Despite justice being served for George Floyd, US police reforms are urgent
A Minnesota jury has properly convicted former officer Derek Chauvin of second-degree murder for the killing of George Floyd on May 26, 2020. Millions of people across the country watched the video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck until long after he lost consciousness and stopped begging for mercy. And...
US Congress in historic vote for slavery reparations bill after 32 years of trying
The US Congress made a historic step towards reparations of Black people when on April 14, 2021 a congressional committee voted on a slavery reparations bill, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in its April report. The bill was approved, according to online newspaper Politico, which reports, “Wednesday night, the House...
Gender and race still determine salaries at American universities – women association
Women account for just 24 per cent of all top income earners at US universities, according to a study from the Eos Foundation. The study, conducted in association with the Washington DC-based American Association of University Women, found that highly compensated women are especially scarce at the tenured and tenure-track...
Covid: Fraud in US sky high as glitchy computer systems cave in to criminals
Throughout the Covid crisis, unemployment programmes have served as a lifeline, channelling more than $650 billion over the past year to millions of struggling households. But the state-run agencies that distribute the funds have been overwhelmed, making their harried staff as well as their glitchy computer systems easy prey for...
Lockdown: Fewer cars on roads, but number of fatal accidents spikes
Although there are fewer cars on America’s roads since the pandemic began, the number of fatal car crashes has increased. Early nationwide data support this counterintuitive finding: Even as daily trips from households fell significantly, preliminary data show that 28,190 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes during the first...
Holy weed: Colorado cannabis farms puff out more gases than coal mines
Legal cannabis production in Colorado emits more greenhouse gases than the state’s coal mining industry, researchers analysing the sector’s energy use have found. The production and use of cannabis for medical or recreational reasons is now legal in several US states, which has led to a booming industry. Hailey Summers...
Espionage: It’ll take years for US, Europe to unpack China’s and Russia’s spying sprees
First it was SolarWinds, a reportedly Russian hacking campaign that stretches back almost a year and has felled at least nine US government agencies and countless private companies. Now it’s Hafnium, a Chinese group that’s been attacking a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server to sneak into victims’ email inboxes and...
Multitude of coronavirus variants found in the US, but the threat is unclear
For the scientists who have spent the past year poring over hundreds of thousands of coronavirus genomes, the United States has been an enigma. Despite having world-leading genome sequencing infrastructure and experiencing more Covid infections than any other country, the United States has until recently lagged far behind in sequencing...
Terrorism? Day hacker tried to poison water supply of a Florida city of 15,000
Around 8am last Friday, an employee of a water treatment plant in the 15,000-person city of Oldsmar, Florida, noticed that his mouse cursor was moving strangely on his computer screen, out of his control, as local police would later tell it. Initially, he was not concerned; the plant used the...
On the trail of QAnon: How Trump turned conspiracy theory research upside down
For people around the world, the now-iconic images of a man in a horned headdress roaming the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection came as a shock. For Kate Starbird, the images were frighteningly familiar. ‘QAnon Shaman’ – the online persona of Jacob Anthony Chansley, or Jake Angeli –...
