"Toward the end of the last Ice Age, prehistoric artists painted tens of thousands of images—including depictions of mastodons, giant sloths and other now-extinct animals—on cliff walls in the Amazon rainforest, reports Dalya Alberge for the Guardian. Archaeologists found the first of the enormous set of images in 2017 but kept the trove secret while continuing work and preparing a television series on the discovery."
"China has launched a small spacecraft from the surface of the moon in the critical next step in the ambitious Chang’e 5 mission to bring lunar samples to Earth."
"Astronomers were hit today (Dec. 3) with a huge wave of data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory… Those researchers can now explore the best-yet map of the Milky Way, with detailed information on the positions, distances and motion of 1.8 billion cosmic objects, to help us better understand our place in the universe."
"Denmark has decided to end all oil and gas activities in the North Sea by 2050 and has cancelled its latest licensing round, saying the country is 'now putting an end to the fossil fuel era.'"
"The United States has set three grim records, recording the highest number of daily deaths, new infections and hospitalizations since the pandemic began… According to an NBC News tally, the U.S. reported 2,777 coronavirus-related deaths and nearly 205,000 new cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday."
"President-elect Joe Biden plans to ask Americans to wear a face mask for 100 days after he is inaugurated to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, and he pledged to publicly take a vaccine when it's available to encourage the public to get vaccinated."
"If there are 'I Voted' stickers, why not 'Vaccinated for COVID-19' buttons?… The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning to offer health care providers a template they can use to print buttons or stickers that would advertise a person's vaccination status. The idea is that the button would be handed out to patients after they receive their vaccination shots." Rolls eyes in marketing professional.
"US pharma giant Pfizer has said that it will deliver 50 million doses this year of its COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed by German firm BioNTech. The new forecast represents half of the 100 million doses the firm had originally hoped to deliver, a company spokeswoman told US newspaper The Wall Street Journal." Jazz hands. And so begins the opening rounds of a bidding war.
"Health care workers first, along with residents and staff of nursing homes. Those people should receive the COVID-19 vaccine before anyone else, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday… That recommendation applies to the U.S. But what about health care workers in other countries? Or the elderly with health conditions? Should a nurse in Peru, who's at high risk of catching the virus, be immunized before a person with low risk in the U.S. receives the vaccine?"
"For this story I talked to educators in six states, from California to South Carolina. For the most part they say things have improved since last spring. But they are close to burnout, with only a patchwork of support. They said the heart of the job right now is getting students connected with school and keeping them that way — both technologically and even more importantly, emotionally. Here are five lessons learned so far." In 8 years expect a new round of "Why Johnny can't read" articles.
"Hiring in the US is now so slow, it could take another 40 months for the job market to fully recover from the pandemic… The US economy added 245,000 jobs in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. It was 224,000 fewer than economists had expected and a massive slowdown from the 610,000 jobs added in October, as the recovery is growing more sluggish."
"The job growth figure was well below expectations. Economists at Wells Fargo had expected the United States to add just 425,000 jobs in November, while other forecasts pointed to just under half a million… The unemployment rate dipped to 6.7%, from 6.9% the month before, largely because 400,000 people dropped out of the workforce."
"Dolphin Trust, now known as German Property Group, promised high interest payments and investors' original capital back, if they lent it money for up to five years… But the firm has now collapsed owing an estimated £1bn to investors all over the world." Who took the money away.
How goes Brexit? "The U.K. left the European Union in January but agreed to continue following EU trade rules until the end of the year so both sides could come to a new trade agreement. However, their negotiations have dragged on for months, and without a clear end in sight, there are growing concerns the talks could collapse without a deal." Hello, hard Brexit. Look, you knew this was coming when you voted leave. Only now, surprise, there's a life saving vaccine you don't have a trade deal to bring into the country. Again, the point was to make Britons suffer and to weaken western alliances. And all because your fisherman sold off rights they thought weren't valuable (and then a decade or two later, surprise, really valuable).
"AT&T-owned WarnerMedia stunned the entertainment world on Thursday when it announced its intention to put all 17 of its 2021 Warner Bros movies on HBO Max on the same day each movie hits theaters." That's no so much a shot across the bow as it's a torpedo to the engine room. Although I'll note the "Death of Theaters" have been predicted often.
"Authorities in Bangladesh are pushing ahead with the relocation of tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, despite concerns raised by human rights groups and the United Nations."
"The perpetually busy arterial highways that connect most northern Indian towns to this city of 29 million people now pulse to the cries of 'Inquilab Zindabad' — 'Long live the revolution.' Tens and thousands of farmers with distinctive, colorful turbans and long, flowing beards have descended upon the city’s borders, choking highways in giant demonstrations against new farming laws that they say will open them to corporate exploitation." Welcome to late stage capitalism. That's what you voted for, but believed it would only hurt the other guy.
"A high school football player attacked a referee Thursday night on the field moments after being ejected from the game in an incident that was recorded on video." While a lot of this will focus on the players, frankly it's the coachs' who are at fault here. But given the culture of football in Texas, I don't expect much to happen.
"Hundreds of Google employees have published an open letter following the firing of a colleague who is an accomplished scientist known for her research into the ethics of artificial intelligence and her work showing racial bias in facial recognition technology… That scientist, Timnit Gebru, helped lead Google's Ethical Artificial Intelligence team until Tuesday… She says she was forced out of the company following a dispute over a research paper and an email she subsequently sent to peers expressing frustration over how the tech giant treats employees of color and women."
"If President Trump and his campaign’s legal team thought conservative-leaning federal judges would be especially sympathetic to their allegations of election fraud, the record is showing they were mistaken… Judges appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents alike have struck down the campaign’s allegations of voter fraud in every case on which they have ruled, according to a Yahoo News review of post-election federal complaints, active and closed, that were brought directly by the Trump campaign or by attorneys who are independently seeking to invalidate the results of the election in battleground states."
"At the center of the conflict is pro-Trump trial lawyer Lin Wood. His advocacy for President Donald Trump — and his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud — have been so extreme that he’s now taken to publicly discouraging people from voting for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, arguing that the runoff elections are already rigged."
"President Trump on Thursday criticized Attorney General William Barr, accusing the head of the Justice Department of not thoroughly examining debunked claims of widespread voter fraud… When asked whether he still had confidence in Barr, a Trump ally who has in the past taken what critics describe as an unusually political role in the Justice Department, the president said: 'Ask me that in a number of weeks from now.'"
"The official serving as President Donald Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press."
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