamics complicate the task for a vaccine. Ideally you would want it to both reduce the share of people with latent infections and reduce the odds that those infections become active. But we don’t have what’s called a “correlate of protection” for TB: a set of indicators of a person’s immune system that show they can resist initial infection, or can keep an infection from becoming active.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gOfi21">
|
||||
That makes testing treatments and vaccines tricky — and expensive. Testing needs to be truly massive in scale, given the relatively small share of people who gain new latent infections, or see infections go active, in a given year. M72, the most promising vaccine candidate as of right now, is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/06/30/tuberculosis-vaccine-trial-funding-gates/">currently undergoing a phase III trial</a> with a staggering 26,000 participants. It cost donors $550 million to fund it — more than half the annual research budget for TB. And there’s still a chance it won’t work, or even that the trial won’t pick up enough cases to show anything either way.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="maAcPM">
|
||||
If every promising TB vaccine costs more than half a billion dollars to test, we are not going to test very many. Even if M72 works, and I very much hope it does, it may still have limitations, as the existing vaccine for children does; and there may be other models that are cheaper to manufacture, or that prove more effective. We want to be testing those, too, and we won’t if testing them is prohibitively expensive.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h3 id="FH1mmU">
|
||||
How to make vaccine testing cheap
|
||||
</h3>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DUAqog">
|
||||
In 2016, the <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-vaccine-prevent-cholera-travelers">FDA approved a cholera vaccine</a> whose <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4872293/">phase III test only included 197 people</a>. That’s a tiny fraction of the 26,000 in the TB vaccine trial. This earlier trial was much, much cheaper but still resulted in a working, approved vaccine.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z7FtjB">
|
||||
What was the trick? The cholera vaccine was assessed using a “challenge” trial. 134 of the volunteers in the study actually ingested the cholera bacterium after receiving their vaccine or placebo. Those who got infected were, of course, given antibiotics, fluids, and other necessary treatments. No one got hurt. But their sacrifice enabled researchers to find an effective cholera vaccine for a fraction of the price of a field trial with thousands of people.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NaFV4Q">
|
||||
<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/9/21209593/coronavirus-vaccine-human-trials-explained">Human challenge trials</a> are a tested and reliable method, having been <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6402913/">used for decades with great success</a> to develop <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23933962/malaria-vaccine-challenge-trials-drugs-tropical-disease-africa-research">malaria</a> treatments and prophylactics. But <a href="https://www.1daysooner.org/tuberculosis">they have yet to be used on tuberculosis</a>. Developing a challenge approach takes time, and while that investment has been made for malaria and cholera, it hasn’t been for TB yet. That’s a shame, because they could provide a way around the huge numbers of people TB trials typically need to detect results. Instead of waiting months for a handful out of a group of thousands of participants to be exposed to TB, researchers could expose several dozen volunteers at once, see how much protection vaccines offer, and proceed from there.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LnTLr1">
|
||||
This may sound dangerous at first glance, but the risks are small. As with other challenge trials, the researchers would use a weakened or “attenuated” version of the pathogen and would provide immediate and comprehensive treatment. <a href="https://philarchive.org/archive/ROHETEv2#page=12">One paper examining the idea</a> estimated that a challenge trial would pose a risk of death of about 1 in 1,600, at the high end. For context, that’s less than half the death risk associated with working as a trucker for five years, and about one-sixth the danger of working as a logger for five years. We let people do those things for money because we value lumber and quick shipping. There’s something to be said for letting people take more modest risks to save lives.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ReDFTv">
|
||||
Luckily, several researchers are trying to develop models for tuberculosis challenges. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/205/7/1035/787804">One would use the 1921 vaccine itself as a substitute</a> for the bacterium, because the vaccine is already in essence an attenuated form of TB. Given that the vaccine is already broadly accepted, it seems hard to argue with the acceptability of this approach. Another option involves an <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10680849/#:~:text=Notably%2C%20the%20strain%20that%20contained,for%20a%20human%20challenge%20model.">artificial strain of tuberculosis that has been modified to rely on certain compounds</a> that can be withdrawn at any time, effectively offering a “kill switch” for the bacteria and allowing study researchers to fully cure participants at the end of the trial. Both of these could provide a pathway to challenge trials with extremely minimal risks for participants.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DKmybf">
|
||||
Helen McShane, Eric Rubin, Sarah Fortune, and the dozens of other researchers developing these models are, I think, doing some of the highest-impact work in global health right now. But they need help: regular funding, collaborative drug agencies, and a general public that’s supportive of letting volunteers contribute to the fight against tuberculosis this way.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mh77yO">
|
||||
<em>A version of this newsletter originally appeared in the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect"><em><strong>Future Perfect</strong></em></a><em> newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/future-perfect-newsletter-signup"><em><strong>Sign up here!</strong></em></a>
|
||||
</p></li>
|
||||
<li><strong>The philosophy of anarchism, explained</strong> -
|
||||
<figure>
|
||||
<img alt="A protester, dressed in black and carrying a black bag, tags a gray wall with the anarchy sign — a capital A overlapping a circle — in blue paint." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TpgbpMLQO7-rxJLKpxcuM4Q11DQ=/278x0:4722x3333/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72958367/1249487716.0.jpg"/>
|
||||
<figcaption>
|
||||
A protester in Marseille, France, tags a wall with the anarchy sign during a demonstration against pension reform. | Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
|
||||
</figcaption>
|
||||
</figure>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||||
Why it isn’t the same as chaos.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tYg9l1">
|
||||
When you think of anarchism, what comes to mind?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vPSXXw">
|
||||
Maybe you have some vague image of a punk rocker with the Circle-A symbol scratched into her jeans. Or some comic-book supervillain out to destroy the world that spurned him. Those are fun caricatures, but anarchism is actually a rich tradition of thought going back centuries, and it was at the center of utopian leftism until Marxism came along.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0nIxcH">
|
||||
Today, though, Marxism and other lefty ideologies don’t have nearly the purchase they once did, and it’s not entirely clear what, if anything, has filled that void. That lack is all the more interesting given our current moment, when so many conventional ways of doing and thinking about politics are being challenged.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IQ4qwe">
|
||||
So, in that spirit, I invited Sophie Scott-Brown onto <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area"><em>The Gray Area</em></a> to talk about the history of anarchism and its relevance today. She’s a research fellow at the University of St. Andrews and the director of Gresham College in London. She’s also the author of a new book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Colin-Ward-and-the-Art-of-Everyday-Anarchy/Scott-Brown/p/book/9780367569303"><em>Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy</em></a>, which is a fascinating look at the potential of anarchist ideas through the work of the well-known British writer.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oi8iIm">
|
||||
Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area"><em>The Gray Area</em></a> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/id1081584611">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/search/vox%20conversations">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6NOJ6IkTb2GWMj1RpmtnxP">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/vox-conversations">Stitcher</a>, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<div id="eeJhgc">
|
||||
|
||||
</div>
|
||||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="6BN4Us"/>
|
||||
<h4 id="OflXU1">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wnYFex">
|
||||
We’re all familiar with the stereotypes, but as someone who thinks seriously about anarchism, what does the term mean to you?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="SKMKzq">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ieBB5t">
|
||||
Yeah, I completely accept the stereotypes. Before you can get to any sort of serious anarchist philosophy, you have to do quite a lot of work deconstructing that for people. So here’s a working definition that might help. Anarchism, if you just take the very word itself, all it entails is a commitment to a lack of permanent authority.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dnnQK9">
|
||||
Now, what you then want to do imaginatively after that is wide open. Dare I say there’s a lot of propaganda out there suggesting there has to be chaos and disorder and violence and crime. But the concept itself simply says no permanent authority, and that’s about the one thing you can say that really connects up a lot of people who might use that term to describe their beliefs.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="fdEWPX">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xySgBk">
|
||||
I heard someone say once that anarchism is “democracy taken seriously.” I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I like it.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="fu6XOA">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sIFXBi">
|
||||
I think that’s precisely right. There’s a spectrum of anarchisms, so I’ll stress that before I get lots of complaints. However, I would actually argue, philosophically speaking, if you’re going to take that first notion that we started with — that anarchism is a commitment to an absence of permanent authority — that does refine your options a little bit more.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="GDdpMK">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VLyP8R">
|
||||
Is there a particular species of anarchism that you identify with?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="YThGcL">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NyX9YF">
|
||||
I mean, for me, if you want the philosophical roots of it, it comes very much from the Italian rhetorical tradition. So figures like Cicero going through to Vico, people who actually believed that the nuts and bolts of living together means communication, means dispute, means arguing, essentially, but arguing in such a way where the results are not catastrophic. So conflict, I think, is a feature of life. The challenge for us is to not make that conflict catastrophic.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CauYrV">
|
||||
So if you accept that conflict’s going to be a ubiquitous feature of life, you say to yourself, “Okay, well, how do I deal with conflict so that it’s not only not catastrophic, but actually creative?” We want to be ambitious with it. We want to know how to live in a world where our conflicts, our differences, our collisions, can be very creative. And that, to me, is the essence of what a full and most radical democratic culture would look like.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="Clevno">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GGvAok">
|
||||
Do you think it’s better to think of anarchism as a practice rather than an ideology?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="Jit7Xt">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="seJTfC">
|
||||
I certainly do. I think in some ways the big challenge anarchism gives to us these days, and why it’s so removed from where we’re at now but also why it’s going to be essential for the world that we’re going into, is that it comes away from this whole notion that politics always has to have an end game. It’s going to be a utopia. It’s going to be the ideal society. There was always an element of utopianism in anarchism, let’s not lie about that, but for me, I feel like we’re reaching times now where people have very little patience with utopian notions.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WaZj3n">
|
||||
I mean, sure, wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world without constant warfare? That kind of utopian thinking has a life and a place, but anything more specific, I think we’ve perhaps grown out of that. And therefore this idea of anarchy as a habit of mind or an attitude or a way of thinking and being in the world is useful for thinking about a politics of constant change. You’ve got to think about a politics which accepts that you’re never going to have the truth or the facts or the safe ground under your feet to know you’re right. So how do you live with an ability to adapt? How do you live with contingency? How do you live with the fact that you’re going to be involved in lots of different kinds of problems, probably simultaneously?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="MdYgb2">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Hm2znw">
|
||||
What would you say is the most promising anarchist idea that seems relevant to this political moment?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="CxHjiM">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pMkAGF">
|
||||
Decentralization, or the idea that permanent authority is the real bugbear. This is a bit provocative, but even things like codes of law and rights and things like that, they have their purpose and their reason, or they certainly did have their purpose and reason, but increasingly we’re looking at a world where we simply have to get better at taking more responsibility.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hTPbNI">
|
||||
Anything like government or systems of law, what are they? They’re actually heuristics. They’re shortcuts for an awful lot of moral and political discussion and reasoning, and people forget that they’ve compressed those discussions into a series of rules of thumb. And we are increasingly not teaching ourselves or troubling ourselves to have those complex conversations between ourselves, and so the tail is sort of wagging the dog now. We’re becoming very subject to all these systems and structures, which emerged at times that were so unbelievably different from how we’re living now and they’re not fit for purpose anymore, and so it’s no surprise that they’re cracking up around us.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="wTHd2v">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1A7WcY">
|
||||
It does seem like a lot of this comes down to whether or not one views human conflict as ultimately creative or ultimately destructive, whether it’s the beginning of cooperation or the end of conversation.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="fOg96l">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W1a3ZT">
|
||||
Well, you have the famous quote, it’s usually attributed to Bakunin, “To destroy and to build again.” There is a vein running through anarchism, which has often been part of the reason why it’s been associated with violence and violent insurrection and chaos and disorder and that sort of thing. But to destroy and to build again can be taken perfectly metaphorically. It’s this idea that actually destruction and creation are simultaneous things. Any act of creativity is simultaneously destroying some possibilities in favor of others.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="Shgr8A">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O2aQIl">
|
||||
Every political philosophy, either implicitly or explicitly, is built on a theory of human nature, and I guess I’m wondering what the anarchist view of human nature is. Or maybe I should ask what your view of human nature is because I’m sure there are many different views of human nature within the anarchist community.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="jkNVI4">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pp1Iu6">
|
||||
Well, those pesky anarchists, as you’re saying, have pretty much adopted all of the familiar views of human nature and managed to turn anarchism to their advantage in every single possible definition. So you do have those like Peter Kropotkin, the 19th-century Russian anarchist, who are very optimistic about human nature. They think we’re basically social beings and we’re being inhibited or prevented from doing that by these coercive, life-denying, authoritarian structures. Therefore, if we get rid of those, it’ll be an easy win. People will find it remarkably easy to be cooperative.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="due3Yk">
|
||||
But then you have people like Alex Comfort, for example, who is a 20th-century British anarchist who wrote around the 1940s and 1950s, and he took what he called a much more realistic view. He argued that humans aren’t going to be like that at all. They’re going to collide with each other constantly, so the game in town is how do you manage that conflict? If it’s inevitable, if you can’t be too optimistic about everyone’s social capacity, how can you distribute your society, distribute your decision-making power, distribute your economic power, so nobody ever gets enough to have a critical mass that can overtake everybody else?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V1fWeC">
|
||||
My view is a total copout, Sean. I think human nature is incredibly malleable. I think it can be many, many, many things. I think we’re like the ultimate actor in neutral, waiting for the next role.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="CrgnBn">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GQmeJi">
|
||||
Can you be an anarchist and still believe that there are fundamentally evil human beings?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="Bq3hxF">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7wIehj">
|
||||
Well, I personally don’t, which is sometimes really difficult to maintain. I don’t believe in evil. What I would say is people certainly have the capacity for it, a shocking capacity for it. And I’m not a full environmentalist in the sense that I don’t think that if only these people had a nice progressive education and lots of drama classes when they were young, everything would’ve been fine. It might’ve been. In many cases, it probably could have been, but actually we don’t quite know what that tipping point is. I would be happier calling it a capacity rather than anything more profound.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="0C1sci">
|
||||
Sean Illing
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</h4>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZY6mb2">
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I do think that human beings are pretty plastic and often we are as good or bad as the world allows us to be. I also believe that evil, for lack of a better word, is a real thing. And I say that as a secular person, not a religious person. And even if we constructed the most practical utopia ever, I think we would still need police and armies. Now, an anarchist might say that people can be wicked, but it’s power that makes them that way. I think there’s some truth there, but it also seems importantly incomplete. Some people are just wicked whether they have power or not. Would you disagree with that?
|
||||
</p>
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||||
<h4 id="pSLry1">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
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||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mr7mH9">
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||||
Well, it’s a big gamble to take, isn’t it? I have to ask myself, on balance, is the damage [done by] having things like a permanent police force or a judiciary system skewed in a particular historical social context? Does the damage outweigh the reality that these institutions can actually be the source of so many problems?
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||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="L1ubHh">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
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||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f2fzH3">
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||||
These aren’t easy questions, I get that. I would say that I agree with you that the vast majority of people are not “cruel and disordered” when they’re not governed. I guess I just think that some people are, and the problem is that it doesn’t take many cruel and disordered people to make life impossible for everyone else. And that to me is the crucial political problem, how to deal with that. And I’m not sure anarchy can or does, but I could be wrong.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="YSeiMY">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MpAagL">
|
||||
Let’s flip this upside down. We’re talking about that rare individual who is beyond all reasonable measure, but what we could talk about is all those other people. And I actually think they are really interesting, those other people. Who are they? We don’t quite know.
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</p>
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||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LXmc3M">
|
||||
But if we take the situation we have now where we have minorities on either end. We have a relative minority of people who are unbelievably kind, you’d call them saintly if you were religious, and then you have the tiny minority of people who we’ll call evil for want of any other word. And then you have this sort of spectrum of people in between the two.
|
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TOLR0N">
|
||||
These are always the really interesting people. They’re the people who are very unpredictable, and that’s wonderful in a way because you never know where they’ll go with a particular issue on a particular day. But they’ll be very responsive to a situational logic rather than some sort of deep ideological commitment to anything. And I think there’s enormous potential there, which is largely ignored or squandered.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NrW523">
|
||||
People really dismiss everyday sorts of intelligence and reasoning and logic, and because it’s dismissed, because we’re constantly trying to come up with these official measures of what we should be and who we should be, we actually miss that, half the time, we’re perfectly functional anarchists already.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="2rrXpk">
|
||||
Sean Illing
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qjkQgJ">
|
||||
There’s so much in anarchism that appeals to me, but I’m not sure it could ever work at scale. And yet you could pose that question about any political order. I fear that one of the lessons of the 20th and 21st centuries might be that humans are not especially equipped to live in large symbolic communities without material connections and shared ways of living. So maybe anarchism could work, but only in smaller, more localized ways?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<h4 id="p2mc3u">
|
||||
Sophie Scott-Brown
|
||||
</h4>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FqoQyj">
|
||||
I think that’s broadly right. This idea that you have to have anarchist nations or even anarchist unions, if you like, well, yes you could, but maybe let them take care of themselves. If they happen, they happen. But what might be more interesting is this notion of being intensely local while being simultaneously global. I’m trying not to use that old but very useful cliche, “Think global, act local,” but it’s got traction here.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZALriL">
|
||||
Let’s say, for example, that we accept that there are idealistic and ethical and practical reasons why it would be great to see more worker control of industrial democracy in our workplaces. Why is it that we have to retain these fairly doddery, very hierarchical structures of decision-making, which as we know even now are still not particularly diverse?
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="076dpo">
|
||||
We’re under so much pressure to keep educating people for longer and longer because now we’re told it’s a lifelong process of learning to keep abreast of everything in order to stay employed. Well, if you’re going to keep this highly educated population, are you honestly going to be surprised when they start getting very resentful about being treated like rube mechanicals in their workplaces? I don’t think we need to worry about anarchist nations or anything like that. A much more healthy approach is to start local by giving more workers more control over their lives and their democracy.
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fc4p6s">
|
||||
<em>To hear the rest of the conversation, </em><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/taking-anarchism-seriously/id1081584611?i=1000638168277"><em>click here</em></a><em>, and be sure to follow </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/thegrayarea">The Gray Area</a><em> on </em><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/id1081584611"><em>Apple Podcasts</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://podcasts.google.com/search/vox%20conversations"><em>Google Podcasts</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6NOJ6IkTb2GWMj1RpmtnxP"><em>Spotify</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/vox-conversations"><em>Stitcher</em></a><em>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.</em>
|
||||
</p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
||||
<ul>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Indian team has responsibility to take women’s cricket ahead: Harmanpreet Kaur</strong> - After a gap of nearly nine years, India will be playing a Test at home when they take on England in a one-off match here at the DY Patil Stadium</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Didn’t know how to come back after World Cup final loss but now motivated for ultimate prize: Rohit</strong> - “It wasn’t easy to digest but life moves on and it wasn’t easy to move on,” said Rohit, opening up for the first time since India lost to Australia</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Test series against India | It was a fair decision, says Chris Woakes on being left out</strong> -</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Gaza support | Cricket Australia expects Usman Khawaja to abide by rules</strong> - Khawaja sported messages on his boots conveying the sentiments “Freedom is a fundamental human right” and “All lives possess equal value,” both written in the hues of the Palestinian flag.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Champions League | Man United loses 1-0 to Bayern Munich; crashes out</strong> - Kingsley Coman scored in the 70th minute to knock Erik ten Hag’s Manchester United out of the Champions League</p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
||||
<ul>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Do justice to winter session in North Karnataka by taking up irrigation projects worth ₹5,700 crore in the region, Vijayendra tells government</strong> - The newly-appointed BJP State chief also requested incentives for sugarcane and grape growers, while criticising the Siddaramaiah government for increasing cattle feed prices.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Telangana | Congress Govt. to know burden of promises now: KTR</strong> - He observed that the party came to power by fooling people with impossible promises</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Parliament security breach: ‘My son’s act is condemnable’, says Manoranjan’s father in Mysuru</strong> - Mr. Devraj said they had voted for BJP MP from Mysuru Pratap Simha</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>U.S. has made great progress in further bolstering defence relations with India: Pentagon</strong> -</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Telangana ranked among the top in own tax revenue collections at 84.2% of overall tax collected</strong> - RBI’s report on state finances says general increase in own tax revenues will reduce dependence on Central devolutions</p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
||||
<ul>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Dozens wounded in Russian missile strikes on Kyiv</strong> - A total of 53 people have been hurt in the attacks, including six children, the mayor of Kyiv says.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Aid stalemate leaves Zelensky with little to show from US trip</strong> - The Ukrainian president failed to secure a breakthrough on more US aid during his third visit to Washington.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Russia’s new Black Sea naval base alarms Georgia</strong> - The Kremlin’s plans raise fears that EU-hopeful Georgia could be dragged into the war in Ukraine.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Aleksandar Vucic dominates Serbian election as vote nears</strong> - Critics say President Aleksandar Vucic is an autocrat, as his party seeks another election win.</p></li>
|
||||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Manchester United 0-1 Bayern Munich: Red Devils out of Europe with defeat by German champions</strong> - Manchester United fall to defeat by Bayern Munich at Old Trafford to exit the Champions League at the group stage.</p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
||||
<ul>
|
||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Blue Origin sure seems confident it will launch New Glenn in 2024</strong> - Does Jeff Bezos’s heavy-lift rocket really have a shot at launching next year? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1990649">link</a></p></li>
|
||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>E3 memory lane: Ars’ favorite moments from the show’s over-the-top past</strong> - The people, scenery, and oddities that made E3 part trade show, part theme park. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1990329">link</a></p></li>
|
||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Every homeopathic eye drop should be pulled off the market, FDA says</strong> - Eye drops are uniquely risky because the eye is an immune-privileged site. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1990624">link</a></p></li>
|
||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The future of Arrakis is at stake in latest trailer for Dune: Part Two</strong> - “This is a form of power that our world has not yet seen.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1990472">link</a></p></li>
|
||||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Broadcom ends VMware perpetual license sales, testing customers and partners</strong> - Already-purchased licenses can still be used but will eventually lose support. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1990440">link</a></p></li>
|
||||
</ul>
|
||||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
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