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<title>06 January, 2024</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>Antigen-display exosomes provide adjuvant-free protection against SARS-CoV-2 disease at nanogram levels of spike protein</strong> -
<div>
As the only bionormal nanovesicle, exosomes have high potential as a nanovesicle for delivering vaccines and therapeutics. We show here that the loading of type-1 membrane proteins into the exosome membrane is induced by exosome membrane anchor domains, EMADs, that maximize protein delivery to the plasma membrane, minimize protein sorting to other compartments, and direct proteins into exosome membranes. Using SARS-CoV-2 spike as an example and EMAD13 as our most effective exosome membrane anchor, we show that cells expressing a spike-EMAD13 fusion protein produced exosomes that carry dense arrays of spike trimers on 50% of all exosomes. Moreover, we find that immunization with spike-EMAD13 exosomes induced strong neutralizing antibody responses and protected hamsters against SARS-CoV-2 disease at doses of just 0.5-5 ng of spike protein, without adjuvant, demonstrating that antigen-display exosomes are particularly immunogenic, with important implications for both structural and expression-dependent vaccines.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.04.574272v1" target="_blank">Antigen-display exosomes provide adjuvant-free protection against SARS-CoV-2 disease at nanogram levels of spike protein</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Longitudinal transcriptional changes reveal genes from the natural killer cell-mediated cytotoxicity pathway as critical players underlying COVID-19 progression</strong> -
<div>
Patients present a wide range of clinical severities in response SARS-CoV-2 infection, but the underlying molecular and cellular reasons why clinical outcomes vary so greatly within the population remains unknown. Here, we report that negative clinical outcomes in severely ill patients were associated with divergent RNA transcriptome profiles in peripheral immune cells compared with mild cases during the first weeks after disease onset. Protein-protein interaction analysis indicated that early-responding cytotoxic NK cells were associated with an effective clearance of the virus and a less severe outcome. This innate immune response was associated with the activation of select cytokine-cytokine receptor pathways and robust Th1/Th2 cell differentiation profiles. In contrast, severely ill patients exhibited a dysregulation between innate and adaptive responses affiliated with divergent Th1/Th2 profiles and negative outcomes. This knowledge forms the basis of clinical triage that may be used to preemptively detect high-risk patients before life-threatening outcomes ensue.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.02.573936v1" target="_blank">Longitudinal transcriptional changes reveal genes from the natural killer cell-mediated cytotoxicity pathway as critical players underlying COVID-19 progression</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Revisit the Inhibitory Effects of Glucocorticoids on Immunocytes</strong> -
<div>
Glucocorticoids (GCs) are efficacious agents for reducing inflammation and suppressing immune responses, exerting various effects on immune cells through the intracellular glucocorticoid receptor (GR), and impacting both innate and adaptive immunity. In the context of COVID-19, glucocorticoids are often used to treat severe cases of patients by reducing inflammation, suppressing immune responses, and ameliorating the severity of COVID-19. However, the precise inhibitory effects on immune cells have yet to be comprehensively delineated. In this study, we extensively examined the inhibitory effects of treating Balb/c mice with dexamethasone (DEX) on lymphoid and myeloid cells. We observed that high doses of DEX treatment resulted in a reduction in the number of immunocytes and an attenuation of their activity. Particularly noteworthy, macrophages, DC cells, and monocytes were diminished by approximately 90% following high doses of DEX, while B cells experienced a reduction of about 70% and CD3 T cells were less affected. Furthermore, our findings demonstrated that DEX induces the inhibition of immune cells by engaging in high-affinity binding to GR. Consequently, we conclude that DEX treatments affect a broad range of immune cells, encompassing both lymphoid and myeloid cells, through depletion or the down-regulation of immune function, potentially acting via the GR signaling pathway. These findings may enhance the clinical applicability of DEX in achieving transient immune deficiency.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.28.525640v2" target="_blank">Revisit the Inhibitory Effects of Glucocorticoids on Immunocytes</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Stably-Inverted Apical-Out Human Upper Airway Organoids for SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Therapeutic Testing</strong> -
<div>
Apical-out organoids produced through eversion triggered by extra-organoid extracellular matrix (ECM) removal or degradation are generally small, structurally variable, and limited for viral infection and therapeutics testing. This work describes ECM-encapsulating, stably-inverted apical-out human upper airway organoids (AORBs) that are large (~500 um diameter), consistently spherical, recapitulate in vivo-like cellular heterogeneity, and maintain their inverted morphology for over 60 days. Treatment of AORBs with IL-13 skews differentiation towards goblet cells and the apical-out geometry allows extra-organoid mucus collection. AORB maturation for 14 days induces strong co-expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 to allow high-yield infection with five SARS-CoV-2 variants. Dose-response analysis of three well-studied SARS-CoV-2 antiviral compounds [remdesivir, bemnifosbuvir (AT-511), and nirmatrelvir] shows AORB antiviral assays to be comparable to gold-standard air-liquid interface cultures, but with higher throughput (~10-fold) and fewer cells (~100-fold). While this work focuses on SARS-CoV-2 applications, the consistent AORB shape and size, and one-organoid-per-well modularity broadly impacts in vitro human cell model standardization efforts in line with economic imperatives and recently updated FDA regulation on therapeutic testing.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.02.573939v1" target="_blank">Stably-Inverted Apical-Out Human Upper Airway Organoids for SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Therapeutic Testing</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A speed limit on serial strain replacement from original antigenic sin</strong> -
<div>
Many pathogens evolve to escape immunity, yet it remains difficult to predict whether immune pressure will lead to diversification, serial replacement of one variant by another, or more complex patterns. Pathogen strain dynamics are mediated by cross-protective immunity, whereby exposure to one strain partially protects against infection by antigenically diverged strains. There is growing evidence that this protection is influenced by early exposures, a phenomenon referred to as original antigenic sin (OAS) or imprinting. In this paper, we derive new constraints on the emergence of the pattern of successive strain replacements demonstrated by influenza, SARS-CoV-2, seasonal coronaviruses, and other pathogens. We find that OAS implies that the limited diversity characteristic of successive strain replacement can only be maintained if R0 is less than a threshold set by the characteristic antigenic distances for cross-protection and for the creation of new immune memory. This bound implies a "speed limit" on the evolution of new strains and a minimum variance of the distribution of infecting strains in antigenic space at any time. To carry out this analysis, we develop a theoretical model of pathogen evolution in antigenic space that implements OAS by decoupling the antigenic distances required for protection from infection and strain-specific memory creation. Our results demonstrate that OAS can play an integral role in the emergence of strain structure from host immune dynamics, preventing highly transmissible pathogens from maintaining serial strain replacement without diversification.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.04.574172v1" target="_blank">A speed limit on serial strain replacement from original antigenic sin</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin Coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR)</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR) can cause 100% mortality in human ACE2-transgenic mice, potentially attributable to late-stage brain infection. This underscores a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans and provides a unique model for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.03.574008v1" target="_blank">Lethal Infection of Human ACE2-Transgenic Mice Caused by SARS-CoV-2-related Pangolin Coronavirus GX_P2V(short_3UTR)</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A Murine Model of Post-acute Neurological Sequelae Following SARS-CoV-2 Variant Infection</strong> -
<div>
Viral variant is one known risk factor associated with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), yet the pathogenesis is largely unknown. Here, we studied SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant-induced PASC in K18-hACE2 mice. The virus replicated productively, induced robust inflammatory responses in lung and brain tissues, and caused weight loss and mortality during the acute infection. Longitudinal behavior studies in surviving mice up to 4 months post-acute infection revealed persistent abnormalities in neuropsychiatric state and motor behaviors, while reflex and sensory functions recovered over time. Surviving mice showed no detectable viral RNA in the brain and minimal neuroinflammation post-acute infection. Transcriptome analysis revealed persistent activation of immune pathways, including humoral responses, complement, and phagocytosis, and reduced levels of genes associated with ataxia telangiectasia, impaired cognitive function and memory recall, and neuronal dysfunction and degeneration. Furthermore, surviving mice maintained potent T helper 1 prone cellular immune responses and high neutralizing antibodies against Delta and Omicron variants in the periphery for months post-acute infection. Overall, infection in K18-hACE2 mice recapitulates the persistent clinical symptoms reported in long COVID patients and may be useful for future assessment of the efficacy of vaccines and therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2 variants.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.03.574064v1" target="_blank">A Murine Model of Post-acute Neurological Sequelae Following SARS-CoV-2 Variant Infection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Prototype mRNA vaccines imprint broadly neutralizing human serum antibodies after Omicron variant-matched boosting</strong> -
<div>
Immune imprinting is a phenomenon in which an individual's prior antigenic experiences influence responses to subsequent infection or vaccination. Here, using antibody depletion and multiplexed spike-binding assays, we characterized the type-specificity and cross-reactivity of serum antibody responses after mRNA vaccination in mice and human clinical trial participants. In mice, a single priming dose of a preclinical version of mRNA-1273 vaccine encoding Wuhan-1 spike minimally imprinted serum responses elicited by Omicron boosters, enabling a robust generation of type-specific antibodies. However, substantial imprinting was observed in mice receiving an Omicron booster after two priming doses of mRNA-1273, an effect that was mitigated by a second booster dose of Omicron mRNA vaccine. In humans who received two BA.5 or XBB.1.5 Omicron-matched boosters after two or more doses of the prototype mRNA-1273 vaccine, spike-binding and neutralizing serum antibodies cross-reacted with circulating Omicron variants as well as more distantly related sarbecoviruses. Because the serum neutralizing response against Omicron strains and other sarbecoviruses was completely abrogated after pre-clearing with the Wuhan-1 spike protein, antibodies induced by XBB.1.5 boosting in humans focus on conserved epitopes shaped and shared by the antecedent mRNA-1273 primary series. Our depletion analysis also identified cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies that recognize distinct epitopes in the receptor binding domain (RBD) and S2 proteins with differential inhibitory effects on members of the sarbecovirus subgenus. Thus, although the serum antibody response to Omicron-based boosters in humans is dominantly imprinted by prior immunizations with prototype mRNA-1273 vaccines, this outcome can be beneficial as it drives expansion of multiple classes of cross-neutralizing antibodies that inhibit infection of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and extend activity to distantly related sarbecoviruses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.03.574018v1" target="_blank">Prototype mRNA vaccines imprint broadly neutralizing human serum antibodies after Omicron variant-matched boosting</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Change in Anti-COVID-19 Behavior and Prejudice against Minorities during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Evidence from Five European Countries</strong> -
<div>
In the COVID-19 pandemic, it is vital to identify factors increasing behaviors that limit the transmission of COVID-19 (i.e., anti-COVID-19 behavior) and factors protecting against the negative consequences of the pandemic on societies (i.e., prejudice). A simultaneous investigation of a change in anti-COVID behavior and prejudice during the pandemic is essential because some factors (e.g., fear of COVID-19) could increase both outcomes, whilst other factors (e.g., norms in anti-COVID behavior or intergroup contact in prejudice) could bring desirable changes in one outcome without negatively affecting the other. In a three-wave longitudinal study (NT1 = 4275) in five European countries from April to October 2020, we employed a latent change score model to distinguish between intra- and inter-individual changes in anti-COVID-19 behavior and prejudice. On the intra-individual level, anti-COVID-19 behavior was increased by anti-COVID-19 norms; and prejudice against migrants from the Middle East was influenced by positive and negative direct and mass-media intergroup contact.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ry7se/" target="_blank">Change in Anti-COVID-19 Behavior and Prejudice against Minorities during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Evidence from Five European Countries</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Mutation of highly conserved residues in loop 2 of the coronavirus macrodomain demonstrates that enhanced ADP-ribose binding is detrimental to infection</strong> -
<div>
All coronaviruses (CoVs) encode for a conserved macrodomain (Mac1) located in nonstructural protein 3 (nsp3). Mac1 is an ADP-ribosylhydrolase that binds and hydrolyzes mono-ADP-ribose from target proteins. Previous work has shown that Mac1 is important for virus replication and pathogenesis. Within Mac1, there are several regions that are highly conserved across CoVs, including the GIF (glycine-isoleucine-phenylalanine) motif. To determine how the biochemical activities of these residues impact CoV replication, the isoleucine and the phenylalanine residues were mutated to alanine (I-A/F-A) in both recombinant Mac1 proteins and recombinant CoVs, including murine hepatitis virus (MHV), Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The F-A mutant proteins had ADP-ribose binding and/or hydrolysis defects that led to attenuated replication and pathogenesis in cell culture and mice. In contrast, the I-A mutations had normal enzyme activity and enhanced ADP-ribose binding. Despite increased ADP-ribose binding, I-A mutant MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 were highly attenuated in both cell culture and mice, indicating that this isoleucine residue acts as a gate that controls ADP-ribose binding for efficient virus replication. These results highlight the function of this highly conserved residue and provide unique insight into how macrodomains control ADP-ribose binding and hydrolysis to promote viral replication and pathogenesis.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.03.574082v1" target="_blank">Mutation of highly conserved residues in loop 2 of the coronavirus macrodomain demonstrates that enhanced ADP-ribose binding is detrimental to infection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>BCG activation of trained immunity is associated with induction of cross reactive COVID-19 antibodies in a BCG vaccinated population.</strong> -
<div>
Background: During the current COVID 19 pandemic, the rate of morbidity and mortality was considerably lower in BCG vaccinated countries like Pakistan. BCG has been shown to provide cross protection to both disseminated TB as well as non related viral infections in BCG vaccinated children which is consistent with COVID 19 morbidity in the younger age group. Recently, this cross protection was attributed to trained immunity (TI) associated with BCG recall responses in the innate arm of the immune system. Little is known about the longevity of BCG Trained Immunity (TI) beyond early childhood. Objective: To assess the BCG induced recall responses in healthy individuals by cytokines secreted from the TI network and its potential role in providing cross protection against COVID 19 and other viral infections. Study Design: In this cross sectional study, healthy young adults and adolescents (n=20) were recruited from 16-40 years of age, with no prior history of TB treatment, autoimmune, or chronic inflammatory condition. Methods: BCG induced cytokine responses were assessed using prototypic markers for cells of the TI network macrophages [M1 (TNF alpha, IFN gamma), M2 (IL10)], NK (IL2), Gamma delta (gamma delta]) T (IL17, IL4)} and SARS CoV2 IgG antibodies against RBD using short term (12 hours) cultures assay. Results: Significant differences were observed in the magnitude of recall responses to BCG with macrophage cytokines showing the highest mean levels of TNF alpha (9148 pg/ml) followed by IL10 (488 pg/ml) and IFN gamma(355 pg/ml). The ratio of unstimulated vs BCG stimulated cytokines was 132 fold higher for TNF alpha, 40 fold for IL10, and 27 fold for IFN gamma. Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were also detected in unstimulated plasma which showed cross reactivity with BCG. Conclusion: The presence of cross reactive antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and the relative ratio of pro and anti inflammatory cytokines secreted by activated TI cellular network may play a pivotal role in protection in the early stages of infection as observed during the COVID 19 pandemic in the younger age groups resulting in lower morbidity and mortality.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.02.573408v1" target="_blank">BCG activation of trained immunity is associated with induction of cross reactive COVID-19 antibodies in a BCG vaccinated population.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>VLP-Based Model for Study of Airborne Viral Pathogens</strong> -
<div>
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the danger of airborne viral pathogens. The lack of model systems to study airborne pathogens limits the understanding of airborne pathogen distribution, as well as potential surveillance and mitigation strategies. In this work, we develop a novel model system to study airborne pathogens using virus like particles (VLP). Specifically, we demonstrate the ability to aerosolize VLP and detect and quantify aerosolized VLP RNA by Reverse Transcription-Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (RT-LAMP) in real-time fluorescent and colorimetric assays. Importantly, the VLP model presents many advantages for the study of airborne viral pathogens: (i) similarity in size and surface components; (ii) ease of generation and noninfectious nature enabling study of BSL3 and BSL4 viruses; (iii) facile characterization of aerosolization parameters; (iv) ability to adapt the system to other viral envelope proteins including those of newly discovered pathogens and mutant variants; (v) the ability to introduce viral sequences to develop nucleic acid amplification assays.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.03.574055v1" target="_blank">VLP-Based Model for Study of Airborne Viral Pathogens</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Antigen non-specific CD8+ T cells accelerate cognitive decline in aged mice following respiratory coronavirus infection</strong> -
<div>
Primarily a respiratory infection, numerous patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 present with neurologic symptoms, some continuing long after viral clearance as a persistent symptomatic phase termed long COVID. Advanced age increases the risk of severe disease, as well as incidence of long COVID. We hypothesized that perturbations in the aged immune response predispose elderly individuals to severe coronavirus infection and post-infectious sequelae. Using a murine model of respiratory coronavirus, mouse hepatitis virus strain A59 (MHV-A59), we found that aging increased clinical illness and lethality to MHV infection, with aged animals harboring increased virus in the brain during acute infection. This was coupled with an unexpected increase in activated CD8+ T cells within the brains of aged animals but reduced antigen specificity of those CD8+ T cells. Aged animals demonstrated spatial learning impairment following MHV infection, which correlated with increased neuronal cell death and reduced neuronal regeneration in aged hippocampus. Using primary cell culture, we demonstrated that activated CD8+ T cells induce neuronal death, independent of antigen-specificity. Specifically, higher levels of CD8+ T cell-derived IFN-{gamma} correlated with neuronal death. These results support the evidence that CD8+ T cells in the brain directly contribute to cognitive dysfunction following coronavirus infection in aged individuals.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.02.573675v1" target="_blank">Antigen non-specific CD8+ T cells accelerate cognitive decline in aged mice following respiratory coronavirus infection</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Four Years of COVID-19: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan Have the Highest Research Growth Rates From 2020-2023</strong> -
<div>
We tried to assess the global research scholarly output after COVID-19 (from 2020 to 2023). Based on Scopus record, the world has produced 15, 041, 579 publications with 86, 165, 933 citations. We analyzed those countries, which have published at least 150, 000 research papers. For each country, we retrieved total number of publications, % growth rate, total citations, citations per paper, Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), and % international collaboration. Twenty-seven (n=27) countries were found to be highly productive, with China leading the way in number of publications. Citation metrics are dominated by the USA, China, and European countries. Specifically, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Australia are notable for their high impact and influence. Saudi Arabia achieved the highest growth rate of 53.5%, and highest international collaboration (76.5%). Infact Saudi Arabia also attained high citations per article (8.8), and an FWCI of 1.63. While, Pakistan exhibited an 8.4 citations per article, FWCI of 1.54, growth rate of 34.9%, and collaborative percentage of 64.9%. Egypt also attained the 2nd highest growth rate (n=36.1). Based on four (n=4) distinct performance metrics, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were in the top ten group.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.31.573759v1" target="_blank">Four Years of COVID-19: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan Have the Highest Research Growth Rates From 2020-2023</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Complex changes in serum protein levels in COVID-19 convalescents</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic, triggered by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, has affected millions of people worldwide. Much research has been dedicated to our understanding of COVID-19 disease heterogeneity and severity, but less is known about recovery associated changes. To address this gap in knowledge, we quantified the proteome from serum samples from 29 COVID-19 convalescents and 29 age-, race-, and sex-matched healthy controls. Samples were acquired within the first months of the pandemic. Many proteins from pathways known to change during acute COVID-19 illness, such as from the complement cascade, coagulation system, inflammation and adaptive immune system, had returned to levels seen in healthy controls. In comparison, we identified 22 and 15 proteins with significantly elevated and lowered levels, respectively, amongst COVID-19 convalescents compared to healthy controls. Some of the changes were similar to those observed for the acute phase of the disease, i.e. elevated levels of proteins from hemolysis, the adaptive immune systems, and inflammation. In contrast, some alterations opposed those in the acute phase, e.g. elevated levels of CETP and APOA1 which function in lipid/cholesterol metabolism, and decreased levels of proteins from the complement cascade (e.g. C1R, C1S, and VWF), the coagulation system (e.g. THBS1 and VWF), and the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton (e.g. PFN1 and CFL1) amongst COVID-19 convalescents. We speculate that some of these shifts might originate from a transient decrease in platelet counts upon recovery from the disease. Finally, we observed race-specific changes, e.g. with respect to immunoglobulins and proteins related to cholesterol metabolism.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.26.513886v2" target="_blank">Complex changes in serum protein levels in COVID-19 convalescents</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>SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza A/B in Point-of-Care and Non-Laboratory Settings</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: SARS-CoV-2 Infection; Influenza A; Influenza B <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Diagnostic Test: Aptitude Medical Systems Metrix COVID/Flu Test <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Aptitude Medical Systems; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority <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>Effect of Aerobic Exercises Versus Incentive Spirometer Device on Post-covid Pulmonary Fibrosis Patients</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Lung Fibrosis Interstitial; Post-COVID-19 Syndrome <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: Aerobic Exercises; Device: Incentive Spirometer Device; Other: Traditional Chest Physiotherapy <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: McCarious Nahad Aziz Abdelshaheed Stephens; Cairo University <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>Can Doctors Reduce COVID-19 Misinformation and Increase Vaccine Uptake in Ghana? A Cluster-randomised Controlled Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Motivational Interviewing, AIMS; Behavioral: Facility engagement <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: London School of Economics and Political Science; Innovations for Poverty Action; Ghana Health Services <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 Ultrasound Trial</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long Covid <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: Splenic Ultrasound <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: SecondWave Systems Inc.; University of Minnesota; MCDC (United States Department of Defense) <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>Immunogenicity After COVID-19 Vaccines in Adapted Schedules</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Coronavirus Disease 2019; COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: BNT162b2 30µg; Drug: BNT162b2 20µg; Drug: BNT162b2 6µg; Drug: mRNA-1273 100µg; Drug: mRNA-1273 50µg; Drug: ChAdOx1-S [Recombinant] <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Universiteit Antwerpen <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>Could Wearing Face Mask Have Affected Demodex Parasite</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Pandemic, COVID-19; Demodex Infestation <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Diagnostic Test: standard superficial skin biopsy (SSSB) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Nurhan Döner Aktaş <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>TDCS Stimulation After Covid-19 Infection</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Procedure: Transcranial Direct Stimulation <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Istanbul Medipol University Hospital; Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety and Immunogenicity of a Booster Vaccination With an Adapted Vaccine</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: SARS-CoV2 Infection <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Biological: PHH-1V81; Biological: Comirnaty Omicron XBB1.5 <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Hipra Scientific, S.L.U <br/><b>Active, not 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>Regulation of innate immune and inflammatory responses by supersulfides</strong> - Innate immunity plays an important role in host defense against microbial infections. It also participates in activation of acquired immunity through cytokine production and antigen presentation. Pattern recognition receptors such as Toll-like receptors and nucleotide oligomerization domain-like receptors sense invading pathogens and associated tissue injury, after which inflammatory mediators such as pro-inflammatory cytokines and nitric oxide are induced. Supersulfides are molecular species…</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 the humoral and mucosal immune response of a multiepitope vaccine against COVID-19 in pigs</strong> - INTRODUCTION: This study evaluated the immune response to a multiepitope recombinant chimeric protein (CHIVAX) containing B- and T-cell epitopes of the SARS-CoV-2 spike’s receptor binding domain (RBD) in a translational porcine model for pre-clinical studies.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>In Silico Study on Natural Chemical Compounds from Citric Essential Oils as Potential Inhibitors of an Omicron (BA.1) SARS-CoV-2 Mutants’ Spike Glycoprotein</strong> - CONCLUSION: The outcomes of this investigation hold significant potential for the utilization of a homology modeling approach for the prediction of RBD’s secondary structure based on its sequence when the 3D structure of a mutated protein is not available. This opens the opportunities for further advancing the drug discovery process, offering novel avenues for the development of multifunctional, non-toxic natural medications.</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 Comprehensive Review of the Clinical Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics, and Drug Interactions of Nirmatrelvir/Ritonavir</strong> - Nirmatrelvir is a potent and selective inhibitor of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) main protease that is used as an oral antiviral coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) treatment. To sustain unbound systemic trough concentrations above the antiviral in vitro 90% effective concentration value (EC(90)), nirmatrelvir is coadministered with 100 mg of ritonavir, a pharmacokinetic enhancer. Ritonavir inhibits nirmatrelvir’s cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4-mediated metabolism…</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 stapled lipopeptide platform for preventing and treating highly pathogenic viruses of pandemic potential</strong> - The continued emergence of highly pathogenic viruses, which either thwart immune- and small molecule-based therapies or lack interventions entirely, mandates alternative approaches, particularly for prompt and facile pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis. Many highly pathogenic viruses, including coronaviruses, employ the six-helix bundle heptad repeat membrane fusion mechanism to achieve infection. Although heptad-repeat-2 decoys can inhibit viral entry by blocking six-helix bundle assembly, 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>ACE2 Receptor-Targeted Inhaled Nanoemulsions Inhibit SARS-CoV-2 and Attenuate Inflammatory Responses</strong> - Three kinds of coronaviruses are highly pathogenic to humans, and two of them mainly infect humans through Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 （ACE2）receptors. Therefore, specifically blocking ACE2 binding at the interface with the receptor-binding domain is promising to achieve both preventive and therapeutic effects of coronaviruses. Alternatively, drug-targeted delivery based on ACE2 receptors can further improve the efficacy and safety of inhalation drugs. Here, these two approaches are…</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>TRIM28-mediated nucleocapsid protein SUMOylation enhances SARS-CoV-2 virulence</strong> - Viruses, as opportunistic intracellular parasites, hijack the cellular machinery of host cells to support their survival and propagation. Numerous viral proteins are subjected to host-mediated post-translational modifications. Here, we demonstrate that the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein (SARS2-NP) is SUMOylated on the lysine 65 residue, which efficiently mediates SARS2-NP’s ability in homo-oligomerization, RNA association, liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Thereby the innate antiviral…</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>Plant extracts modulate cellular stress to inhibit replication of mouse Coronavirus MHV-A59</strong> - The Covid-19 infection outbreak led to a global epidemic, and although several vaccines have been developed, the appearance of mutations has allowed the virus to evade the immune response. Added to this is the existing risk of the appearance of new emerging viruses. Therefore, it is necessary to explore novel antiviral therapies. Here, we investigate the potential in vitro of plant extracts to modulate cellular stress and inhibit murine hepatitis virus (MHV)-A59 replication. L929 cells were…</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 randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of an inhibitor of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (TM5614) in mild to moderate COVID-19</strong> - An inhibitor of plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI)-1, TM5614, inhibited thrombosis, inflammation, and fibrosis in several experimental mouse models. To evaluate the efficacy and safety of TM5614 in human COVID-19 pneumonia, phase IIa and IIb trials were conducted. In an open-label, single-arm trial, 26 Japanese COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate pneumonia were treated with 120-180 mg of TM5614 daily, and all were discharged without any notable side effects. Then, a randomized,…</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>Antiviral effect of palmatine against infectious bronchitis virus through regulation of NF-κB/IRF7/JAK-STAT signalling pathway and apoptosis</strong> - 1. Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), a gamma-coronavirus, can infect chickens of all ages and leads to an acute contact respiratory infection. This study evaluated the anti-viral activity of palmatine, a natural non-flavonoid alkaloid, against IBV in chicken embryo kidney (CEK) cells.2. The half toxic concentration (CC(50)) of palmatine was 672.92 μM, the half inhibitory concentration (IC(50)) of palmatine against IBV was 7.76 μM and the selection index (SI) was 86.74.3. Mode of action assay…</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>One-step silver coating of polypropylene surgical mask with antibacterial and antiviral properties</strong> - Face masks can filter droplets containing viruses and bacteria minimizing the transmission and spread of respiratory pathogens but are also an indirect source of microbes transmission. A novel antibacterial and antiviral Ag-coated polypropylene surgical mask obtained through the in situ and one-step deposition of metallic silver nanoparticles, synthesized by silver mirror reaction combined with sonication or agitation methods, is proposed in this study. SEM analysis shows Ag nanoparticles fused…</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 novel inhibitor of SARS-CoV infection: Lactulose octasulfate interferes with ACE2-Spike protein binding</strong> - The ongoing challenge of managing coronaviruses, particularly SARS-CoV-2, necessitates the development of effective antiviral agents. This study introduces Lactulose octasulfate (LOS), a sulfated disaccharide, demonstrating significant antiviral activity against key coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV. We hypothesize LOS operates extracellularly, targeting the ACE2-S-protein axis, due to its low cellular permeability. Our investigation combines biolayer interferometry…</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>IFN-γ-mediated control of SARS-CoV-2 infection through nitric oxide</strong> - INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to identify mechanisms of antiviral host defense against SARS-CoV-2. One such mediator is interferon-g (IFN-γ), which, when administered to infected patients, is reported to result in viral clearance and resolution of pulmonary symptoms. IFN-γ treatment of a human lung epithelial cell line triggered an antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, yet the mechanism for this antiviral response was not identified.</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>HDAC1-3 inhibition increases SARS-CoV-2 replication and productive infection in lung mesothelial and epithelial cells</strong> - CONCLUSION: This study highlights a previously unrecognized effect of HDAC1-3 inhibition in increasing SARS-CoV-2 cell entry, replication and productive infection correlating with increased expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2. These data, while adding basic insight into COVID-19 pathogenesis, warn for the use of HDAC inhibitors in SARS-CoV-2 patients.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Should Virtual Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) Teaching Replace or Complement Face-to-Face Teaching in the Post-COVID-19 Educational Environment: An Evaluation of an Innovative National COVID-19 Teaching Programme</strong> - Background The COVID-19 pandemic brought about drastic changes to medical education and examinations, with a shift to online lectures and webinars. Additionally, social restrictions in the United Kingdom (UK) inhibited students’ ability to practice for objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) with their peers. Methods The Virtual OSCE buddy scheme (VOBS) provided a means to practice OSCE skills virtually by linking groups of 2-6 final-year medical students with a junior doctor who had…</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>What’s Behind Israel’s Crackdown in the West Bank?</strong> - The Palestinian political analyst Ibrahim Dalalsha on the politics behind the violence and settlement expansion since October 7th. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/whats-behind-israels-crackdown-in-the-west-bank">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Ghost of January 6th Haunts 2024</strong> - The impending Biden-vs.-Trump rematch already has one dominant theme. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-ghost-of-january-6th-haunts-2024">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The California Town Owned by a New York Investment Firm</strong> - Scotia was created, a century and a half ago, so that lumberjacks could live near the trees they cut down. Its current owners have been trying for more than a decade to bring new residents to town. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/scotia-the-california-town-owned-by-a-new-york-investment-firm">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Why Some Academics Are Reluctant to Call Claudine Gay a Plagiarist</strong> - A political-science professor wrestles with his role in the drama surrounding the former Harvard president. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-some-academics-are-reluctant-to-call-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Joe Biden Makes Saving Democracy the Center of His Campaign</strong> - The President and his team are framing the 2024 race as a binary choice between him and an authoritarian Donald Trump. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/joe-biden-makes-saving-democracy-the-center-of-his-campaign">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Why Taiwan is 2024’s first big election to watch</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="The candidate, in the midst of a crowd, smiles and clasps hands with a supporter." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZJMeFe3BJbiQG6jQTIVz92J7KXE=/278x0:4713x3326/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73029116/1896202515.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Taiwanese vice president and presidential candidate Lai Ching-te on the campaign trail in Taipei on January 3, 2024.  | Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Next week’s presidential contest comes down to one issue: China.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fCdCFS">
Even amid a<a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/3/24022864/elections-democracy-2024-united-states-india-pakistan-indonesia-european-parliament-far-right-voting'"> historically packed global election</a> calendar in 2024, next week’s presidential contest in Taiwan will be one of the most closely watched and significant. The political future of the island and its historically fraught relationship with <a href="https://www.vox.com/china">China</a> — by far the main issue for voters this year — will have consequences not just for Taiwan’s nearly 24 million people, but for global security and prosperity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cJD1fG">
China views Taiwan as a rebellious province, rather than an independent country, and Beijing’s longstanding position is that the two should be reunified. Chinese President Xi Jinping <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/fc1dfe48-a390-48c3-b27c-7e405978c166">recently described</a> this reunification as a “historical inevitability” in his New Year’s address.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oi1Cga">
While China’s official position has been that this reunification — something Taiwanese voters <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-is-unification-so-unpopular-in-taiwan-its-the-prc-political-system-not-just-culture/">overwhelmingly oppose</a> — should be accomplished by peaceful means, it has not ruled out using force and has stepped up military and economic pressure on the island. This has alarmed governments and military leaders around the world, given the real possibility that a war over Taiwan could draw in other countries<a href="https://themessenger.com/grid/test-imagining-the-unimaginable-the-us-china-and-war-over-taiwan"> including the United States</a> and devastate the global <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy">economy</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Haxwlo">
Underlining the stakes, a senior Chinese official warned Taiwanese voters this week to make the “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-official-urges-taiwans-people-make-correct-choice-election-2024-01-03/">correct</a>” choice, describing the election as a decision between “peace and war, prosperity and decline.”
</p>
<h3 id="T7f3rh">
China on the ballot
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B6NnXp">
The January 13 election pits current Vice President Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) against Taipei Mayor Hou You-ih of the Kuomintang (KMT), as well as third-party candidate Ko Wen-je, of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wLNamd">
Lai has been <a href="https://www.economist.com/interactive/2024-taiwan-election">leading in the polls</a> throughout the election, and benefited when an attempt by the two opposition parties to form a unity ticket collapsed in a <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/how-the-taiwan-opposition-alliance-talks-fell-apart/">messy public spat</a> in November. But the race has been tightening in recent weeks — Lai led by 5 points at the end of December. “Most people expect Lai to win, but I wouldn’t rule out a surprise,” said <a href="https://www.gmfus.org/find-experts/bonnie-s-glaser">Bonnie Glaser</a>, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PdMBDY">
In other places, voters might be debating taxes or social issues or government spending. But Taiwanese politics hinges on one subject.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DYyqX4">
“Every election is ultimately about China, which makes the two parties big tents on everything else,” <a href="https://www.ipsas.sinica.edu.tw/en/%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6%E4%BA%BA%E5%93%A1/%E9%AE%91%E5%BD%A4/">Nathan Batto</a>, a professor of political science at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, told Vox. Supporters of one party “might be for higher taxes or lower taxes, for gay marriage or against it. The fundamental cleavage is China.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3Hjp8V">
The KMT is descended from the nationalist party that led mainland China for two decades until retreating to Taiwan after the communist takeover in 1949. The KMT controlled Taiwan as an autocratic, one-party state until the island’s bumpy transition to democracy in the 1990s.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s8fRXP">
Though the KMT long presented itself as the legitimate government not only of Taiwan but mainland China, ironically it is now the party that favors maintaining closer economic and political ties with Communist Party-ruled China. The DPP, which has held the presidency since 2016, argues that Taiwan is too reliant on the mainland and should build closer ties with other international powers. (The more recently founded TPP has tried to forge a middle ground between the two, with mixed success.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="olCX3t">
Under outgoing DPP President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-21-chinese-air-force-planes-entered-its-air-defence-zone-2023-03-02/#:~:text=TAIPEI%2C%20March%202%20(Reuters),Chinese%20air%20force%20incursions%20nearby.">deepened its relationship </a>with the US, securing billions of dollars in new arms deals from Washington. The Tsai administration also experienced the most serious crisis in the Taiwan Strait in years when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/7/26/23278113/drama-nancy-pelosi-taiwan-travel-plans-china-policy-biden-explained">visited the island</a> in August 2022. Pelosi was the highest-ranking US official to come to Taiwan since 1997, which prompted China to respond with <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/3/china-conducts-live-fire-exercises-around-taiwan-as-pelosi-visits">live-fire military drills</a> around Taiwan while Pelosi was present.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SNmpdL">
While the current election campaign in Taiwan has been bitter and polarizing, the debate itself takes place between very defined and fairly narrow guardrails.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pH1iz3">
“<a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/more-than-80-percent-of-taiwanese-01092019115150.html">More than 80 percent</a> of our people oppose reunification now,” said <a href="https://indsr.org.tw/en/archive?uid=44">Shen Ming-shih</a>, deputy CEO at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taiwanese think tank. “If a political party tried to revive the idea, they would be rejected immediately,”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c4PYXY">
At the same time, neither party advocates declaring full independence, a highly provocative move that might risk war. In recent debates, the DPP’s<a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3246039/frontrunner-william-lai-challenged-renounce-independence-first-taiwan-election-debate"> Lai has had to defend past statements</a> in which he described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence.” Nowadays, Lai <a href="https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2023/08/16/2003804803">says</a> he subscribes to President Tsai’s position that there is no need to formally declare independence since the island “is already a sovereign, independent country called the Republic of China.” In other words, Taiwan is a de facto independent state, albeit one that is only formally recognized by a handful of small countries.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s5ULPu">
Lai has <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3246417/taiwan-election-hopeful-william-lai-says-kmts-embrace-one-china-dividing-island">argued</a> that the KMT’s embrace of Beijing is actually the more dangerous path, and would put the country’s hard-fought sovereignty at risk. “Instead of countering the communists, they now befriend the communists,” he has said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tRHDjk">
If it returns to power, a Kuomintang government would be likely to try to lower the tensions across the Taiwan Strait and promote more <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/taiwans-2024-presidential-election-analyzing-hou-yu-ihs-foreign-policy-positions">trade, tourism, and cultural exchanges</a> between the two countries, all of which have declined under Tsai’s administration. But Batto is skeptical that a KMT win would dispel tensions altogether. The last time the KMT was in power, from 2008 to 2016, then-President Ma Ying-jeou took a more conciliatory tone and forged a number of trade deals with China, but Beijing <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9072a12e-b9d5-4385-a76f-e7f14f2e05e4">was ultimately disappointed </a>by the public backlash this brief detente provoked in Taiwan. In the years since, China under Xi has become even more authoritarian, widening the political gap with a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/country/taiwan">highly democratic Taiwan</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KTvYpY">
“It may be that [Beijing has] given up on the idea of achieving unification through winning at Taiwanese domestic politics,” Batto said. “They’re certainly not making any internal compromises to their own positions to build a constituency here.”
</p>
<h3 id="fTEHoy">
Dialing up the pressure
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PwDEO7">
Shen notes that in years past, Xi often played up the possibility of a “one country, two systems” model for Taiwan, referring to the arrangement by which Hong Kong, when it reverted to Beijing’s control in 1997, was promised a degree of political independence while being formally part of China. But Xi’s recent statements, including both his New Year’s address and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/xi-told-biden-taiwan-is-biggest-most-dangerous-issue-bilateral-ties-us-official-2023-11-16/">tough remarks </a>about Taiwan during a recent meeting with <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden">President Joe Biden</a>, showed the Chinese leader’s “determination to accomplish reunification.” And the promise of “one country, two systems” lost all credibility after Beijing-backed authorities <a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-hong-kong-beijing-democracy-national-security-9e3c405923c24b6889c1bcf171f6def4">cracked down on Hong Kong’s democratic opposition</a> in 2021.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lqZKeU">
The trendlines in Taiwanese politics are certainly not heading China’s way. According to recent polls, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-05-12/poll-taiwanese-distance-themselves-from-chinese-identity">66 percent of the population</a> now identifies as solely Taiwanese, as opposed to 28 percent as both Taiwanese and Chinese and just 4 percent as solely Chinese. (Notably, only 2.3 percent of Taiwan’s population is Indigenous, and not ethnically Chinese.) This trend is particularly pronounced among younger Taiwanese, including those whose grandparents or great-grandparents fled communist China.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hIK2oX">
While there’s still significant trade across the Taiwan Strait, and Taiwanese companies like iPhone-maker FoxConn are major players in the mainland economy, the number of Taiwanese workers in mainland China has been <a href="https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2023/04/12/2003797746">falling steadily</a> in recent years. And while military tensions between the two are hardly new, China’s growing <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/19/china-defense-budget-military-weapons-purchasing-power/">military and economic power</a> has allowed it to dial up the pressure in recent years.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vJjYfd">
This pressure campaign has included flying an increasing number of military aircraft into airspace around the island, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-says-43-chinese-air-force-planes-crossed-taiwan-strait-median-line-2022-12-26/">sometimes up to dozens in a day</a>. Taiwanese officials have also claimed the government<a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/taiwan-government-faces-5-million-cyber-attacks-daily-official"> faces millions of cyberattacks per month</a>, with about half of them believed to originate in China.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0Tmu29">
China has also launched a campaign to use diplomatic pressure and financial inducements to encourage the remaining countries that have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan to drop them and recognize Beijing. Nine countries <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/04/not-about-the-highest-bidder-the-countries-defying-china-to-stick-with-taiwan">have dropped their recognition</a> of Taiwan since Tsai came to power in 2016. Just 13 countries remain, most of them small island states in the Pacific or Caribbean.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BWzHyI">
China still has ways to <a href="https://themessenger.com/grid/how-a-chinese-naval-blockade-could-isolate-taiwan-and-send-shockwaves-across-the-world">dial up that pressure further</a>, including interfering with trade, either through a full blockade or by pressuring companies to avoid shipping to an island that is highly dependent on imports of food and energy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5YkdxD">
“China’s strategy has long been to try and erode the confidence of the people of Taiwan and and induce a sense of psychological despair,” said Glaser. The hope in Beijing, Glaser says, is that Taiwan’s population will reluctantly conclude that “the best future is one in which they are part of China in some way.”
</p>
<h3 id="DeGnaL">
The toll of war
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DBP2J6">
That’s how China’s wait-it-out strategy might work. But there is also the disturbing possibility that Xi, or one of his successors, could lose patience with Taiwanese intransigence.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tGj6me">
Xi has said repeatedly that the task of reunification should not be “passed on from generation to generation.” During his recent summit meeting with Biden, Xi emphasized that he was still committed to peaceful reunification but, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/xi-told-biden-taiwan-is-biggest-most-dangerous-issue-bilateral-ties-us-official-2023-11-16/">according to US officials who were present,</a> “moved immediately to conditions that the potential use of force could be utilized.” Former US Indo-Pacific commander Adm. Phil Davidson suggested in congressional testimony in 2021 that China is likely to move on Taiwan “<a href="https://news.usni.org/2021/03/09/davidson-china-could-try-to-take-control-of-taiwan-in-next-six-years">in the next six years</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CCIdHS">
Such a war, if it did come, could make the <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia-invasion-ukraine">Russian invasion of Ukraine</a> look small by comparison. Some analysts have suggested an invading force of 1 million to 2 million troops <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2021/05/why-a-taiwan-invasion-would-look-nothing-like-d-day/">might be necessary</a>. The war could involve the United States, as well. Under what’s known as the “one-China policy,” the US technically recognizes Taiwan as part of China and doesn’t have formal diplomatic relations with Taipei. But in practice, Washington has become Taiwan’s most important political backer and <a href="https://www.forumarmstrade.org/ustaiwan.html">supplier of military equipment</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mLyZau">
The US hasn’t made clear as an official matter of policy whether it would come to Taiwan’s aid if the island were attacked, a stance known as “strategic ambiguity.” But President Biden <a href="https://themessenger.com/grid/the-big-taiwan-question-as-china-issues-warnings-and-holds-military-drills-is-a-chinese-invasion-imminent">has said on three separate occasions</a> that the US has a commitment to defend Taiwan, and though the White House walked back these statements each time, growing tensions between Washington and Beijing may make US involvement more likely. Many analyses of a potential conflict have suggested that China might even preemptively <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2021-02/Thomas_Shugart_Testimony.pdf">strike US bases in the Pacific </a>to hamper the American response.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8Lb26i">
The human toll of such a war would be staggering. A <a href="https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/230109_Cancian_FirstBattle_NextWar.pdf?VersionId=WdEUwJYWIySMPIr3ivhFolxC_gZQuSOQ">recent wargame by the Center for Strategic and International Studies</a> found that while a US-led international force, presumably including East Asian allies like Japan, could defeat the Chinese military in a conflict over Taiwan, in just three weeks of fighting, the US could lose half as many troops as in 20 years of fighting in Iraq and <a href="https://www.vox.com/afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>. In the CSIS scenario, the US was projected to lose two aircraft carriers and 10 to 20 large surface ships — the kind of losses not seen since World War II. And this is even without taking into account <a href="https://themessenger.com/grid/china-may-soon-become-the-worlds-third-nuclear-superpower-heres-what-that-means">China’s growing nuclear arsenal</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Il4ofb">
While the fighting would likely be contained around Taiwan, the economic impact of a war, or even just a full-scale Chinese blockade of the island, would be felt worldwide. Taiwan’s dominant company, TSMC, <a href="https://themessenger.com/grid/how-a-chinese-naval-blockade-could-isolate-taiwan-and-send-shockwaves-across-the-world">produces the microchips</a> used in nearly all the world’s smartphones, about a third of its personal computers, and myriad other devices. Should these highly sophisticated factories suffer major damage or be destroyed in the course of an invasion, “we’d face an economic crisis globally akin to the disruptions that we saw during the Great Depression,” as Chris Miller, author of the book <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/chip-war-the-fight-for-the-world-s-most-critical-technology-chris-miller/18265375?gclid=CjwKCAiA7t6sBhAiEiwAsaieYoVdXQyIu2q_kuaB9mThnY64GGS-7PbABJuyBHlnn9uyvNAISU4yzhoC7mwQAvD_BwE"><em>Chip War</em></a>, said on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-chris-miller.html"><em>The Ezra Klein Show</em> last year</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DXvUhk">
The world’s reliance on these chips is so great that it has sometimes been called Taiwan’s “silicon shield.” The idea is that the global economy, very much including China itself, is simply too reliant on Taiwan-made semiconductors to risk any action that might take the supply offline. But as the invasion of Ukraine has shown, countries can be willing to incur severe economic costs to accomplish what they see as major geopolitical goals — and reunification is about as fundamental as it gets for China.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qNGX5z">
Of course, the costs borne by the world pale in relation to those that would be felt by Taiwan in an invasion scenario.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="17QaVD">
“Internationally, a lot of people look at Ukraine as an inspirational story of resisting aggression and the encroachment of a foreign power,” said Batto. “But here, we see apartment blocks [in Ukraine] being bombed and think, ‘That could be my house.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="afRD9H">
For now, both parties in the election are committed to maintaining the uneasy status quo in the Taiwan Strait, even if they have very different ideas of how to do so. Unfortunately, its massive neighbor across the strait may be less interested in maintaining it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bT7hRr">
</p></li>
<li><strong>The Supreme Court’s new, nightmare abortion cases, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="People at a rally outside the Supreme Court building carry signs that read “Keep abortion safe and legal” as well as “I am the pro-life generation.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lgNag7FlL5QMGArHGcEN6DBj20Y=/0x0:4259x3194/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73028138/GettyImages_1084718214.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Abortion rights activists hold signs alongside anti-abortion activists participating in the “March for Life,” an annual event to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court case <em>Roe v. Wade</em>, which legalized abortion in the US, outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, January 18, 2019. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Court blocked a lower court order enforcing a federal law that protects patients who require medically necessary abortions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jUNYwD">
The <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus">Supreme Court</a> handed down two significant orders on Friday evening. The <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/010524zr2_886b.pdf">first</a> announces that the Court will hear a case asking whether former <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump">President Donald Trump</a> is <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/1/3/24022580/supreme-court-donald-trump-ballot-insurrection-fourteenth-amendment-colorado-anderson">disqualified from running for president</a>. The Court’s decision to hear this case was widely expected, and the biggest news in this order is that the Court plans to hear the case on an expedited basis, with oral arguments taking place on February 8.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mX8dyy">
The <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/010524zr_9o6b.pdf">second order</a> is more surprising and potentially almost as consequential: The Court temporarily blocked a <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/4/23984674/supreme-court-abortion-emtala-emergency-medically-necessary-idaho">lower court’s decision</a> holding that patients who require an <a href="https://www.vox.com/abortion">abortion</a> to save their life or prevent catastrophic health consequences are entitled to such an abortion under federal law.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i19d6P">
In the second order, the Court also agreed to hear a pair of cases asking whether federal law requires hospitals to perform medically necessary abortions. Those two cases are called <em>Moyle v. United States</em> and <em>Idaho v. United States.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vSiKMt">
Both the <em>Moyle </em>and <em>Idaho</em> cases <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/1/3/24023889/abortion-supreme-court-emtala-fifth-circuit-texas-becerra">should be slam dunks in favor of abortion rights</a>. A federal law known as the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1395dd">Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act</a> (EMTALA) requires hospitals that receive Medicare funds — which is nearly all hospitals because Medicare pays for <a href="https://www.vox.com/health-care">health care</a> for the elderly — to provide “such treatment as may be required to stabilize the medical condition” of “any individual” who arrives at the hospital’s ER with an “emergency medical condition.” (In limited circumstances, the hospital may transfer the patient to a different facility that will provide this stabilizing treatment, but the patient must receive the treatment.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uRVC1Z">
EMTALA does not specifically mention abortions, but the law is written expansively and applies a blanket rule. When a patient arrives at an emergency room with a medical emergency, the hospital must stabilize that patient. That means that, if an abortion is the medically appropriate treatment, the patient must receive an abortion.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iXUHtS">
This rule is triggered, moreover, not only when a patient has a life-threatening condition, but also when a patient has a condition that places their health “in serious jeopardy,” that threatens “serious impairment to bodily functions,” or “serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part.” So a patient must be offered abortion care if an abortion will save their life, but also if they need an abortion to prevent serious damage to their uterus or some other serious medical complication.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="X8cZVm">
The Court’s decision to hear the <em>Idaho</em> and <em>Moyle</em> cases is not particularly surprising because the far-right United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently handed down a decision holding that <a href="https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-10246-CV0.pdf">EMTALA does not apply to abortions at all</a>. That decision is riddled with errors; among other things, the Fifth Circuit didn’t even have the <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2024/1/3/24023889/abortion-supreme-court-emtala-fifth-circuit-texas-becerra">lawful authority to decide this case</a>. But the Supreme Court often takes up legal questions that split lower courts, and the Fifth Circuit’s decision means that lower courts are divided on whether EMTALA means what it says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xBVOyY">
Still, the Court’s decision to also suspend a <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/4/23984674/supreme-court-abortion-emtala-emergency-medically-necessary-idaho">lower court’s order holding that EMTALA does mean what it says</a> and that it preempts an Idaho law that prohibits all abortions except when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman” is quite unexpected. The Court sat on these two cases for more than a month before blocking the lower court’s decision. And, again, the EMTALA statute is crystal clear that patients experiencing a medical emergency must receive “such treatment as may be required to stabilize the medical condition” — nothing in EMTALA suggests that this rule does not apply if the appropriate treatment is an abortion.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TL4j2n">
But this is the same Court that <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/6/24/23181720/supreme-court-dobbs-jackson-womens-health-samuel-alito-roe-wade-abortion-marriage-contraception">overruled <em>Roe v. Wade</em></a>, and five of the Court’s Republican appointees have shown an extraordinary willingness to bend the law to benefit anti-abortion litigants — even ruling that the state of Texas may <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/12/10/22827899/supreme-court-texas-abortion-law-sb8-decision-whole-womans-health">immunize itself from federal litigation challenging its anti-abortion laws</a> by using bounty hunters to enforce those laws.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rdmdFc">
So, while the Court’s order in the <em>Idaho</em> and <em>Moyle</em> cases isn’t a sure sign that these cases will end disastrously for women who will die if they don’t receive an abortion, it is still a terrible sign of what the future may bring for these patients. And, if nothing else, the Court’s decision to suspend the lower court’s decision holding that EMTALA applies to hospitals in Idaho endangers pregnant patients in that state — at least until the Court issues its final decision in these cases.
</p></li>
<li><strong>The Supreme Court arguments for (and against) removing Trump from the ballot, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Trump speaks intro a microphone." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zUF2MJYiLBCxPSynORvRDCZlmJQ=/334x0:5667x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73019145/1868528185.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks to guests at a campaign event on December 19, 2023, in Waterloo, Iowa. | Scott Olson/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The Constitution has a right to defend itself, but Trump also has a right to due process.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EV1P0b">
Shortly before Christmas, the Colorado <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus">Supreme Court</a> dropped a bombshell opinion ruling that former <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump">President Donald Trump</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/20/24009521/supreme-court-donald-trump-colorado-ballot-insurrection-fourteenth-amendment-anderson-griswold">must be removed from the 2024 ballot</a> because of his failed effort to overturn the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020-presidential-election">2020 election</a> and his successful incitement of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. Maine’s top elections official reached a similar conclusion about a week later, <a href="https://www.maine.gov/sos/news/2023/Decision%20in%20Challenge%20to%20Trump%20Presidential%20Primary%20Petitions.pdf">removing Trump from the ballot in that state</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jvAymK">
On Friday, the Supreme Court announced it would take up the case, now known as <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/trump-v-anderson/"><em>Trump v. Anderson</em></a>. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 8.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s05sRA">
Last week, the Colorado Republican Party asked the justices to take up the question of whether Trump may serve as president after attempting to overthrow the US government. Trump filed a similar request shortly thereafter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VtAPND">
While many of the Colorado GOP’s arguments are meritless and should not be taken seriously by any court, they are correct about one thing: The Supreme Court needs to resolve this case as fast as it can.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O4QPvf">
Indeed, the plaintiffs in the <em>Anderson</em> litigation — six Colorado voters who seek to remove Trump from the ballot in that state — agree with the GOP that the US Supreme Court needs to hear this case on an expedited basis. They <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-696/294458/20231228130328129_20231228%20Anderson%20Resp%20to%20Petr%20Mot%20to%20Expedite.pdf">filed their own brief</a> explaining that “voting in Colorado happens mostly by mail and will begin for in-state residents once the ballots are mailed out on February 12.” Accordingly, they “propose a schedule that will allow for briefing and argument in time for a [Supreme Court] decision by February 11.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="m0v4JB">
The case turns on a previously obscure provision of the 14th Amendment, which provides that anyone who previously held a high office requiring them to swear an oath supporting the Constitution is forbidden from holding a similar office if they “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">have engaged in insurrection or rebellion</a>” against that Constitution.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r0y1se">
The Colorado Supreme Court concluded that <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf">Trump engaged in an “insurrection”</a> because he spent months falsely claiming that the 2020 election was “rigged.” He encouraged his supporters to “fight,” suggesting that Democrats would “fight to the death” if the shoe were on the other foot. And Trump named then-Vice President <a href="https://www.vox.com/mike-pence">Mike Pence</a> as someone who should be targeted by the pro-Trump mob that invaded the Capitol.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Gz29rN">
But there is <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/20/24009521/supreme-court-donald-trump-colorado-ballot-insurrection-fourteenth-amendment-anderson-griswold">precious little case law</a> laying out what this provision of the Constitution means, or defining key terms like “insurrection” or what it means to “engage in” such an attack on the United States. Since the period immediately following the Civil War, there has not been much litigation involving disloyal public officials who joined an insurrection against the very system of government they swore to defend. So courts asked to interpret the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection Clause — including the Supreme Court — must do so without the ordinary guideposts judges look to when reading the Constitution.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JRMCIN">
The Colorado GOP’s brief makes <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-696/294416/20231227184621636_Colorado-Republican-State-Central-Committee-v.-Anderson-Cert-Petition%20PDFA.pdf">three legal arguments</a> in favor of letting Trump remain on the ballot. Two of these arguments are silly and unpersuasive and should be ignored by the Supreme Court, but one of them raises a very plausible case for, at the very least, delaying the decision whether to disqualify Trump until after one of his criminal trials is over.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EdBPVK">
In addition to their legal arguments, Colorado Republicans also make a political argument for keeping Trump on the ballot — removing him would deny voters “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-696/294416/20231227184621636_Colorado-Republican-State-Central-Committee-v.-Anderson-Cert-Petition%20PDFA.pdf">the ability to choose their Chief Executive through the electoral process</a>.” This purely political argument has garnered sympathy from many observers, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/us/politics/trump-ballot-colorado-supreme-court.html">including outlets such as the New York Times</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lspLIb">
This final argument, if taken seriously by a majority of the justices, could render the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection Clause a dead letter — because it would prevent it from operating in the one circumstance when such a constitutional provision is needed.
</p>
<h3 id="TWC9sk">
The Constitution has a right to defend itself
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DmoiDQ">
Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as ham-handed and ineffective as it was, was a direct attack on the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution lays out a process by which American presidents are chosen, and that process chose <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a> in 2020.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fYdV6H">
Nevertheless, the various legal proceedings challenging Trump’s ability to serve as president again have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/22/us/politics/trump-ballot-colorado-supreme-court.html">widely been portrayed as anti-democratic</a> by Trump, his allies, and a few reporters. As the New York Times’s Charlie Savage wrote shortly after the Colorado Supreme Court’s <em>Anderson</em> decision, that case “pits one fundamental value against another: giving voters in a democracy the right to pick their leaders versus ensuring that no one is above the law.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QzppJY">
There are two rebuttals to this claim. One is that democracy, as Harvard political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky wrote shortly after Trump’s rise to power, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Democracies-Die-Steven-Levitsky/dp/1524762938">is a game that we want to keep playing indefinitely</a>.” One of the fundamental premises of all democratic systems of government is that elected officials must periodically stand for election, and that they lose their authority if they lose their popular mandate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k3zQhy">
Trump, by contrast, attempted to make the <a href="https://www.vox.com/presidential-election">2016 election</a> the last presidential election that mattered (at least for as long as he wanted to hold power). There is nothing democratic about canceling elections or about refusing to abide by their results.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oynyDw">
Nor should the 14th Amendment be read more cautiously because Trump still enjoys a broad base of popular support in some parts of the country. Indeed, allowing insurrectionists with significant public support to stand for office would defeat the whole point of the Constitution’s Insurrection Clause.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NgSpxH">
Unpopular insurrectionists will never get elected to office in the first place <em>because they are unpopular</em>. The whole point of the Insurrection Clause is to bar individuals who enjoy enough popular support that they could conceivably regain high office, not to impose a legal ban on candidates who are just going to lose their election anyway.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XKGy7G">
Of course, the fact that the Insurrection Clause is only needed when a politician hostile to the Constitution enjoys broad public support <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/23880607/trump-14th-amendment-lawsuits-federalist-society">raises its own problems</a>. Among other things, the most strident Trump supporters — the very kind of people who invaded the Capitol on January 6 — may not respond peacefully to a decision removing their political leader from the ballot.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NLG3Vv">
But these concerns can, at least, be mitigated by ensuring that the process used to disqualify Trump is ostentatiously fair, and that it complies with constitutional due process guarantees — which brings us to the GOP’s strongest argument against the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision removing Trump from that state’s ballot.
</p>
<h3 id="ZWqZyW">
The GOP’s strongest argument for keeping Trump on the ballot — at least for now
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PVk36y">
The Colorado GOP does raise one fairly strong legal argument that supports deferring the question of whether Trump should be removed from the 2024 ballot until, at least, after he is convicted of a crime or otherwise determined to have engaged in insurrection by a federal trial court.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LuHwjW">
In <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9097097359975117830&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=6&amp;as_vis=1&amp;oi=scholarr"><em>Ownbey v. Morgan</em></a> (1921), a case that admittedly had nothing to do with the Insurrection Clause, the Supreme Court said that “it cannot rightly be said that the Fourteenth Amendment furnishes a universal and self-executing remedy.” This means that private litigants ordinarily cannot sue to enforce this amendment, absent some state or federal statute authorizing such lawsuits.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qwnoGt">
Ordinarily, this question of whether the amendment is “self-executing” doesn’t even come up in 14th Amendment litigation, because <a href="https://www.vox.com/congress">Congress</a> passed a law known as “Section 1983,” which allows private suits against state officials who deprive a plaintiff “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983">of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1IHByJ">
So, for example, if a government official refuses to enroll a Black student in a public school because of that student’s race, in violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that no one shall be denied “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">the equal protection of the laws</a>,” that student may file a Section 1983 suit because they were denied the right to racial equality “secured by the Constitution.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zrq3gX">
But the plaintiffs in <em>Anderson</em> do not claim that their personal rights are violated if Trump appears on the ballot in Colorado, nor could they reasonably claim that they are. If Trump is allowed to run for election in 2024, that will impact all Americans in the same way — rather than impacting these six plaintiffs in any way that is specific to them. So Section 1983 does not permit them to sue, and there does not appear to be any other federal statute authorizing private litigants to sue to enforce the Insurrection Clause.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i8EVM1">
That said, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that a <em>state</em> statute permitting voters to challenge candidates’ eligibility to run for office <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf">does permit suits seeking to enforce the Insurrection Clause</a>, and states often have the power to pass laws permitting their own courts to enforce the Constitution. Colorado could, for example, pass a law providing that any state official who refuses to enroll a public school student because of the student’s race will be fired, even though the Constitution does not mandate that state employees who engage in race discrimination must be terminated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o5QZEz">
But, as the Colorado GOP warns the justices, the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision also means that “individual litigants, state courts, and secretaries of state in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia have authority” to <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-696/294416/20231227184621636_Colorado-Republican-State-Central-Committee-v.-Anderson-Cert-Petition%20PDFA.pdf">determine which candidates must be removed from the ballot</a> for violating the 14th Amendment. And, while there is no reason to believe that Colorado’s judges acted in bad faith when they removed Trump, it’s <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-696/294416/20231227184621636_Colorado-Republican-State-Central-Committee-v.-Anderson-Cert-Petition%20PDFA.pdf">not hard to imagine</a> what could happen in states with less responsible judges if the Colorado decision is allowed to stand.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5AvgVs">
Imagine, for example, that the Florida Supreme Court — which is made up entirely of Republican appointees, most of whom were appointed by <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23550366/ron-desantis-first-amendment-free-speech-woke-academic-freedom-new-college-florida">far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis</a> — were to invent some completely fabricated reason to accuse President Joe Biden of engaging in an insurrection, and then imagine that they invoked this pretextual reason to remove Biden from the 2024 ballot.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SkaYsM">
Ordinarily, the US Supreme Court is supposed to <a href="https://adamunikowsky.substack.com/p/is-the-supreme-court-seriously-going-40f">defer to a lower court’s factual findings</a> when it reviews a state supreme court’s decision. So, if Florida’s courts are free to decide which candidates are disqualified because they engaged in insurrection, the US Supreme Court has limited authority to correct such a decision merely because it rests on made-up facts.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D0E6cx">
And there’s also a semi-famous case warning against treating the Insurrection Clause as a self-executing provision that can be enforced without a federal statute laying out how it should be enforced. In <a href="https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0011.f.cas/0011.f.cas.0007.html"><em>In re Griffin</em></a> (1869), Chief Justice Salmon Chase wrote that the Constitution’s guarantee of “due process of law” — a guarantee, it is worth noting, that is <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">also safeguarded by the 14th Amendment</a> — is inconsistent with a system that “at once without trial, deprives a whole class of persons of offices held by them, for cause, however grave.” (<em>Griffin</em> it should be noted, was not a Supreme Court decision. Although the case was decided by a sitting chief justice, justices in the mid-19th century frequently acted as ordinary trial or appellate judges.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zvB66K">
Trump wasn’t exactly denied a trial altogether before he was removed from Colorado’s ballot. But, as Justice Carlos Samour wrote in a <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf">dissenting opinion</a>, the process Colorado’s courts used to determine that Trump engaged in an insurrection was unusually truncated. It lacked “basic discovery, the ability to subpoena documents and compel witnesses, [and] workable timeframes to adequately investigate and develop defenses.” And, as Justice Maria Berkenkotter <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf">wrote in her dissent</a>, the Colorado courts relied on a process that “up until now has been limited to challenges involving relatively straightforward issues, like whether a candidate meets a residency requirement for a school board election.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XVu8cb">
In any event, the Colorado GOP takes its argument that the 14th Amendment is not self-executing too far, suggesting that Trump cannot be disqualified unless he is convicted in a federal court specifically of violating a criminal statute that <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2383">uses the magic word “insurrection.”</a> But they raise valid points against allowing each state to have the final word on who can run for president, and against allowing Trump to be removed based on the limited process he received in the Colorado system.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1U9Gdz">
These concerns would be obviated, however, if the Supreme Court reverses the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision removing Trump from the ballot — but also states that Trump might still be declared ineligible <a href="https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/20/24009521/supreme-court-donald-trump-colorado-ballot-insurrection-fourteenth-amendment-anderson-griswold">if he is convicted in federal court</a> for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
</p>
<h3 id="ErL5SF">
The GOP’s remaining arguments are extraordinarily weak
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TN3FJD">
In addition to this one, reasonably persuasive argument for reversing the Colorado Supreme Court, the state GOP also makes two other arguments that the justices will hopefully have the good sense to ignore. First, they claim that the GOP has a “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-696/294416/20231227184621636_Colorado-Republican-State-Central-Committee-v.-Anderson-Cert-Petition%20PDFA.pdf">First Amendment associational right to choose its own political candidates</a>,” so kicking one of the GOP’s preferred candidates off the ballot would violate the Constitution.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I1DeXb">
Notably, however, the Colorado GOP cites no case law that even arguably supports this argument. The Supreme Court said in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/504/428/"><em>Burdick v. Takushi</em></a><em> </em>(1992) that “limiting the choice of candidates to those who have complied with state election law requirements is the prototypical example of a regulation that, while it affects the right to vote, is eminently reasonable.” So it would be quite odd if the Supreme Court concluded that a state cannot have a law disqualifying candidates who are constitutionally ineligible for the office they seek.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bjDKwS">
The GOP’s final remaining argument, meanwhile, is the sort of over-lawyered argument that, in the words of attorney Adam Unikowsky, is unlikely to persuade “<a href="https://adamunikowsky.substack.com/p/is-the-supreme-court-seriously-going-40f">anyone unburdened by law school</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VUqCny">
Briefly, the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv">Insurrection Clause</a> itemizes a list of former officials who are constitutionally ineligible for office, and the GOP claims that Trump does not fit into any of these categories:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1MIEPB">
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, <em>or as an officer of the United States</em>, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="86GQ02">
The key words in this provision are “as an officer of the United States.” The Colorado GOP argues that the president does not count as such an officer, and therefore Trump is not disqualified from holding office again in the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="N6xw7e">
The GOP roots this argument largely in other provisions of the Constitution, drafted nearly a century before the 14th Amendment, which seem to describe the president as separate from “officers of the United States.” One provision of Article II of the Constitution, for example, states that the president “shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii">and all other officers of the United States</a>.” But the president obviously does not appoint himself. So, read in isolation, this passage does suggest that the president is not an “officer of the United States.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y3Dl8T">
But, as the Colorado Supreme Court held, these passages should not be read in isolation. And the Constitution as a whole suggests the far more intuitive conclusion that the highest-ranking official in the United States is, indeed, an officer of the United States. “The Constitution refers to the Presidency as an ‘Office’ twenty-five times,” the state supreme court notes. And the GOP’s preferred reading of the Constitution would lead to absurd results.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BY1ouR">
One provision of the Constitution, for example, states that Congress “can impose, as a consequence of impeachment, a ‘disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.’” But, if the presidency doesn’t count as such an office, that would mean that Congress may disqualify impeached officials from holding any office except for the most powerful office in the entire government.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l52flM">
Why on earth would anyone write a constitution with such a silly loophole?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UlHdUm">
Indeed, the GOP’s reading of the Constitution would lead to even more absurd results than this post-impeachment problem. The GOP does not contest, for example, that the Constitution disqualifies anyone who served as a senator, a member of the House of Representatives, a governor, a state lawmaker, or a cabinet official from holding office if they engage in insurrection. So, even under the GOP’s reading of the 14th Amendment, a former president who previously served in any of these other offices would be disqualified if they later engaged in insurrection.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0fazHM">
The GOP’s argument, in other words, is that a former president who once served in some other elected or appointed office is ineligible to serve again if they engage in an insurrection — but an insurrectionist former president who has only served as president, such as Trump, remains eligible. No one would intentionally write a constitution to include such an arbitrary distinction.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uCfm41">
Of course, Republican appointees enjoy a six-vote supermajority on the Supreme Court. So there is no guarantee that a majority of the justices won’t latch onto one of the GOP’s weaker arguments for keeping Trump on the ballot. But there’s no need for them to do so, even if they are determined to rule in favor of Trump, because the GOP raises an entirely plausible due process objection to the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision — albeit one that should only delay, and not eliminate, the need to determine whether Trump is eligible for office.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dTBBCN">
<em><strong>Update, January 5, 6:05 pm: </strong></em><em>This story was originally published on January 3 and has been updated to include new information regarding </em>Trump v. Anderson<em>.</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>Double Scotch, Amazing Attraction, Stravinsky and Ultimate Striker shine</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>Jendayi, Christofle, Lazarus and Spanish Eyes catch the eye</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>Yuki Bhambri/ Robin Haase lose in the semifinals</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>Sports Council of the Deaf seeks clearance for World Youth Games</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>Moise Kouame and Maria Golovina triumph</strong> -</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>Infrastructure witnessing rapid growth in the country: Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri</strong> - He inaugurates Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra in Vaniyamkulam grama panchayat in Palakkad</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>Karnataka BJP to meet in Bengaluru on January 8 to chalk out Lok Sabha poll strategy, says V. Sunil Kumar</strong> - Two surveys have been conducted in Karnataka for selecting candidates for the Lok Sabha elections</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>Millet pizza, burger, popcorn and muffin break culinary stereotypes at mela in Bengaluru</strong> - University of Agricultural Sciences-Raichur has come out with more than 100 millet-based products</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>ISRO’s Aditya-L1 successfully placed in a halo orbit around L1 point</strong> - India’s maiden solar mission Aditya L1 reached the L1 point on January 6, 127 days after it was launched on September 2, 2023</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>Criminals cannot be spared just because they wear saffron shawls and raise Jai Sri Ram slogan, warns Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge</strong> - Terming the BJP protest against the arrest of Hindutva activist Srikanth Poojari as a sign of its frustration, Mr. Priyank said that BJP leaders had not yet come out of the shock of their defeat in Karnataka</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: Some residents leave Belgorod after deadly attacks</strong> - Twenty-five people were killed last weekend in Belgorod - the biggest Russian city near Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Atesh, the group spying on Russians in occupied Crimea</strong> - Atesh, meaning fire in Crimean Tatar, says it collects data on Russian forces in occupied Ukraine.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: US says Russia using North Korea ballistic missiles</strong> - The US promises to raise what it calls a significant and concerning escalation at the UN Security Council.</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>Palace of Aigai: Greece reopens huge Alexander the Great monument</strong> - Greece spent 16 years restoring palace ruins where Alexander the Great was crowned more than 2,000 years ago.</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>Madrid City Hall apologises over blackface Epiphany videos</strong> - The videos were part of the Epiphany festivities which show the Three Wise Men bringing presents for children.</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>Here’s a first look at United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket</strong> - ULA’s first flight-ready Vulcan rocket is finally on the launch pad. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1994128">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Experimental antibiotic kills deadly superbug, opens whole new class of drugs</strong> - The relatively large molecule clogs a transport system, leading to lethal toxicity. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1994119">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ivanti warns of critical vulnerability in its popular line of endpoint protection software</strong> - Customers of the Ivanti Endpoint Protection Manager should patch or mitigate ASAP. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1994088">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Discontinued and unreleased Microsoft peripherals revived by licensing deal</strong> - Classics like the Ergonomic Keyboard should be available again this year. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1994041">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Android users could soon replace Google Assistant with ChatGPT</strong> - The Android ChatGPT app is working on support for Android’s assistant APIs. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1993933">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>A male and a female whale were swimming…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
… in the ocean when the male saw a whaling ship in the distance. He recognized it as the same ship that harpooned and killed his father many years ago. He suggested to female that they should both go under the ship and both blow air out of their blowholes which would cause the ship to turn over and sink.<br/> So they did just that and it worked, the ship turned over and sank. Then the male realized that the sailors survived and were swimming for land. He was enraged! So he says to the female, “let’s chase after them and gobble them up.” He notices that she seems unwilling to do this and asked, “why not?”<br/> She replied, “I was ok with the blowjob but I don’t swallow seamen.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Gaphumbala"> /u/Gaphumbala </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zn94f/a_male_and_a_female_whale_were_swimming/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zn94f/a_male_and_a_female_whale_were_swimming/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A guy with no skills and no brains gets a job helping out on a small family farm</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
On his first morning on the job, the farmer’s wife says to him:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I’ve got somethin’ for you to do. The butcher’s comin’ by in half a hour to carve up some of our livestock into meat. Since my husban’ the farmer is asleep and likely still drunk off his ass, I need you to go kill the pig and drag his carcass to the road.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Alrighty,” the guy says, and heads out. He comes back just a few minutes later.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“My, that was mighty fast,” the farmer’s wife says. “You done that before?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“No ma’am, but it was pretty easy,” the guy responds. “You know, since he was still asleep and drunk.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/lukeknep"> /u/lukeknep </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zlvu8/a_guy_with_no_skills_and_no_brains_gets_a_job/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zlvu8/a_guy_with_no_skills_and_no_brains_gets_a_job/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A groom gets drunk at his wedding reception and wakes up with a hangover. He says to his best man, “What happened last night?”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Well,” says the best man, “your new wife got drunk, got up from the table, and started dancing like mad. Then I got drunk, and I started dancing with her. Then you got drunk, and you saw us dancing together, and you got so angry at us that you kicked her in the crotch.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Ouch!” says the groom. “That must have hurt.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“It sure did!” says the best man. “Two of my fingers got broken.”
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/wimpykidfan37"> /u/wimpykidfan37 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18ze5hc/a_groom_gets_drunk_at_his_wedding_reception_and/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18ze5hc/a_groom_gets_drunk_at_his_wedding_reception_and/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two men were washed ashore during WWI.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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Their ship, an aging minesweeping model, had wrecked off the coast of an uninhabited island. As the older veteran worked to build a makeshift camp, the younger soldier managed to salvage a radio, and quickly telegraphed an SOS with their coordinates.
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To their surprise, a ship responded within the hour, confirming that it could arrive at their position in approximately two weeks.
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The old vet sighed and shook his head, saying he’d rather take his chances swimming out to the wrecked ship and trying to repair it.
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The young soldier scoffed. “You’d really rather play with that old mine craft all day?”
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The older man shrugged. “It’s better than a fortnight.”
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/KairuSmairukon"> /u/KairuSmairukon </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zsdj3/two_men_were_washed_ashore_during_wwi/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zsdj3/two_men_were_washed_ashore_during_wwi/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>My daughter broke up with this amazing guy because he lost the top half of his foot in a tragic accident.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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I asked her “did you break up with him because he was an amputee?”
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She said, “no, it’s just that I am lack toes intolerant.”
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(Credit to my 11 year old. I just helped to package it a little bit)
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/thermbug"> /u/thermbug </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zpd5f/my_daughter_broke_up_with_this_amazing_guy/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/18zpd5f/my_daughter_broke_up_with_this_amazing_guy/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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