The Full Belmonte, 3/1/2024
Biden and Trump make dueling visits to the southern border
“President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will face off today over an issue dominating the 2024 campaign, when they make dueling trips to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Biden is visiting Brownsville, Texas, where he’s meeting with border patrol agents, law enforcement officials and local leaders, the White House said.
About 330 miles away, Trump is delivering remarks this afternoon at Eagle Pass, Texas, according to two sources familiar with his planning.
Biden’s handling of the border has become one of his biggest political liabilities as he runs for re-election. An NBC News poll in January found registered voters believed Trump would handle border security better than Biden by more than a 30-point margin.” [NBC News]
Defense Secretary grilled about secret hospitalization on Capitol Hill
“Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin found himself on the hot seat before Congress today, answering questions about why he chose to keep his hospitalization secret from the White House following his cancer diagnosis.
‘We did not handle this right. And I did not handle this right,’ Austin told the GOP-led House Armed Service Committee. ‘And as you know, I have apologized, including directly to the president. And I take full responsibility.’
The back-and-forth became heated at times, as Republicans took Austin to task for waiting so long to notify President Biden of his condition.
‘Are you surprised the president didn’t call for your resignation?’ asked Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana. Austin responded, ‘The president has expressed full faith confidence in me.’
Banks pressed Austin on whether Biden is ‘aloof, or are you irrelevant?’ Austin pushed back, saying ‘It’s neither. The president is not aloof, and I participate in all of the critical decision-making processes.’” [NBC News]
Israel accused of opening fire on civilians as Gaza death toll surpasses 30,000
“Israeli troops opened fire on civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza City, killing more than 100 people, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave, though Israel is disputing that account.
The incident pushed the death toll in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to more than 30,000, those health officials said.
The Palestinian Health Ministry called the violence in Gaza City today a ‘massacre,’ and said that in addition to the 104 people killed, more than 700 were wounded.
The Israel Defense Forces released aerial video that it says shows the large crowd surrounding and looting aid trucks, ‘causing dozens of deaths as a result of severe crowding and trampling.’ The military said soldiers only opened fire on a specific, threatening group that approached their position.
President Biden, as he left for the border today, walked back his prediction that Israel and Hamas could reach a cease-fire agreement by Monday. ‘Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful,’ Biden said.” [NBC News]
Government shutdown
“The House and Senate both passed a stopgap bill on Thursday to avert a partial government shutdown. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature. Congress had been confronting a pair of shutdown deadlines on March 1 and March 8. This stopgap bill will shift the deadlines to March 8 and March 22 to give lawmakers more time to pass full-year appropriations bills. At the end of the day today, funding would have expired for several key government agencies if lawmakers did not pass the stopgap measure before that time. Deep GOP divisions remain, but sources in the room told CNN that House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was forced into a position to cut the deal with Democrats on government funding.” [CNN]
Texas Panhandle wildfire now largest in state history
Hunter Cooper helps clean up a residence in the snow, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024, in Canadian, Texas.
David Erickson, AP
“The explosive wildfire burning in the Texas Panhandle has grown into the largest blaze in the state’s history.
The Smokehouse Creek Fire has grown to an estimated 1,075,000 acres and remains only 3% contained, the Texas A&M Forest Service said.
Eyewitness video captured images of homes in flames and blackened buildings in the city of Canadian, Texas.
At least one fatality has been linked to the fires, an 83-year-old grandmother who was found dead in her home in the town of Stinnett, family members said.” [NBC News]
Judge to hear closing arguments in ‘daytime soap opera’ Fani Willis hearing
Hearing on Trump prosecutor’s relationship with a deputy has brought deviation from racketeering case against ex-president
“A Fulton county judge will hear closing arguments Friday afternoon in a three-day evidentiary hearing to determine whether district attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from handling the election interference against Donald Trump because of her romantic relationship with a deputy handling the case.
The hearing has offered a dramatic deviation from the racketeering case against the former US president and 14 remaining co-defendants for trying to overturn the election in Georgia.
The matter kicked off in January when Michael Roman, a Republican operative and one of the defendants in the case, filed a motion claiming Willis financially benefitted from the case because of a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a top prosecutor in the case. Trump and several other defendants later joined the request.
Willis and Wade both admitted to a romantic relationship, but both said it only began after he was hired on 1 November 2021. They both testified about vacations they had taken together and revealed personal details about a romantic relationship that they say only began in 2022, after he was hired, and ended last summer.
A star witness who was supposed to undercut their claims ultimately failed to produce meaningful evidence.
On the surface, the question at the heart of the matter was whether Willis had a conflict of interest because of her relationship with Wade. But over several hours of testimony, lawyers for Roman, Trump and the other defendants did not produce any concrete evidence showing that she did.
Willis testified that she repaid Wade in cash for any travel they had taken together – a claim that drew skepticism from defense lawyers, but no evidence to prove otherwise.
‘This was a disqualification hearing that quickly denigrated into a daytime soap opera,’ said J Tom Morgan, the former district attorney in DeKalb county, a Fulton county neighbor. ‘Have they proven a conflict of interest, where this all started, absolutely not.’
It’s not exactly clear what the standard Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the case, will use to determine whether Willis should be disqualified. Georgia law allows for a prosecutor to be disqualified if there is an actual conflict of interest. Experts say state law has long established this high bar to clear and the defendants in the case have not done so.
But McAfee has suggested that defense lawyers may not need to prove an actual conflict, but merely the appearance of one. ‘I think it’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one,’ he said at a recent hearing.
Robert CI McBurney, a different Fulton county judge who was overseeing the case at an earlier stage, disqualified Willis from investigating a fake elector after she appeared at a fundraiser for his political rival. That appearance, he said, would lead to questions about her motives in every step of the case, which was enough to disqualify her.
A disqualification would upend the case and delay it past the 2024 election. The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a state agency, would have the sole discretion to reassign the case to another prosecutor, and there’s no timeline for how long that could take.
But even if Willis and Wade aren’t disqualified, defense attorneys have used the hearings to damage the two prosecutors’ judgment and credibility in the public’s eye.
By bringing to light something they failed to disclose on their own, they’ve seeded the impression that the two were trying to conceal something.
While it may not stand up legally, defense lawyers have also showed text messages from an associate of Nathan Wade’s in which he says the affair ‘absolutely’ began before he was hired (the witness, Terrence Bradley, later testified he was only speculating). They also put a former friend of Willis on the stand that said she was certain the relationship began before Wade was hired. And they’ve also sought to introduce cell phone evidence that could undermine Wade’s claims he never spent the night at Willis’s condo before the relationship began.
‘I was standing in the grocery store and I would guess that the two women in front of me have not really paid much attention to this case or the politics,’ Morgan said. ‘But they start talking about the text messages … it’s more interesting. People who haven’t paid any attention to this all of a sudden are paying attention to it.’
Morgan also said the timing or existence of a relationship between Willis and Wade wasn’t really relevant to whether there was a conflict of interest. But during the hearing, the two prosecutors had boxed themselves in to a story that the romantic relationship only began after Wade was hired.
Any evidence that comes to light questioning that undermines their credibility and could lead to accusations of perjury. Willis herself has said with certainty that the relationship definitely did not begin until after Wade was hired, but also acknowledged that it’s difficult to say exactly when a romantic relationship begins….” Read more at The Guardian
The man accused of leaking classified intelligence on Discord will plead guilty.
“A reminder: Jack Teixeira, a military computer technician, allegedly shared hundreds of secret documents on the chat platform, which is popular with gamers.
What’s new? Teixeira, 22, plans to change his earlier plea of not guilty, a legal filing said yesterday. It could mean he’ll get less prison time than if he had been found guilty at trial.”
Read this story at Washington Post
Concerns that Chinese automakers pose a U.S. national-security threat prompted President Biden to order a federal investigation into foreign-made software in cars.
“Connected vehicles could collect sensitive data about U.S. infrastructure or residents and send them to Beijing, and technology could be used to access or disable the vehicles remotely, he said. The probe could lead to restrictions on certain auto parts in the U.S. Currently, few cars sold stateside are made in China, and most have software that Western firms developed, limiting the immediate threat. Chinese car companies are expanding globally, and if they gain entry into the U.S., the potential risk could be higher, industry analysts say. Separately, Apple’s decision to cancel its electric-car project and shift some employees into artificial intelligence was greeted with investor enthusiasm. The company is expected to unveil AI tools at a June developer conference after lagging behind its tech peers with clearer AI strategies.” [Wall Street Journal]
Alabama passed legislation to protect IVF.
“What to know: State lawmakers voted yesterday to shield patients and providers from legal liability if embryos created for the fertility treatment are damaged or destroyed.
Why they did it: The state’s Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos are children, which led to clinics halting treatmentand an intense political backlash.
What now? Alabama’s governor is expected to sign the finalized bill into law next week.”
Read this story at Washington Post
Massive winter storm triggers blizzard warnings for California
“Rare blizzard warnings have been issued for the Cascades and the Sierra Mountains, as a massive winter storm slams higher elevations in California and Nevada.
Up to 10 feet of snow is expected to fall in the Sierras from tonight through Sunday, with wind gusts between 60 and 100 mph.
An avalanche watch has been issued for the Lake Tahoe area, and some ski resorts have shut down.
The National Weather Service’s Sacramento office is cautioning drivers about whiteout conditions in the mountains. ‘Travel is HIGHLY discouraged!!’ it said.
Just as the snow was beginning in the Sierras, a semitruck overturned and shut down part of Interstate 80, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The NWS Reno office warned of ‘period of life-threatening blizzard conditions sandwiched in for Friday afternoon through Saturday morning’ across the Sierras, in its forecast discussion.” [NBS News]
“Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is expected to be laid to rest near his home in Moscow today. Navalny died two weeks ago under mysterious circumstances in an Arctic prison colony. His widow, Yulia, says her husband was murdered on orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has denied the accusation and insists it has no interest in Navalny's funeral proceedings.
Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
‘We don't really know yet if this funeral will happen,’ NPR's Charles Maynes tells Up First. Navalny's family says authorities are threatening the funeral services company that is supposed to bring his body to the service. Maynes describes a heavy security presence near the site where the funeral is reported to take place. This includes dozens of police vans, riot police and steel fencing along the route from the church to the cemetery. After several hundred supporters were detained for attending makeshift memorials for Navalny, Maynes says the question now is: ‘How many more could face arrest for attempting to attend this final send-off?’” [NPR]
“It just may be the most polluted place on Earth.
Thirty miles south of Johannesburg sits the Vaal Triangle, home to 1.7 million people alongside Africa’s biggest steel mill, a giant coal-fired power plant, an oil refinery and a petrochemicals complex. One town in the area, Vereeniging, regularly registers the highest levels of harmful particulate emissions on the planet.
In 2005, the South African region was designated as the country’s first “Airshed Priority Area,” a promise that pollution would be tackled. Two decades later, air quality levels are much the same. In some areas, cash-strapped municipalities have stopped collecting trash, forcing residents to burn it, worsening the problem.
That’s a result of the failure by the government, led by the African National Congress, to enforce existing laws and pass new ones to protect its people. And the companies — ArcelorMittal, Sasol and Eskom — have won exemptions to emissions limits by playing on concerns about unemployment that is sky-high and worsening.
With elections on May 29 threatening to cost the ANC its parliamentary majority, the government is split over the central dilemma: how to wean the most carbon-dependent economy of any nation of more than 4 million people off the dirtiest fossil fuel — coal.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and his environment minister advocate a transition to clean power. But his energy and electricity ministers are painting that push as a Western plot that will drive people across the coal belt, an ANC heartland, out of work and worsen already crippling national power outages.
New emissions limits should, in theory, be applied next year and the government has billions of dollars in concessional finance to switch from coal.
Government scientists pouring over millions of death certificates are expected to report mid-2024 how many people have been killed by the use of the fossil fuel.
Even that may not sway the argument.” — Antony Sguazzin [Bloomberg}
Children play outside a shack with the Lethabo power plant in the distance. Photographer: Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg
“Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined a wave of condemnation of Israel after its forces opened fire near a convoy of food trucks during an outbreak of violence that left dozens of Palestinians killed and injured. Saudi Arabia, with which Israel wants to establish diplomatic relations, accused ‘occupation forces’ of ‘targeting unarmed civilians.’” [Bloomberg}
Palestinians at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City yesterday. Photographer: AFP/Getty Images
“George Galloway, the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, won a seat in Parliament in a special election that underscored how the Israel-Hamas war has exacerbated community tensions and sowed division across British politics.” [Bloomberg}
“Thousands of South Korean trainee doctors defied a government deadline to end their walkout in protest over a plan to increase medical school prices, risking punishment that includes arrest and a suspension of their licenses.” [Bloomberg}
“Brian Mulroney, the former prime minister of Canada who helped negotiate NAFTA, died at 84.” [New York Times]
March 1, 2024
By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick
Good morning. We’re covering the Republican fascination with Vladimir Putin —
Vladimir Putin Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Enemy or ally?
“Large parts of the Republican Party now treat Vladimir Putin as if he were an ideological ally. Putin, by contrast, continues to treat the U.S. as an enemy.
This combination is clearly unusual and sometimes confusing. It does not appear to stem from any compromising information that Putin has about Donald Trump, despite years of such claims from Democrats. Instead, Trump and many other Republicans seem to feel ideological sympathies with Putin’s version of right-wing authoritarian nationalism. They see the world dividing between a liberal left and an illiberal right, with both themselves and Putin — along with Viktor Orban of Hungary and some other world leaders — in the second category.
Whatever the explanation, the situation threatens decades of bipartisan consensus about U.S. national security.
Already, House Republicans have blocked further aid to Ukraine — a democracy and U.S. ally that Putin invaded. Without the aid, military experts say Russia will probably be able to take over more of Ukraine than it now holds.
If Trump wins a second term, he may go further. He has suggested that he might abandon the U.S. commitment to NATO, an alliance that exists to contain Russia and that Putin loathes. He recently invited Russia to ‘to do whatever the hell they want’ to NATO countries that don’t spend enough on their own defense. (Near the end of his first term, he tried to pull American troops out of Germany, but President Biden rescinded the decision.)
Trump has also avoided criticizing Putin for the mysterious death this month of his most prominent domestic critic, Aleksei Navalny, and has repeatedly praised Putin as a strong and smart leader. In a town hall last year, Trump refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine or Russia to win the war.
There are some caveats worth mentioning. Some skepticism about how much money the U.S. should send to Ukraine stems from practical questions about the war’s endgame. It’s also true that some prominent Republicans, especially in the Senate, are horrified by their party’s pro-Russian drift and are lobbying the House to pass Ukraine aid. ‘If your position is being cheered by Vladimir Putin, it’s time to reconsider your position,’ Senator Mitt Romney of Utah said last month.
But the Republican fascination with Putin and Russia is real. The Putin-friendly faction of the party is ascendant, while some of his biggest critics, like Mitch McConnell, who announced this week that he would step down this year as the Republican Senate leader, will soon retire.
(We recommend this article — in which Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, explains that while McConnell sees the U.S. as the world’s essential force, a growing number of Republicans do not.)
In the rest of today’s newsletter, we’ll walk through the evidence of this shift.
Ukraine aid
The Senate has passed an additional $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, with both Republican and Democratic support. But the House, which Republicans control, has so far refused to pass that bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is close to Trump, has not allowed a vote on the bill even though it would likely pass if he did.
A few Republicans have gone so far as speak about Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in ways that mimic Russian propaganda. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused Ukraine of having ‘a Nazi army,’ echoing language Putin used to justify the invasion.
Military experts say that if Ukraine does not receive more U.S. aid, it could begin losing the war in the second half of this year. ‘Not since the first chaotic months of the invasion, when Russian troops poured across the borders from every direction and the country rose up en masse to resist, has Ukraine faced such a precarious moment,’ wrote our colleagues Andrew Kramer and Marc Santora, who have been reporting from Ukraine.
(Related: Ukrainians who live to the west of the recently captured Avdiivka are poised to flee in the face of a Russian onslaught.)
Alexander Smirnov
House Republicans hoping to impeach President Biden have repeatedly promoted information that appears to have been based partly on Russian disinformation. One example: The Republicans cited an F.B.I. document in which an informant accused Biden and his son, Hunter, of taking $5 million bribes from the owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
But federal prosecutors have now accused the informant, Alexander Smirnov, of fabricating the allegation to damage Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Smirnov has told the F.B.I. that people linked to Russian intelligence passed him information about Hunter Biden.
A federal judge has ordered Smirnov detained and called him a flight risk.
Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson is not a Republican Party official, but he is an influential Trump supporter, and Carlson has often echoed Russian propaganda. At least once, he went so far as to say he hoped Russia would win its war against Ukraine.
Last month, Carlson aired a two-hour interview with Putin in which Putin made false claims about Ukraine, Zelensky and Western leaders with little pushback from Carlson. In a separate video recorded inside a Russian grocery store, Carlson suggested life in Russia was better than in the U.S. (Watch Jon Stewart debunk those claims here.)
Republican voters
The shift in elite Republican opinion toward Russia and away from Ukraine has influenced public opinion.
Shortly after Russia invaded, about three-quarters of Republicans favored giving Ukraine military and economic aid, according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Now, only about half do.
Republican voters are also less likely to hold favorable views of Zelensky. In one poll, most Trump-aligned Republicans even partly blamed him for the war. Republicans also support NATO at lower rates than Democrats and independents, a shift from the 1980s.
More on the war
‘Donald Trump views himself as a Putinesque, dictatorial figure,’ Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House leader, has said. ‘We should believe him that he wants to go down this road.’ Jeffries also told The Times how he hoped Ukraine aid could pass.
The Biden administration is considering giving Ukraine weapons from Pentagon stockpiles even though it lacks money to replace them, a short-term bid to aid Ukraine until Congress acts.
Putin warned that direct Western intervention in Ukraine would risk nuclear war, alluding in a speech to the French president’s recent comments about sending NATO troops there.
Trump plans to meet next week with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister.” [New York Times]
Today's WorldView
By Ishaan Tharoor
with Sammy Westfall
Gaza’s spiraling, unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe
Wounded Palestinians are treated at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, Gaza, after an Israeli airstrike on a residential building on Monday. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post)
“The disaster that unfolded Thursday marked a new low in the Gaza Strip’s unfolding calamity. Local authorities said more than 100 people were killed and more than 700 others injured, accusing Israeli forces of opening fire on a crowd of people in devastated Gaza City waiting for humanitarian aid. An IDF official acknowledged that IDF troops on one end of the convoy fired at members of the crowd who were approaching in, what they called, a threatening manner but said many Palestinians died in a stampede as they sought to reach trucks carrying vital aid.
The grisly incident encapsulates much of the horror of the moment in Gaza, a territory that has been pulverized by the Israeli military campaign that followed Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 strike on southern Israel. On social media, observers and journalists described the scene as the ‘flour massacre.’ Overwhelmed, semi-destroyed hospitals in Gaza absorbed a new influx of hundreds of wounded civilians, many ofwhose injuries, officials told my colleagues, were inflicted by gunfire.
More than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began. Hunger and disease stalk the land and drive countless Gazans on the sort of desperate, daily searches for food and water that can end in the scenes witnessed Thursday. The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known.
Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid. “We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions,” Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in an email statement after a recent visit to Gaza. ‘Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.’
Hopes are dimming for an imminent diplomatic breakthrough that could see Hamas free its remaining hostages and hostilities cease. This week, it emerged that the Biden administration may even be contemplating airdropping aid into Gaza, given the delays and difficulties in supplying vital food and other goods over land crossings. Some analysts couldn’t help but consider the irony of the United States dropping supplies onto a population that’s seeking respite from months of Israeli attacks with U.S.-made munitions. Such measures would “mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior U.S. officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza,” said Scott Paul, Oxfam’s humanitarian director, in a statement.
A number of top U.N. officials voiced their alarm Thursday. “I am appalled at the reported killing and injury of hundreds of people during a transfer of aid supplies west of Gaza City today,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s lead humanitarian officer, said. ‘Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.’
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned of an ‘unknown number of people’ — believed to be in the tens of thousands — lying under the rubble of buildings brought down by Israeli strikes. Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said about one in 20 people in Gaza is now dead or wounded in remarks made in Geneva. He also detailed the suffering of the living.
‘All people in Gaza are at imminent risk of famine. Almost all are drinking salty and contaminated water. Health care across the territory is barely functioning,’ he said. ‘Just imagine what this means for the wounded, and people suffering infectious-disease outbreaks. In northern Gaza, where the operational space for humanitarian work is now almost zero, many are already believed to be starving. In all other parts of Gaza, humanitarian assistance has become extremely challenging — and this is not only dangerous, but also dehumanizing.’
People walk in Gaza on Feb. 24. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post)
Perhaps most agonizing in all this is the ordeal of Gaza’s children. There are myriad anecdotes of babies and children wasting away without adequate food and dying from poisoning due to consuming animal feed, which some are substituting into their diets in the absence flour. UNICEF, the U.N.’s children’s agency, estimated in February that about 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their families. A generation of Palestinian children will be scarred by the toll of the war, the obliteration of their homes and schools, and the deep trauma of evading bombs while grieving loss.
‘Since the start of the war, aid agencies have delivered warning upon warning about the harrowing toll it is exacting on children,’ my colleague Niha Masih reported in a piece on what’s befallen young people in the territory. ‘Nearly 10 percent of Gazan children under age 5 are acutely malnourished. … About 1,000 children have lost one or both legs, according to UNICEF. Those who remain physically unscathed, Save the Children says, are experiencing grave psychological trauma.’
Seema Jilani, a senior technical adviser for emergency health at the International Rescue Committee, recently returned from a stint working in emergency wards in Gaza’s hospitals. ‘This war is generating a generation of orphans who currently have no access to education, have no access to school, have no access to play or educational development, have no access to health and hygiene services,’ she told Masih. ‘It’s a very grim picture and a very bleak future.’” [Washington Post]
“Scientists have started cloning genetically modified pigs with organs designed to be transplanted into people. Biotech company Revivicor Inc. says the experiments hold promise for alleviating the chronic shortage of organs for transplantation. But the research is garnering ethical and safety concerns.
NPR's Rob Stein is the first journalist to tour one of the research farms breeding these pigs. He reports Revivicor has already started testing organs from the pigs in ‘baboons and in the bodies of people who have been declared brain dead.’ These tests have raised fears of accidentally spreading a pig virus to people and concerns over sacrificing thousands of these pigs for organ harvesting. Bioethicist L. Syd Johnson tells Stein that the ‘hubris of a human-created, built-for-purpose animal should really give us pause.’ David Ayares, who runs Revivicor, says the company treats the pigs humanely, and they ‘have the opportunity to transform medicine and save a lot of lives.’” [NPR]
Ultra-processed foods were linked to 32 health problems.
“The details: Foods such as frozen dinners, sugary cereals and potato chips are linked to issues including heart disease, cancer, anxiety and early death, new research found.
What can you do? Learn how to identify ultra-processed food — here are some red flags — and stick to whole, fresh and homemade foods as much as you can.”
Read this story at Washington Post
Scientists got a step closer to understanding the origin of life.
The finding could explain how lifeless molecules produced living and breathing organisms, from single-celled algae (shown here) to people. (Hakan Kvarnstrom/Science Photo Library)
“How? For the first time, chemists created pantetheine — an essential building block of life — in a lab, using simple molecules that were probably present on early Earth.
Why it’s exciting: It shows how chemical ingredients may have formed and combined to make living cells. And it suggests that, one day, scientists could create life from scratch.”
Read this story at Washington Post
“Oprah Winfrey is leaving the WeightWatchers board of directors and donating her stock, in part to ‘eliminate any perceived conflict of interest around her taking weight loss medications,’ the company said in a statement.” [NBC News]
Elon Musk Sues OpenAI, Sam Altman for Breach of Contract
“Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and its Chief Executive Sam Altman, alleging they broke the artificial-intelligence company’s founding agreement by prioritizing profit over the benefit of humanity.”
READ MORE at Wall Street Journal
SPORTS
The Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark will enter the W.N.B.A. draft this year, announcing that this is her last college season.
“From The Athletic: Clark’s season has been an accumulation of accolades, her most recent claim coming Wednesday when she scored 33 points in Iowa’s 108-60 win over Minnesota, pushing her career point total to 3,650.”
Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Richard Abath was a night watchman whose decision to allow two thieves disguised as Boston police officers into the Gardner Museum in 1990 enabled the greatest art heist in history. He died at 57.” [New York Times]