Coronavirus News (236)

China must deliver on opening up promises ahead of Xi Jinping’s ‘last chance’ EU virtual summit next week President Xi Jinping is expected to take part in a virtual summit with European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on Monday The talks are seen as key as Beijing tries to convince Europe it is sincere about opening its markets and free trade ahead of the US presidential election

Coronavirus: Chinese vaccine ready for use in November, top scientist says Clinical trials have been progressing smoothly and preparations are being made to go into mass production, CDC’s chief biosafety expert Wu Guizhen says Wu says she was inoculated herself in April and ‘has felt quite good’ since

What the World Can Learn From Life Under Tokyo’s Rail Tracks

Nepal’s remittance villages New book on overseas labour migrants details the good, bad and ugly about dependence on money they send home

नेपालकाे रेल यातायातमा अर्काे यात्रा शुरु (फाेटाे फिचर)

Sagoon

NASA Has Figured Out a New Way to Safely Land on the Moon How to land on the Moon without a human pilot.

Ford VP Disses Cybertruck, Calling Electric F-150 a “Real” Work Truck Ford has no interest in "competing for lifestyle customers."

WHO SAYS EUROPE IS HEADED INTO ANOTHER POTENTIAL PANDEMIC CRISIS "WE HAVE A VERY SERIOUS SITUATION UNFOLDING BEFORE US."  ...... “pandemic fatigue” is causing numbers of confirmed cases of COVID-19 to surge in parts of Europe ....... Numbers are rising in both France and Spain. In some instances, the number of new cases is outpacing peak numbers back in April. Both countries even surpassed the per capita-adjusted numbers in the US. .............  this autumn could look especially bad, considering the fast-approaching flu season. 

A BRAZILIAN CITY MAY HAVE HAD ENOUGH COVID-19 CASES TO REACH HERD IMMUNITY IS THIS IN STORE FOR ALL OF US? ...... Coronavirus cases in the city of Manaus, Brazil are on the decline — and experts suspect it’s because so many people already caught COVID-19 there that it’s now too hard for the virus to spread to new people. ......... about 66.1 percent of residents of Manaus were infected with COVID-19 at some point, which falls in line with the percentages that epidemiologists previously predicted would be necessary to establish herd immunity.  

Coronavirus News (235)

 Nancy Pelosi unveils details of stimulus deal to avoid government shutdown 

How Mathematical ‘Hocus-Pocus’ Saved Particle Physics Renormalization has become perhaps the single most important advance in theoretical physics in 50 years. 

Chief Justice Roberts’s lifelong crusade against voting rights, explained He has fought to undermine voting rights his entire career. 

11 ways to fix America’s fundamentally broken democracy A plan for the democratic revolution America needs.

Despair at CDC after Trump influence: 'I have never seen morale this low'

Republicans will replace RBG but Democrats hold the trump cards – no, really

Climate Change Increases Fire Risk

‘You can win this!’: how Beto O'Rourke is becoming Joe Biden’s greatest ally

Coffee Rust Is Going to Ruin Your Morning Coffee plants were supposed to be safe on this side of the Atlantic. But the fungus found them.

How to Break Out of Your Social Media Echo Chamber Platforms like Facebook are designed to profit from humans' confirmation bias. Here's how to restore balance to your feed........  social media platforms ensure we only get a single side of every story. ........ Social media companies therefore rely on adaptive algorithms to assess our interests and flood us with information that will keep us scrolling. The algorithms ignore the recency and frequency of what our friends are posting and instead focus on what we “like,” “retweet,” and “share” to keep feeding content that is similar to what we’ve indicated makes us comfortable.

A Breakdown of the Biden Policy Platform: Five Key Takeaways

Employee Engagement: Making a Difference

Preparing for What’s Ahead: The Case of Sonoma County Winegrowers

What Will the World Look Like in 2030?  while these trends have been gathering pace for years, the pandemic is accelerating many of them .......... I am very bullish on sub-Saharan Africa because of their demographic dynamism, and because the biggest cities in Africa are growing and creating an expanding middle class. Now, only maybe 15% of the sub-Saharan African population is middle class. But that proportion is growing. That will change the world, because Africa will soon become the second most populous region in the world. ..........  As a result of the pandemic, technology adoption has been progressing much faster, out of necessity. .........  We may have to consider very seriously ideas such as a universal basic income ........... universal basic income also has a business case. Remember, two-thirds of the American economy is [made up of household] consumption. If people don’t have jobs or don’t have well-paying jobs, then we need to compensate for that. ............  But if we add other functions or other uses to those digital tokens — like if they will help us vote, keep politicians in check or provide incentives for people to save the environment — then there is a bright future ahead for digital tokens. So instead of digital currency, I would say digital tokens, which would include a currency component to them. .......... and the pandemic only exacerbates inequality. Not everyone can work from the home, and therefore they have to expose themselves to the virus while taking public transportation to go to work. ........ Millennials right now are suffering from — for a second time during their adult lifetimes — a very difficult labor market. ........ We need to focus on two things. One is international collaboration among governments when it comes to climate change, but also in other areas like trade, where it is completely absent right now. The second one, which is the one that I push in my book, is we as individuals need to take ownership of this. We need to be less wasteful. We need to economize our resources. We need to be more pro-environment in our own behavior as consumers.