In The News (13)

The Standing 7-Minute Workout A gentler version of a popular workout keeps you moving while keeping your body off the floor.  

Powerful Snowstorm Expected to Affect Much of the East Winter storm warnings have been issued from North Carolina to New York. Hazardous travel conditions and heavy snow are expected, forecasters said. ............   most of New Jersey Transit’s bus and rail operations would be temporarily suspended on Monday because of the storm. ...........  At the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, which describes itself as the “busiest bus terminal in the world,” all bus service in and out will be suspended on Monday.   

The Forgotten People Fighting the Forever War A devastating incident in Afghanistan shows the perils of relying on Special Operations alone to fight the nation’s battles. ...........  The Afghan army and police, plagued by corruption and poor leadership, had abandoned their posts and left the city to the Taliban with barely a fight.   

The Brazil Variant Is Exposing the World’s Vulnerability Somehow the coronavirus is rampaging through a city that was supposedly immune. ........... Even in a year of horrendous suffering, what is unfolding in Brazil stands out. In the rainforest city of Manaus, home to 2 million people, bodies are reportedly being dropped into mass graves as quickly as they can be dug. Hospitals have run out of oxygen, and people with potentially treatable cases of COVID-19 are dying of asphyxia. This nature and scale of mortality have not been seen since the first months of the pandemic. ................  Data seemed to support the idea that herd immunity in Manaus was near. ........... Although no known variants have been found to pose an immediate threat to vaccinated people, the capacity for reinfection to any significant degree would reshape the pandemic’s trajectory. .............. The new wave of COVID-19 cases in Manaus occurred about eight months after the initial wave. People might have lost some degree of immunity during that window. .............  the variant in Brazil, known as the P.1 (or B.1.1.248) lineage, has a potent combination of mutations. Not only does this variant seem to be more transmissible; its lineage carries mutations that help it escape the antibodies that we develop in response to older lineages of the coronavirus. That is, it at least has a capacity to infect people who have already recovered from COVID-19, even if their defenses protect them against other versions of the virus. .................... the virus’s capacity to cause such a deadly second surge in Brazil suggests a dangerous evolutionary potential. ............. New, dangerous variants are all but inevitable when there are extremely high levels of transmission of the virus. ............ The immune response that the vaccines create is generally more robust than the immune response we get after being infected by a virus .......... vaccines will not be available to more than a fifth of the world’s population until 2022. ........... Ensuring that every human is vaccinated is in everyone’s interest, as global distribution of vaccines is the most effective way to drive down the virus’s capacity to replicate and evolve. The key will be bringing down the global rates of transmission as quickly as possible—not getting any single country to 100 percent vaccination while dozens of countries roil. ..............   In a recursive loop, the virus could come back to haunt the vaccinated, leading to new surges and lockdowns in coming years. The countries that hoard the vaccine without a plan to help others do so at their own peril.

In The News (12)

Raphael Warnock and the Solitude of the Black Senator The Georgia pastor will be just the 11th Black U.S. senator. His victory came amid an attempt to delegitimize election results — a pattern for more than 150 years. ...........  The expansion of American democracy to accommodate Black participation was interpreted as a threat to those who considered politics to be the divine and exclusive province of white men. .......... The Cincinnati Daily Enquirer’s headline the next day was even more direct: “The Mississippi Gorilla Admitted to the Senate.” ..............  By the time Bruce’s term ended in 1881, so had Reconstruction. With federal troops no longer enforcing civil rights protections, white segregationists’ violent and methodical retaking of the South, where more than 90 percent of Black Americans lived, blocked them by racial terrorism and measures like grandfather clauses, poll taxes and literacy tests from voting booths and elected office, systemically removing Black citizens from the democracy. ............ It would be more than eight decades before the Senate seated another Black member. .............. By the time he left the Senate in January 1979, a political language had emerged that eerily invoked the period after Reconstruction: “law and order,” often a euphemism for maintaining a particular social and racial order; “states’ rights,” as cover for skirting civil rights protections in the Constitution; “personal responsibility,” an evasion of the systemic economic subjugation of Black Americans. ...................  It was only eight years ago that, for the first time in the nation’s history, the Senate had more than one Black member. .............  The echoes of eras past resound in present-day America, where Black Americans’ participation in the nation’s leadership is seen by some not as a fulfillment of its founding ideals but as an existential threat to them. 

Biden’s Nightmare May Be China Think dealing with Mitch McConnell will be tough? Managing a reckless Xi Jinping will be even harder. .......... Xi is an overconfident, risk-taking bully who believes that the United States is in decline. .............  Few expected Xi to pick fights with India on their shared border, as he has several times in the past year, and heaven help us if he is similarly reckless toward Taiwan and sparks a war with the United States. ....................   Biden’s challenge will be to constrain a Chinese leader who has been oppressive in Hong Kong, genocidal in the Xinjiang region, obdurate on trade, ruthless on human rights and insincere on everything, while still cooperating with China on issues like climate change, fentanyl and North Korea ...............  I have had more Chinese friends imprisoned than I can count. I have no illusions about Beijing ............  China is a complex and contradictory place, not a caricature. ........... whether arms control agreements, hotlines and military-to-military consultations can lower temperatures.   

As Biden Plans Global Democracy Summit, Skeptics Say: Heal Thyself First The sense of a dysfunctional, if not entirely broken, democratic system in the United States has foreign rivals crowing — and suggesting that it has no business lecturing other nations. ...............  Mr. Biden should instead hold a democracy summit at home — one focused on “injustice and inequality” in the United States, including issues like voting rights and disinformation. .............  “and in progress on issues like dealing with systemic racism.” ............. who, exactly, would be invited to attend.  

The Silicon Valley Start-Up That Caused Wall Street Chaos Robinhood pitched itself to investors as the antithesis of Wall Street. It didn’t say that it also entirely relies on Wall Street. This past week, the two realities collided. .............  Online brokers had traditionally charged around $10 for every trade, but Robinhood said that customers of its phone app could trade for free. .......... Rampant speculation on options contracts helped drive the rise of GameStop’s shares from about $20 on Jan. 12 to nearly $500 on Thursday — a rally that forced Robinhood to hit the brakes on its own customers.    

A 10-Year-Old GameStop Investor Cashed In. His Return? Over 5,000%. Jaydyn Carr of San Antonio made $3,200 on shares from GameStop this week that his mother bought him in 2019 for about $60. ...............  “I asked him, ‘Do you want to stay or sell?’” .........  Jaydyn decided to sell his shares, earning $3,200 — a return of more than 5,000 percent on an investment of about $60.  

China Wanted to Show Off Its Vaccines. It’s Backfiring. Delays, inconsistent data, spotty disclosures and the country’s attacks on Western rivals have marred its ambitious effort to portray itself as a leader in global health. ........  China’s vaccines, while considered effective, cannot stop the virus as well as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna, the American drugmakers. .............  Sinopharm, a state-owned vaccine maker, and Sinovac have said they can produce up to a combined two billion doses this year, making them essential to the global fight against the coronavirus. .............  Unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, their doses can be kept at refrigerated temperatures and are more easily transported, making them appealing to the developing world. ...........  Several world leaders, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, have gotten a Sinovac vaccine.   

Biden Wants the Biggest Stimulus in Modern History. Is It Too Big? Supporters of a ‘hot’ economy see a chance to correct the mistakes of the last recession. Others see danger.  ...........  “Interest rates are at zero, inflation is low, unemployment is high. You don’t need a textbook to know this is when you push on the fiscal accelerator. Let’s go.” ................  but there also might be a painful adjustment with a period of slow growth on the other side of the mountain.”  

Forecast: Wild Weather in a Warming World The polar vortex is experiencing an unusually long disturbance this year because of a “sudden stratospheric warming.” Bundle up. .......... two disruptions of the polar vortex so far this year and, potentially, a third on the way. ........... While warming means milder winters overall, “the motto for snowstorms in the era of climate change could be ‘go big or go home!’ ......... The wild weather has its origins in the warming Arctic. .......   “We’re changing the planet in such dramatic and incontrovertible ways,” she said. “The atmosphere is different now. The Earth’s surface is different now. The oceans are different now. So there must be some connections that are yet to be discovered as we do more research on the stratospheric polar vortex.” ...............  precisely where the snow will fall, and how deep, is difficult to predict ahead of time.