Berkeley — Global land-use changes — including forest fragmentation, agricultural expansion and concentrated livestock production — are creating “hot spots” favorable for bats that carry coronaviruses and where conditions are ripe for the diseases to jump from bats to humans, finds an analysis published this week by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the…
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If you haven’t yet mastered the name of the latest coronavirus variant to set nations on edge — B.1.617.2, as evolutionary biologists call it — then fear not: The World Health Organization has proposed a solution. The group said on Monday that it had devised a less technical, and more easily pronounceable, system for naming…
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“I think my days are getting a little bit numbered of doing nudity,” she said. “I’m just not that comfortable doing it anymore. It’s not even really an age thing, actually. There comes a point where people are going to go, ‘Oh, here she goes again.’” She jokes that it’s not fair to camera operators…
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For weeks, thousands of people have crowded the streets of Colombia, protesting inequality, rising poverty and police violence. President Iván Duque has deployed the country’s military and police forces, and more than 40 people have died. On April 28, during a demonstration in Bogotá, three young dancers confronted their fear of violence there through the…
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For a few glorious weeks, Zou Xiaoqi, a single mother in Shanghai, felt accepted by her government. After giving birth in 2017, Ms. Zou, a financial worker, went to court to challenge Shanghai’s policy of giving maternity benefits to married women only. She had little success, losing a lawsuit and two appeals. Then, earlier this…
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Good morning. Here’s Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on Memorial Day, from an 1884 address he gave in Keene, N.H., “in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life.” It’s worth recalling before anyone heads out into a yard or park today to grill with friends, a…
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In other cases, detectives might surreptitiously collect the DNA of a suspect’s relative by testing an object that the relative discarded in the trash. Maryland’s new law states that when police officers test the DNA of “third parties” — people other than the suspect — they must get consent in writing first, unless a judge…
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People have been metal detecting since 1881, when Alexander Graham Bell invented a device to find the bullet lodged in President James Garfield. But it took several more decades for recreational metal detectors — devices that resemble “sort of a skillet on the end of a pole,” as one newspaper put it in 1927 —…
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On February 20, 1973, Lance Loud earned a place in musical history that, at the time, nearly stopped his career cold. That night, he appeared with his band, Loud!, on “The Dick Cavett Show” as part of an evening devoted to “An American Family,” the PBS program credited as TV’s first reality show. The cinéma…
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A pool can be soothing long before you wade into its waters. Even viewed from a distance, pools can evoke a sense of stillness, a sense of calm. But often the most visually harmonious elements of pools remain hidden to us — until we look at them from a new perspective. In 2018, after purchasing…
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