navan
/
Daily-Dose
mirror of https://github.com/navanchauhan/Daily-Dose.git
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Added daily report

This commit is contained in:
Navan Chauhan 2024-02-27 12:41:00 +00:00
parent 90b8f6d469
commit 36f6cd8241
3 changed files with 730 additions and 2 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

181
archive-covid-19/27 February, 2024.html Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,181 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="" xml:lang="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<meta content="pandoc" name="generator"/>
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
<title>27 February, 2024</title>
<style>
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
div.hanging-indent{margin-left: 1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;}
ul.task-list{list-style: none;}
</style>
<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>
<body>
<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Career Navigator: An online platform to streamline professional development and career education for graduate bioscientists</strong> -
<div>
Graduate professional development is a highly dynamic enterprise that prepares graduate students for personal and career success in a variety of fields, including the biosciences. National policies, funding awards, and institutional programs have generated myriad tools and services for graduate bioscience students, including new learning resources, events, connections to prospective employers, and opportunities to strengthen academic and professional portfolios. These interventions are welcome and have done much to enhance graduate bioscience training, but they may also be overwhelming for trainees. To streamline professional development and career education information for the bioscience graduate students at our institution, we tested a model where we built a centralized web portal of career development resources. Here we present our strategy and best practices for website design. We show data that students preferred a centralized online portal over other forms of resource communication; that programming, paired communication and environmental factors (e.g. remote learning and work as in the COVID-19 pandemic) combined to increase sustained engagement with the site; and that harnessing website analytics is an effective way to measure site utilization and generate insights on programming and resource development. This data, in turn, fits into broader priorities to evaluate interventions in graduate bioscience education.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.22.580689v1" target="_blank">Career Navigator: An online platform to streamline professional development and career education for graduate bioscientists</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Heterologous Prime-Boost with Immunologically Orthogonal Protein Nanoparticles for Peptide Immunofocusing</strong> -
<div>
Protein nanoparticles are effective platforms for antigen presentation and targeting effector immune cells in vaccine development. Encapsulins are a class of protein-based microbial nanocompartments that self-assemble into icosahedral structures with external diameters ranging from 24 to 42 nm. Encapsulins from Mxyococcus xanthus were designed to package bacterial RNA when produced in E. coli and were shown to have immunogenic and self-adjuvanting properties enhanced by this RNA. We genetically incorporated a 20-mer peptide derived from a mutant strain of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) into the encapsulin protomeric coat protein for presentation on the exterior surface of the particle. This immunogen elicited conformationally-relevant humoral responses to the SARS-CoV-2 RBD. Immunological recognition was enhanced when the same peptide was presented in a heterologous prime/boost vaccination strategy using the engineered encapsulin and a previously reported variant of the PP7 virus-like particle, leading to the development of a selective antibody response against a SARS-CoV-2 RBD point mutant. While generating epitope-focused antibody responses is an interplay between inherent vaccine properties and B/T cells, here we demonstrate the use of orthogonal nanoparticles to fine-tune the control of epitope focusing.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.24.581861v1" target="_blank">Heterologous Prime-Boost with Immunologically Orthogonal Protein Nanoparticles for Peptide Immunofocusing</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Biochemical characterization of naturally occurring mutations in SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase</strong> -
<div>
Since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, mutations in all subunits of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of the virus have been repeatedly reported. Although RdRp represents a primary target for antiviral drugs, experimental studies exploring the phenotypic effect of these mutations have been limited. This study focuses on the phenotypic effects of substitutions in the three RdRp subunits: nsp7, nsp8, and nsp12, selected based on their occurrence rate and potential impact. We employed nano-differential scanning fluorimetry and microscale thermophoresis to examine the impact of these mutations on protein stability and RdRp complex assembly. We observed diverse impacts; notably, a single mutation in nsp8 significantly increased its stability as evidenced by a 13 [deg]C increase in melting temperature, whereas certain mutations in nsp7 and nsp8 reduced their binding affinity to nsp12 during RdRp complex formation. Using a fluorometric enzymatic assay, we assessed the overall effect on RNA polymerase activity. We found that most of the examined mutations altered the polymerase activity, often as a direct result of changes in stability or affinity to the other components of the RdRp complex. Intriguingly, a combination of nsp8 A21V and nsp12 P323L mutations resulted in a 50% increase in polymerase activity. Additionally, some of the examined substitutions in the RdRp subunits notably influenced the sensitivity of RdRp to Remdesivir, highlighting their potential implications for therapeutic strategies. To our knowledge, this is the first biochemical study to demonstrate the impact of amino acid mutations across all components constituting the RdRp complex in emerging SARS-CoV-2 subvariants.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.24.581855v1" target="_blank">Biochemical characterization of naturally occurring mutations in SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Emotional Contagion in Scandinavia during the COVID-19 Public Health Crisis</strong> -
<div>
In this article we present the findings of social media analysis of the spread of misinformation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and outline how analyses of the psychological properties of a text can be used to optimize strategic messaging online. Our data used Twitter data, collected during the COVID-19 pandemic and analyzed using a suite of AI based analytical tools, which provided data for further empirical analysis. The analysis yielded insights related to the differences in the dynamics of the spread of misinformation within (and outside of) Scandinavian countries. Analysing this data enabled us to explore three hypotheses: (1) Misinformation will be associated with specific moral signatures, which will differ between Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian samples, (2) Levels of engagement will be associated with specific themes and moral concerns, which will differ between Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian samples, and (3) Within Scandinavia, similar unique signatures will be discernible at the country level, with Sweden driving significant differences. These specific results provide guidance for healthcare professionals responsible for communicating information and crafting messages that are more resonant with their target population and more generally demonstrate the ability for social media analysis to be useful in strategic decision making when going beyond focusing on engagement metrics or sentiment alone.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/9e5f7/" target="_blank">Emotional Contagion in Scandinavia during the COVID-19 Public Health Crisis</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Leveraging Social Media Data for Unobtrusive Measurement of Academics’ Well-Being</strong> -
<div>
Understanding and promoting researchers’ well-being is crucial for successful research outcomes and a thriving scientific community. Traditional well-being assessments can be resource-intensive, prompting the computational analysis of academic social networks as a promising alternative. It has been shown that sentiment analysis of social media text data can be used to infer well-being in the general population, but it is not known whether this approach is transferable to the specific subgroup of researchers. This proof-of-concept study addresses this research question by assessing the potential of scholarly communication in social media to provide insights into researchers’ emotional well-being using sentiment analysis. Therefore, we derived researchers’ emotional well-being from a dataset of more than 13 Million tweets from almost 16,000 psychology researchers, and utilized survey data from the COVID-19 pandemic for external validation of our results. Our aim was to confirm two hypotheses: lower well-being during the pandemic (H1) and a stronger impact on female researchers (H2). Using structural break analysis, the impact of the pandemic was found to be statistically significant for positive sentiments. A differential effect by gender was observed descriptively, but did not reach statistical significance. Results suggest that sentiment analysis of researchers’ tweets can provide insights into their well-being, but to a limited extent than in the general population. Exploratory analysis of cognitive well-being revealed that some, but not all PERMA+4 dimensions are prevalent in researchers’ social media posts. We discuss promising expansions of our approach and highlight practical implications for policymakers.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/957h8/" target="_blank">Leveraging Social Media Data for Unobtrusive Measurement of Academics’ Well-Being</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Deep plasma proteomics with data-independent acquisition: A fastlane towards biomarkers identification.</strong> -
<div>
Plasma proteomic is a precious tool in human disease research, but requires extensive sample preparation in order to perform in-depth analysis and biomarker discovery using traditional Data-Dependent Acquisition (DDA). Here, we highlight the efficacy of combining moderate plasma prefractionation and Data-Independent Acquisition (DIA) to significantly improve proteome coverage and depth, while remaining cost- and time-efficient. Using human plasma collected from a 20-patient COVID-19 cohort, our method utilises commonly available solutions for depletion, sample preparation, and fractionation, followed by 3 LC-MS/MS injections for a 360-minutes DIA run time. DIA-NN software was then used for precursor identification, and the QFeatures R package was used for protein aggregation. We detect 1,321 proteins on average per patient, and 2,031 unique proteins across the cohort. Filtering precursors present in under 25% of patients, we still detect 1,230 average proteins and 1,590 unique proteins, indicating robust protein identification. Differential analysis further demonstrates the applicability of this method for plasma proteomic research and clinical biomarker identification. In summary, this study introduces a streamlined, cost- and time-effective approach to deep plasma proteome analysis, expanding its utility beyond classical research environments and enabling larger-scale multi-omics investigations in clinical settings.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.581160v1" target="_blank">Deep plasma proteomics with data-independent acquisition: A fastlane towards biomarkers identification.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The COVID-19 pandemic era impact on the incidence of the custodial death, due to illness in 36 states and union territories of India-A comparison study (2017–2022)</strong> -
<div>
Abstract: Mahatma Gandhi said that “crime is due to diseased mind and jail should have an environment like hospitals for prisoner’s treatment and care”. A lot of research is carried out globally during COVID-19, on the well being of peoples staying outside the prisons, but very few large scale researches are available to know about the well being of the prisoners during COVID-19 era. The data is provided by the Prison Section of all the 36 States/UTs in prearranged Performa of the NCRB, through an application made by NCRB. A total of 11,289 custodial death occurred among the prisoners residing in various prisons of India, during the study period, out of which 9,406 (83.32 percent, Total-9406 (Obs-216, Mean-43.55, Std. Dev.- 68.87, Min-0, Max-401, Std. Err.- 4.69, 95% Conf. Interval of mean-34.31 -52.78) mortalities were attributed due to illness. Compared to year 2020, our study revealed that the COVID-19 year 2021 has attributed to largest (16.47 percent increased illness custodial death and 12.14 percent increased total mortalities) number of custodial death due to illness. The study revealed that during the study period, majority of the mortalities were due to heart diseases in prisoners (27.28 percent, Total-2566 (Obs-216, Mean-11.88, Std. Dev.- 19.30, Min-0, Max-123, Std. Err.- 1.31, 95% Conf. Interval of mean-9.29 -14.47). Cholera / Diarrhoea attributed to the least number of mortalities during the study period (0.21 percent, Total-20 (Obs-216, Mean-0.09, Std. Dev. - 0.40, Min-0, Max-4, Std. Err. - 0.03, 95% Conf. Interval of mean-.04 -.15). This six years of study revealed that most of the custodial death (42%), due to illness in prisoners of India was due to CVDs and pulmonary diseases. This study also revealed that 27% of custodial deaths due to illness were not clearly categorized. Honourable Justice Lokur, of Supreme Court of India, said in a landmark judgment, in 2013, that “The distinction made by the NCRB [National Crime Records Bureau] between natural and unnatural custodial deaths is not clear. For example, if a prisoner dies due to a lack of proper medical attention or timely medical attention, would that be classified as a natural custodial death or an unnatural custodial death?” The policymakers and decision-makers must think on the necessity of developing Prisoners care policies following the COVID-19 pandemic, in light of the findings of this research study.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6hncz/" target="_blank">The COVID-19 pandemic era impact on the incidence of the custodial death, due to illness in 36 states and union territories of India-A comparison study (2017–2022)</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Who has the flu? Early winter 2023-24 spread of flu and COVID-19</strong> -
<div>
Winter 2023-24 has seen an unusual confluence of a variety of respiratory illnesses, ranging from flu to RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) and COVID-19. Between December 21, 2023 and January 29, 2024, we surveyed 30,460 individuals aged 18 and older across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. We asked them if they had experienced an Influenza-like Illness (ILI) defined as experiencing a fever and cough, or a fever and sore throat, and/or if they had been diagnosed with COVID-19, over the previous month. Amongst those who responded yes to such questions, we asked them whether or not they had sought medical attention. In this report, we summarize our findings across a variety of demographic subgroups, including age, race, education, income, gender, and geography.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/wfx3g/" target="_blank">Who has the flu? Early winter 2023-24 spread of flu and COVID-19</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Prognostic factors for mortality, ICU, MIS-C and hospital admission due to SARS-CoV-2 in paediatric patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
ABSTRACT Background: There is a paucity of data on the factors associated with severe COVID-19 disease, especially in children. This systematic review and meta-analysis aim to identify the risk factors for acute adverse outcomes of COVID-19 within paediatric populations, using the recruitment setting as a proxy of initial disease severity. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed representing published evidence from the start of the pandemic up to 14 February 2022. Our primary outcome was the identification of risk factors for adverse outcomes, stratified by recruitment setting (community, hospital). No geographical restrictions were imposed. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology was used to evaluate the certainty in the body of evidence for each meta-analysis. In anticipation of significant clinical and methodological heterogeneity in the meta-analyses, we fitted logistic regression models with random effects. Findings: Our review identified 47 studies involving 94,210 paediatric cases of COVID-19. Infants up to 3 months were more likely to be hospitalised than older children. Gender and ethnicity were not associated with an increased likelihood of adverse outcomes among children within the community setting. Concerning comorbidities, having at least one pre-existing disease increased the odds of hospitalisation. Concerning BMI, underweight children and severely obese were noted to have an increased likelihood of hospital admission. The presence of metabolic disorders and children with underlying cardiovascular diseases, respiratory disorders, neuromuscular disorders and neurologic conditions were also more likely to be hospitalised. Concerning underlying comorbidities, paediatric hospitalised patients with congenital/genetic disease, those obese, with malignancy, cardiovascular diseases and respiratory disease were associated with higher odds of being admitted to ICU or ventilated. Interpretation: Our findings suggest that age, male, gender, and paediatric comorbidities increased the likelihood of hospital and ICU admission. Obesity, malignancy, and respiratory and cardiovascular disorders were among the most important risk factors for hospital and ICU admission among children with COVID-19. The extent to which these factors were linked to actual severity or where the application of cautious preventive care is an area in which further research is needed.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.23298451v1" target="_blank">Prognostic factors for mortality, ICU, MIS-C and hospital admission due to SARS-CoV-2 in paediatric patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Tixagevimab-cilgavimab (AZD7442) for the treatment of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 (DisCoVeRy): A phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Tixagevimab and cilgavimab (AZD7442) are two monoclonal antibodies developed by AstraZeneca for the pre-exposure prophylaxis and treatment of patients infected by SARS-CoV-2. Its effectiveness and safety in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 was not known at the outset of this trial. Methods DisCoVeRy is a phase 3, adaptive, multicentre, randomized, controlled trial conducted in 63 sites in Europe. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive placebo or tixagevimab-cilgavimab in addition to standard of care. The primary outcome was the clinical status at day 15 measured by the WHO seven-point ordinal scale. Several clinical, virological, immunological and safety endpoints were also assessed. Findings Due to slow enrolment, recruitment was stopped on July 1st, 2022. The antigen positive modified intention-to-treat population (mITT) was composed of 173 participants randomized to tixagevimab-cilgavimab (n=91) or placebo (n=82), 91.9% (159/173) with supplementary oxygen, and 47.4% (82/173) previously vaccinated at inclusion. There was no significant difference in the distribution of the WHO ordinal scale at day 15 between the two groups (odds ratio (OR) 0.93, 95%CI [0.54-1.61]; p=0.81) nor in any clinical, virological or safety secondary endpoints. In the global mITT (n=226), neutralization antibody titers were significantly higher in the tixagevimab-cilgavimab group/patients compared to placebo at day 3 (Least-square mean differences (LSMD) 1.44, 95% Confidence interval (CI) [1.20-1.68]; p &lt; 10-23) and day 8 (LSMD 0.91, 95%CI [0.64-1.18]; p &lt; 10-8) and it was most important for patients infected with a pre-omicron variant, both at day 3 (LSMD 1.94, 95% CI [1.67-2.20], p &lt; 10-25) and day 8 (LSMD 1.17, 95% CI [0.87-1.47], p &lt; 10-9), with a significant interaction (p &lt; 10-7 and p=0.01 at days 3 and 8, respectively). Interpretation There were no significant differences between tixagevimab-cilgavimab and placebo in clinical endpoints, however the trial lacked power compared to prespecified calculations. Tixagevimab-cilgavimab was well tolerated, with low rates of treatment related events.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.24302586v1" target="_blank">Tixagevimab-cilgavimab (AZD7442) for the treatment of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 (DisCoVeRy): A phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Global patterns of rebound to normal RSV dynamics following COVID-19 suppression</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Introduction Annual epidemics of respiratory synctial virus (RSV) had consistent timing and intensity between seasons prior to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (COVID-19). However, starting in April 2020, RSV seasonal activity declined due to COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) before re-emerging after relaxation of NPIs. We described the unusual patterns of RSV epidemics that occurred in multiple subsequent waves following COVID-19 in different countries and explored factors associated with these patterns. Methods Weekly cases of RSV from twenty-eight countries were obtained from the World Health Organisation and combined with data on country-level characteristics and the stringency of the COVID-19 response. Dynamic time warping and regression were used to describe epidemic characteristics, cluster time series patterns, and identify related factors. Results While the first wave of RSV epidemics following pandemic suppression exhibited unusual patterns, the second and third waves more closely resembled typical RSV patterns in many countries. Post-pandemic RSV patterns differed in their intensity and/or timing, with several broad patterns across the countries. The onset and peak timings of the first and second waves of RSV epidemics following COVID-19 suppression were earlier in the Southern Hemisphere. The second wave of RSV epidemics was also earlier with higher population density, and delayed if the intensity of the first wave was higher. More stringent NPIs were associated with lower RSV growth rate and intensity and a shorter gap between the first and second waves. Conclusion Patterns of RSV activity have largely returned to normal following successive waves in the post-pandemic era. Onset and peak timings of future epidemics following disruption of normal RSV dynamics need close monitoring to inform the delivery of preventive and control measures. Keywords: Respiratory synctial virus, epidemic onset, epidemic peak, epidemic rebound, dynamic time warping
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.24303265v1" target="_blank">Global patterns of rebound to normal RSV dynamics following COVID-19 suppression</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A Population-Based Cross-Sectional Investigation of COVID-19 Hospitalizations and Mortality Among Autistic People</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Current evidence suggests the possibility that autistic people may be at more risk of COVID-19 infection, hospitalisation, and mortality than the general population. Previous studies, however, are either limited in scale or do not investigate potential risk factors. Whilst many risk factors have been speculated to be responsible for severe COVID-19, this research has focused on general population samples. Methods: Using data-linkage and a whole-country population, this study modelled associations between autism and COVID-19 hospitalisation and mortality risk in adults, investigating a multitude of clinical and demographic risk factors. Results: Autistic adults had higher rates of hospitalisation, Standardised Incident Ratio 1.6 in 2020 and 1.3 in 2021, and mortality, Standardised Mortality Ratio 1.52 in 2020 and 1.34 in 2021, due to COVID-19 than the general population. In both populations, age, complex multimorbidity and vaccination status were the most significant predictors of COVID-19 hospitalisation and mortality. Effects of psychotropic medication varied by class. Conclusions: Although similar factors exhibited a positive association with heightened risk of severe COVID-19 in both the autistic and general populations, with comparable effect sizes, mortality rates were elevated among the autistic population as compared to the general population. Specifically, the presence of complex multimorbidity and classification of prescribed medications may emerge as particularly significant predictors of severe COVID-19 among individuals within the autistic population due to higher prevalence of complex multimorbidity in the autistic population and variability in the association between medication classes and severe COVID-19 between both populations, though further research is needed.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.24303274v1" target="_blank">A Population-Based Cross-Sectional Investigation of COVID-19 Hospitalizations and Mortality Among Autistic People</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Changes in opioid prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic in England: cohort study of 20 million patients in OpenSAFELY-TPP</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions in healthcare delivery, including postponement of elective procedures and difficulty accessing in-person care, which may have increased the need for strong pharmacological pain relief in some patients. Methods: With NHS England approval, we used routine clinical data from &gt;20 million general practice adult patients in OpenSAFELY-TPP. We used interrupted time series analysis to quantify trends in prevalent and incident opioid prescribing prior to the pandemic (January 2018-February 2020) and changes during the COVID-19 lockdown period (March 2020-March 2021) and recovery period (April 2021-June 2022). We identified how these changes varied in people living in care homes, and by age, sex, deprivation, ethnicity, and geographic region. Results: The median number of people prescribed an opioid per month was 50.9 per 1000 patients prior to the pandemic. We observed little change in overall prescribing after the start of the pandemic, except for a temporary increase in March 2020. There was a 9.8% (95%CI -14.5%, -6.5%) reduction in new opioid prescribing from March 2020, sustained to the end of the study period. Reductions in new prescribing were observed for all demographics except people 80+ years. Among care home residents, in April 2020 new opioid prescribing increased by 112.5% (95%CI 92.2%, 134.9%) and parenteral opioid prescribing increased by 186.3% (95%CI 153.1%, 223.9%). Conclusion: Changes in opioid prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic were mostly consistent across subgroups with the exception of differences by age and care home residence. Among people in care homes, increases in parenteral opioid prescribing likely reflect use to treat end-of-life COVID-19 symptoms. Further research is needed to understand what is driving the reduction in new opioid prescribing and its relation to changes to health care provision during the pandemic.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.24303238v1" target="_blank">Changes in opioid prescribing during the COVID-19 pandemic in England: cohort study of 20 million patients in OpenSAFELY-TPP</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Making a Case for an Autism-Specific Multimorbidity Index: A Comparative Cohort Study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Autistic people experience challenges in healthcare, including disparities in health outcomes and multimorbidity patterns distinct from the general population. This study investigated the efficacy of existing multimorbidity indices in predicting COVID-19 mortality among autistic adults and proposes a bespoke index, the ASD-MI, tailored to their specific health profile. Using data from the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium, encompassing England9s entire population, we identified 1,027 autistic adults hospitalized for COVID-19, among whom 62 died due to the virus. Employing logistic regression with 5-fold cross-validation, we selected diabetes, coronary heart disease, and thyroid disorders as predictors for the ASD-MI, outperforming the Quan Index, a general population-based measure, with an AUC of 0.872 versus 0.828, respectively. Notably, the ASD-MI exhibited better model fit (pseudo-R2 0.25) compared to the Quan Index (pseudo-R2 0.20). These findings underscore the need for tailored indices in predicting mortality risks among autistic individuals. However, caution is warranted in interpreting results, given the limited understanding of morbidity burden in this population. Further research is needed to refine autism-specific indices and elucidate the complex interplay between long-term conditions and mortality risk, informing targeted interventions to address health disparities in autistic adults. This study highlights the importance of developing healthcare tools tailored to the unique needs of neurodivergent populations to improve health outcomes and reduce disparities.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.24303273v1" target="_blank">Making a Case for an Autism-Specific Multimorbidity Index: A Comparative Cohort Study</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Thymidine Phosphorylase Mediates SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Enhanced Thrombosis in K18-hACE2TG Mice</strong> -
<div>
COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, is associated with arterial and venous thrombosis, thereby increasing mortality. SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (SP), a viral envelope structural protein, is implicated in COVID-19-associated thrombosis. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Thymidine phosphorylase (TYMP), a newly identified prothrombotic protein, is upregulated in the plasma, platelets, and lungs of patients with COVID-19 but its role in COVID-19-associated thrombosis is not defined. In this study, we found that wild-type SARS-CoV-2 SP significantly promoted arterial thrombosis in K18-hACE2TG mice. SP-accelerated thrombosis was attenuated by inhibition or genetic ablation of TYMP. SP increased the expression of TYMP, resulting in the activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) in BEAS-2B cells, a human bronchial epithelial cell line. A siRNA-mediated knockdown of TYMP inhibited SP-enhanced activation of STAT3. Platelets derived from SP-treated K18-hACE2TG mice also showed increased STAT3 activation, which was reduced by TYMP deficiency. Activated STAT3 is known to potentiate glycoprotein VI signaling in platelets. While SP did not influence ADP- or collagen-induced platelet aggregation, it significantly shortened activated partial thromboplastin time and this change was reversed by TYMP knockout. Additionally, platelet factor 4 (PF4) interacts with SP, which also complexes with TYMP. TYMP enhanced the formation of the SP/PF4 complex, which may potentially augment the prothrombotic and procoagulant effects of PF4. We conclude that SP upregulates TYMP expression, and TYMP inhibition or knockout mitigates SP-enhanced thrombosis. These findings indicate that inhibition of TYMP may be a novel therapeutic strategy for COVID-19-associated thrombosis.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.581661v1" target="_blank">Thymidine Phosphorylase Mediates SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Enhanced Thrombosis in K18-hACE2TG Mice</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</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>Effectiveness of a Nasal Spray on Viral Respiratory Infections</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Acute Respiratory Tract Infection; Flu, Human; COVID-19; Common Cold <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: Nasal Spray HSV Treatment <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: CEN Biotech; Urgo Research, Innovation &amp; Development <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>GS-441524 for COVID-19 SAD, FE, and MAD Study in Healthy Subjects</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: GS-441524; Drug: Placebo <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS); Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc.; ICON Government and Public Health Solutions, 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>The Aerobic Exercise Capacity and Muscle Strenght in Individuals With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pneumonia; COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: Kardiopulmonary exercise test (Quark KPET C12x/T12x device connected to the Omnia version 1.6.8 COSMED system); Device: Peripheral muscle strength measurement (microFET3 (Hoggan Health Industries, Fabrication Enterprises, lnc) and JAMAR hydraulic hand dynamometer (Sammons Preston, Rolyon, Bolingbrook).; Device: Standard exercise tolerance test (a bicycle ergometer and recorded through the ergoline rehabilitation system 2 Version 1.08 SPI.); Device: Aerobic exercise training (a bicycle ergometer and recorded through the ergoline rehabilitation system 2 Version 1.08 SPI.) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Selda Sarıkaya; Zonguldak Bulent Ecevit University <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>UNAIR Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine INAVAC as Heterologue Booster (Immunobridging Study) in Adolescent Subjects</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pandemic; COVID-19 Vaccines <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: INAVAC (Vaksin Merah Putih - UA- SARS CoV-2 (Vero Cell Inactivated) 5 μg <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Dr. Soetomo General Hospital; Indonesia-MoH; Universitas Airlangga; PT Biotis Pharmaceuticals, Indonesia <br/><b>Active, not 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>World Health Organization (WHO) , COVID19 Case Series of Post Covid 19 Rhino Orbito Cerebral Mucormycosis in Egypt</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Mucormycosis; Rhinocerebral (Etiology); COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Procedure: debridment <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Nasser Institute For Research and Treatment <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>Treatment of Post-COVID-19 With Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: a Randomized, Controlled Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-COVID-19 Syndrome; Post-COVID Syndrome; Post COVID-19 Condition; Post-COVID Condition; Post COVID-19 Condition, Unspecified; Long COVID; Long Covid19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Hyperbaric oxygen <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Erasmus Medical Center; Da Vinci Clinic; HGC Rijswijk <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>Mindfulness-based Mobile Applications Program</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19; Cell Phone Use; Nurse; Mental Health <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: mindfulness-based mobile applications program <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Yu-Chien Huang <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>Attention Training for COVID-19 Related Distress</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Anxiety <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Attention Bias Modification; Behavioral: Attention Control Training; Behavioral: Neutral training <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Palo Alto 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>Correlation of Antibody Response to COVID-19 Vaccination in Pregnant Woman and Transplacental Passage Into Cord Blood.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Covid-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Diagnostic Test: COVID-19 Spike Protein IgG Quantitative Antibody (CMIA) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Vachira Phuket Hospital <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>UNAIR Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine as Homologue Booster (Immunobridging Study)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pandemic; COVID-19 Vaccines; COVID-19 Virus Disease <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: INAVAC (Vaksin Merah Putih - UA- SARS CoV-2 (Vero Cell Inactivated) 5 μg <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Dr. Soetomo General Hospital; Universitas Airlangga; Biotis Pharmaceuticals, Indonesia; Indonesia-MoH <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>Safety and Immunogenicity of a Sub-unit Protein CD40.RBDv Bivalent COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted or Not, as a Booster in Volunteers.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: CD40.RBDv vaccin (SARS-Cov2 Vaccin) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: ANRS, Emerging Infectious Diseases; LinKinVax; Vaccine Research Institute (VRI), France <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>High-definition Transcranial Direct Current Ctimulation and Chlorella Pyrenoidosa to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Cardiovascular Diseases; Long Covid19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: High Definition-transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; Dietary Supplement: Chlorella Pyrenoidosa <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Federal University of Paraíba; City University of New York <br/><b>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>Reduced interleukin-18 secretion by human monocytic cells in response to infections with hyper-virulent Streptococcus pyogenes</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Our data demonstrate that strains, which harbor covR/S mutations, interfere with IL-18 and IL-8 responses in monocytic cells by utilizing the caspase-8 axis. Future experiments aim to identify the underlying mechanism and consequences for NSTI patients.</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>Methyl rosmarinate is an allosteric inhibitor of SARS-cov-2 3 C L protease as a potential candidate against SARS-cov-2 infection</strong> - The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been ongoing for more than three years and urgently needs to be addressed. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prescriptions have played an important role in the clinical treatment of patients with COVID-19 in China. However, it is difficult to uncover the potential molecular mechanisms of the active ingredients in these TCM prescriptions. In this paper, we developed a new…</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>Human transferrin receptor can mediate SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has been detected in almost all organs of coronavirus disease-19 patients, although some organs do not express angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2), a known receptor of SARS-CoV-2, implying the presence of alternative receptors and/or co-receptors. Here, we show that the ubiquitously distributed human transferrin receptor (TfR), which binds to diferric transferrin to traffic between membrane and endosome for the iron…</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>Polyvalent Nanobody Structure Designed for Boosting SARS-CoV-2 Inhibition</strong> - Coronavirus transmission and mutations have brought intensive challenges on pandemic control and disease treatment. Developing robust and versatile antiviral drugs for viral neutralization is highly desired. Here, we created a new polyvalent nanobody (Nb) structure that shows the effective inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Our polyvalent Nb structure, called “PNS”, is achieved by first conjugating single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) and the receptor-binding domain (RBD)-targeting Nb with retained…</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>Efficacy of Host Cell Serine Protease Inhibitor MM3122 against SARS-CoV-2 for Treatment and Prevention of COVID-19</strong> - We have developed a novel class of peptidomimetic inhibitors targeting several host cell human serine proteases including transmembrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2), matriptase and hepsin. TMPRSS2 is a membrane associated protease which is highly expressed in the upper and lower respiratory tract and is utilized by SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses to proteolytically process their glycoproteins, enabling host cell receptor binding, entry, replication, and dissemination of new virion particles. We have…</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 and Virus Adsorption Properties of Y-Zeolite Exchanged with Silver and Zinc Cations</strong> - The antimicrobial activity of silver and zinc exchanged cations in Y-zeolite (Ag/CBV-600, Zn/CBV-600) is evaluated against Staphylococcus aureus (gram (+)) and Escherichia coli (gram (-)) bacteria along with their adsorption capacity for viruses: brome mosaic virus (BMV), cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV), and the bacteriophage MS2. The physicochemical properties of synthesized nanomaterials are characterized by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), 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>Diphenyl ethers from the cultured lichen mycobiont of <em>Graphis handelii</em> Zahlbr</strong> - CONCLUSION: A new compound, handelone (1) was isolated from the cultured mycobiont of Graphis handelii. From these compounds, four new derivatives were prepared. Compound 1 showed good activity against M^(pro) with an IC(50) value of 5.2 μM but it showed weak or inactive activity in other tests. Other compounds were inactive in all assays.</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>Sialic Acid Conjugate-Modified Cationic Liposomal Paclitaxel for Targeted Therapy of Lung Metastasis in Breast Cancer: What a Difference the Cation Content Makes</strong> - Cationic lipids play a pivotal role in developing novel drug delivery systems for diverse biomedical applications, owing to the success of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and the Phase III antitumor agent EndoTAG-1. However, the therapeutic potential of these positively charged liposomes is limited by dose-dependent toxicity. While an increased content of cationic lipids in the formulation can enhance the uptake and cytotoxicity toward tumor-associated cells, it is crucial to balance these…</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>Raman spectroscopy study of 7,8-dihydrofolate inhibition on the Wuhan strain SARS-CoV-2 binding to human ACE2 receptor</strong> - Emerging evidence suggests that elevated levels of folic acid in the bloodstream may confer protection against Wuhan-SARS-CoV-2 infection and mitigate its associated symptoms. Notably, two comprehensive studies of COVID-19 patients in Israel and UK uncovered a remarkable trend, wherein individuals with heightened folic acid levels exhibited only mild symptoms and necessitated no ventilatory support. In parallel, research has underscored the potential connection between decreased folic acid…</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>Gut microbial co-metabolite 2-methylbutyrylcarnitine exacerbates thrombosis via binding to and activating integrin α2β1</strong> - Thrombosis represents the leading cause of death and disability upon major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs). Numerous pathological conditions such as COVID-19 and metabolic disorders can lead to a heightened thrombotic risk; however, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Our study illustrates that 2-methylbutyrylcarnitine (2MBC), a branched-chain acylcarnitine, is accumulated in patients with COVID-19 and in patients with MACEs. 2MBC enhances platelet hyperreactivity and…</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>Sulfated Glycans Inhibit the Interaction of MERS-CoV Receptor Binding Domain with Heparin</strong> - Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a zoonotic virus with high contagion and mortality rates. Heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) are ubiquitously expressed on the surface of mammalian cells. Owing to its high negatively charged property, heparan sulfate (HS) on the surface of host cells is used by many viruses as cofactor to facilitate viral attachment and initiate cellular entry. Therefore, inhibition of the interaction between viruses and HS could be a promising…</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>The Potential of Usnic-Acid-Based Thiazolo-Thiophenes as Inhibitors of the Main Protease of SARS-CoV-2 Viruses</strong> - Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 viruses is officially over, the search for new effective agents with activity against a wide range of coronaviruses is still an important task for medical chemists and virologists. We synthesized a series of thiazolo-thiophenes based on (+)- and (-)-usnic acid and studied their ability to inhibit the main protease of SARS-CoV-2. Substances containing unsubstituted thiophene groups or methyl- or bromo-substituted thiophene moieties showed…</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>Human Betacoronavirus OC43 Interferes with the Integrated Stress Response Pathway in Infected Cells</strong> - Viruses evolve many strategies to ensure the efficient synthesis of their proteins. One such strategy is the inhibition of the integrated stress response-the mechanism through which infected cells arrest translation through the phosphorylation of the alpha subunit of the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2 (eIF2α). We have recently shown that the human common cold betacoronavirus OC43 actively inhibits eIF2α phosphorylation in response to sodium arsenite, a potent inducer of oxidative…</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>Feasibility Study of Developing a Saline-Based Antiviral Nanoformulation Containing Lipid-Soluble EGCG: A Potential Nasal Drug to Treat Long COVID</strong> - CONCLUSION: Nanoformulations containing EC16 showed properties compatible with nasal application to rapidly inactivate SARS-CoV-2 residing in the olfactory mucosa and to reduce inflammation in the CNS, pending additional formulation and safety studies.</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>Identification of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease Inhibitors Using Chemical Similarity Analysis Combined with Machine Learning</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease (Mpro) is an enzyme that cleaves viral polyproteins translated from the viral genome, which is critical for viral replication. Mpro is a target for anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug development. Herein, we performed a large-scale virtual screening by comparing multiple structural descriptors of reference molecules with reported anti-coronavirus activity against a library with &gt;17 million compounds. Further filtering, performed by applying two machine learning algorithms, identified…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>

547
archive-daily-dose/27 February, 2024.html Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,547 @@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="" xml:lang="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<meta content="pandoc" name="generator"/>
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
<title>27 February, 2024</title>
<style>
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
div.hanging-indent{margin-left: 1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;}
ul.task-list{list-style: none;}
</style>
<title>Daily-Dose</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"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><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>
<body>
<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<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>
<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>
</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>The Israeli Settlers Attacking Their Palestinian Neighbors</strong> - With the world’s focus on Gaza, settlers have used wartime chaos as cover for violence and dispossession. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/israel-west-bank-settlers-attacks-palestinians">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet</strong> - Disturbances on the sun may have the potential to devastate our power grid and communication systems. When the next big storm arrives, will we be prepared for it? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/what-a-major-solar-storm-could-do-to-our-planet">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Professor Claimed to Be Native American. Did She Know She Wasn’t?</strong> - Elizabeth Hoover, who has taught at Brown and Berkeley, insists that she made an honest mistake. Her critics say she has been lying for more than a decade. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/a-professor-claimed-to-be-native-american-did-she-know-she-wasnt">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inside North Korea’s Forced-Labor Program in China</strong> - Workers sent from the country to Chinese factories describe enduring beatings and sexual abuse, having their wages taken by the state, and being told that if they try to escape they will be “killed without a trace.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/inside-north-koreas-forced-labor-program-in-china">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Vatican and the War in Gaza</strong> - A rhetorical dispute between the Church and the Israeli government shows the limits—and the possibilities—of the Pope’s role in times of conflict. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-vatican-and-the-war-in-gaza">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Why elite colleges are bringing the SAT back</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="“Undergraduate admissions” signage outside of the Admissions Office at Dartmouth College on February 8, 2024, in Hanover, New Hampshire." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/INRt6ddOD93RU4A2J8XKBkn74ck=/724x0:8009x5464/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73167223/1988735666.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Scott Eisen/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Yale and Dartmouth are bringing testing back — but thousands of other schools aren’t.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MG4nA8">
America’s colleges and universities are embroiled in yet another debate about admissions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7A47YJ">
This time, they’re rethinking their positions on standardized testing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JrENEL">
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, several elite colleges made the submission of SAT and ACT scores optional for applicants.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KO0b89">
Testing had become a hassle, with limited testing locations and time for students to get prepared. The anti-testing movement had long contended that standardized tests reinforce racial and economic inequality and that reliance on them harms students from disadvantaged backgrounds. During the pandemic, those students faced additional roadblocks. Schools loosened restrictions to simplify the process for everyone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KJcx6P">
But last week, Yale University <a href="https://admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible">announced</a> that it was reversing course.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HudeZq">
Going forward, students must include test scores with their applications, and for the first time, the school is allowing applicants to report Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) exam scores in place of SAT or ACT scores.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G64KnZ">
The move follows two others reinstating testing requirements of some kind: Dartmouth College earlier this month and MIT in 2022.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sPQozG">
So why are (a few elite) school leaders changing their minds?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HbERur">
They’re pointing to new research that says that test scores are actually helpful for admissions decisions — and beneficial for marginalized students.
</p>
<h3 id="CEqikO">
Do standardized tests make school admissions more or less fair?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JLrUzl">
The anti-testing movement has long held that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjVVwMGJ9S8">tests maintain inequality</a> and are a <a href="https://www.vox.com/23700778/sat-act-standardized-tests-college-high-school">disservice to students</a> from disadvantaged backgrounds.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LaiH8H">
There are reasons for that: <a href="https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2021/9/28/is-income-implicit-in-measures-of-student-ability">Tests</a> can be <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sat-math-scores-mirror-and-maintain-racial-inequity/">discriminatory</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nzCXSj">
A <a href="https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SAT_ACT_on_Grades.pdf">study</a> from Opportunity Insights, a group of Harvard economists, found that “students from low-income families and other less advantaged backgrounds have lower standardized test scores and are less likely to take the test than students from higher income families” due to “differences in school quality, neighborhood exposure, and many other environmental conditions.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qVgk0B">
But that wasn’t their central finding. They and the other researchers fueling the recent admissions reversals have found that test-optional practices <em>harm</em> students from low-income backgrounds.
</p>
<aside id="QcTbSK">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x2Gl1Q">
That’s because when given the option to submit scores, these students decided not to submit them out of fear that their scores weren’t perfect.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yLG3Kg">
Instead, admissions counselors have found that strong scores from students of lower-income backgrounds are an indicator that they would excel academically in college.
</p>
<h3 id="mujTqC">
What does the research say about how universities use test scores?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8VrMi3">
One thing college admissions officers consider when evaluating a potential student is: Will they succeed here? And researchers have tried to determine the connection between test scores and that college success.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WJgnep">
In one <a href="https://home.dartmouth.edu/sites/home/files/2024-02/sat-undergrad-admissions.pdf">study</a>, Dartmouth researchers found that test scores were a better indicator of college performance than grades, essays, or teacher recommendations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MdaPgZ">
And importantly, researchers found that test scores help admissions officers better pick out high-achieving less-advantaged applicants.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rSjFGv">
Under the test-optional policy, “many high-achieving less-advantaged applicants choose not to submit scores even when doing so would allow Admissions to identify them as students likely to succeed at Dartmouth and in turn benefit their application,” the researchers wrote.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6244bC">
The Opportunity Insights researchers similarly examined the connection between test scores and student success at IvyPlus institutions (the eight Ivy League colleges plus Stanford, MIT, Duke, and the University of Chicago).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t2HnVx">
They found that “Even among otherwise similar students with the same high school grades, […] SAT and ACT scores have substantial predictive power for academic success in college.” These researchers also found that higher high school GPAs are not associated with higher college GPAs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e9yJnf">
Yale’s <a href="https://admissions.yale.edu/test-flexible">research</a> has identified the same thing. In its announcement, the school wrote, “test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s future Yale grades. This is true even after controlling for family income and other demographic variables, and it is true for subject-based exams such as AP and IB, in addition to the ACT and SAT.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g7x3Uk">
In short, according to Opportunity Insights’ findings, it can be the case that tests reinforce inequality generally but also allow schools to identify individual kids who are academically prepared despite challenging circumstances.
</p>
<h3 id="upfPD6">
What happens next
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hDZF7j">
Yale and Dartmouth have emphasized that test scores are simply one part of their whole-person review processes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tiT37z">
Using test scores in the years before the pandemic had not harmed Yale’s diversity efforts, the university said in its announcement, citing gains in the number of admitted first-generation college students and under-represented minority students.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9Gm9T1">
And it’s worth pointing out that some of the wealthiest applicants never stopped testing and submitting scores when possible.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sPuqx0">
Adam Nguyen, who founded Ivy Link, a firm that helps students gain admission to selective colleges, never changed the advice he gave to clients.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6jn3AL">
“I can tell you that a number of things on the application are ‘optional,’ but to get into the Ivy League and other elite colleges, an applicant has to go above and beyond the minimum requirements,” he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="49Vax5">
And for wealthy students, that can mean paying firms like his tens of thousands of dollars to help curate outstanding extracurricular resumes, design showcase projects, and bolster their grades. Comparatively, he said, “standardized tests are probably the avenue where kids” can excel with fewer resources.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5wPaos">
Meanwhile, the anti-testing movement has said the attention to the test-optional reversals is excessive. An <a href="https://fairtest.org/overwhelming-majority-of-u-s-colleges-and-universities-remain-act-sat-optional-or-test-blind-score-free-for-fall-2025/">overwhelming majority</a> of US colleges and universities remain test-optional.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wGvAh4">
At least 1,825 four-year colleges in the US — or more than 80 percent of them — will not require SAT or ACT scores for fall 2025, according to FairTest, an organization that advocates against testing requirements.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7aUYp7">
“Despite a media frenzy around a single Ivy League school reinstating testing requirements, ACT/SAT-optional and test-blind/score-free policies remain the new normal in undergraduate admissions,” said FairTest executive director Harry Feder.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QDYDzM">
<em>This story appeared originally in </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast"><em><strong>Today, Explained</strong></em></a><em>, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/today-explained-newsletter-signup"><em><strong>Sign up here for future editions</strong></em></a><em>.</em>
</p></li>
<li><strong>Can Biden contain the fallout from his Gaza policy in Michigan?</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/x7q2owwvsnyQwSWHalMqpw3QrY4=/0x0:4892x3669/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73167196/1855731537.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaks alongside Shawn Fain, president of the United Automobile Workers, at a press conference calling for a ceasefire in the Middle East, outside of the US Capitol on December 14, 2023, in Washington, DC. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Biden’s support for Israel’s military campaign is testing Arab American voters’ loyalty in Michigan and beyond.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jgX07w">
Arab American activists and their allies are urging voters to cast ballots as “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic primary on Tuesday in protest of <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden">President Joe Biden</a>’s support for <a href="https://www.vox.com/israel">Israel</a>’s war in <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080046/gaza-palestine-israel">Gaza</a>. They’re unlikely to change the result of the contest, in which Biden is the only major candidate, but they’re hoping to signal their anger — and send a warning — to Democrats in one of the most critical swing states on the 2024 map.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yOvtjk">
Michigan is home to more than 300,000 people who <a href="https://wapo.st/48y2BHQ">claim Middle Eastern or North African heritage</a>, many of them concentrated in the city of Dearborn — one of the largest Arab American communities in the US. These are voters who helped deliver Michigan to Biden in 2020, when his margin of victory in the state was just over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-michigan.html">154,000 votes</a>. In Wayne County, where Dearborn is located, as well as Oakland County, where Arab Americans also make up a significant share of the population, voters <a href="https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/michigan/">backed him</a> at rates of about 69 and 56 percent, respectively.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IXnATO">
Those days, however, are over. Biden is currently losing to former <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump">President Donald Trump</a> in <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/michigan/trump-vs-biden">seven major polls </a>conducted in Michigan since the beginning of the war. There are multiple reasons for that, including <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/4440883-biden-michigan-rife-political-obstacles/">falling support</a> in the powerful auto workers <a href="https://www.vox.com/unions">union</a>, which endorsed Biden glaringly late in the game this year, but Arab Americans and young progressive voters in the state have also cited Gaza as an important factor, and <a href="https://www.wlns.com/news/new-polling-reveals-tight-race-for-in-michigan/">most Michiganders support a ceasefire</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7Vgm9a">
Arab American officials in Michigan have become prominent critics of the US’s support for Israel’s campaign, which has killed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/25/gaza-death-toll-set-to-pass-30000-as-israel-prepares-assault-on-rafah">about 30,000 Palestinians</a> since the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/10/7/23907683/israel-hamas-war-news-updates-october-2023">October 7 attack</a> by <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/10/10/23911661/hamas-israel-war-gaza-palestine-explainer">Hamas</a>. The mayor of Dearborn — Abdullah Hammoud, who has Lebanese ancestry — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/opinion/biden-dearborn-michigan-gaza.html">wrote in an op-ed</a> in the New York Times Wednesday that “We don’t have to imagine the violence and injustice being carried out against the <a href="https://www.vox.com/palestine">Palestinian</a> people. Many of us lived it, and still bear the scars of life under occupation and apartheid.” US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), the only Palestinian member of <a href="https://www.vox.com/congress">Congress</a>, has explicitly told voters not to support Biden.
</p>
<div id="cwaxtc">
<blockquote align="center" class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
NEW ENDORSEMENT: “If you want us to be louder, come here and vote uncommitted.” -<a href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="RashidaTlaib">@RashidaTlaib</span></a> <a href="https://t.co/8pxuUjq5QG">pic.twitter.com/8pxuUjq5QG</a>
</p>
— #ListenToMichigan (<span class="citation" data-cites="Listen2michigan">@Listen2michigan</span>) <a href="https://twitter.com/Listen2michigan/status/1758956419741561302?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 17, 2024</a>
</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KzzC1F">
Tlaib’s sister, Layla Elabed, is now heading up the “Listen to Michigan” campaign to encourage at least <a href="https://www.listentomichigan.com/">10,000 Michiganders</a> to vote “uncommitted” in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. Now endorsed by progressive organizations including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/14/us/politics/biden-michigan-gaza-uncommitted.html">Our Revolution </a>and the <a href="https://www.dsausa.org/no-money-for-massacres-phonebanks/">Democratic Socialists of America</a>, the campaign has been conducting text and phone banking, buying digital ads, knocking on doors, and sending out mailers throughout Michigan.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xt6tMs">
“This is a protest vote against genocide,” Elabed said. “The resounding sense in a lot of Arab American communities and Muslim American communities is that our voices don’t matter here. And our lives don’t matter abroad.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pu7QCZ">
Even if the organizers of the uncommitted campaign succeed, they won’t affect Biden’s chances of securing his party’s nomination. But depending on how large the uncommitted vote is in Michigan, it could spell trouble for Biden in the fall, should Arab Americans and their allies stay home or cast a ballot for Trump in a state Biden, <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/">currently in a tight contest nationally</a>, will likely need to win.
</p>
<h3 id="gR6p9O">
Biden has faltered on Arab American outreach
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wSX1DP">
The uncommitted campaign is the product of what Arab American leaders say is the White House’s failure to listen to them and address their concerns through traditional outreach channels. Since October, Arab American leaders have been trying to no avail to get an audience with Biden to voice their concerns about the war, said Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, who grew up in Dearborn.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y7HT25">
Biden <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-hosts-meeting-muslim-leaders-rcna122433">quietly hosted</a> a group of five Muslim leaders in late October at the White House, where they told him that he had failed to show empathy for the acute suffering in Gaza. But that was seen as a slight by the ethnic constituency of Arab Americans, who are also Christian, Druze, Jewish, Mandaen, and other faiths, as well as secular, Berry said. And in February, Biden <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/07/white-house-officials-to-meet-with-arab-muslim-leaders-in-michigan/72508019007/">skipped a scheduled stop in Dearborn</a> while visiting Michigan, instead meeting with auto workers in the Detroit metro area.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jEwqkS">
“For months, we’ve been asking for meaningful engagement on policy, and, frankly, are being ignored,” Berry said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vObWkH">
The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee did not respond to requests for comment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XydoLm">
Officials from the Biden campaign and the White House, as well as Biden surrogates, have visited Michigan multiple times in the last two months with the intent of smoothing things over with the Arab American community. In January, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-campaign-arab-american-support-israel-michigan-cf331a82f907fe70e22d5f0aa6d7346e">held small meetings </a>with some Arab American leaders after others made clear that they were too angry to be open to dialogue in a planned larger meeting. And even after adjusting the plan, there was one meeting in which all 10 to 15 people invited declined to attend in protest.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mRFDki">
To Elabed, the fact that Biden sent his campaign manager to Michigan signaled that he was more interested in securing Arab American votes than talking “about how this failed policy is affecting our communities,” she said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kv5TZ4">
In February, a group of White House officials, including USAID administrator Samantha Power, also visited Michigan to highlight how the administration is trying to get humanitarian aid to Palestinians. In a closed-door meeting, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-administration-jon-finer-gaza-communication/">reportedly admitted</a> that the administration had “misstepped in the course of responding to this crisis” and “left a very damaging impression, based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration, the country values the lives of Palestinians.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UMY1ht">
Biden ally Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — who supports a ceasefire in Gaza and cutting off further aid to Israel — <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ro-khanna-michigan-primary-biden-uncommitted-israel-gaza/">met with Arab and Muslim leaders</a> in Michigan earlier this month to talk about how to build support for their policy demands in Washington.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7DZYcm">
But Elabed said it still doesn’t feel as though Biden is adequately responding to the concerns of the Arab American community. His sharpest critique of Israel’s campaign came only earlier this month, when he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/us/politics/biden-israel-gaza.html#:~:text=President%20Biden%20sharply%20escalated%20his,has%20%E2%80%9Cgot%20to%20stop.%E2%80%9D">said</a> that it was “over the top” and that civilian suffering and death “had to stop.” Meanwhile, the US recently vetoed a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations for the third time since the start of the war. The Biden administration continues to push for a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/senate-on-verge-of-passing-95-3-billion-ukraine-israel-aid-package-55d07d5a">$14.1 billion supplemental aid package</a> for Israel on top of the approximately <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts">$3.3 billion</a> it already receives annually from the US, and is continuing to make <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/15/which-countries-have-stopped-supplying-arms-to-israel">major arms sales</a> while offering unconditional military support to Israel.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sITeqk">
“For Joe Biden to ignore the very communities that largely brought him Michigan in 2020 is a slap in the face,” Elabed said. “It does feel so dehumanizing that a party that I have supported my whole adult life is now ignoring the deaths and murder of my people and the destruction of my ancestral land.”
</p>
<h3 id="HCoOxW">
Arab Americans say blame Biden if Trump wins a second term — not them
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fkj26J">
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is urging voters in her state not to vote uncommitted. “It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/02/25/sotu-whitmer-full-interview.cnn"><em>State of the Union</em></a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VvLde5">
But many Arab American activists are arguing that Whitmer and others critiquing uncommitted voters should instead lay the blame at Biden’s feet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yrLTMG">
“If the outcome is that we have another Trump presidency, it is going to be Joe Biden and his administration and the Democratic Party that hands over the White House to the Trump administration,” Elabed said. “Because when you ignore your core constituency … you have no one to blame but yourselves.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bqqv3F">
Many Arab American voters fear a second Trump presidency — not just on the issue of Gaza — and acknowledge that his foreign policy was disastrous for Palestinians and the Arab world, Berry said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XAjzWn">
He moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2017 — a choice made in recognition of the fact that Israel had made unified Jerusalem its capital but a decidedly controversial one given that control of Jerusalem has historically been a key sticking point in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. The US <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/25/three-years-on-us-still-views-syrias-golan-as-israeli-territory">recognized</a> the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights under Trump and reaffirmed it under Biden.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ypuGc">
The Trump administration also argued in 2019 that Israeli settlements in the occupied <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080034/west-bank-israel-palestinians">West Bank</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/18/us-israeli-settlements-no-longer-considered-illegal-palestinian-land-mike-pompeo">are not necessarily illegal</a>, lending legitimacy to Israel’s claims on the territories, but the annexations and moves toward it are widely regarded as illegal under international law, and no other country has recognized them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o9JbnQ">
Trump also instituted a travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries — including the Arab states of Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — that was <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/26/17506386/travel-ban-supreme-court-trump-flowchart">struck down by the courts and later revived in a different iteration</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GfVnQa">
None of this is news to Arab American voters. But activists argue it’s still hard for them to justify voting for Biden when the Biden administration has in their minds failed to adequately push back on the slaughter of Palestinians after October 7.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="44UgcZ">
“We fought back for those four years,” Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said. “We pushed back and we found ways to fight back against [Trump’s] policies. But the one thing we didn’t have was a genocide.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PAnjq3">
Berry said her organization is pushing hard to ensure that Arab Americans don’t just sit this election out as a result of anger with Biden, which she said is not how the community’s best interests are served, but isn’t encouraging that they vote any particular way. The alternatives include voting for third-party candidates or casting a ballot for Trump. Many Iraqi Chaldean Christians in Michigan’s Macomb and Oakland counties already backed him in 2020, when he promised to <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/macomb-county/2020/01/30/trump-warren-deportation-relief-michigan-iraqi-christians/2859307001/">shield them from deportation</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="70GAXE">
“We’ll speak to [Trump]. And if he does the right moves in the campaign … we don’t mind voting for him,” Ayoub said. “Those dead family members, those dead bodies, those images we’re seeing … That’s enough for them to say, give me a few bad tweets and a few mean words and let my family members live.”
</p>
<h3 id="ZvS7Jf">
What does all of this really mean, in Michigan and nationally?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8LPOB5">
The <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden">national contest</a> between Biden and Trump, who is all but assured the GOP nomination, is tight. As one of <a href="https://rollcall.com/2024/02/05/the-states-that-matter-in-2024/">six major battleground states </a>in 2024, Michigan could determine the outcome of the election overall, and Biden can’t afford any significant splintering of his coalition there.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pTMmv8">
The Arab American community in Michigan is small, making up slightly over 1 percent of the state’s population of 10 million. And outside the Arab American community, there are “not that many” voters who disagree with Biden’s policies in Gaza and even fewer are “so motivated in their anger against Biden that they would vote uncommitted in a Democratic primary,” Bill Ballenger, a longtime political pundit in Michigan, said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Yv9c57">
But if the margins in Michigan are anywhere as close as they were in 2020 and 2016, “maybe the loss of support in the Arab American community could spell the difference between victory and defeat for Biden,” Ballenger said. “No wonder he’s worried.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Id0mhf">
And while the war in Gaza looms large in Michigan because of its large Arab American community, it’s an issue that has resonated nationally among Arab Americans, who also have sizable and growing communities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia. The movement to abandon Biden over his stance on Gaza has already <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/abandon-biden-pennsylvania-launch-20240219.html#:~:text=The%20national%20%22Abandon%20Biden%22%20movement,campaign%20in%20Pennsylvania%20on%20Monday.&amp;text=The%20national%20">spread to some of those states</a>, and his campaign is struggling to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/27/politics/bidens-gaza-problem/index.html">secure surrogates and endorsements </a>that could help bridge the gap with Arab Americans and young progressives. Nationally, <a href="https://www.aaiusa.org/library/arab-americans-special-poll-domestic-implications-of-the-most-recent-outbreak-of-violence-in-palestineisrael">Biden’s support among Arab American voters</a> has fallen from 59 in 2020 to 17 percent after the war in Gaza broke out in October.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uyiNnY">
Democrats generally have also increasingly turned against the war in Gaza. About half of 2020 Biden voters said that they believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in a <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4429906-half-biden-voters-israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-poll/">February poll</a> by YouGov/The Economist.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qbYOzC">
That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll decide how to vote based on Biden’s response to the war; the <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy">economy</a> remains a <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-republicans-have-sharply-distinct-priorities-for-2023-ap-norc-poll-finds">bipartisan priority for voters</a>, and Democrats also <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-republicans-have-sharply-distinct-priorities-for-2023-ap-norc-poll-finds">cite</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/health-care">health care</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate">climate change</a>, poverty, racism, <a href="https://www.vox.com/abortion">abortion</a>, and women’s rights as top concerns. Biden is pushing the progress he’s made on the economy and trying to draw a sharp contrast with Trump on these other issues so far. But the number of uncommitted voters in Michigan could signal just how deep Democratic discontent is.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IIhhcj">
“This is not only isolated to Arab or Muslim voters in Michigan,” Aboud said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="obUtz3">
<em>Haleema Shah contributed reporting to this article.</em>
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>How Sarah J. Maas became romantasy’s reigning queen</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Sarah J. Maas, a blond woman, smiling in front of a wall with a geometric design." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PGPhoTqBfnwxbRxQLwSci_R-43g=/0x369:2734x2420/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73167117/476434242.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Sarah J. Maas, London. | Getty
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The sexy subversions of A Court of Thorns and Roses.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6DFFBB">
As BookTok goes, so goes publishing. The community of TikTokers who make videos about their favorite books is one of the only forces <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23644772/booktok-money-business-sponsored-videos">actively driving book sales</a> in a contracting market — and right now, BookTok has a new favorite genre. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-america-loves-faerie-smut/id1346207297?i=1000645352380">Romantasy</a>, the hybrid genre of romance-focused fantasy novels, has never been hotter. Every second pitch I receive from a publisher describes itself as romantasy. Bookstores are pushing tables of romantasy novels to the front of the shop. Grown-ups and teenagers alike are posting long videos about their favorite romantasy books. Many of them highlight Sarah J. Maas, the genre’s reigning queen.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7NoIUR">
Maas has been publishing since 2012, when at 26 she published <em>Throne of Glass</em>, the fantasy novel she started working on as a 16-year-old. In 2013, she scored her first <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150821061942/http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2013-09-15/young-adult/list.html">New York Times bestseller</a>, and in 2015, she began to pick up adult fans with the wildly popular <em>A Court of Thorns and Roses</em>. Now, Maas has two YA and one adult romantasy series (<em>Crescent City</em>, the adult series, began in 2020). Between all those titles, she’s sold more than <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/books/acotar-hulu-tv-show-rcna138576">38 million books worldwide</a>. Her most recent book, <em>House of Flame and Shadow</em>, came out at the end of January and has been on the bestseller list <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/">ever since</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sIuzl4">
Of all Maas’s series, <em>A Court of Thorns and Roses</em> (ACOTAR) is her crown jewel. The TikTok tag #acotar has 8.9 billion views. Hulu has been developing a TV adaptation helmed by Ron Moore, although its current status is reportedly “<a href="https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/a-court-of-thorns-and-roses-tv-series-scrapped-hulu-acotar-sarah-j-maas-1235908518/">murky</a>.” Among fans, it is her most beloved work, the only Maas series so popular that it’s spawned its own spinoff novels. They say that ACOTAR has reignited their childhood love of reading, that these are the books that make other books feel worthwhile.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eKXet0">
Reading through the first three volumes of ACOTAR recently, I began to understand why. These books go down like candy, silly and frothy and compulsively readable. Everyone in ACOTAR is beautiful, everyone is attractively damaged, everyone is pining with love for some inaccessible someone else. I read nearly 2,000 pages in a couple of weeks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9fZdtL">
What is liveliest about Maas’s writing, though, is how well she knows her formula. Maas is a genius at cramming her books with the tropes of her hybrid genre — and then subverting those tropes just enough to thrill.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="JdpMGm"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4AIdgd">
In his 2017 book <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/16/14559854/hit-makers-derek-thompson-review"><em>Hit Makers</em></a>, journalist Derek Thompson identifies a simple formula for popularity. Human beings, Thompson writes, tend to like things that are pleasingly familiar, with a gentle touch of surprise. That’s part of why romantasy is so popular. It takes two familiar trope-driven formulae — say, an enemies-to-lovers love story plus an epic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil — and smashes them together to create something that feels new.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OiT1VH">
Identifying the pleasingly familiar and adding a surprise is something of a specialty for Maas. She likes to start her stories with classic fairy tales given a hint of a girl power twist. <em>Throne of Glass</em> is based on “Cinderella,” but Maas’s Cinderella is an assassin sent to kill the prince. <em>A Court of Thorns and Roses</em> is “Beauty and the Beast,” but Beauty is a deadly huntress.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f4lGvX">
Within the stories themselves, Maas’s worldbuilding is full of hat tips to her predecessors. In <em>A Court of Thorn and Roses</em>, the faerie land is called Prythian, a nod to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/18/9166631/chronicles-prydain-alexander">Lloyd Alexander’s <em>Chronicles of Prydain</em></a>. In Prythian, faeries use a form of teleportation called “winnowing,” and their explanation of it will be familiar to anyone who loved Madeleine L’Engle’s <em>A Wrinkle in Time</em>. “Think of it as … two different points on a piece of cloth,” Maas writes (very much her ellipses). “Winnowing … it’s like folding that cloth so the two spots align.” If you’ve read the classics of YA fantasy before, you’ll recognize the sampling and remixing she is doing here.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7wBp62">
Part of the pleasure of reading Maas is seeing these familiar YA fantasy references lie cheek by jowl with the tropes of romance novels. In <em>A Court of Mist and Fury</em>, the second volume of the series, two lovers who have not yet admitted their feelings for each other find themselves forced by cruel circumstance to <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/8/21/17760572/to-all-the-boys-ive-loved-before-netflix-fake-dating-trope-explained">fake date</a>. Later, they end up at an inn with only one bed to spare, not once but twice. Across ACOTAR, Maas’s protagonist, Feyre, is torn between two boys. One is blond and sunny; one is dark-haired and brooding; both are impossibly beautiful, rich, and powerful; both begin as Feyre’s enemies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BH2KPX">
Romance and fantasy also have their darker tropes, and Maas plays with these as well. Lots of books feature villainous sexual predators, but when such figures appear in ACOTAR, they are almost exclusively women. It’s an interestingly consistent move from Maas — one she appears to keep coming back to across her books because it feels counterintuitive while at the same time allowing her readers the satisfaction of a purely evil villainess to hate. It’s also a good excuse to give her male characters extra layers of sadness and vulnerability. Maas is not interested in dissecting all the ways sexual trauma can hurt a person, but she is interested in giving her romantic leads dark and violent backstories.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I6nhaK">
Maas’s biggest subversion, though, is also her most exciting. At the end of <em>A Court of Thorns and Roses</em>, she pulls out the rug from under her own love triangle, and the results are glee-inducing to read. Spoilers follow.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="MPF7jX"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aFBw0f">
If the first volume of ACOTAR is a Beauty and the Beast story, then the Beast is Tamlin, the mercurial faerie lord who first pulls Feyre into Prythian. Tamlin, the High Lord of Spring, is angry and possessive in the way that tends to read as attractive in romance novels, especially romance novels based on this fairy tale. Tamlin has the ability to turn into a wolflike creature, and when he’s angry, he growls and claws shoot out of his fingers. When Feyre gets angry, he uses magic to restrain her.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="owVHpv">
None of Tamlin’s sins here are too far off the Edward Cullen norm, and with the first three-quarters of <em>Thorns and Roses</em> following the beats of a standard Beauty and the Beast love story so clearly, it’s easy to feel as though Maas is steering you toward thinking of Tamlin’s anger problem as romantic.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oEFmvs">
Feyre, who is recovering from a childhood of poverty and emotional neglect, falls rapidly for Tamlin, despite her initial hatred of all faeries. He showers her with fine food and clothes, gives her art supplies so that she can pursue her passion for painting. He is the first person Feyre has ever encountered who treats her as someone special and beautiful. His uncontrollable rage at the thought of her being in danger or with another man seems to her like yet more proof that she is special and beautiful. She is smitten. When the book ends with the pair kissing in a meadow full of wildflowers, it feels like just what you would expect.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vbFWNd">
Yet something bizarre happens about a hundred pages before that ending. Tamlin is kidnapped by a wicked faerie, and Feyre has to go on a quest to rescue him. That quest is normal for this story type — Beauty traditionally rescues the Beast, and Tamlin’s name is a nod to the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin, in which a mortal girl rescues her lover from a wicked fairy queen. Done right, such a quest reads as incredibly romantic, a chance for the lovers to prove the strength of their connection against insurmountable odds. What’s so odd about this particular case is that instead, as soon as the quest begins, Tamlin becomes a nonentity within the story.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="txr2Us">
Feyre’s thoughts of Tamlin and how much she loves him become generic, vague on the details. Even when he is present on the page, he is passive, unemotive, no longer compelling. All the energy and the juice of the story has transferred itself over to a new romantic lead — Rhysand, the enigmatic and brooding High Lord of Night. In <em>Thorns and Roses</em>, Rhysand is ambiguously villainous, apparently allied with the wicked queen. Still, for purposes of his own, he’s willing to form an alliance with Feyre to help her rescue Tamlin.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vg8pOY">
In the page time that earlier in the novel would have been accorded to Tamlin, Feyre thinks a lot about how much she hates Rhysand, and also how attractive he is. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Feyre is going to hook up with Rhys eventually, but the structure of the tropes here tells us that Tamlin is obviously Feyre’s endgame. He’s the Beast and she’s the Beauty! They end the book kissing in a meadow! Who’s going to mess with that?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m7gClS">
Maas messes with it. With a merciless speed that I can only compare to <em>Gilmore Girls</em> making Dean illiterate as soon as Jess shows up, Maas reveals in the opening of <em>A Court of Mist and Fury</em> that Tamlin is a faerie Republican, ruling his court according to the laws of trickle-down magic economics and sparing no handouts for the poor. Feyre, with her background of childhood poverty, is outraged — and as Tamlin’s possessive rages become more and more violent, she loses patience with him. Before the end of the book, she has cast Tamlin aside and declared her love for Rhysand, who is revealed to be the most benevolent of all the High Lords of Prythian and who places a premium on Feyre’s independence to boot.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="khG5cT">
This kind of love interest switcheroo is common in the world of teen TV, where characters change partners according to the fickle winds of <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22364676/dawson-crying-gif-secret-history-dawsons-creek-legend">cast chemistry and writing staff changes</a>. In YA books, however, love stories tend to be more aesthetically unified than they are on TV. You can usually tell who will end up with whom from early on in the narrative, and the satisfaction of reading comes from seeing how they’ll end up together. Watching a swap like this one emerge out of nowhere is a perfect execution of Thompson’s <em>Hit Makers</em> formula: a pleasingly familiar romance trope subverted when you least expect it; the love story structure of one medium ported over into another.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X9td9b">
It’s popular among Maas’s fans to say that the switch is a politically evolved take on <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/23/15000768/beauty-and-the-beast-feminist-stockholm-syndrome">the problems</a> of the Beauty and the Beast story. The Beast’s anger issues and violent tendencies, his decision to find a girlfriend by kidnapping her — these are revealed as red flags for an abusive relationship instead of romantic quirks. Feyre finds true love not with him but with someone who tells her constantly that she is always free to make her own choices.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x7XHGl">
I’m not sure, though, that the switch works as an effective political critique on Maas’s source material. Rhys, like Tamlin, initiates his relationship with Feyre by coercing her into a magical bargain that forces her to promise to come to his home. Like Tamlin, Rhys mistreats Feyre only to later reveal he was forced to do so by circumstances beyond his control. He withholds crucial information from her, and although he lets her make her own choices, he forces her to do so within artificially limited circumstances.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ML5Bb">
The switch is incredibly fun to read, yet it doesn’t criticize problematic old romance tropes so much as slightly tweak their angles. But then, if those romance tropes weren’t so satisfying to read, problematic or not, Maas wouldn’t have used them to begin with.
</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>Elena Norman quits as Hockey India CEO after 13 years</strong> - Talk of her quitting was around ever since the women’s Asian Champions Trophy in November, and her absence during the Olympic Qualifiers last month only added to it</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>Hyderabad marathoner runs on the world’s highest frozen lake</strong> - Dr Umesh Bhammarkar from Hyderabad ran one of the most difficult marathons on the frozen Pangong lake</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>Namibia’s Loftie-Eaton smashes fastest T20I century</strong> - Loftie-Eaton played a knock of 101 off just 36 deliveries, which included 11 fours and eight sixes at an amazing strike rate of 280.55.</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>Shami undergoes ankle surgery, set to miss IPL</strong> - Mohammed Shami, who last played for India in the ODI World Cup final against Australia on November 19, went under the knife in the London on February 27</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>How Anmol Kharb and other women shuttlers punched above weight to win first gold: Data</strong> - Teen sensation Anmol Kharb rescued India twice by beating opponents ranked 400 positions above her</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>Supreme Court comes down heavily on Patanjali for prima facie violation of undertaking on claims, ads</strong> - The Supreme Court cautioned Patanjali Ayurved and its officers from making any statements adverse to any system of medicine in the media, both print and electronic, in any form as they said in their undertaking before the court earlier</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>Study on cardiometabolic health status of CSIR-CFTRI employees undertaken</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>Jolt to Congress in Gujarat as its Rajya Sabha MP Naran Rathwa joins BJP ahead of Lok Sabha polls</strong> - Rathwa is a tribal leader from Chhota Udepur in Gujarat. His tenure as the Rajya Sabha member is coming to end in April this year</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>Modi govt has ‘eclipsed’ dreams of students: Rahul Gandhi on paper leaks</strong> - “History will never forgive Narendra Modi for this crime”</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 CM formally launches two more guarantees: LPG cylinder refill at Rs 500 and up to 200 units free electricity</strong> - Govt firm on creating “Telangana model” in implementation of welfare schemes, says Revanth Reddy</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>Prominent Russian human rights activist jailed</strong> - In his closing court statement, Oleg Orlov said Russia is “sinking ever more deeply into darkness”.</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>Depardieu faces new allegation of sexual assault</strong> - In the latest of a string of accusations, a set designer accuses the French actor of grabbing her in 2021.</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>Russian defeat in Ukraine vital for Europe - Macron</strong> - France’s president says European states will give Ukraine medium- and long-range missiles and bombs.</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>Sweden midfielder Olsson on ventilator in hospital</strong> - Sweden international and former Arsenal midfielder Kristoffer Olsson is on a ventilator in hospital after losing consciousness at his home on 20 February.</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>Sweden’s bid to join Nato clears final hurdle</strong> - Hungary ratifies Sweden’s application to the military alliance after delaying its approval.</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>Varda’s drug-cooking Winnebago will be remembered as a space pioneer</strong> - A small capsule containing pharmaceuticals made in space landed in Utah last week. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2005808">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>New data shows which states were more deadly for pedestrians in 2023</strong> - Preliminary road-safety data for the first half of 2023 has been published. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2005974">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>SpaceX discloses cause of Starship anomalies as it clears an FAA hurdle</strong> - “Several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2006048">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kagan: Florida social media law seems like “classic First Amendment violation”</strong> - In oral arguments, Justice Thomas asks who speaks when an algorithm moderates. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2006043">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Surprising link found between niacin and risk of heart attack and stroke</strong> - Breakdown products of niacin, aka Vitamin B3, may spur vascular inflammation. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2006049">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>There once was a man who had only one testicle</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
There once was a man who had only one testicle, and whose given name was ‘Onestone’.<br/> He hated that name and asked everyone not to call him Onestone. After years and years of torment, Onestone finally cracked and said, ‘If anyone calls me ’Onestone’ again I will kill them!’
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The word got around and nobody called him that any more. Then one day a young woman named Blue Bird forgot and said, ‘Good morning, Onestone.’
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
He jumped up, grabbed her and took her deep into the forest where he made love to her all day and all night. He made love to her all the next day, until Blue Bird died from exhaustion. The word got around that ‘Onestone’ meant what he promised he would do.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Years went by and no one dared call him by his given name until a woman named Yellow Bird returned to the village after being away.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Yellow Bird, who was Blue Bird’s cousin, was overjoyed when she saw Onestone. She hugged him and said, ‘Good to see you, ’Onestone’…..
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Onestone grabbed her, took her deep into the forest, made love to her all day, made love to her all night, made love to her all the next day, made love to her all the next night, but Yellow Bird wouldn’t die!
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Why ???
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
You Can’t Kill Two Birds With One Stone……..
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/naturalizedcitizen"> /u/naturalizedcitizen </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b14aqr/there_once_was_a_man_who_had_only_one_testicle/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b14aqr/there_once_was_a_man_who_had_only_one_testicle/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A man dies and goes to Hell…..</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Satan greets him.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Hey. How’s it going?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Not good. I just found out I’m in hell.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I know we have a bad reputation but it’s not that bad. It’s actually quite fun down here. Did you ever drink when you were alive?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Of course.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Well, Mondays, you can drink as much as you want. Vodka, gin, tequila, rum…whatever! Make your own if you want. You don’t have to drive home. You don’t have to worry about your liver or alcohol poisoning. You’re already dead. Were you a smoker?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Yes, I was.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Tuesdays, smoke it up. We have all the cigarettes and cigars. Even the best Cubans. You don’t need to worry about lung cancer. You’re already dead. Did you get high when you were alive?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Sometimes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Wednesdays, get as high as you want. Weed, coke, PCP, crack, LSD.. whatever! Make your own. Not like you’ll overdose. You’re already dead.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
This actually does sound quite fun.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I know, right? It’s not so bad. Did you ever stick anything up your ass when you were alive?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
No…
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
You’re not going to like Thursdays.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/vect77"> /u/vect77 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b13ev7/a_man_dies_and_goes_to_hell/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b13ev7/a_man_dies_and_goes_to_hell/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A gay couple, was feeling hot n bothered on a plane and so decided to join the mile high club…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“What if we had sex?” asks Jeremiah.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Are you crazy? Here, on the plane? It would be awkward, everyone would watch us doing it…”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Nobody is even paying attention to anything. Look!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Jeremiah stands up and asks loudly:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Could I have a napkin, please?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Nobody gives a damn. Everyone is sleeping, reading, looking out the window, etc.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Flight attendants pretend to not hear them, as they also don’t give a damn.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“They really wouldn’t care then, would they?” says Timothy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
So Jeremiah and Timothy have wild sex on the plane.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Later, when the plane arrives to the airport and the people are leaving, the stewardess sees an old man who threw up all over his shirt, even his pants are soaking in the filth.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Sir, you should’ve asked for a bag!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I didn’t dare” whispers the old man. "A few rows ahead I saw a man asking for a napkin and he got fucked in the ass.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/James-k"> /u/James-k </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b0o2bb/a_gay_couple_was_feeling_hot_n_bothered_on_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b0o2bb/a_gay_couple_was_feeling_hot_n_bothered_on_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why are girlfriends and fish alike?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Why are girlfriends and fish alike?<br/> There maybe a lot of fish in the sea, but till you catch one, you are just holding your rod.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/naturalizedcitizen"> /u/naturalizedcitizen </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b17biw/why_are_girlfriends_and_fish_alike/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b17biw/why_are_girlfriends_and_fish_alike/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What did Julius Caesar say after visiting a strip club?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Veni, vidi, veni.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MudakMudakov"> /u/MudakMudakov </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b11y7f/what_did_julius_caesar_say_after_visiting_a_strip/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1b11y7f/what_did_julius_caesar_say_after_visiting_a_strip/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html>

4
index.html
View File

File diff suppressed because one or more lines are too long