Astronomers discover the smallest rogue planet yet zipping through the Milky Way
Shane McGlaun - Oct 30, 2020

The term rogue planet is applied to planets that do not orbit a star. These planets fly unaccompanied through the galaxy, and astronomers have announced that they have spotted the smallest rogue planet candidate yet. The belief that the planet could be smaller than the Earth, with a mass somewhere between that of our world and Mars.

If the rogue planet can be confirmed, it would mark a milestone in the study of rogue planets believed to be common throughout the galaxy and beyond but challenging to detect. Andrzej Udalski, the co-author of the survey of the rogue planet, says that the discovery demonstrates low-mass free-floating planets can be detected and characterized via ground-based telescopes. So far, astronomers have discovered more than 4000 exoplanets, and most of them were found using the “transit method.”

To discover exoplanets, astronomers also use another technique called gravitational microlensing. In that technique, they watch foreground objects pass in front of a distant background star. When planets bend and magnify the starlight, it can reveal the foreground object’s mass along with other characteristics. The challenge of that technique is that the alignment of the source, lens, and observer has to be nearly perfect.

Since it’s extremely difficult to use gravitational microlensing looking at one star, astronomers observe vast swaths of the sky using an instrument called OGLE and a 1.3-meter telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to monitor millions of stars in the center of the Milky Way. Using that technique, researchers discovered an event called OGLE-2016-BLG-1928 that lasted 42 minutes. It was the shortest microlensing event ever detected, and the researcher says it was clear that a tiny object must’ve caused it.

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Calculations suggested the object was between the mass of Mars and the Earth and probably closer to the size of Mars. It was determined that the candidate was likely a rogue planet because if it were orbiting a star, researchers would detect its presence in the light curve of the event. Scientists were able to rule out the planet having a star within eight astronomical units. Researchers think this type of rogue planet is probably common and believe that

NASA’s latest space posters feature creepy and retro horror designs
Brittany A. Roston - Oct 28, 2020

NASA occasionally releases travel posters featuring fictional, often retro representations of real-life places, ones located so far from our own planet that we’ll likely never explore them during this lifetime. The space agency is back with a new set of posters, these ones designed specifically for the upcoming Halloween holiday — and they were clearly inspired by classic horror comics.

In case you’ve somehow missed them, you can find a large number of NASA’s creative space-themed posters on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Visions of the Future website. The content includes posters for our solar system’s biggest names, including Mars and Jupiter, as well as ones for moons like Titan and Europa. There are also posters for exoplanets, travel to different types of environments, and more.


NASA’s latest posters are different, bringing with them unique horror-themed designs for the Halloween season. The posters all refer to actual cosmic phenomena, according to the space agency, including gamma rays, dark matter, and the ‘galactic graveyard.’ The posters have been released in both English and Spanish.

These three new offerings fall in the ‘Galaxy of Horrors’ series, which includes some past posters with a creepy theme, including ‘Eternal Darkness,’ ‘Kepler’s Inferno,’ ‘Monster Mash,’ ‘Flares of Fury,’ ‘Zombie Worlds,’ and more. You can view the full horror poster series here. As with the new posters and all of the ones released before it, anyone can download these posters, use them as device wallpapers, or print them out and mount them on their walls.

One of the NASA JPL astrophysicists who consulted on the poster project, Jason Rhodes, said, “One of the things I really like about these posters is that if you spend some time studying the art and then maybe go learn a little more about each of these topics, you’ll see there was a lot of thought by the artists about the choices they made to highlight the science.”

ARACNAPHOBIA TRIGGER...

Ogre-faced spiders can hear without ears

...TOO LATE

Shane McGlaun - Oct 31, 2020

The spider seen in the image below is called the ogre-faced spider. They are believed to have the largest eyes of any known spider species, and one of their hallmarks is the ability to see in the dark 2000 times better than humans. It turns out incredible eyesight isn’t the only thing that these spiders have going for them.

New research shows that the ogre-faced spider is also able to hear without having ears. The spiders can hear both low and high-frequency sounds using receptors in their legs. Researchers say they can detect sounds from at least 6.5 feet from the source of the sound. They are sensitive to frequencies up to 10 kilohertz.

The scientists used both laboratory tests and field observations in their study. They were able to show that auditory stimuli in the same low-frequency range as the wing beats of the moth, mosquito, and flies prompt spiders to perform a backward strike. The backward strike is one of the signature hunting moves of the spider. This led researchers to determine that the spiders use auditory clues to detect and capture flying prey.

Study co-author Jay Strafstrom says the spiders are a “gold mine” of information. The observations performed in the study shows that not only does the spider possess incredible visual capability, they can hear very well. Ogre-faced spiders are tropical in nature and found worldwide, including in the States, particularly in Florida.

The spiders are nocturnal and spend the daytime hiding among plant fronds. During the day, the creature tends to play dead and hunts and kills prey at night. The spiders strike forward to capture prey below them and strike backward to capture prey flying above them, and the study found that the hunting methods rely on different senses.

OBIT 
Sir Sean Connery: An imperfect man, but the perfect star

He was the milkman’s boy raised in the fumes of McEwan’s brewery and the North British Rubberworks, who ascended the heights of Hollywood to become the most famous living Scot.

By Martyn Mclaughlin
Saturday, 31st October 2020, 

Sir Sean Connery pictured in New York in 2009. Picture: Michael Loccisano/Getty

The life of Sir Sean Connery, who has died at the age of 90, was a remarkable and improbable ride. He will be immortalised as the actor who defined the character of James Bond, and carved out a status as Scotland’s greatest bona fide film star. He will also be remembered as the man who was, and steadfastly remained, Big Tam.

Nearly twenty years have passed since Connery’s final on-screen performance, and yet he left behind a filmography to rival any leading man in the 20th century. It spanned 58 years and roles as diverse as a Spanish hidalgo, one of England’s most famous kings, a Russian submarine captain, and a legendary Greek ruler. The accent never deviated. The script seldom mattered. People paid to see Connery.

No Scot achieved the level of his fame, and perhaps no one will. What made Connery’s all the more remarkable is that he refused to court it. He let his aura do the talking.

The nature and allure of that elusive quality is difficult to define, as evidenced in the flurry of fulsome tributes paid to Connery in the past few hours. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described it as a “towering presence,” while Daniel Craig, the current Bond, said Connery’s radiance could be measured only in “megawatts.”

Both assessments are true, and yet incomplete. Whatever Connery had, it was fully formed long before he set foot in an Aston Martin DB5. A few years back, I spoke to the artist, Richard Demarco, one of Connery’s childhood friends. The young actor had posed for him as a life model, and Demarco recalled a natural dignity to the way he held himself.

“It was obvious Tommy was not going to be a French polisher,” Demarco told me. “But then, all he had to do was stand still and look beautiful.”

On screen, Connery fused a combustible blend of elegance and menace, and moved like a panther. The grit and danger were ever present in his Bond, and the supporting Oscar he won for his turn in The Untouchables proved deserved recognition of an understated and often underappreciated acting style. But it was arguably his films with Sidney Lumet which best exploited Connery’s innate physical authority - the bedrock of his success.

This quality granted him a leading man presence comparable to Cary Grant, James Cagney, and Gary Cooper. Connery’s greatest achievement, perhaps, was to prove so effortlessly that a working class Scot, the son of a cleaner and a factory worker, belonged in their company

Off screen, the same balance was not always so easy to strike. He was difficult company at times, both among strangers as well as those who classed themselves as his friends. Despite publishing his autobiography Connery was not a man given to self-revelation.

As the late William McIlvanney once observed, Connery never mistook himself for any image he was supposed to have at any given time. Any image he acquired was just part of him, not the other way round.

Indeed, Connery had greater influence over Bond’s Scots heritage than has been acknowledged. It was only after seeing him in the film adaptation of Dr No that Ian Fleming fleshed out his protagonist’s backstory in You Only Live Twice.

And from a man descended from Irish travelling stock, whose great grandfather eked out a miserable living as a bare knuckle fighter, there were darker legacies. Fits of jealousy, bitterness, and violence; forces he sometimes trained against those closest to him.

One of the ironies of Connery’s life was his vexed relationship with the very things that defined him - Bond, Scotland and women.

He resented the Broccoli family for the money he had received for turning Bond into one of the world’s most successful - and profitable - film franchises.

In the early 1980s, Harry Saltzman, a co-producer of the films, took seriously ill. According to Joe McGrath, the Scottish film director, Connery received the news at a card table in a casino.

“Sean, Harry’s had a stroke,” he was told. “He’s paralysed down one side.” Connery, still looking at his cards, replied: “Good. I hope he’s paralysed down the other side tomorrow.” Asked later if the story was true, he said simply, 'Yes.”

Connery was subject to accusations of misogyny over the years, including by his ex-wife, Diane Cilento, who said he subjected her to physical and mental abuse. He once advocated hitting women with an “open handed slap” in a 1975 interview with Playboy, and spent much of the next 45 years expressing regret.

As Connery became increasingly politically active, he was also charged with claims of hypocrisy for advocating the cause of Scottish independence from far-flung climes. His interjections in the debate over his homeland’s future were once dismissed by Brian Wilson, the former Labour MP, as “the view from a Marbella saloon bar.”

But Connery’s love for his country, and his desire for constitutional change, never dimmed. Even in the twilight of his life, spent in sun-dappled Lyford Cay, a private gated community in the Bahamas, he yearned for both.

None of this contradiction and darkness inherent in Connery’s character dulled the brightness of his star. Maybe because they helped create it. He was, after all, the emblem of a particular strain of masculinity that was once revered. Nowadays, it is openly questioned, and fading fast from view.

In the age of #MeToo, it seems inconceivable that his star would ascend under the same circumstances. But then, no young actor nowadays would begin their working life at the age of nine, rising at 5am from the squalor of a cramped tenement to deliver milk in a handcart.

Connery was, in many ways, an Imperfect man. But he was, and will remain, the perfect star.

Sean Connery, a lion of cinema whose roar went beyond Bond

By JAKE COYLE

1 of 4
FILE - This March 4, 1992 file photo shows actor Sean Connery during a news conference in Hamburg, Germany. Connery, considered by many to have been the best James Bond, has died aged 90, according to an announcement from his family.(AP Photo/Christian Eggers, File)

Writing an appreciation of Sean Connery feels inevitably inadequate compared to experiencing the real thing. To glimpse his magnetism, you might turn to a photograph of him in a tailored suit, leaning against an Aston Martin. You’d probably get more of his menacing charisma by pulling up the “Chicago way” scene from “The Untouchables.”

It might be enough simply to say: The king is dead.

As a lion of movies for half a century, Connery’s talent was manifest. He was famously cast as James Bond without a screen test. It was that obvious. And from then on, in even the lesser films, Connery, who died Saturday at 90, was never out of place on screen. His presence was absolute. Noting his supreme confidence, the late film critic Pauline Kael once wrote, “I don’t know any man since Cary Grant that men have wanted to be so much.”

As a more earthy, macho movie-star ideal, Connery was so beloved that he was shared, like folklore, between generations. It helped that he never seemed to be appealing to the audience, or to anybody, for anything. With raised eyebrows and roguish wisecracks, there was little that Connery (nearly always the lead) didn’t command. And to a certain extent, that cocksureness shaped his career, too.

Connery, 32 when “Dr. No” came out,” had already lived through World War II. Born into poverty in Edinburgh, he left school at age 13 during the war and worked as a laborer and a bricklayer before he donned the tuxedo. He saw Bond, too, as a product of the war.

“Bond came on the scene after the War, at a time when people were fed up with rationing and drab times and utility clothes and a predominantly gray color in life,” Connery, who served in the British Navy as a teenager, told Playboy in 1965. “Along comes this character who cuts right through all that like a very hot knife through butter, with his clothing and his cars and his wine and his women.”

Long after achieving fame, Connery contentedly gave it up. He spent his final two decades cheerfully retired in the Caribbean, often playing golf with his wife, unimpressed and little tempted by more modern Hollywood productions. (He said he was “fed up with the idiots.”)

There was irony in that. Connery, as the original cinema Bond, did much to make the style and tone of today’s movie franchises — even if few carry a lick of Connery’s danger. His Bond heir Daniel Craig on Saturday credited Connery with helping “create the modern blockbuster.” It’s hard to imagine the suave secret-service spy would have ever become a cultural force if the franchise hadn’t from the start traded on its star’s brutal charm. Connery crucially added humor to Ian Fleming’s pages, along with a dash of cruelty.


Connery’s Bond became etched as an icon of its era, one increasingly distant from today. He was the epitome of a dashing, womanizing, macho image that loomed over the second half of the 20th century. Connery differed from his character in many respects but not all. In that same Playboy interview, he explained why he believed hitting a woman with an open fist was justifiable.

Bond is the first word on Connery but it’s certainly not the last. Against the pleas of fans, he departed the character at 41 (he was later coaxed back for 1983’s “Never Say Never Again”), refusing to be typecast. His best and most interesting work all came after.

“The Hill” (1965) was the first of five films with Sidney Lumet (the others were “The Anderson Tapes,” “The Offense,” “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Family Business”), and while it’s less seen than many of Connery’s, it remains possibly the best expression of the actor’s rugged power. He plays a prisoner of indomitable strength and defiance jailed in a sadistic British Army WWII military prison in the scorching Libyan desert.

He was a soldier again a decade later in John Huston’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” based on the Rudyard Kipling short story, playing a military officer who’s embraced as a god in Kafiristan, an impression he struggles to maintain. It’s a perfect role and performance for Connery, whose best work came when he — this former bodybuilder of unimpeachable force and magnetism — was humbled.

Connery’s confidence came through most dramatically when it was challenged by foes more formidable than a Bond villain. In his Oscar-winning performance in Brian De Palma’s Prohibition-era crime film, “The Untouchables,” he’s alive to Al Capone’s threat, telling Kevin Costner’s Treasury Department agent: “You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do?”

Accepting the Academy Award, Connery addressed his wife since 1975, Micheline Roquebrune. “In winning this award, it creates a certain dilemma because I had decided that if I had the good fortune to win, that I would give it to my wife, who deserves it,” he said. “But, this evening, I discovered backstage that they’re worth $15,000 — now I am not so sure. Micheline, I am only kidding. It’s yours.”

Connery aged well as an actor, crafting more diverse and inquisitive portraits of masculinity. He played an aging Robin Hood, with Audrey Hepburn, in “Robin and Marian” (1976), a combustible submarine captain in John McTiernan’s “The Hunt for Red October” and a lovable, playful father to Harrison Ford in Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989).

Another “Indiana Jones,” Connery said, had been the only thing that really tempted him to come out of retirement. That could be because the glint of mischief that accompanied nearly every Connery performance was so present in “The Last Crusade.” Connery always left you feeling if not shaken then very happily stirred.

___
AP Film Writer Jake Coyle 

Locals teed off about new Trump golf course in Scotland


Published on October 30, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

David Milne, seen on a hillside above the clubhouse of Donald Trump's International Golf Links course on Scotland's east coast, is aghast that the local council has given the go-ahead for a second course (AFP)

On the roof of his house overlooking the sea in northeast Scotland, David Milne stands below a Mexican flag and stares down at a palatial golf clubhouse owned by Donald Trump.

Milne has been a major opponent of the development ever since the US president began building the Trump International Golf Links near the village of Balmedie in 2006.

But he is now scratching his head in disbelief that the local Aberdeenshire Council has given the go ahead for a second course beside the sand dunes just a few miles away.

“There’s no justification for this golf course,” he told AFP.

“The first course that’s here is losing money. It’s never turned a profit since it opened its doors. It’s done nothing but damage to this area.

“So, why do you want to build a second one and destroy more landscape?”

Milne said the surrounding countryside and its coastal paths used to be visited by throngs of tourists and bird-watchers.

But tramping through the dunes off the windswept beach is nearly impossible now, as the course has been blocked off with wire fencing.

Loss-making

Trump International Golf Links is one of three golf resorts the outspoken US tycoon-turned-politician and his family own in Europe.

One is in Ireland while the two others — Turnberry and Trump International — are in Scotland, the ancestral home of his mother, Mary, who came from the northwest Isle of Lewis.

Trump bought the 1,400 acres (567 hectares) of land north of the city of Aberdeen in 2006, and in characteristic style pledged to build “the world’s best golf course”.




He promised to create 6,000 jobs and invest £1 billion ($1.3 billion, 1.1 billion euros).

The links opened in 2012 but in October last year, Trump International Golf Club Scotland reported a loss of £1.07 million for 2018 after a £1.25 million loss in 2017.

The two courses employed around 650 temporary and permanent staff in 2018.

Milne says Trump offered him $260,000, jewelry and a golf club membership for his house, which is built on roughly one-fifth of an acre of land bordering the course.

But he refused. In retaliation, a row of trees was planted in front of his house. Then a fence was built and Trump sent him the $3,500 bill, he added.

“The Mexican flag first went up when I first heard Donald Trump talking about the wall on the Mexican border and making the Mexicans pay for it,” he said.

“That struck a chord with me because he’s already tried that, right here at this site.”

On a sand dune where construction for the new Trump course has been given the go ahead, local Democratic and Green Group councillor Paul Johnston is as baffled as Milne.

“The success of the other one has to be proven first and it’s not exactly a success,” said Johnston, who opposed the plans on environmental grounds.

“Far from it. It makes a loss every year. A lot of people around here probably do feel misled by the whole fiasco.”

Not everyone is opposed, however.

Stewart Spence, the 70-year-old owner of the five-star Marcliffe Hotel in Aberdeen, a half-hour drive from Balmedie, said Trump’s investment has paid dividends locally.

“The amount of business it has brought into the area obviously is enormous,” he said.

“The spin-off has been for restaurants, chauffeur drivers and everything else. People will come and stay two or three nights.

“They might eat one night at my hotel and the other nights they go out to eat in restaurants.”

Flagging interest
Trump visited Scotland before his shock 2016 presidential election win, and was serenaded on his arrival at Glasgow Prestwick Airport by a spoof Mariachi band, “Juan Direction”.

The musicians were also armed with a wheelbarrow full of bricks for his border wall.

Trump’s chaotic four years as the president has taken its toll on his political opponents in the United States, where he is seeking a second term of office at elections next week.

In Scotland, Milne knows how they feel.

He said he has been promised a lifetime supply of Mexican flags from friends he gained there by refusing to budge.

“I put the flag up as a token of respect and solidarity with the Mexican people,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

“I said the flag would fly as long as Donald Trump is president. Should he lose the election, the flag will come down.

“That is not a reflection on the Mexican people. It’s just no longer required. They won.”

Sean Connery

Positively shocking: Trump's boasts of help from Sean Connery fall apart

President claimed Bond actor helped him get planning permission for Scottish resort

Sean Connery, James Bond actor, dies aged 90

Martin Belam and Libby Brooks

Sun 1 Nov 2020
 

Connery in 1992. On Sunday Trump paid tribute to the actor, who has died aged 90. Photograph: Christian Eggers/AP

It was less licence to kill and more dramatic licence. Donald Trump’s claim that the late Sean Connery assisted him in getting planning applications passed in Scotland fell apart quickly on Sunday when the chair of the planning committee said the James Bond star was not involved.

In a series of tweets, two days prior to the US election, Trump paid tribute to Connery, saying he was “highly regarded and respected in Scotland and beyond”. It was announced on Saturday the James Bond actor had died aged 90.

But his claim that Connery stepped in and shouted “let him build the damn thing” in connection with a big development raised eyebrows in Scotland.

He tweeted that “everything went swimmingly” with his development plans after initially “having a very hard time getting approvals”.

In 2008 Connery is reported as saying of the project: “During tough economic times, this is a major vote of confidence in Scotland’s tourist industry and our ability to rise to the challenge. I look forward to seeing a new gem in the north-east that is good for Aberdeenshire and good for Scotland.”

But Martin Ford, the Aberdeenshire councillor who was chair of the planning committee that initially refused Trump’s application to build the resort, told the Guardian: “Mr Connery was not involved in the due process that led to the granting of planning permission for a golf resort at Menie. He did not submit a letter of representation to the council, appear at the planning hearing, or at the public local inquiry.”

Ford added: “Opinions offered in press articles are not material considerations in decisions on planning applications.”

Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond said: “Scotland and much of the world is mourning the loss of a great spirit. Sean Connery’s contribution and life’s work was immense, real and lasting and everyone with an ounce of class is reflecting upon just that today. Tributes are great from all sources but this is not a time for tweeting silly claims or indeed responding to them.”

David Milne, a near neighbour of the Trump golf course in Scotland, and the US president’s most vocal local critic, said the claim that Connery helped him land planning permission for his golf resort was “utter bollocks”.

Milne said Connery had never played the course, despite Trump’s invites.

The actor was offered the honour of becoming the first member of Trump’s golf resort at Menie, north of Aberdeen, with membership number 007, which the property mogul built after bulldozing a very rare dune habitat as well as overriding local planning rules.

Trump had said that he wanted the star to play the first shot on the course. But when the resort was opened two years later, Trump played first balls with former Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie instead.

The pair did know each other, however. Connery and Trump were photographed together at several events in New York, including the Johnnie Walker Dressed to Kilt fashion show in the early 2000s.

Where's the meat? UK's first vegan butchers launches


LONDON (Reuters) - In a corner of north London, a new gleaming butchers is preparing to open.

The only thing it lacks is meat.

To coincide with Sunday’s World Vegan Day, Britain’s first permanent vegan butcher, Rudy’s, is opening, set to sell meat-free versions of traditional products such as baycon, soysage and turk’y.

Demand for vegan products has surged in recent years in Britain, with increasing numbers of people cutting out animal-derived ingredients completely, while others reduce the amount of meat and dairy they consume each week.


“People understand what it is that we’re selling,” co-founder Matthew Foster told Reuters.

“It’s all designed to emulate meat. It tastes like meat, it’s got meat-like texture.”

Law firm EMW reported a 128% jump in new trademarks registered for vegan food in the UK last year, with both large corporates and small companies registering such trademarks as vegan ice cream and pastries.

The team behind the new butchers started out in 2017 with a vegan diner and are now looking to offer goods, including whole dinner kits to be made in the home.

The substitutes, set out in the brightly lit shop with white walls and sketches of animals on the walls, are made from soya and seitan.

The surge in demand for alternative food products has recently sparked a debate over whether restaurants and shops should be allowed to label products as “veggie burgers” or “vegan sausages” or whether it can confuse the consumer.

Lawmakers in the European Union ruled earlier in October that banning such terms, as advocated by farmers, would discourage consumers from shifting to more plant-based diets.

White House coronavirus adviser Atlas apologizes for Russian TV interview

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas apologized on Sunday for giving an interview to Russia’s Kremlin-backed television station RT, saying he was unaware the outlet was a registered foreign agent in the United States.



Atlas, a neuroradiologist and member of the White House coronavirus task force, appeared on the channel on Saturday and criticized coronavirus lockdowns measures, calling them an “epic failure” at stopping the virus’ spread.

“I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent,” Atlas wrote on Twitter. “I regret doing the interview and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of.

“I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to defend us,” Atlas said.

RT registered as a foreign agent three years ago. A January 2017 report from U.S. intelligence agencies said the television station, which broadcasts on cable in the United States, is “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine” and that it contributed to the Kremlin’s campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential election in favor of the winning candidate, Republican President Donald Trump.

After that report, the U.S. Department of Justice insisted that RT America comply with requirements under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

“The lockdowns ... will go down as an epic failure of public policy by people who refused to accept they were wrong,” Atlas told RT in the Saturday interview.


Public health experts in the United States have previously raised concerns that Atlas, who has no background in infectious diseases, is providing misleading or incorrect information on the pandemic to Trump.

Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious disease expert, said on Saturday that Atlas is the only pandemic adviser who Trump regularly sees.

“I have real problems with that guy,” Fauci told the Washington Post. “He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in.”

Twitter removes false coronavirus tweet by Trump's favourite health adviser
Scott Atlas tweeted: ‘Masks work? NO!’

Twitter bans ‘false or misleading content’ with potential to harm
Ed Pilkington in New York
Mon 19 Oct 2020 
 

The White House pandemic adviser Scott Atlas has no training in virology or epidemiology. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

Twitter has removed a tweet by Scott Atlas, a controversial scientist who has Donald Trump’s ear, in which he wrongly stated that masks fail to protect against coronavirus.



The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported that Atlas has scattered discord inside the White House, so infuriating Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator, that she complained to Vice-President Mike Pence, calling for Atlas to be removed.

The Post reported that at one meeting in the Oval Office, Atlas placed himself behind the Resolute Desk after Trump had left the room. The scientist, a senior fellow from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, denied the account.

On Sunday, Twitter took down the tweet in which Atlas said: “Masks work? NO.” The company said the post violated its policy on Covid-19 misinformation that prohibits “sharing false or misleading content which could lead to harm”.

In a stream of posts, Atlas falsely claimed that several US states and other countries had taken up widespread use of masks without evidence of any positive effect. He also incorrectly said that there were “many harms” to the practice.

Twitter’s move to block Atlas’s public comments is the latest controversy to hit since he joined the White House as a pandemic adviser in August.

A neuroradiologist, Atlas has no training in virology or epidemiology yet is understood to have become the key scientific influence on the president, eclipsing respected experts such as Anthony Fauci, the country’s top specialist in infectious diseases.

Atlas’s views on how to deal with the virus have raised alarm in scientific circles. He has repeatedly cast doubt on masks and social distancing, and suggested people could gain natural self-defenses against the disease even without a vaccine through “herd immunity”.

Shortly after his appointment to the White House, 78 of his former colleagues at Stanford medical school wrote an open letter in which they lamented that many of Atlas’s opinions “run counter to established science”. Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was recently overheard discussing Atlas on a phone call. “Everything he says is false,” Redfield said.

Coronavirus is back on the ascendant, across the US. Data compiled by Johns Hopkins records more than 8m confirmed cases, with almost 220,000 deaths.

Friday saw the daily number of confirmed cases exceed 70,000 for the first time since July, with almost 900 deaths. In a leaked report, the White House put 26 states in the “red zone” – indicating a dangerous level of new infections – including almost all states in the midwest.

The surge in cases spells political peril for Trump as he finalizes his push for re-election in two weeks’ time. His rival, former vice-president Joe Biden, has put criticism of Trump’s handling of the pandemic at the center of his campaign.

Despite the rising numbers, and despite his own recent illness from the disease, Trump has stuck to his line that the threat of the virus is overplayed. At a rally in Nevada on Sunday he repeated his false claim that the US was “rounding the turn”.

In North Carolina on Sunday, Biden said: “As my grandfather would say, ‘This guy’s gone around the bend if he thinks we’ve turned the corner.’ Things are getting worse, and he continues to lie to us about circumstances.”

Trump and Atlas have regularly been seen in public without wearing masks. Their behavior goes against the official advice of the administration’s own public health agency, the CDC, which recommends mask-wearing in public settings.

Masks are particularly important for preventing the spread of the virus from people who show no symptoms and may not know they are contagious. Face coverings are primarily useful in protecting other people, rather than the individuals wearing them.

The Latest: Mexico mourns doctors on Day of the Dead
By The Associated Press

A portrait of Jose Valencia, a male nurse who died from symptoms related to COVID-19, placed on a Day of the Dead altar made by his daughter at their home in Mexico City, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020. The weekend holiday isn't the same in a year so marked by death in a country where more than 90,000 people have died of COVID-19, many cremated rather than buried and with cemeteries forced to close. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

MEXICO CITY —- Diminutive figures skeletons in facemasks and medical caps are all too common on Mexico’s Day of the Dead altars this year.

More than 1,700 Mexican health workers are officially known to have died of COVID-19 and they’re being honored with three days of national mourning on these Days of the Dead.

One is Dr. Jose Luis Linares, who attended to patients at a private clinic in a poor neighborhood in Mexico City, usually charging about 30 pesos (roughly $1.50) a consultation.

“I told him, ‘Luis, don’t go to work.’ But he told me, ‘then who is going to see those poor people,’” said his widow, Dr. María del Rosario Martínez. She said he had taken precautions against the disease because of lungs damaged by an earlier illness.

Her Day of the Dead altar this year inlcudes — in addition to the usual marigolds and paper cutouts — little skeleton figures shown doing consultations or surgeries in honor of colleagues who have died.

Amnesty International said last month that Mexico had lost more medical professionals to the coronavirus than any other nation.

Supreme Court changes fuel moves to protect abortion access
By DAVID CRARY

This Oct. 23, 2020, photo provided by Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas shows the new Planned Parenthood health center in Lubbock, Texas. (Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas via The AP)


A vast swath of West Texas has been without an abortion clinic for more than six years. Planned Parenthood plans to change that with a health center it opened recently in Lubbock.

It’s a vivid example of how abortion-rights groups are striving to preserve nationwide access to the procedure even as a reconfigured Supreme Court — with the addition of conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett — may be open to new restrictions.

Planned Parenthood has made recent moves to serve more women in Missouri and Kentucky, and other groups are preparing to help women in other Republican-controlled states access abortion if bans are imposed.


“Abortion access in these states now faces its gravest ever threat,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s president. She said the new health center in Lubbock “is an example of our commitment to our patients to meet them where they are.”

The clinic opened on Oct. 23 in a one-story building that had been a medical office and was renovated after Planned Parenthood purchased it. To avoid protests and boycotts that have beset some previous expansion efforts, Planned Parenthood kept details, including the clinic’s location, secret until the opening was announced.

Planned Parenthood says the health center will start providing abortions — via surgery and medication — sometime next year. Meanwhile, it is offering other services, including cancer screenings, birth control and testing for sexually transmitted infections.

Planned Parenthood closed its previous clinic in Lubbock, a city of 255,000 people, in 2013 after the Texas Legislature slashed funding for family planning services and imposed tough restrictions on abortion clinics.

That law led to the closure of more than half the state’s 41 abortion clinics before the Supreme Court struck down key provisions in 2016. There were no clinics left providing abortion in a region of more than 1 million people stretching from Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle south to Lubbock and the oil patch cities of Odessa and Midland.

Women in Lubbock faced a 310-mile (500-kilometer) drive to the nearest abortion clinic in Fort Worth.

Anti-abortion activists have been mobilizing to prevent the return of abortion services to Lubbock — and are not giving up even with the new clinic’s opening.

“Lubbock must not surrender to the abortion industry,” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, a West Texas native who attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock and is now communications director for Texas Right to Life.

Her organization has backed a petition drive trying to persuade the City Council to pass an ordinance declaring Lubbock a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Abortion opponents hope that designation would lead to either enforcement efforts or lawsuits seeking to block abortion services.

Thus far, the City Council has declined to adopt the ordinance, but activists say they have enough signatures to place it on the ballot in a local referendum.

Texas is one of several red states where Planned Parenthood has sought to expand abortion access. Earlier this year, its health center in Louisville, Kentucky, began providing abortions after obtaining a license from the newly installed administration of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

For the previous four years, anti-abortion Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration refused to issue a license. The change doubled the number of abortion providers in Kentucky from one to two.

Dr. Kara Cadwallader, Planned Parenthood’s chief medical officer for Kentucky and Indiana, said the resumption of abortion services in Louisville had gone smoothly. Anti-abortion protesters routinely appear outside the building, she said, but they were a steady presence even when the center did not provide abortions.

She and her colleagues are bracing for a new wave of anti-abortion legislation from Kentucky’s Legislature, where the GOP holds enough seats to override possible vetoes from Beshear.

“We’ll once again be under siege,” Cadwallader said.

In October 2019, Planned Parenthood’s affiliate in St. Louis opened a large new health center in Fairview Heights, Illinois — about 17 miles (27 kilometers) from its St. Louis clinic. Illinois, where Democrats hold power, has not sought to curtail abortion, and the clinic was intended to provide an extra option for women from Missouri and other nearby Republican-governed states with multiple restrictions.

Missouri, for example, bars the use of telemedicine for abortion services, a policy that has sharply limited the number of medication abortions. Dr. Colleen McNicholas, Planned Parenthood’s chief medical officer for reproductive health services in the St. Louis region, has made clear that medication abortion by telemedicine is available in Illinois.

The Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, who represents many independent abortion providers as president of the National Abortion Federation, said one priority for her members is to make medication abortion more widely available. She also anticipates that it will become more difficult for women to obtain late-term abortions, increasing the need for funding programs that can help pay for travel to clinics that offer those procedures.

Laurie Bertram Roberts is executive director of one such program, the Alabama-based Yellowhammer Fund. She anticipates an increase in the number of low- and middle-income women who will need significant financial help — sometimes topping $10,000 — to travel to distant clinics if access is curtailed in Alabama.

Bertram Roberts also expects more women to resort to do-it-yourself abortions, now that it’s increasingly possible to receive abortion pill drugs by mail.

“We’re talking about a huge amount of people who can possibly do stuff at home safely,” she said. “We’re not going back to the days of back-alley abortions.”