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The 2018 announcement in China by He Jianqui who genetically altered human embryos via CRISPR—producing twins known as Lulu and Nana—helped strengthen policies about germline gene editing. Despite the worldwide scorn leveled against him for conducting a brazen act of human experimentation, his research also helped usher in a more moderate point of view regarding the manipulation of germline genes. Policy makers followed with a softer tone in guidelines on the feasibility of research involving the genes of heredity. As it turned out, a bourgeoning number of scientists were expressing interest in developing potential cures by manipulating genetic sequences in germline DNA.

Are we ready? Advances in CRISPR means the era of germline gene editing has arrived

Quick, accurate and easy-to-use, CRISPR-Cas9 has made genomic editing more efficient—but at the same time has made human germline editing much more feasible, erasing many of the ethical barriers erected to prevent scientists from editing the genes of heredity.

WASHINGTON—President Biden walked back comments tying the fate of a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure agreement to a separate, Democratic effort to pass a broad antipoverty plan, recommitting to the bipartisan deal after Republicans threatened to withdraw their support.

Biden Walks Back Threat on Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal

President Biden walked back comments tying the fate of a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure agreement to a separate, Democratic effort to pass a broad antipoverty plan, after Republicans threatened to withdraw their support for the bipartisan plan.

Twenty-four years ago, while in charge of a small television operation at Al Quds University, my team and I decided to broadcast live sessions of the Palestinian Legislative Council dealing with corruption in the newly established Palestinian Authority. The broadcast angered people in Yasser Arafat’s entourage and I was arrested and jailed for seven days without any explanation.

Op-Ed: How the autocratic rule of Mahmoud Abbas fails Palestinians

The killing of a critic of the Abbas government has enraged Palestinians who want free elections and political reform.

(Bloomberg) — Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessible database of people’s social connections, allowing users to move records of their relationships between social media services instead of being locked into a few dominant apps.

The undercurrent to Project Liberty is a fear of the power that a few huge companies — and specifically Facebook Inc. — have amassed over the last decade. “I never thought I would be questioning the security of our underlying systems, namely democracy and capitalism,” McCourt said.

A Real Estate Mogul Has a $100 Million Plan to Save the Internet

(Bloomberg) — Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessibl…

The Gettysburg Address speech that no one gives before it turns into a pie fight

The best political speech in many years was not delivered. Instead, incoming Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid set it aside and reprimanded members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s departing coalition for their nonstop heckling of incoming Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, which was outrageous even by the standards of the Knesset. Several members were hauled out of the parliament’s chambers.

Opinion | Lessons From an Israeli Crack-Up

A new government strikes a conciliatory tone that American politicians should emulate.

A boolean variable can have values true, false and null. Most of the universe is still a mystery whatever the fact checkers say.

No ET, no answers: Intel report is inconclusive about UFOs

WASHINGTON (AP) — A long-awaited U.S. government report on UFOs released Friday makes at least one thing clear: The truth is still out there. Investigators did not find extraterrestrial links in reviewing 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajector…

Covid is set to cost the world at least £21.5 trillion

But scientists say the world needs to spend just £35 billion to make sure it never happens again.

Authorities in Israel and Australia imposed new Covid-19 restrictions in response to the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus, while India warned of a worrying new mutation, emphasizing how the morphing pathogen continues to challenge a return to pre-pandemic life world-wide…

“The entrance of the Delta variant has changed the transmission dynamics,” said Prof. Balicer, who is also the chief innovation officer for Israel’s largest health-management organization, Clalit.

Delta Coronavirus Variant Prompts Limits in Australia, Israel, as India Warns of New Mutation

The developments underscore how the morphing pathogen continues to challenge a return to pre-pandemic life world-wide.

Other countries are discovering that certain vaccines may not be as effective as others in preventing infections caused by these variants. …

Dr. Adib said that the association is now discussing the possibility of administering to medical workers a third shot of another vaccine, such as Oxford-AstraZeneca. Some countries are supporting a mix-and-match scheme to boost immunity. Sinovac, which is produced by a Chinese pharmaceutical company and promoted by the Chinese government, has been criticized for a lack of transparency about its clinical trials.

Indonesia’s Doctors Got Vaccinated With Sinovac, and Got Sick

Facing increased cases and a deadly variant, the Indonesian health system is under strain, as doctors become patients.

by Jeff Kao, ProPublica, and Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik, The New York Times

How China Spreads Its Propaganda Version of Life for Uyghurs

Thousands of videos of Uyghurs denying abuses against their community are showing up on Twitter and YouTube. They’re part of an elaborate influence campaign by Chinese officials to counter reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang.

It was only in 2004 that a prominent virologist, Peter Palese, wrote that Chi-Ming Chu, a respected virologist and a former member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told him that “the introduction of this 1977 H1N1 virus” was indeed thought to be due to vaccine trials involving “the challenge of several thousand military recruits with live H1N1 virus.”

For the first time, science itself seemed to have caused a pandemic while trying to prepare for it.

Now, for the second time in 50 years, there are questions about whether we are dealing with a pandemic caused by scientific research.

Opinion | Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling.

Even if the coronavirus did not emerge from a lab, the groundwork for a potential disaster had been laid for years, and learning its lessons is essential to preventing others.

Surprisingly, the results showed that SARS-CoV-2 bound to ACE2 on human cells more tightly than any of the tested animal species, including bats and pangolins. If one of the animal species tested was the origin, it would normally be expected to show the highest binding to the virus.

“Humans showed the strongest spike binding, consistent with the high susceptibility to the virus, but very surprising if an animal was the initial source of the infection in humans,” says La Trobe University Professor David Winkler.

COVID-19 origins still a mystery: Study finds virus was ‘highly human adapted’

Scientists using computer modeling to study SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, have discovered the virus is most ideally adapted to infect human cells—rather than bat or pangolin cells, again raising questions of its origin.

One of the problems with fusion power is that it would upset the fission business, like the fuel rod cycle business. Then you would have to retrain all the existing gov’t inspectors to understand something they don’t. All that land PWRs sit on would cost billions to convert. There’s a lot of inertia to business as usual. The barriers to fusion are not just technical but financial.

U.S. lawmakers are demanding an investigation into the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China, where athletes complained of COVID-like symptoms and described the city as a ‘ghost town’ weeks before authorities admitted the spread of a new virus.

Almost 10,000 international competitors from 100 countries took part in what is known as the ‘military Olympics’ in October 2019, two months before Beijing confirmed they were treating patients with an ‘unknown pneumonia’.

Congress demands answers about illness at 2019 Military World Games

U.S. lawmakers are demanding an investigation into the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, China, where athletes complained of COVID-like symptoms.

Users reported having issues with Google as they tried to access the search engine on their Android smartphones. According to the online outage tracker Downdetector, which gives users real-time information about the status of websites, people experienced issues accessing Google at 1:20 a.m. (ET) on June 22. Visitors to Google experienced problems accessing and using the search engine, with some complaining they experienced issues when using its app on their Android phones.

Google keeps stopping on Android phones as users report issues

Android smartphone users have complained they are unable to access Google on their devices via the search engine’s app.