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<title>01 November, 2023</title>
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<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>Polyethylene glycol (PEG)-associated immune responses triggered by clinically relevant lipid nanoparticles in rats</strong> -
<div>
With the large-scale vaccination of lipid nanoparticles (LNP)-based COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, elucidating the potential polyethylene glycol (PEG)-associated immune responses triggered by clinically relevant LNP has become imminent. However, inconsistent findings were observed across very limited population-based studies. Herein we initiated a study using LNP carrier of Comirnaty as a representative, and simulated real-world clinical practice covering a series of time points and various doses correlated with approved LNP-delivered drugs in a rat model. We demonstrated the time- and dose-dependency of LNP-induced anti-PEG antibodies in rats. As a thymus-independent antigen, LNP unexpectedly induced isotype switch and immune memory, leading to rapid enhancement and longer lasting time of anti-PEG IgM and IgG upon re-injection in rats. Importantly, initial LNP injection accelerated the blood clearance of subsequent dosing in rats. These findings refine our understandings on LNP and possibly other PEG derivatives, and may promote optimization of related premarket guidelines and clinical protocols.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.24.516986v4" target="_blank">Polyethylene glycol (PEG)-associated immune responses triggered by clinically relevant lipid nanoparticles in rats</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Germ aversion relates to negative attitudes towards people who violate COVID-19 health measures</strong> -
<div>
How do individual differences in pathogen avoidance motivations relate outgroup prejudice? The current study is a re-analysis of survey data collected via Project Implicit during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic (March-May 2020). A large sample of American internet users (N = 2,258) completed measures of pathogen avoidance motivations (i.e., germ aversion) and reported their attitudes towards several social groups. The analysis showed that participants who had more germ aversion, perceived national groups (Britons, Italians, Chinese) as more infectious and reported slightly more negative attitudes towards these national groups. Germ aversion was not related to attitudes towards ethnic groups. In contrast, germ aversion had small-to-medium relations with attitudes towards people who did not engage in COVID-19 preventive measures and towards people who did not follow the advice of doctors and the government. Overall, the findings are not consistent with the notion that pathogen avoidance motivations have a broad effects on outgroup prejudice. Rather, the findings are consistent with proposals that pathogen avoidance motivations relate to a narrow range of variables, primarily avoidance of people or objects that are associated with ecologically-valid cues of infectious disease.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2cwk8/" target="_blank">Germ aversion relates to negative attitudes towards people who violate COVID-19 health measures</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Viral respiratory epidemic modelling of societal segregation based on vaccination status</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: Societal segregation of unvaccinated people from public spaces has been a novel and controversial COVID-era public health practice in many countries. Models exploring potential consequences of vaccination-status-based segregation have not considered how segregation influences the contact frequencies in the segregated groups. We systematically investigate implementing effects of segregation on population-specific contact frequencies and show this critically determines the predicted epidemiological outcomes, focusing on the attack rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations and the share of infections among vaccinated people that were due to contacts with infectious unvaccinated people. Methods: We describe a susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) two-population model for vaccinated and unvaccinated groups of individuals that transmit an infectious disease by person-to-person contact. The degree of segregation of the two groups, ranging from zero to complete segregation, is implemented using the like-to-like mixing approach developed for sexually-transmitted diseases, adapted for presumed SARS-CoV-2 transmission. We allow the contact frequencies for individuals in the two groups to be different and depend, with variable strength, on the degree of segregation. Results: Segregation can either increase or decrease the attack rate among the vaccinated, depending on the type of segregation (isolating or compounding), and the contagiousness of the disease. For diseases with low contagiousness, segregation can cause an attack rate in the vaccinated, which does not occur without segregation. Interpretation: There is no predicted blanket epidemiological advantage to segregation, either for the vaccinated or the unvaccinated. Negative epidemiological consequences can occur for both groups.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.21.22279035v5" target="_blank">Viral respiratory epidemic modelling of societal segregation based on vaccination status</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Nationwide population-based infection- and vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Germany at the end of 2021</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background: The first wave of the Corona Monitoring Nationwide (RKI-SOEP) Study drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel proved a low pre-vaccine SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in the German adult population of 2.1%. Methods: In this second wave of the study (RKI-SOEP-2, November 2021-March 2022), we used combined serological and self-reported data on infection and vaccination to estimate the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2-specific anti-spike and/or anti-nucleocapsid IgG antibodies (combined seroprevalence), past infection, and basic immunization in individuals aged 14+. Findings: Combined seroprevalence was 90.7% (95% CI 89.7% - 91.6%) without correction for antibody waning and 94.6% (95% CI 93.6% - 95.7%) with correction. While 1 in 10 individuals had been infected (9.9%, 95% CI 9.0% - 10.9%), 9 in 10 had at least a basic immunization (90%, 95% CI 88.9%-90.9%). Population-weighted estimates differed by age, region, and socioeconomic deprivation. Infection-induced seroprevalence with correction for antibody waning was 1.55 (95% CI 1.3 - 1.8) times higher than the cumulative proportion based on national surveillance data. Interpretation: At the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2-Omicron wave, the vast majority of the population had been vaccinated, infected, or both. Our results show how large-scale vaccination, but not a high infection rate, was able to fill the immunity gap, especially in older individuals (aged 65+) who are known to be at higher risk of severe COVID-19. Our data point towards a targeted demographically and regionally stratified mitigation strategy, to optimize future pandemic mitigation efforts.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.30.23297594v1" target="_blank">Nationwide population-based infection- and vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Germany at the end of 2021</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The Heroization of Healthcare Workers Blinds the Public to Their Suffering and Encourages Their Exploitation</strong> -
<div>
From the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers all over the world have been lauded as “heroes”. Despite intentions to show appreciation for healthcare workers, we offer evidence that the “hero” label can ironically and insidiously blind the public to their suffering and encourage their exploitation. The heroization of healthcare workers predicts beliefs that they: (1) must enjoy their jobs despite increasingly poor treatment, (2) can endure negative work-related health outcomes, and (3) would willingly volunteer for more work (without any additional pay) and take additional pay cuts. Heroizing healthcare workers also increased public support for new exploitative policies. These effects were specific to heroizing, and not just the result of more general positive attitudes toward healthcare workers. We discuss the implications of these effects for contemporary forms of exploitation and for how we can work to mitigate the suffering and unfair treatment of healthcare workers in difficult times.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zsnhg/" target="_blank">The Heroization of Healthcare Workers Blinds the Public to Their Suffering and Encourages Their Exploitation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Analytic-Thinking Predicts Hoax Beliefs and Helping Behaviors in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic</strong> -
<div>
The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak was labeled a global pandemic by the WHO in March of 2020. During that same month, the number of confirmed cases and the death rate grew exponentially in the United States, creating a serious public-health emergency. Unfortunately, many Americans dismissed the pandemic as a hoax and failed to properly engage in helpful behaviors like social-distancing and increased hand-washing. Here, we examine a disposition—willingness to engage in analytic-thinking—that might predict beliefs that the pandemic is a hoax and failures to change behavior in positive ways. Our results indicate that individuals less willing to engage effortful, deliberative, and reflective cognitive processes were more likely to believe the pandemic was a hoax, and less likely to have recently engaged in social-distancing and hand-washing. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding and addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/m3vth/" target="_blank">Analytic-Thinking Predicts Hoax Beliefs and Helping Behaviors in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Imagining a Personalized Scenario Selectively Increases Perceived Risk of Viral Transmission for Older Adults</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a serious and prolonged public-health emergency. Older adults have been at significantly greater risk of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death due to COVID-19; as of February 2021, over 81% of COVID-19-related deaths in the U.S. occurred for people over the age of 65. Converging evidence from around the world suggests that age is the most significant risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness and for the experience of adverse health outcomes. Therefore, effectively communicating health-related risk information requires tailoring interventions to older adults’ needs. Using a novel informational intervention with a nationally-representative sample of 546 U.S. residents, we found that older adults reported increased perceived risk of COVID-19 transmission after imagining a personalized scenario with social consequences. Although older adults tended to forget numerical information over time, the personalized simulations elicited increases in perceived risk that persisted over a 1-3 week delay. Overall, our results bear broad implications for communicating information about health risks to older adults, and suggest new strategies to combat annual influenza outbreaks.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/6m5p4/" target="_blank">Imagining a Personalized Scenario Selectively Increases Perceived Risk of Viral Transmission for Older Adults</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Pairing Facts with Imagined Consequences Improves Pandemic-Related Risk Perception</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic reached staggering new peaks during a global resurgence more than a year after the crisis began. Although public health guidelines initially helped to slow the spread of disease, widespread pandemic fatigue and prolonged harm to financial stability and mental wellbeing contributed to this resurgence. In the late stage of the pandemic, it became clear that new interventions were needed to support long-term behavior change. Here, we examined subjective perceived risk about COVID-19, and the relationship between perceived risk and engagement in risky behaviors. In Study 1 (N = 303), we found that subjective perceived risk was likely inaccurate, but predicted compliance with public health guidelines. In Study 2 (N = 735), we developed a multi-faceted intervention designed to realign perceived risk with actual risk. Participants completed an episodic simulation task; we expected that imagining a COVID-related scenario would increase the salience of risk information and enhance behavior change. Immediately following the episodic simulation, participants completed a risk estimation task with individualized feedback about local risk levels. We found that information prediction error, a measure of surprise, drove beneficial change in perceived risk and willingness to engage in risky activities. Imagining a COVID-related scenario beforehand enhanced the effect of prediction error on learning. Importantly, our intervention produced lasting effects that persisted after a 1-3 week delay. Overall, we describe a fast and feasible online intervention that effectively changed beliefs and intentions about risky behaviors.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/53a9f/" target="_blank">Pairing Facts with Imagined Consequences Improves Pandemic-Related Risk Perception</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Spatiotemporal dynamics and epidemiological impact of SARS-CoV-2 XBB lineages dissemination in Brazil in 2023</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The SARS-CoV-2 XBB is a group of highly immune-evasive lineages of the Omicron VOC that emerged by recombining BA.2-descendent lineages and spread worldwide during 2023. In this study, we combine SARS-CoV-2 genomic data (n = 11,065 sequences) with epidemiological data of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) cases collected in Brazil between October 2022 and July 2023 to reconstruct the space-time dynamics and epidemiologic impact of XBB dissemination in the country. Our analyses revealed that the introduction and local emergence of lineages carrying convergent mutations within the Spike protein, especially F486P, F456L, and L455F, propelled the spread of XBB* lineages in Brazil. The average relative instantaneous reproduction numbers of XBB<em>+F486P, XBB</em>+F486P+F456L, and XBB<em>+F486P+ F456L+L455F lineages in Brazil were estimated to be 1.24, 1.33, and 1.48 higher than that of other co-circulating lineages (mainly BQ.1</em>/BE<em>), respectively. Despite such a growth advantage, the dissemination of these XBB</em> lineages had a reduced impact on Brazils epidemiological scenario concerning previous Omicron subvariants. The peak number of SARI cases from SARS-CoV-2 during the XBB wave was approximately 90%, 80%, and 70% lower than that observed during the previous BA.1<em>, BA.5</em>, and BQ.1* waves, respectively. These findings revealed the emergence of multiple XBB lineages with progressively increasing growth advantage, yet with relatively limited epidemiological impact in Brazil throughout 2023. The XBB*+F486P+F456L+L455F lineages stand out for their heightened transmissibility, warranting close monitoring in the months ahead.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.30.23297466v2" target="_blank">Spatiotemporal dynamics and epidemiological impact of SARS-CoV-2 XBB lineages dissemination in Brazil in 2023</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Estimated transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 variants from wastewater are robust to differential shedding</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the development and adoption of wastewater-based epidemiology. Wastewater samples can provide genomic information for detecting and assessing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants in communities and for estimating important epidemiological parameters such as the growth advantage of the variant. However, despite demonstrated successes, epidemiological data derived from wastewater suffers from potential biases. Of particular concern are differential shedding profiles that different variants of concern exhibit, because they can shift the relationship between viral loads in wastewater and prevalence estimates derived from clinical cases. Using mathematical modeling, simulations, and Swiss surveillance data, we demonstrate that this bias does not affect estimation of the growth advantage of the variant and has only a limited and transient impact on estimates of the effective reproduction number. Thus, population-level epidemiological parameters derived from wastewater maintain their advantages over traditional clinical-derived estimates, even in the presence of differential shedding among variants.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.25.23297539v2" target="_blank">Estimated transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 variants from wastewater are robust to differential shedding</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Menstrual cycle changes increased following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination: Social media validation and self-controlled case series analysis.</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Objectives - To investigate if there was an increase in menstrual abnormality related presentation post COVID-19 vaccination. Design - BERTopic machine learning, with a guided topic modelling option was used to analyse mentions of menstrual change in relation to COVID-19 vaccination on the social media platform Reddit. Self-controlled case series (SCCS) analysis using general practice data collected via the POpulation Level Analysis and Reporting (POLAR) tool with permission from Primary Health Networks (PHNs) as the de-identified dataset owners in Victoria and New South Wales. Setting: Globally for social media analysis. Victoria and New South Wales (NSW), Australia for POLAR. Participants: For social media analysis, people who made a Reddit post about menstrual concerns post COVID-19 vaccine. For the SCCS analysis, people who presented to a POLAR GP registered practice with a new menstrual abnormality diagnosis. Exposures: COVID-19 vaccination with adenovirus vector [AstraZenecas Vaxzervria ChadOx1-S], mRNA [Pfizer-BioNTechs Comirnaty BNT162b2 and Modernas Spikevax] or protein-subunit [Novavaxs Nuvaxovid]). Outcomes and Measures: Scraped social media posts were pre-processed, analysed for positive, negative, and neutral sentiments and topic modelled. Menstrual abnormality presentations of interest were isolated from the general practice dataset aggregated by POLAR, by searching for relevant SNOMED CT codes. Similarly, relative incidence (RI) was calculated for all COVID-19 vaccine types. Results: Social media analysis saw peaks in menstrual change posts on Reddit since the global COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The SCCS analysis demonstrates an increase in general practice presentations of menstrual abnormality diagnosis following mRNA vaccines (RI= 1.14, 95% CI: 1.07 to 1.22, P &lt;0.001). Conclusions and Relevance: This study demonstrates an increase in menstrual abnormality presentations following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. Our findings validate the concerns raised on social media so people who are vaccinated or are considering future vaccines feel heard, supported, and validated. Our analysis highlights the importance of using large real-world datasets to gather reliable evidence for public health decision making.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.26.23297643v1" target="_blank">Menstrual cycle changes increased following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination: Social media validation and self-controlled case series analysis.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Systematic SARS-CoV-2 S Gene Sequencing in Wastewater Samples Enables Early Lineage Detection and Uncovers Rare Mutations in Portugal</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
As the COVID-19 pandemic reached its peak, many countries implemented genomic surveillance systems to track the evolution and transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Transition from the pandemic to the endemic phase prioritized alternative testing strategies to maintain effective epidemic surveillance at the population level, with less intensive sequencing efforts. One such promising approach was Wastewater-Based Surveillance (WBS), which offers non-invasive, cost-effective means for analysing virus trends at the sewershed level. From 2020 onwards, wastewater has been recognized as an instrumental source of information for public health, with national and international authorities exploring options to implement national wastewater surveillance systems and increasingly relying on WBS as early warning of potential pathogen outbreaks. In Portugal, several pioneer projects joined the academia, water utilities and Public Administration around WBS. To validate WBS as an effective genomic surveillance strategy, it is crucial to collect long term performance data. In this work, we present one year of systematic SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance in Portugal, representing 35% of the mainland population. We employed two complementary methods for lineage determination - allelic discrimination by RT-PCR and S gene sequencing. This combination allowed us to monitor variant evolution in near-real-time and identify low-frequency mutations. Over the course of this year-long study, spanning from May 2022 to April 2023, we successfully tracked the dominant Omicron sub-lineages, their progression and evolution, which aligned with concurrent clinical surveillance data. Our results underscore the effectiveness of WBS as a tracking system for virus variants, with the ability to unveil mutations undetected via massive sequencing of clinical samples from Portugal, demonstrating the ability of WBS to uncover new mutations and detect rare genetic variants. Our findings emphasize that knowledge of the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 at the population level can be extended far beyond via the combination of routine clinical genomic surveillance with wastewater sequencing and genotyping.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.30.23297774v1" target="_blank">Systematic SARS-CoV-2 S Gene Sequencing in Wastewater Samples Enables Early Lineage Detection and Uncovers Rare Mutations in Portugal</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Two-years mothering into the pandemic: Impact of the three COVID-19 waves in the Argentinian postpartum women’s mental health</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affects certain vulnerable groups, including postpartum women. Thus, this work aimed to analyze the mental health evolution in Argentinian postpartum women during the first three waves of COVID-19 and its determinants. In this repeated cross-sectional study, data were collected during the three waves of COVID-19: May-July/2020 (n=319), April-August/2021 (n=340), and December/2021- March/2022 (n=341). Postpartum depression (PDSS‐SF), insomnia (ISI), and perceived stress symptoms (PSS-C) were used. Statistical analyses included multivariate logistic regression, analysis of variance, and structural equation modeling to test for temporal trends in mental health indicators during the pandemic and to identify their determinants. The prevalence rates of postpartum depression and insomnia rose from 37% to 60% and 46% to 62%, respectively. In contrast, pandemic-related stress decreased. Certain factors increased maternal risk of mental symptoms: unemployment status, no medical support, reduced family size, remote working, advanced maternal age, late postpartum, multiparity, and living in the least developed region of Argentina. Structural equation modeling confirmed a process of pandemic-stress adaptation, although there is a persistent increment of postpartum depression and consequent increased insomnia. Postpartum women’s mental health was worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although women have become more able to cope and perceive less pandemic-related stress, its social and economic impact still persists and puts them at higher psychological risk. Thus, health systems must ensure the women’s well-being to deal with current and future consequences of this epidemiological scenario.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.30.23297772v1" target="_blank">Two-years mothering into the pandemic: Impact of the three COVID-19 waves in the Argentinian postpartum women’s mental health</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>To Sit Quietly in a Room Alone: The Psychology of Social, Material, and Sensation Seeking Input</strong> -
<div>
External input is any kind of physical stimulation created by an individual’s surroundings that can be detected by the senses. The present research established a novel conceptualization of this construct by investigating it in relation to the needs for material, social, and sensation seeking input, and by testing the consequences of these needs for psychological functioning during long- and short-term input deprivation. It was established that the three needs constitute different dimensions of an overarching construct (i.e., need for external input), that the needs for social and sensation seeking input have negative consequences for people’s experiences of long-term input deprivation (i.e., COVID-19 restrictions), and that the need for material input negatively predicts the experiences of short-term input deprivation (i.e., sitting in a chair without doing anything else but thinking). Overall, this research established a novel construct that has fundamental implications for experiences and actions in a range of different contexts.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zpf6b/" target="_blank">To Sit Quietly in a Room Alone: The Psychology of Social, Material, and Sensation Seeking Input</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Projections of wastewater as an indicator of COVID-19 cases in corrections facilities: a modelling study</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Although prison facilities are not fully isolated from the communities they are located within, the majority of the population is confined and requires high levels of health vigilance and protection. This study sought to examine the dynamic relationship between facility level wastewater viral RNA concentration and probability of at least one positive COVID-19 case within the facility. Methods The study period was January 11, 2021 through May 12, 2023. Wastewater samples were collected and analyzed for SARS-CoV-2 (N1) and pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) three times per week across 14 prison facilities in Kentucky (USA). Confirmed positive clinical case reports were also provided. A hierarchical Bayesian spatial-temporal model with a latent lagged process was developed. Findings We modeled a facility-specific SARS-CoV-2 (N1) normalized by PMMoV wastewater ratio associated with at least one COVID-19 facility case with an 80% probability. The ratio differs among facilities. Across the 14 facilities, our model demonstrates an average capture rate of 94.95% via the N1/PMMoV threshold with p_ts≥0.5. However, it is noteworthy as the p_ts threshold is set higher, such as at 0.9 or above, the model9s average capture rate reduces to 60%. This robust performance underscores the model9s effectiveness in accurately detecting the presence of positive COVID-19 cases of incarcerated people. Interpretation The findings of this study provide a correction facility-specific threshold model for public health response based on frequent wastewater surveillance.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.31.23296864v1" target="_blank">Projections of wastewater as an indicator of COVID-19 cases in corrections facilities: a modelling study</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>SAFE Workplace Intervention for People With IDD</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Developement of Infectious Airborne Disease Prevention Workplace Curriclulm <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: SAFE Employment Training <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Temple University; National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research <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>Effects of an EMDR Intervention on Traumatic and Obsessive Symptoms</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Adult ALL; Post-traumatic Stress Disorder; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Disgust; Guilt; Shame <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: EMDR <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Pisa <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>Lithium Long COVID Dose-finding Study</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Dietary Supplement: Lithium <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: State University of New York at Buffalo <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>Preoperative Educational Videos on Maternal Stress Whose Children Received Congenital Heart Disease Surgery: During COVID-19 Panic</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19; Educational Videos; Maternal; Uncertainty; Anxiety; Depression; Congenital Heart Disease; Children <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: Preoperative educational videos plus routine education; Other: Preoperative routine education <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Chung Shan Medical 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>Pharmacokinetics and Safety of GST-HG171 Tablets in Subjects With Impaired and Normal Renal Function</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pneumonia <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: GST-HG171 Tablets <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Fujian Akeylink Biotechnology Co., Ltd. <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>Pharmacokinetics and Safety of GST-HG171 Tablets in Subjects With Impaired and Normal Liver Function</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pneumonia <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: GST-HG171 Tablets <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Fujian Akeylink Biotechnology Co., Ltd. <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>Evaluation of Concordance Between Exhaled Air Test (eBAM-CoV) and RT-PCR to Detect SARS-CoV-2</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: SARS-CoV-2 Infection; COVID-19; Coronavirus <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: eBAM Cov Testing <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nīmes; University of Nimes; brains’ laboratory sas, 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>Study to Safety, Tolerability and Immunogenicity of EG-COVII in Healthy Adult</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: EG-COVII <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: EyeGene Inc. <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>Pharmacokinetics and Bioequivalence of Aterixen 100 mg Tablets and Aterixen 100 mg Film-coated Tablets in Healthy Volunteers</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Viral Infection COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Aterixen <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Valenta Pharm JSC <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>Long COVID Brain Fog: Cognitive Rehabilitation Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID; Brain Fog; Cognitive Impairment; Cognitive Dysfunction; Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Speed of Processing Training; Behavioral: In-lab Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Training; Behavioral: In-lab Brain Health Training; Behavioral: Transfer Package; Behavioral: Follow Up Phone Calls; Behavioral: Vocational Rehabilitation; Behavioral: Peer Mentoring <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Alabama at Birmingham; National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research <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>Paradoxical Response to Chest Wall Loading in Mechanically Ventilated Patients</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: ARDS; COVID-19; Mechanical Ventilation Pressure High; Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Diagnostic Test: Manual loading of the chest wall <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: HealthPartners Institute <br/><b>Withdrawn</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>A Practical RCT of TCM in the Treatment of LCOVID and Analysis of Syndrome Types and Medication Characteristics.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Traditional Chinese medicine treatment; Drug: Western medicine treatment <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Chinese University of Hong Kong <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>Narrative Intervention for Long COVID-19 (NICO)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID; Long Covid19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Narrative Intervention for Long COVID-19 (NICO) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Colorado, Denver <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>Inspiratory Muscle Training in People With Long COVID-19- A Pilot Investigation.</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: PrO2 <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Bath; Swansea 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>Home-Based Respiratory Muscle Strength Training Program for Individuals With Post-COVID-19 Persistent Dyspnea</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-COVID-19 Syndrome; Dyspnea <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: Respiratory Muscle Strength Trainers <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of South Florida <br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Potential PDE4B inhibitors as promising candidates against SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong> - Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an RNA virus belonging to the coronavirus family responsible for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It primarily affects the pulmonary system, which is the target of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), for which many new compounds have been developed. In this study, phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitors are being investigated. The inhibition of PDE4 enzyme produces anti-inflammatory and bronchodilator effects in the lung…</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>Proteomic analyses of smear-positive/negative tuberculosis patients uncover differential antigen-presenting cell activation and lipid metabolism</strong> - CONCLUSION: Our study provides valuable insights into the differential molecular mechanisms underlying SNPT and SPPT, reveals the critical role of antigen-presenting cell activation in SNPT for effectively clearing the majority of Mtb in bodies, and shows the possibility of APC activation as a novel TB treatment strategy.</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><em>Antrodia cinnamomea</em> May Interfere with the Interaction Between ACE2 and SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein in vitro and Reduces Lung Inflammation in a Hamster Model of COVID-19</strong> - CONCLUSION: AC shows potential as a nutraceutical for reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by disrupting the interaction between ACE2 and the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and for preventing COVID-19-associated lung inflammation.</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>Computational Screening Using a Combination of Ligand-Based Machine Learning and Molecular Docking Methods for the Repurposing of Antivirals Targeting the SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease</strong> - CONCLUSION: Results demonstrated the efficiency of LBVS combined with MD. This combined strategy provided positive evidence showing that the top screened drugs, including CCX-140, which had the lowest MD score, can be reasonably advanced to the in vitro phase. This combined method may accelerate the discovery of therapies for novel or orphan diseases from existing drugs.</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>Impact of influenza immunity on the mortality among older adults hospitalized with COVID-19: a retrospective cohort study</strong> - It has been suggested that the outcomes of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are better in individuals having recently received an influenza vaccine than in non-vaccinated individuals. We hypothesized that this association depends on the humoral responses against influenza viruses. We aim to assess the relationship between the humoral immunity against influenza and the 3-month all-cause mortality among hospitalized older patients with COVID-19. We performed an exploratory retrospective study…</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>Superior anti-pulmonary viral potential of Natrialba sp. M6-producing surfactin and C50 carotenoid pigment with unveiling its action modes</strong> - CONCLUSION: This study declared the promising efficacy of Sur as an efficient pharmacological treatment option for these pulmonary viruses and considered as guide for further in vivo research.</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>Identifying the Potential of miRNAs in <em>Houttuynia cordata</em>-Derived Exosome-Like Nanoparticles Against Respiratory RNA Viruses</strong> - INTRODUCTION: Pathogenic respiratory RNA viruses, including influenza A virus (IAV), respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and SARS-CoV-2, are major causes of causes of acute respiratory infection globally. Plant-derived exosome-like nanoparticles containing miRNAs have shown substantial cross-kingdom regulatory effects on both viral and human transcripts. Houttuynia cordata (H. cordata), a traditional Chinese medicine frequently used to treat respiratory diseases. However, the role of H….</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>Hypercapnia increases ACE2 expression and pseudo-SARS-CoV-2 entry in bronchial epithelial cells by augmenting cellular cholesterol</strong> - Patients with chronic lung disease, obesity, and other co-morbid conditions are at increased risk of severe illness and death when infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Hypercapnia, the elevation of CO(2) in blood and tissue, commonly occurs in patients with severe acute and chronic lung disease, including those with pulmonary infections, and is also associated with high mortality risk. We previously reported that hypercapnia increases viral replication 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>Clinical and Immunological Impacts of Latent Toxoplasmosis on COVID-19 Patients</strong> - Background Parasites are well-known immune-modulators. They inhibit some aspects of the immune system to ensure persistence inside the host for a long time; meanwhile, they stimulate other immune aspects to assure the survival of the host. Wide variations in the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among developed and developing countries were reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parasitic infections, including Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), were claimed to contribute to such…</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>IgG antibody levels against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in mother-child dyads after COVID-19 vaccination</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines induce high anti-SARS-CoV-2 S titers in pregnant women, which can inhibit the binding of ACE2 to protein S and are efficiently transferred to the fetus. However, there was a rapid decrease in antibody levels at 2 to 3 months post-partum, particularly in infants.</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>Neurotoxic effects of chloroquine and its main transformation product formed after chlorination</strong> - Pharmaceutical transformation products (TPs) generated during wastewater treatment have become an environmental concern. However, there is limited understanding regarding the TPs produced from pharmaceuticals during wastewater treatment. In this study, chloroquine (CQ), which was extensively used for treating coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) infections during the pandemic, was selected for research. We identified and fractionated the main TP produced from CQ during chlorine disinfection 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>Development of Pan-Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Agents through Allosteric Inhibition of nsp14/nsp10 Complex</strong> - SARS-CoV-2 nsp14 functions both as an exoribonuclease (ExoN) together with its critical cofactor nsp10 and as an S-adenosyl methionine-dependent (guanine-N7) methyltransferase (MTase), which makes it an attractive target for the development of pan-anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs. Herein, we screened a panel of compounds (and drugs) and found that certain compounds, especially Bi(III)-based compounds, could allosterically inhibit both MTase and ExoN activities of nsp14 potently. We further demonstrated…</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>Unraveling bioactive metabolites of mangroves as putative inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro and RBD proteins: molecular dynamics and ADMET analysis</strong> - COVID-19 is a deadly pandemic caused by Corona virus leading to millions of deaths worldwide. Till today no medicine was available to cure this disease. This study selected 262 potential bioactive natural products derived from mangroves to inhibit the main protease (Mpro) and receptor-binding domain (RBD) protein of the COVID-19 virus. All the ligands were subjected to Adsorption Digestion Metabolism Excretion and Toxicity (ADMET) predictions and docking studies using AutodockVina. Among all the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Immunogenicity of Co-Administered Omicron BA.4/BA.5 Bivalent COVID-19 and Quadrivalent Seasonal Influenza Vaccines in Israel during the 2022-2023 Winter Season</strong> - Vaccination against COVID-19 and influenza provides the best defense against morbidity and mortality. Administering both vaccines concurrently may increase vaccination rates and reduce the burden on the healthcare system. This study evaluated the immunogenicity of healthcare workers in Israel who were co-administered with the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 bivalent COVID-19 vaccine and the 2022-2023 quadrivalent influenza vaccine. SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody titers were measured via microneutralization…</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>Longitudinal Analysis of SARS-CoV-2-Specific Cellular and Humoral Immune Responses and Breakthrough Infection following BNT162b2/BNT162b2/BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1/ChAdOx1/BNT162b2 Vaccination: A Prospective Cohort in Naive Healthcare Workers</strong> - Assessing immune responses post-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination is crucial for optimizing vaccine strategies. This prospective study aims to evaluate immune responses and breakthrough infection in 235 infection-naïve healthcare workers up to 13-15 months after initial vaccination in two vaccine groups (108 BNT/BNT/BNT and 127 ChAd/ChAd/BNT). Immune responses were assessed using the interferon-gamma enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay, total immunoglobulin, and neutralizing activity through surrogate…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<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 $1.8-Billion Lawsuit Over a Teacher Test</strong> - In the nineties, New York began requiring aspiring educators to take an exam. Thousands of people later claimed that the test was racially biased. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-teachers-who-oppose-tests">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What the U.A.W. Won</strong> - In forcing the Big Three automakers to pay higher wages and make other concessions, the union demonstrated the enduring power of organized labor. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-the-uaw-won">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Plight of the Hostages and the Rapidly Escalating Crisis in Gaza</strong> - Never before has Israel sought to rescue so many hostages from a territory where it is also waging an unbridled aerial war. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-plight-of-the-hostages-and-the-rapidly-escalating-crisis-in-gaza">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Smoking Gun for Biden’s Big Climate Decision?</strong> - A new analysis suggests that L.N.G. exports may well be worse for the environment than burning coal. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-smoking-gun-for-bidens-big-climate-decision">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Hamas Propaganda War</strong> - Across the Arab world, the group is successfully selling its narrative of resistance. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-hamas-propaganda-war">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>It takes more than trees to build a livable city</strong> -
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<img alt="A drawing of a person holding a shovel and walking away from a row of recently planted trees." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ybRdrDEssTAsvyp2UWxKAZKUVwI=/0x448:3486x3063/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72816344/GettyImages_wpt014.0.jpg"/>
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Getty Images
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Why green cities might not be the panacea we think they are.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p2FVS5">
Des Fitzgerald’s new book, <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/des-fitzgerald/the-living-city-fitzgerald/"><em>The Living City: Why Cities Don’t Need to Be Green to Be Great</em></a>, reads like a provocation. The idea of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-37716-8_1">green cities</a> — urban spaces where trees and plant life are integrated to make the environment more sustainable and livable — is so prevalent that there are very few cities <a href="https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/reports-greening-americas-communities-projects">in the United States</a> and <a href="https://www.c40.org/">around the world</a> that aren’t pursuing it in <a href="https://thegreencities.eu/">some form</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MZbfWE">
Fitzgerald, a professor of medical humanities and social sciences at <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/contributor/des-fitzgerald/">University College Cork</a>, Ireland, doesn’t think the explicit goal of adding more trees is bad, exactly. He acknowledges that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/01/planting-trees-cities-cut-deaths-summer-heat-study">planting more trees</a> can have a cooling effect on a warming planet and can benefit people living in cities. But, he writes, he wanted to consider why “so many planners, architects and policymakers [are] so fixated on <em>nature</em> as the solution to all of the city’s problems.” Fitzgerald, who previously co-wrote a book about the intersection of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&amp;hl=en&amp;user=vDg1EaIAAAAJ&amp;citation_for_view=vDg1EaIAAAAJ:Tiz5es2fbqcC">mental health and urban living</a>, started noticing in recent years that people talk about trees as a miracle cure for the challenges cities face, especially the psychological well-being of city dwellers. There’s the rise of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/forest-bathing-nature-walk-health">forest bathing</a>, <a href="https://nationalparkcity.london/">park cities</a>, and <a href="https://www.onetreeperchild.com/">“one tree per child” </a>campaigns. Fitzgerald wants readers to consider some of the less savory historical antecedents of the movement and question the dichotomy between the city and the natural world that he thinks we take for granted.
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zJclvB">
A lot of the ideas in Fitzgerald’s book are counterintuitive. You don’t need to agree with all of them to appreciate his book, which takes many of the shibboleths of modern urban planning and architecture and turns them on their heads.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Od67ct">
<em>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8betG6">
<strong>You’re interested in what the tree symbolizes, more so than the tree itself. The tree as a moral project or as a political project, right? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sebsuZ">
Exactly — what kind of cultural work we’re doing when we get involved with trees. There’s a quote in the book from someone who says trees are a <a href="https://naturalresources.house.gov/legislative-priorities/trillion-trees-act.htm">bipartisan issue</a>, which is sort of true. It’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s an interesting thing to say. There’s no ideology that cannot be advanced by the tree. You have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/08/02/trillion-trees-republicans-climate/">right-wing ecologism</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/16/liberal-democrats-pledge-to-plant-60m-trees-a-year">left-wing ecologism</a>. Part of what I find tricky about this kind of uncritical tree veneration is that politics gets covered over a bit, and we kind of forget that there’s all sorts of not-good cultural associations being carried along there.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qQCAEb">
<strong>I can imagine someone reading this and thinking, “What bad cultural associations could people possibly attach to trees?”</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uID7cf">
On the most basic level, it’s worth reminding ourselves that until very recently in human history, forests were <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23840033/vaster-wilds-review-lauren-groff">places of terror and fear</a> and the unknown. Today, there’s a <a href="https://www.vox.com/23894176/great-outdoors-exclusionary-nature-hiking-equity">certain privilege</a> in being able to enjoy green spaces. You have to have a particular kind of body. In many parts of the world, you have to be racialized in a certain kind of way, to be able to be in the forest in a non-threatening way. All of that gets forgotten.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JligaK">
But the bigger thing is that the political movements that advanced nature over urban space, that wanted to get people out into nature, and out of cities for their own moral goods — it’s not a good movement. A Jamaican-American historian, <a href="https://environment.yale.edu/profile/taylor">Dorceta Taylor</a>, wrote this really brilliant history of the <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-rise-of-the-american-conservation-movement">environmental movement in the United States</a>, and she convincingly describes what happened in the early days of the environmental movement in the US as basically a response to anxiety about threats to racialized masculinity. You’ve got elite men in urban spaces suddenly feeling anxious and threatened, not least by the arrival of immigrants from places that were then thought to be in some ways less civilizationally developed — Ireland, for example. What’s at stake in the movement into places like Yosemite or the discovery of the West, aside from the erasure of Indigenous communities who were already there, is an attempt to recover a sense of virile white masculinity, as opposed to the threatening masses who are coming into the cities.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9n71SG">
That is just something we don’t think about, especially at the [urban] planning level.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1lujId">
<strong>What made you want to write about green city initiatives? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yoXXPZ">
When I first started to think about this topic seriously, it was around the time that a campaign was emerging for London to declare itself the world’s <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/cleanair/london-worlds-first-national-park-city-a4195376.html">first National Park City</a>. It was really the <a href="https://www.nationalparkcity.org/">website of that initiative</a> that gave me the sense that there is something interesting happening. It was a very animalistic vision, like what if there were otters in the river? It was this takeover of urban space by wildness, as represented by things like otters and beavers, that just struck me as a very strange vision. Like something was wrong here that needed to be corrected, and there were these wild objects that are going to help us make good on it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="okpO57">
The other thing that really struck me is the language of <a href="https://www.vox.com/mental-health">mental health</a>, the sense that what green space is really going to do is have a transformative effect on the mental health of people in urban spaces, a great problem that has been with urban civic leaders since at least the mid-19th century. It was just so obvious to me that if you wanted to take urban mental health seriously, that is not where you would start.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xAPW8P">
<strong>Where would you start? Why does that seem unserious to you?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hxzlzl">
I do think that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/feb/25/city-stress-mental-health-rural-kind">cities have a role</a> in the production of mental distress for some people. The city is a source of stress in a whole bunch of different ways: noise and light, but also inequality and precarity and things like <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy/23856608/portland-homeless-tent-encampments-forced-treatment-guardianships">poor housing</a>, [job] insecurity, migration status, dealing with bureaucracy. These are just things that stress people out that conglomerate in urban spaces. So if you are living in a city and you may have some kind of biological predisposition that elevates your risk of developing major psychosis, and that runs into a big stressor — let’s say <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/7/5/23778810/homelessness-california-unsheltered-research">housing precarity</a> — those two things together will significantly increase your likelihood of experiencing a psychotic episode, or whatever it is.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Tqs3ti">
I find that very convincing, and it’s a story that is really important and that we need to stay with, as researchers. It’s with that complexity in mind that I find the idea that trees are going to intervene, it just seems not serious. If you really want to have a transformation of urban mental health, you could just do what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/30/housing-crisis-council-homes-are-the-answer">they did in the 1950s</a>: build <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/28/plans-approved-for-britains-first-womens-only-tower-block">massive blocks of housing</a>, which is literally the opposite of the green cities people think you need. It’s modernist housing blocks on the edges of cities. You get people decent, secure places to live, where they have some sense that their kids have a stake in the place.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qaXer9">
That’s the kind of thing that would have a transformational effect on people’s mental health in urban space. It would take out so many stressors.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y1hsRA">
<strong>What about the climate element to this? Obviously, there really are benefits to planting more trees as the planet warms, but I wonder if you see it being used as a feel-good workaround for a more difficult problem?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="muZj76">
I think undeniably, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/dec/14/mature-trees-are-key-to-liveable-cities-housing-intensification-plans-must-ensure-they-survive">trees have a major effect</a> on making cities more livable as the world gets warmer. They have a cooling effect, they provide shade, they let water run off. I have a maybe inappropriate nervousness about this book being read as anti-environment, so I need to stress that I absolutely do think that one way that cities are going to need to make themselves more sustainable in the future is by having more organic matter in urban space.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6jl445">
But without being facetious about it, if we are serious about <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate">climate change</a>, and if we are serious about even mitigation, let alone solving the problem, I just can’t believe that this is where we would start. This just feels like, not quite a Band-Aid; it’s almost more like a transference. It’s like we can’t deal with the problem so let’s do this thing that kind of feels like dealing with the problem. It’s nice, anyway, because it’s planting trees. No one’s going to object to that, and that kind of makes us all collectively feel like we’re resolving these issues.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Af4AVm">
<strong>You survey a lot of the research in your book about the effect that nature and natural environments have on us. The research does seem to support the idea that it has a positive effect, no?</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Iofc8d">
I feel confident that immersion in nature has some kind of calming effect and that for some people it will be good for their mental health. There’s a lot of really good research in this space and a lot of people are doing important work trying to really get down to the biological specifics of what’s going on. We are very far from making any good sense of it or getting anywhere near a point where we can make policy prescriptions on the basis of it. That’s not because people are doing bad work, it’s just because we’re very early in that process and it’s such a complicated thing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J87nmO">
<strong>Washington, DC, and many other American cities are </strong><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/02/23/dc-traffic-deaths-highest-record/"><strong>really </strong></a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/19/dc-homicides-rising-major-cities/"><strong>struggling </strong></a><strong>right now in various ways that, as someone who loves cities, I find hard. Gun violence is </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/23662072/children-guns-mass-shootings-covenant"><strong>a huge problem in the US</strong></a><strong>, as is </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safety-fatalities-governors-association"><strong>traffic violence</strong></a><strong>, the </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/housing"><strong>housing crisis</strong></a><strong>, and the death of a lot of </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/23818654/future-cities-experts-offices-urbanism"><strong>downtowns</strong></a><strong> as people work from home. Certain cities just feel ill-equipped right now to deal with these issues. Maybe it’s a failure of leadership, rather than the cities themselves, but it’s hard to take in.</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mAQ1PL">
A lot of this is familiar. We have a lot of dereliction in Cork. A lot of buildings are basically closed and there’s no one to take them over and that is not because the <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy">economy</a> is bad, it’s just because of completely changing life patterns about where people are shopping, working, all those things. I also think it’s important to think about the city in the absence of this desire for repair. The kind of fantasy we often have about what a good city is — which is that kind of bustling town center, there’s no homelessness — that’s never a good space for everybody.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f99bns">
It’s not that I’m against urban improvement or anything like that, but I think we need to think really carefully about what I think we’ve collectively decided a good city looks like.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a8hVVs">
<strong>It’s maybe this notion that to love cities is to love people and to retreat from the city is to retreat from humanity, to retreat from its problems and to try to pretend like they don’t exist. </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fy3e75">
Yeah, I think we need to stop thinking about the city as a technology that’s gonna fix society. That’s what I mean about trying to get over that horizon of repair, of always fixing things, of wanting someone to take over a derelict store because there’s homeless people sleeping in front of it. That kind of repair is always tricky and ambiguous.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SrygrT">
For anyone who lives in a city right now, there is this sense of, not quite despair but a sense that the city is not in good shape. I think that’s a common global urban experience right now, at least in Europe and North America. I just wonder about the people who are not participating in the conversations. Is there a sense of what a good city might look like for people who are currently sleeping in front of storefronts? I don’t think we think enough about, for instance, the perspective of kids in urban space. Not to be the classic man who has kids and starts to care about these things, but I am suddenly aware of how hostile to kids urban spaces are. Really, it’s impossible for me to let them run around or let them have any kind of freedom. Is anyone even asking kids about what a good urban space looks like?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p2cQ7X">
<strong>One of the things that I enjoyed about the book was that, despite the provocations, you have a lot of nuance. There’s a lot of subtlety. Is there anything else you’d want readers to take away from this conversation? </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yF7ivu">
One thing I would really like people to take from this book that’s maybe not on the surface is a kind of anti-utopianism. I’m not anti specific utopias, but anti the idea of utopia. I start off the book by writing about a city <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113670047/saudi-arabia-new-city-the-mirror-line-desert">that’s being built in Saudi Arabia called Neom</a> and a chunk of that city that’s called The Line. To me, it really crystallizes so much of the vacuity and danger of so much utopian urban thinking. They’ve recruited really serious people, like major architects and serious designers, in the service of what is an objectively dreadful project. Dreadful in its own terms, aesthetically, and dreadful for the people who were already in that space before you broke ground on it. And yet it is buoyed along by an uncritical commitment to utopia on the part of some, hopefully, naive people who are driven by a kind of desire for the perfect future urban space. What I’d like the book to do is to really get us to think critically about the fact of having an urban vision in itself, rather than living in, and making sense of, the spaces that are already around us.
</p></li>
<li><strong>Lahaina schools are open again. Parents worry they’re ridden with toxic waste.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vxgp0w_7WlKRcMxxvvzH6ewbolc=/0x0:4800x3600/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72816245/AP23285784125380.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Third grade students read a book during an English language arts class at their temporary school site in early October before campuses in Lāhainā re-opened. | AP/Mengshin Lin
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Hawai‘i education officials want to return to normal. But some parents want more time to heal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SrvxPb">
On October 15, a day before Lāhainā’s public schools were set to reopen, the families of West Maui — still reeling from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate/2023/8/9/23826015/maui-fire-2023-lahaina-hawaii-cause">deadliest wildfire in US history</a> — received a grim warning. Hawai‘i public health officials said the ash from the fire in Kula, a mountain town 25 miles east of Lāhainā, contained dangerously high levels of arsenic, 140 times greater than the federal safety limit. The fires burned through all kinds of <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate/2023/8/14/23831460/hawaii-fires-maui-wildfires-death-toll-search-rescue-missing">infrastructure and household materials</a>, which can leak harmful chemicals into the air and water, such as arsenic, lead, and asbestos from older buildings.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="C41or9">
The state health department said Lāhainā’s soil, still untested, <a href="https://health.hawaii.gov/news/newsroom/preliminary-kula-ash-samples-show-elevated-levels-of-toxic-substances/">is likely contaminated with the same toxins</a> as those in Kula.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9OjsGh">
The news was frightening — but unsurprising — for the people of Lāhainā, a historic oceanside town that was incinerated by deadly fires in August. Tamara Paltin, a county council member who represents Lāhainā, spent the past two months bracing for long-term environmental consequences. She and her neighbors knew that the island had not yet metabolized the devastation of the summer firestorm that claimed at least 97 lives and displaced thousands more.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Bd8hOx">
“You can’t experience something like that and just expect everything to return to normal in a few months,” she said in an interview with Vox.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="98ghgW">
But Paltin and other West Maui parents were shocked when Keith Hayashi, the superintendent of the Hawai‛i public school system, said students would still be expected to return to class that same week. Lāhainā families first learned about the school reopening plan <a href="https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/VisionForSuccess/Newsletters/SuperintendentReport/Pages/October-4-2023.aspx">on October 4</a>, when Hayashi announced that he was working alongside the state Department of Health to send students back to the classroom. Together, the state officials — aided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — determined that it is now safe to return to Lāhainā’s school campuses, which sit on the edge of the burn zone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5MfC2d">
Less than two weeks later, and despite reports of toxic ash in Kula, Hayashi said the government’s safety assessment was unchanged.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ciM8c9">
Local families were wary of the superintendent’s assurances. As of late October, many families across the district are still keeping their kids out of Lāhainā schools.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZuXymV">
Paltin’s two children, ages 11 and 13, were expected to return to Lāhainā Intermediate School on October 17, just days after the Kula report was released. “I’m not sending my <em>keiki </em>back there,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for “child.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="V2OxWh">
When the Kula report was released on October 15, Superintendent Hayashi held <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f47Px2ycE_k">a virtual press conference </a>alongside Dr. Kenneth Fink, Director of the Hawai‛i Department of Health. Hayashi said the reopening of Lāhainā schools “is critical to the well-being of our students and to the Lāhainā community.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EZHemz">
One Lāhainā campus, the King Kamehameha III Elementary was destroyed in the fire, so the Department of Education is <a href="https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/ConnectWithUs/MediaRoom/PressReleases/Pages/Two-schools,-one-community-King-Kamehameha-III-and-Princess-Nahienaena-Elementary-reopen-on-shared-campus.aspx">using tents to expand classroom space</a> at the nearby Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena Elementary. Despite the superintendent’s bid for normalcy, the school reopening plan has sown fear and confusion among parents. Even before the Kula reports were released, parents I spoke with told me they thought the process seemed dangerously rushed, with children expected to return to school before the EPA finished clearing the hazardous waste created by the fires.
</p>
<aside id="aOB1Tg">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cjcasU">
The EPA cleanup, called <a href="https://www.epa.gov/maui-wildfires/hazardous-materials-removal-phase-1">“Phase 1”</a> in the twofold recovery process, entails removing household materials that become highly dangerous after a major fire, like damaged propane tanks, batteries, and paints. Phase 1, a critical step for protecting residents from hazardous waste, was just <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-hazardous-materials-removal-first-stage-multi-phase-cleanup-75-complete-maui">75 percent complete</a> on October 18, the same day Lāhainā’s youngest students were scheduled to return to the classroom.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8RdqWa">
Many teachers at Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena Elementary asked for blackout curtains for the classrooms that overlook the epicenter of the burn zone. They worried that kids would be retraumatized by the sight of the destruction.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UfsFKD">
Lāhainā’s ash will be tested after Phase 1 is complete, though the state Department of Health said the results will likely be <a href="https://health.hawaii.gov/news/newsroom/preliminary-kula-ash-samples-show-elevated-levels-of-toxic-substances/">similar to Kula</a> because “homes in the impacted area of Lāhainā were constructed during the same time period.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="F0MgIq">
The decision to move forward with the reopening of Lāhainā public schools leaves several concerned parents at an impasse. They can send children back to school, trusting the state’s assessment of potential health risks, or they can scramble to find an alternative method of education. <a href="https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/ConnectWithUs/MediaRoom/PressReleases/Pages/maui-schools-progress-updates.aspx">Hundreds of parents</a> opted to keep their children out of Lāhainā classrooms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Bn076K">
For a safe reopening, state education and health officials need to ensure that the likely toxic ash near Lāhainā’s schools does not become airborne. In last week’s virtual press conference, Fink said ash in the air “could indicate a potential risk of exposure to the toxic materials.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hAzdbx">
And this is where Lāhainā’s famous <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/vog-conditions-island-hawaii-vary-depending-wind-direction">Kona winds</a>, which blow in from the southwestern edge of Maui, become a major concern. The winds tend to intensify during the academic year, <a href="https://www.foxweather.com/learn/kona-low-explainer">between October and April</a>. Parents worry that ash from the burn zone, just blocks away from Lāhainā’s schools, will get caught in the Kona winds, contaminating the air that the students are breathing.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yp1Ozv2l21IlsyUvCq9uzkA6-D0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25048490/AP23285785291555.jpg"/> <cite>Mengshin Lin/AP</cite>
<figcaption>
A sign for Lāhainā Intermediate is shown in Lāhainā, Hawai‘i. Lāhainā Intermediate and two other public schools in Lāhainā that survived August’s wildfire are set to reopen in mid-October.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eB3K4b">
Kalikolehua Storer felt unsafe sending her 8-year-old son back to in-person elementary school classes in Lāhainā. “What’s going to happen on a day like today, when the Kona winds are coming in from the ocean, and everything gets caught in that wind?” Storer told me recently.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e5i7qw">
As a precautionary measure, the EPA plans to cover the roughly 10 square miles of Lāhainā in a nontoxic adhesive called Soiltac, which prevents the soil from moving. Soilworks, the company that manufactures Soiltac, said the material is <a href="https://soilworks.com/soiltac/">“completely transparent”</a> after it dries, promising minimal aesthetic changes to Lāhainā’s landscape. The EPA used a different soil stabilizer, also created by Soilworks, to help protect salmon from contaminants produced by the 2020 Oregon wildfires. “EPA used Soiltac in Kula and it demonstrated that this product can be safely applied to burned properties, reducing the potential exposure to ash and debris,” a spokesman for the agency told Vox.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lisyKz">
Initial application of Soiltac in Lāhainā was “focused on burned properties near schools and near residences that may be occupied,” the EPA spokesman said. The agency warned that it would likely take a month to apply the Soiltac across town — a process they had only just begun by mid-October, just days before students returned to campus.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cL5An2">
In the meantime, to assuage safety concerns, state health officials installed <a href="https://fire.airnow.gov/">air quality monitors</a> around Lāhainā to detect elevated levels of fine particulate matter, known as PM 2.5 (the 2.5 microns describes its size, <a href="https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics">30 times smaller</a> than the width of a human hair). Those tiny particles can <a href="https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/what-makes-air-unhealthy/particle-pollution">embed</a> in the lungs and travel in the bloodstream, aggravating <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32870429/">inflammation</a>, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/multimedia/infographics/asthma_air_pollution.html">asthma</a>, <a href="https://www.epa.gov/air-research/air-pollution-and-cardiovascular-disease-basics#:~:text=Fine%20particulate%20matter%20(particulate%20matter,related%20heart%20attacks%20and%20death.">heart disease</a>, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6447209/">mental health</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3EaxfJ">
By detecting changes in the amount of particulate matter in the air, state officials say, the schools will be alerted if toxins in the ground become airborne.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kKRoa5">
“There are three monitors at Lāhaināluna High School, one each at Lāhainā Intermediate and Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena Elementary, and two monitors between the schools and impacted areas,” a spokesman for the Hawai‛i Department of Health told Vox in a statement.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="v8kiFs">
Yet some environmental health experts questioned the state’s reliance on PM 2.5 monitors to assess safety.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jAJHrd">
<a href="https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/people/john-balmes/">John Balmes</a>, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said the monitors used in Lāhainā can detect changes in the concentration of particulate matter, “but it’s not going to tell you what’s in the particulate matter. Any contamination with metals such as arsenic, cobalt — you can only make assumptions based on testing that’s been done of that dust or ash.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T01r9v">
Because the ash near Lāhainā schools has not yet been tested, the information provided by PM 2.5 offers limited insight into the health risks facing students and teachers. “If you tested the ash … and found it to be not too toxic, not with high levels of arsenic, for example, then you could just monitor the particulate levels,” Balmes said. But the air monitors used in Lāhainā schools “don’t tell you anything about the toxicity” of the airborne particles.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tVfnzD">
When the monitors detect a level of air quality that is dangerous for sensitive groups, teachers are instructed to close all doors and windows and to turn on indoor air filters and cleaners, both of which improve indoor air quality. A spokesman for the Department of Education told Vox that HEPA air filters or portable air cleaners “are available in every classroom and office.” The air cleaners “are not required to be turned on” until the air pollution passes a certain threshold, though the HEPA filters run continually “if desired.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h1XT9V">
It is a safety protocol that confused <a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/lisa-patel">Lisa Patel</a>, a Stanford pediatrician whose research focuses on how climate change impacts health.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I4EVyl">
“For now, they should just be running those air purifiers continuously, period,” Patel said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ommuGc">
The pediatrician said the PM 2.5 monitors that surround the school can be “a few hours delayed” in detecting changes in the air. “In the meantime, you expose those kids to the pollution,” she said. By the time the monitors are pinging, those particulates may have already lodged in kids’ lungs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ElVGKR">
“We have every reason to be concerned because children breathe faster, so they’re taking in more of that pollution pound for pound,” said Patel. “And especially when they’re young, they’re in a period of rapid development, so the toxins in that wildfire smoke are potentially more harmful to them.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3ehx88SSQDknXcFHTmTG6hnTl3Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25048495/AP23285785259690.jpg"/> <cite>Mengshin Lin/AP</cite>
<figcaption>
A sign for Lāhainā Intermediate in Lāhainā, Hawai‘i. Lāhainā Intermediate and two other public schools in Lāhainā that survived August’s wildfire reopened in mid-October.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aZ1QfW">
Faced with such uncertainties, a growing faction of Lāhainā parents are unwilling to place trust in the assurances offered by state education and health officials.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YIJvNx">
“Where will these officials be if our kids get sick five, 10, 15 years down the line? I do not want to be part of a class action lawsuit,” Paltin said. “I do not want to see a television commercial saying something like ‘if your kids went to Lāhainā public schools between 2023 and 2025, call this law office.’ I want my kids to be safe.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D0cMZK">
Hundreds of wealthier families in Lāhainā transferred their children to nearby private and charter schools.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qwVOCc">
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said parents could send their children to public schools outside of West Maui, some of which are over 20 miles away, but they won’t provide school buses to take them there; the parents would “need to make alternate transportation arrangements” to those faraway campuses.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside id="QyHZMo">
<q>“I do not want to see a television commercial saying something like ‘if your kids went to Lāhainā public schools between 2023 and 2025, call this law office.’ I want my kids to be safe.” </q>
</aside>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dnfTlr">
Even the ability to supervise a child during remote learning is a privilege that most Lāhainā families do not have. Earlier this month, Hawai‘i’s governor Josh Green lifted travel restrictions, welcoming tourists back to West Maui <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/10/6/23898399/maui-reopening-wildfires-hawaii-tourism-displaced-residents">despite objections from many local residents</a>, who worried that outsiders would strain the island’s already limited housing supply. The decision heightened tensions between West Maui residents and the Hawai‛i government, exacerbating the existing housing crisis and creating a more urgent need for working parents to find child care.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZqOCsO">
“And it’s human nature to just want to get back to the way things were,” Paltin said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bjwdQF">
Storer, whose house is nestled on the edge of the Lāhainā burn zone, has been living with her son at a hotel three miles north of the town’s only remaining public elementary schools. She is among <a href="https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/ConnectWithUs/MediaRoom/PressReleases/Pages/maui-schools-progress-updates.aspx">the hundreds of local parents</a> who enrolled their children in the state’s remote learning program.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ypl9Mm">
“If he has to do distance learning while I work, then that’s just how it’s got to be now,” she said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NBNEaO">
Storer knows that parents who do not have the option to work from home—especially those who work in tourism—feel pressured to acquiesce to the Department of Education’s new bid for normalcy. As the push to slow the reopening of Lāhainā schools continues, she worries that Lāhainā will feel a rift between the families who sent children back to school and those who didn’t.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BFZnyZ">
“These conversations are not meant to divide our community,” Storer said. “But because of the situation, and because of the unknown, we wanted to prepare well. Our children have been forced to react to an emergency one too many times.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>The Supreme Court seems stumped by two cases about free speech online</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="US Supreme Court Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Elena Kagan attend the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on November 16, 2018." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C8M-Mhf3fJ7iMrHvXkjUUp6CDeg=/120x0:2785x1999/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72815055/1063108716.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Three justices attend an event at the Trump White House. | Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The justices appear to have no idea when they should get involved with online disputes between government officials and their constituents.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GqJjBb">
A pair of Supreme Court cases asking <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/10/27/23929468/supreme-court-social-media-twitter-free-speech-content-moderation">what limits the First Amendment places on government officials</a> who use social media seemed to perplex the justices on Tuesday. The arguments in <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/oconnor-ratcliff-v-garnier/"><em>O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier</em></a> and <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/lindke-v-freed/"><em>Lindke v. Freed</em></a> featured a cacophony of questions about cat pictures, spontaneous grocery store conversations, and a simply dizzying array of proposed legal rules — none of which seemed likely to fully inform public officials what they may and may not do online.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y7MdDc">
The cases <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/10/27/23929468/supreme-court-social-media-twitter-free-speech-content-moderation">involve similar issues</a>. In <em>O’Connor-Ratcliff</em>, two school board members in California blocked a pair of constituents on Facebook or Twitter, and then were sued for doing so. In <em>Lindke</em>, a city manager in Michigan blocked a member of the public from his Facebook page, and was likewise rewarded for doing so with a lawsuit.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iZ4jk9">
Ordinarily, of course, a dispute over a social media user’s decision to block someone online would never belong in federal court. But the First Amendment rules governing public officials are very strict, and they almost never permit a government official to engage in “viewpoint discrimination.” So, if such an official blocks someone because they disagree with that person’s opinions or do not want those opinions to appear next to their own social media posts, that potentially raises very serious constitutional problems.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d6Dzz5">
That said, the specific question presented to the Supreme Court in <em>O’Connor-Ratcliff</em> and <em>Lindke</em> is not whether these officials violated the First Amendment. Instead, the two cases deal with a surprisingly difficult threshold question: whether those officials were acting within the scope of their authority as government officials — or, to use the language of the law, whether they were engaged in “state action” — when they blocked the offended plaintiffs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y3Uh9X">
As a general rule, the Constitution only constrains government officials when they are exercising state authority. An off-duty police officer, for example, can tell a friend they meet at a bar to “shut up,” even though the First Amendment would prohibit a cop from policing a law-abiding citizen’s speech while the cop is on duty.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VouZz7">
But, as the arguments in <em>O’Connor-Ratcliff</em> and <em>Lindke</em> revealed, it is exceedingly difficult to come up with a legal test that can sort through which social media activity by government officials counts as state action and which activity is merely private action that is beyond the reach of the Constitution.
</p>
<h3 id="q29yqG">
The internet has made a difficult constitutional question nearly impossible
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IYTW29">
The Supreme Court has long fretted over the fact that it is very difficult, at least in marginal cases, to determine whether a particular act by a government employee should count as state action or private action. As the Court said in <a href="https://casetext.com/case/jackson-v-metropolitan-edison-co"><em>Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison</em></a> (1974) — a case decided long before anyone had even uttered the word “Twitter” — “the question whether particular conduct is ‘private,’ on the one hand, or ‘state action,’ on the other, frequently admits of no easy answer.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KGRVEJ">
So it’s probably not surprising that the justices spent far more time poking holes in the proposed sorting mechanisms various lawyers proposed to them on Tuesday than they did articulating anything that even vaguely resembled a workable legal test to distinguish between state and private action online.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QZVzKh">
Both Hashim Mooppan, the lawyer representing the school board members in <em>O’Connor-Ratcliff</em>, and the Biden administration (which filed briefs in both cases arguing for narrow constraints on when government officials can be sued for their social media activity) placed a great deal of weight on the fact that the social media accounts belonged to the defendants themselves and not to the government. As the Justice Department argued in its brief, when past cases have asked whether someone may be excluded “from a forum … the existence of state action generally depends on <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-611/275406/20230815175747110_22-611bsacUnitedStates.pdf">whether the government itself owns or controls the property</a> to which access has been denied.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FDunKs">
But none of the justices seemed open to extending this rule to online disputes; some of them openly mocked the proposal. As Chief Justice John Roberts quipped, there is no physical component to a Facebook page — it’s just a “gathering of protons” — so it seems quite odd to apply traditional concepts of property to virtual space.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="457NEq">
Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas questioned whether someone’s personal Facebook page counts as their private property at all. Facebook, after all, has the final power to delete or block a user. So why shouldn’t all social media accounts be understood as the property of a social media company and not of the individual or government entity whose name is on that account?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YNncyr">
The lower courts in these two cases <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/10/27/23929468/supreme-court-social-media-twitter-free-speech-content-moderation">split</a> on whether to use a legal test that is comprehensive and predictable, or one that provides more flexibility for judges to make precise decisions in difficult cases. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which heard the <em>O’Connor-Ratcliff</em> case, preferred a more flexible test that, among other things, asks whether a government official appeared to be acting within the scope of their job when they posted online.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3tL5Qa">
The Sixth Circuit, meanwhile, opted for a more rigid-seeming test that asks whether the government official acted pursuant to an official “duty” or “authority” when they posted something online.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="v1RRQB">
While a majority of the justices appeared to prefer the Sixth Circuit’s approach to the more flexible Ninth Circuit framework, however, it soon became clear that the Sixth Circuit’s framework raises as many questions as it answers. The Sixth Circuit, for example, defined an official’s duties to include only the formal obligations they are required to fulfill under a statute or other official policy. So if there’s no formal rule instructing a public official to post online, that probably means their online activity is not state action.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uaCu4k">
But this creates problems of its own. One of them, which several justices alluded to during the argument, is how the Court should approach “customary duties.” Elected officials, in particular, spend a tremendous amount of time communicating with constituents online and offline about what the government is doing and how the official is doing their job. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, elected officials tell her all the time that they are “on duty 24 hours a day.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y45peY">
But most states don’t have laws that explicitly order elected officials to answer a constituent’s questions if they run into that constituent in the grocery store. And most states don’t have official rules requiring officials to maintain social media sites. So how is a court supposed to determine which of these communications are on-the-job communications and which ones aren’t?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="E7Qrrg">
As Justice Samuel Alito suggested, it is difficult to determine the scope of an official’s unwritten, customary duties. A too-expansive definition of those duties could lead to an official being sued because they blow off a constituent who wants to criticize a town mayor’s policies while the mayor is buying ice cream at the corner store.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DtT1Ty">
And then there’s another problem: What should courts do with a government official who uses the same social media account both to conduct official business and to post personal content?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gRwoDV">
Suppose, to paraphrase a hypothetical offered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, that an official uses their Facebook account both to post cat pictures and to discuss official business. Now suppose that one of that official’s constituents hates cats, and posts so many nasty responses to the cat-related posts that the official eventually blocks the constituent. Because blocking this constituent will also exclude them from the official’s government-related content, did the government official violate the First Amendment here?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mMxvcP">
I could go on at some length listing the many difficult questions that various justices raised over the course of the arguments. But the important overarching point here is that these cases are very difficult. And it’s not clear that it is possible to come up with a clear-cut legal test that will easily allow judges to distinguish between state and private action online.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MPtrnp">
That’s terrible news for public officials, who <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/10/27/23929468/supreme-court-social-media-twitter-free-speech-content-moderation">may be reluctant to use social media</a> if they don’t know what they need to do to avoid being sued. It’s also terrible news for their constituents, who may lose an important channel that allows them to communicate with their government. And it’s terrible news for the courts, which could be bombarded with lawsuits from online trolls if the Court hands down a vague legal test that can easily trigger future lawsuits.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JSuv63">
But none of these unfortunate realities change the fact that there are no easy answers in <em>O’Connor-Ratcliff</em> and <em>Lindke</em>.
</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Women’s Asian Champions Trophy: Consistent India looking to finish league-stage on a high against Korea</strong> - Hockey | It would be ideal for the host to plug the scoring gaps before entering the business end of the competition</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>ICC World Cup 2023: Australia’s Glenn Maxwell falls off golf cart, to miss England clash</strong> - “In transporting back from the clubhouse to the team bus, where Glenn Maxwell come off the back of a cart, and has suffered a small concussion,” said Australia head coach Andrew McDonald</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>Fitness-freak Marcus Stoinis travelling with Indian chef during World Cup</strong> - Mumbai-born Velton Saldanha, a chef trained in French cuisine, travels with Stoinis while he is in India and cooks him meals out of the Australian team’s hotel kitchens</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>No fireworks display in Delhi, Mumbai during World Cup matches due to worsening air pollution</strong> - Delhi has only one match left to host, the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka game on November 6, while Mumbai are scheduled to host two more league games, on November 2 and November 7, and the semifinal on November 15</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>Morning Digest | SC flags possibility of electoral bonds being used to trade favours; suspected extremists kill police officer in Manipur’s Moreh, and more</strong> - Here is a select list of stories to start the day</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>Keraleeyam: customised notebooks by VHSE students at Kanakakkunnu</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>ED attaches assets worth ₹538.05 crore in Jet Airways case</strong> - The ED probe is based on a FIR registered by the CBI following a complaint submitted by Canara Bank.</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>EOW receives 1,554 more complaints against Coimbatore-based Universal Trading Solutions in multi-crore Ponzi scam</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>Revanth alleges leakage in Annaram Barrage, terms it a reflection of corruption in KLIP</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>Rail Nilayam in Secunderabad gets ‘Gold Rating’, again</strong> -</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Russian attacks force evacuations of children</strong> - Mandatory evacuations from the frontlines are swelling the ranks of Ukraine’s displaced millions.</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>UK weather: Severe warnings issued ahead of Storm Ciarán</strong> - Amber warnings for wind are in place as the storm is expected to move in on Wednesday night.</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>Paris graffiti recall 1930s antisemitism, says mayor</strong> - Some 60 Stars of David were daubed on buildings in the 14th arrondissement of Paris.</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>Alexei Kuzmichev: Sanctioned Russian tycoon detained in France</strong> - Putin-ally Alexei Kuzmichev was held as French police carried out raids on his properties.</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>Princess Leonor, Spain’s future queen, turns 18 and swears oath</strong> - At a formal ceremony, the future queen promises to uphold the constitution.</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>Daily Telescope: A dazzling view of the Milky Way from southern Africa</strong> - “I finally had 30 minutes or so to admire the spectacular view.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980281">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>After decades of dreams, a commercial spaceplane is almost ready to fly</strong> - “Plunging into the ocean is awful. Landing on a runway is really nice.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980010">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two artists suing AI image makers never registered works with Copyright Office</strong> - Artist suing Stability AI pushed to explain how Stable Diffusion actually works. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980244">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Tesla Autopilot not responsible for 2019 fatal crash, jury says</strong> - It’s Autopilot’s second big jury win in California this year. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980233">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inserted AI-generated Microsoft poll about woman’s death rankles The Guardian</strong> - Speculative AI news poll presented three choices: murder, accident, or suicide. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980174">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>When I was thirteen, I dreamed of having a girlfriend who had huge tits someday.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
When I was thirteen, I dreamed of having a girlfriend who had huge tits someday.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I had a big-tit girlfriend when I was sixteen, but she lacked passion, so I decided I needed a passionate female who was full of life.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I dated this really passionate lady in college, but she was too sensitive. She was a drama queen who constantly wept and made suicide threats, so everything was an emergency. I concluded that I needed a girl who was stable.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
At the age of 25, I met a very steady girl, but she was uninteresting. She never got thrilled about anything and was very predictable. I decided I wanted an exciting female because life had become so boring.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
When I was 28, I found an exciting girl, but I couldn’t keep up with her. She rushed from one thing to another, never settling on anything. She did mad impetuous things and made me miserable as often as happy. She was great fun initially and very energetic, but directionless. So I decided to find a girl with some real ambition
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I married a brilliant, ambitious woman when I was 30 because she had her feet firmly on the ground. Because she was so driven, she got a divorce from me and grabbed everything I had.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I am older and wiser now, and I am looking for a girl with big tits..
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/PetiteeDanii"> /u/PetiteeDanii </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17l89r2/when_i_was_thirteen_i_dreamed_of_having_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17l89r2/when_i_was_thirteen_i_dreamed_of_having_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I was furious at my English teacher for dropping me down to a B for missing just a single period.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
However, I’m sure he’ll be worried enough to increase it to an A after I inform him that I’ve actually missed three periods.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/EarthMarsUranus"> /u/EarthMarsUranus </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17kyk6k/i_was_furious_at_my_english_teacher_for_dropping/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17kyk6k/i_was_furious_at_my_english_teacher_for_dropping/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A joke about an old Jew.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
For context, the Western Wall, found on the Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Here is the joke:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
An old Jew prays briefly at the Western Wall every morning.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A reporter says to the old Jew:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“What have you been praying for?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The old Jew says: “I have been praying for peace at this wall ever since I was bar mitzvahed at age 13.<br/> For decades, I have prayed for peace here at this holy shrine, every morning. And then, I go about my day. I have been working with activist groups for years to try to achieve peace.”
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The reporter asks: “And what has it been like to pray for peace here every day?”
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And the old Jew sighs and says:
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“It’s been like talking to a wall.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Underworld_Denizen"> /u/Underworld_Denizen </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17l20qk/a_joke_about_an_old_jew/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17l20qk/a_joke_about_an_old_jew/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bike</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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There was a man whose name was David, his pride and joy was his beautiful and powerful bike. He loved it more than anything in the world. One day, he was cruising on his bike when he had a minor heart attack, and he rolled off the road and into a tree. Luckily, he had just suffered some minor injuries, but the bike was severely damaged…
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One fine man was traveling along the same road, and he saw this. He helped David and loaded his bike on his truck and took him to a hospital. Later they got talking and he said that he too love bikes and he can fix the bike for him…
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David was beyond happy to hear it since he thought that his beautiful bike was gone forever… a few days later, the kind man brought his now good as a new bike back, and David was so overwhelmed that he declared that the young man was now like his son… they spent a great deal of time together enjoying their shared love of bikes…
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A few months later, David had another heart attack and died, and when his will was read, it was discovered that he left his bike to not his own son but to the young man… the son was understandably upset, and his mother argued against giving the young man the very costly bike. The lawyer said that he could not do anything because it’s in the will, and David left his bike to a man he considered as a son…
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The wife was very annoyed and said: “But that’s Hardly David’s son…”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/rambocesar"> /u/rambocesar </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17l5sph/bike/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17l5sph/bike/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two Southern belles are walking down a country road.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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They are out enjoying a sunset walk and admiring the scenery, when they come across a man taking photographs. The man, being awestruck at the beauty of the two ladies, asks if he can take their picture with the setting sun in the background.
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The ladies discuss the idea and eventually agree.
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The photographer begins setting up his tripod and adjusting his camera.
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One of the ladies asks, “What is he doing?”
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The other replies, in a thick Southern drawl, “He’s going to focus.”
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Then the first says, “Both of us?”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Wapiti_whacker82"> /u/Wapiti_whacker82 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17kt6zh/two_southern_belles_are_walking_down_a_country/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/17kt6zh/two_southern_belles_are_walking_down_a_country/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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