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A potentially dangerous form of the coronavirus discovered in India can spread more quickly. However, the country is lagging in conducting the required testing to properly monitor and understand it. Based on preliminary research, the World Health Organization named the latest strain of the virus as a “variant of concern” on Monday, joining others that were first observed in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil but have since spread to other nations. “We need a lot of detail about this virus variant,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's COVID-19 technical lead. “We need more focused sequencing completed and shared in...

Wearing masks and social distancing could go on for “years”, says Public Health England’s chief of immunisation. Dr Mary Ramsey claimed on Sunday that social distancing and other practices like wearing a face-covering would go on for “quite a long period of time”.

Susan Hopkins, a specialist in infectious diseases at Public Health England, said that Britons should wear masks made with at least two, or even three, layers, and left open the possibility that the UK might follow the U.S.’s lead and recommend double masking. The British government made wearing masks, or any kind of face covering, in shops mandatory in July 2020, with the government advising they be made with at least two layers of fabric.

Scientists are scrambling to determine if the Chinese coronavirus’s new variant will worsen the pandemic. Health officials documented the first case in the U.S. in Colorado, the state’s Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday. In Los Angeles, public health officials are concerned the mutant strain may already be fueling a surge in infections there. Despite implementing the strictest lockdown and mask mandates in the country, California, the most populous state in America, is now the epicenter for the worst coronavirus spread in the United States, overwhelming hospitals and killing more people each day.

Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist who played a key role in convincing the British government to adopt lockdowns, revealed that the country’s lockdowns were meant to emulate those carried out by the Chinese Communist Party – modeled to strip civil liberties and exert authoritarian control over citizens. In Ferguson’s recent interview with The Times, he revealed that lockdowns he championed as part of Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Board, were rooted in those carried out by the Chinese Communist Party. Dubbed “Professor Lockdown” by many for his contributions to swaying the British government to adopt stringent lockdown measures,...

A top Russian scientist who was working on a Covid-19 vaccine has been found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg, adding one more to the list of people engaged in coronavirus research dropping dead mysteriously. Alexander ‘Sasha’ Kagansky, 45, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise flat – and was found with stab wounds. The Russian biologist had close links to Edinburgh University and had been working in the city for 13 years until at least 2017. The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a murder probe and a 45-year-old...

Remarkable detail of the plot to kill an Iranian nuclear scientist emerged on Saturday, a day after the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh reverberated around the world. Sixty two people were involved in the scheme, according to Mohamad Ahwaze, an Iranian journalist who exposed the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic in his country. Ahwaze said he had obtained leaked Iranian information.

Mohsen Fahrizade, Iran's chief military nuclear scientist, has been assassinated, according to Iranian media outlets. He led the "Amad" military program which Israel alleged was researching how to build a nuclear weapon. The program reportedly ended in the early 2000s. BREAKING: Mohsen Fahrizade the architect of Iran's military nuclear program was assassinated in Tehran, Iranian media reports— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) November 27, 2020An Iranian scientist that Israel alleged led the Islamic Republic's military nuclear program before it was disbanded has been killed in a shootout, Iranian state television said.https://t.co/uCgiGMcEN0— The Associated Press (@AP) November 27, 2020As the AP reports:The semiofficial...

JAG Writes: From Atheism to Saving Faith In God Scientist: I sometimes wonder if our "Natural Selection" can actually carry the heavy load we have placed upon it? Creationist: I too have some doubts. I don't always fully understand the Creation Story in Genesis. Some of your fellow scientists have accused me of believing in a "talking snake" Scientist: Well, they ought not to have accused you of that. Obviously the snake was metaphorical language, everybody knows snakes cannot talk. Creationist: Thanks I'm glad you understand that. The snake represented Evil and delivered the message that Evil always delivers. Scientist:...

Bing Liu "was on the verge of making very significant findings" in a SARS-CoV-2 research project at the University of Pittsburgh, his department said. WTAE Updated: 6:25 PM EDT May 4, 2020 ROSS TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A man who police said was found shot dead at his Ross Township home was a research assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was working on a coronavirus research project. Police said they believe that Bing Liu, 37, was shot inside his Elm Court townhome by a man who then went outside to his car and shot himself. Liu's death is...

WASHINGTON - A group of top American scientists backed by billionaires and industry titans says it has the answer to the coronavirus pandemic, and has delivered a report to the White House through backdoor channels. The scientists compiled a confidential 17-page report that suggests a number of unorthodox measures to combat the coronavirus, including the use of powerful drugs that were intended to be used against Ebola in far heftier doses than tried in the past, reported The Wall Street Journal. Specific recommendations made by the group, such as slashing manufacturing regulations and requirements for specific coronavirus drugs, have already...

Dozens of scientists have endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) sweeping plan to combat global climate change after fellow Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden declared that “not a single solitary scientist thinks it can work.” The former vice president derided Sanders’ proposed $16.3 trillion Green New Deal during a campaign stop last week in New Hampshire, adding that “you can not get to zero emissions by 2030. It’s impossible.” Sanders swung back over the weekend, telling a crowd in Iowa that he would soon unveil “a long list of scientists” who back his plan. The Sanders campaign delivered on Tuesday, releasing...

A team of Chinese researchers have turned cheap copper into a new material “almost identical” to gold, according to a study published in peer-reviewed journal Science Advances on Saturday. The discovery will significantly reduce the use of rare, expensive metals in factories, said the authors. Professor Sun Jian and colleagues at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Liaoning, shot a copper target with a jet of hot, electrically charged argon gas. The fast-moving ionised particles blasted copper atoms off the target. The atoms cooled down and condensed on the surface of a collecting...

Dr. Serkan Gölge, a NASA scientist who was sentenced to seven years, six months in prison in February due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement, has said he has been unlawfully kept behind bars for two years, which he says shows he is being held hostage by the Turkish government, the t24 news website reported on Tuesday. A dual citizen of the US and Turkey, Gölge, 38, was detained as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement, which the government accuses of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, on July 23, 2016. He was arrested...

A deadly nerve agent linked to the poisoning of four people in southern England could have been carried inside a lipstick tube-like container before being planted, a Russian scientist who developed the substance told Euronews. “The substance is very stable. It can be washed away by rain, it can evaporate under the sun. But it won’t decompose." Vladimir Uglev Scientist Vladimir Uglev, 72, took a leading role in developing A-234, a strain of the Novichok family of agents believed to have been used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury earlier this year. Like...

David Goodall listened quietly as his loved ones started to sing. Then he took a breath, made a wish and blew out the flames. But Goodall was not wholeheartedly celebrating the milestone this month in Perth, Australia. The botanist and ecologist, who is thought to be the country’s oldest scientist, said that he has lived too long. And now, he said, he is ready to die. “I greatly regret having reached that age. I would much prefer to be 20 or 30 years younger,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. When asked whether he had a nice birthday, he said:...

Black holes are famous for their muscle: an intense gravitational pull known to gobble up entire stars and launch streams of matter into space at almost the speed of light. It turns out the reality may not live up to the hype. In a paper published today in the journal Science, University of Florida scientists have discovered these tears in the fabric of the universe have significantly weaker magnetic fields than previously thought. A 40-mile-wide black hole 8,000 light years from Earth named V404 Cygni yielded the first precise measurements of the magnetic field that surrounds the deepest wells of...

Lucy Smith reports for the Townsville (Queensland), Australia Bulletin: A RENOWNED climate scientist has been jailed for fraudulently claiming half a million dollars in reimbursements from his employer. Over seven years, Australian Institute of Marine Science senior researcher Daniel Michael Alongi lodged 129 claims for fictitious purchases totalling $553,420.

A new congressional investigation has determined that the Obama administration fired a top scientist and intimidated staff at the Department of Energy in order to further its climate change agenda, according to a new report that alleges the administration ordered top officials to obstruct Congress in order to forward this agenda. Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, released a wide-ranging report on Tuesday that shows how senior Obama administration officials retaliated against a leading scientist and plotted ways to block a congressional inquiry surrounding key research into the impact of radiation....

IT ALL began with the best, if exceedingly ambitious, of intentions – to develop a machine that by a simple pinprick on a patient’s finger could detect any disease known to man. But it ended in the most tragic of circumstances, with the firm behind the invention crashing and a British scientist who had devoted himself to the project taking his own life. Now his widow has spoken out about the treatment he suffered before and after his death at the age of 67, accusing his employers of heartlessness.