US Army: We do ‘not take an oath to a king or queen, a tyrant or dictator’
The people who work with President Trump are getting scared. According to Jonathan Swan in Axios, “Trump is spending too much time with people they consider crackpots or conspiracy theorists and flirting with blatant abuses of power.” Granted, these words could define Trump’s entire tenure in office, so this is...
By pushing to be sworn in as ‘people’s president’ Trump is guilty of sedition
The Signal: Trump is now talking the sedition talk on a daily basis, and, one has to assume, actively planning ways to walk the sedition walk over the next month. He is meeting regularly with Sidney Powell, Steve Bannon and other plotters, and daily he is being fed a diet...
US city on verge of ‘duress law’ to give criminals ‘poverty’ shield
Elected officials in a major US city plan to pass a law that will allow thieves to sell items they steal if they do it to earn money for basic needs and trespassers to set up camp on private property when it is to obtain adequate shelter. Dozens of other...
Billions poured into Covid vaccine facilitated multiple tests at the same time
The slowest part of vaccine development isn’t finding candidate treatments, but testing them. This often takes years, with companies running efficacy and safety tests on animals and then in humans. Human testing requires three phases that involve increasing numbers of people and proportionately escalating costs. The Covid-19 vaccines went through...
Fast quest for coronavirus vaccines and what it means for other diseases
When scientists began seeking a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in early 2020, they were careful not to promise quick success. The fastest any vaccine had previously been developed, from viral sampling to approval, was four years, for mumps in the 1960s. To hope for one even by the summer...
US environmental agency in urgent need of repair after four-year Trump mess
For many scientists at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the past four years working in President Donald Trump’s government have felt like an eternity. Largely sidelined, they could only watch as his administration dismantled science advisory panels, disregarded scientific evidence and weakened pollution regulations. Expectations are high that the...
First ever peek inside Mars reveals a crust with three cake-like layers
NASA’s InSight mission has finally peered inside Mars – and discovered that the planet’s crust might be made of three layers. This is the first time scientists have directly probed the inside of a planet other than Earth and will help researchers to unravel how Mars formed and evolved over...
FDA scientists endorse Moderna coronavirus vaccine
Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration endorsed the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Moderna as safe and efficacious a day after the first doses of a competing vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech were delivered across the United States. The FDA reviewers said that the two-dose vaccine “was highly effective” in...
US coronavirus crisis: One person dies every 36 seconds
More than 303,500 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States. It is the latest sign of a generational tragedy – one still unfolding in every corner of the country – that leaves in its wake an expanse of grief that cannot be captured in a string of statistics....
20,000 activists petition Kenya to reject US plastics export deal
Despite publicly retreating on the push to force Kenya and by extension to allow trade plastics and petrochemical products, American Chemistry Council (ACC) is said to be quietly lobbying Washington to force concessions for exports during ongoing bilateral trade agreement negotiations between the two countries. The push by ACC has...