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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on a podcast episode that aired Friday one of his biggest regrets in office was not speaking “much louder” against the Trump Administration’s calls for lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic, with the comments coming just days after former President Donald Trump appeared to label DeSantis “gutless.” DeSantis said on the conservative podcast “Ruthless” he believes Trump Administration officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci “panicked” as Covid-19 quickly spread around the U.S. in March of 2020, leading to calls for lockdowns. Tensions are reportedly growing between Trump and DeSantis, who was one of...

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DeSantis last held a press briefing about the pandemic on December 17 and photos of the governor shared to social media have raised questions. DeSantis' official Twitter account has recently shared photos of him that were apparently taken several days earlier without noting the fact. On Tuesday, DeSantis' account posted a photo that had been taken 12 days earlier—a fact later confirmed to MSNBC by the governor's office.

On a recent morning, Neil Meehan opened a spreadsheet he has come to dread. It showed the number of intensive-care beds available in an area of New Hampshire that is home to 350,000 people: two. A day earlier, there was just one. Very often there are none. Meehan, the chief physician executive at Exeter Hospital, has worked in emergency medicine for nearly three decades. He has lost track of the number of unprecedented things he has witnessed

NEW YORK ­– Taiwan’s chip fabricators signed an agreement on December 3 to create their own semiconductor equipment industry, opening an “option to decouple from the West,” in the view of a prominent US research firm. The Taiwanese initiative responds to Washington’s extraterritorial sanctions on buyers of US fabricating equipment, imposed by then-president Donald Trump in May 2020. The US asserts the right to block sales of chips produced with US machines or intellectual property. The US sanctions shut off Chinese tech giant Huawei’s access to high-end chips of 7 nanometers and below, crippling what previously was the world’s top...

"AirTags" are placed in out-of-sight locations on high-end automobiles that are parked in high-traffic areas like malls or parking lots. The vehicles are then tracked back to the owners' residences from where they are stolen right from the driveway. The thieves use a screwdriver to enter a targeted car via the driver or passenger door. Once they are inside the car, the thieves deploy an electronic diagnostic device like the kind your friendly mechanic uses. With this device, the car thieves adjust the settings to allow the car to accept a key that they have brought with them. Once this...

Moscow [Russia], November 25 (ANI/Sputnik): The combat effectiveness of Russia's MiG-31 interceptors will triple after repair and upgrade, representatives of the Sokol aircraft plant reported to the Deputy Defense Minister Aleksey Krivoruchko. On Thursday, Krivoruchko, during a working trip to Nizhny Novgorod, visited the Sokol aircraft plant, where he examined the production facilities of the enterprise, checked the progress of repair and modernization of MiG-31 fighters, and also held a meeting on the implementation of the state defence order. The overhaul makes it possible to achieve practically trouble-free operation of the aircraft in service, the plant's representative said. "And the...

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Russia's defence minister on Tuesday accused U.S. bombers of rehearsing a nuclear strike on Russia from two different directions earlier this month and complained that the planes had come within 20 km (12.4 miles) of the Russian border. But the Pentagon said its drills were announced publicly at the time and adhered to international protocols. Moscow's accusation comes at a time of high tension with Washington over Ukraine, with U.S. officials voicing concerns about a possible Russian attack on its southern neighbour - a suggestion the Kremlin has dismissed as false. Moscow has in turn...

<p>Dozens of churches in India were not allowed to hold worship services for a third consecutive Sunday after authorities imposed a complete ban on Christian religious gatherings at the behest of radical Hindu nationalist groups, according to a report.</p><p>More than 50 house churches in the Jhabua District of Madhya Pradesh state were not allowed to gather for worship on Sundays due to the Sub-Divisional Officer issuing a circular to police stations in the Thandla and Megnagar blocks declaring a complete ban on Christian gatherings that do not have permission from the local magistrate, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported.</p>

In the last decade, China has rapidly expanded its “green” new energy vehicle (NEV) industry but recycling and disposing of hundreds of thousands of tons of used car batteries has become a pressing issue due to environmental concerns. Growth in China’s NEV industry took off in 2014 when nearly 78,500 NEVs were produced and some 75,000 were sold. As of September of this year, China’s NEV registration reached 6.78 million, of which 5.52 million are fully electric vehicles. The NEV industry predicts that its production and sales growth rate will remain above 40 percent in the next five years prompting...

A new climate assessment released Tuesday by a group of scientists from the University of Vermont says the state is getting warmer and wetter and the changes pose long-term challenges for the state. Vermont is expected to lose around 70 species of birds, while moose numbers will decline and populations of white tailed deer will increase due to rising temperatures in the coming years, the report said. The study found that since 1900, average Vermont temperatures have increased by nearly 2 degrees and precipitation has increased by 21%. Despite the warming climate, Vermont will remain attractive as a tourist destination....

Some parts of the nation have seen localized spikes in milk prices. But most of the nation is facing an oversupply of milk — a challenge policy makers have been struggling to address. Yes, food prices are up. But no, average U.S. milk prices aren’t skyrocketing — they’ve basically stayed the same since January. That’s because the U.S. overall has an oversupply of milk, and it’s gotten worse over the past few decades as smaller farms have shuttered and larger farms have bought up their livestock and increasingly dominated the industry. It’s been a problem that policymakers have been struggling...

A small-town Alabama police chief who died of COVID-19 loved the community he served and regretted his decision against getting vaccinated, his widow said. Buddy Crabtree, a 10-year veteran of the Ider Police Department in northeastern Alabama, died Saturday of the illness caused by the new coronavirus, news outlets reported. He was often seen inside schools in the town of about 650 people. “He loved his job and Ider,” widow Kristie Crabtree told WAAY-TV. “He loved the community of Ider, his officers, the school kids.”

On Monday The Times reported British social media users could face a two-year prison term if they send messages or post content deemed to have caused “psychological harm” under the UK government’s draft ‘Online Safety Bill’ to tackle hate speech and abuse online. “It includes an anti-misinformation offence … In this regard, The Times reported that unnamed government sources had referenced the example of ‘anti-vaxxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue’,” RT reported. In Taiwan, a similar law has been in place from 19 June 2019, if not earlier. The Communicable Disease Act (or Infectious Disease Prevention...

The mysterious Tarim mummies of China's western Xinjiang region are relics of a unique Bronze Age culture descended from Indigenous people, and not a remote branch of early Indo-Europeans, according to new genetic research.The new study upends more than a century of assumptions about the origins of the prehistoric people of the Tarim Basin whose naturally preserved human remains, desiccated by the desert, suggested to many archaeologists that they were descended from Indo-Europeans who had migrated to the region from somewhere farther west before about 2000 B.C.

The Miami Herald's editorial board published a scathing rebuke of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) on Monday, writing that he is descending into "anti-vaxx Crazyville" after he called a special legislative session to pass new laws aimed at undermining federal COVID-19 vaccine requirements for workers. "We thought things couldn’t get much worse in DeSantis’ handling of the pandemic, but we were wrong — then we were wrong again. Just when you think he’s done enough to undermine our chances of exiting a pandemic that has killed nearly 60,000 Floridians, he has a new trick up his sleeve," the Herald wrote in...

British media reported that China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August, and its performance caught U.S. intelligence services by surprise. However, a military expert raises questions on the authenticity of the sources.The Financial Times, a British media, on Oct. 17 exclusively cited five anonymous sources as saying that the Chinese Communist military launched a rocket carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle that flew in low orbital space and then cruised to its target. “The test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than U.S. officials realized.”Xia Luoshan, a military commentator and host...

The Russian Federation and China claimed in a joint statement that the military biological activities of the United States and its allies pose a ‘serious threat’ to their national security. The two countries stated that they “reaffirm their conviction that the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) is essential as a pillar of the international peace and security, and their determination to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the Convention.” Over the past two decades, the BWC States Parties have failed to reach an agreement...

MONTREAL, QUEBEC — Scientists have modeled what Earth would look like in 500 years if our planet keeps warming up at the present rate. What they found would surprise you. Video Here. A group of environmental scientists have combined to model the impact of climate change all the way up to the year 2500. After publishing their findings in Global Change Biology, the researchers wrote in The Conversation that Earth will gradually become uninhabitable if governments across the globe do not act more strongly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.The study’s results show that the Amazon will change into a place...

The Biden administration warned unvaccinated people against traveling over Labor Day weekend and called for vaccinated people to use the holiday as an incentive to get shots into the arms of their unvaccinated family members.