Many months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the coronavirus is still spreading uncontrolled through the U.S. Public health authorities including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) tell us to remain six feet apart, wash our hands, disinfect frequently touched surfaces, and wear masks. But compliance with these measures—especially masks—is mixed, and daily we hear of cases where people do not know how they were infected. We hear about superspreading events, where one person infects many, happening in crowded bars and family gatherings, but not at outdoor demonstrations. Beaches in cities like Chicago are closed, but gyms and indoor dining at restaurants have reopened. It is no wonder the public is confused. It is critical to have a clear physical description of the ways in which COVID-19 is transmitted, so that individuals and institutions are able to visualize it and will understand how to protect themselves. Contrary to public health messaging, I, together with many other scientists, believe that a substantial share of COVID-19 cases are the result of transmission through aerosols. The evidence in favor of aerosols is stronger than that for any other pathway, and officials need to be more aggressive in expressing this reality if we want to get the pandemic under control. There are three possible ways the virus is transmitted, of which two have been emphasized by the WHO and the CDC. The first is through “fomites,” objects that are contaminated with the virus (which could include someone else’s skin). Early in the pandemic, concern over fomite transmission drove some people to bleach groceries and packages. The CDC now says fomites are a possible means of transmission, but likely not one that is major. For example, an intensive handwashing program in the UK led to only a 16% reduction in transmission. Significantly, other viruses that, like SARS-CoV-2 (the one that causes COVID-19), have a lipid envelope, do not survive long on human hands. That means someone would need to touch their eyes, nostrils, or mouth a short time after touching a contaminated surface in order to contract the novel coronavirus.

From one presidential election to the next, the battleground states that make — or break — the election remain largely the same. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t gradual (and sometimes, not so gradual) shifts underway. We zoomed in on how 16 battleground states have voted relative to the country as a whole since 2000 — or how much more Republican or Democratic they are relative to the nation1 — and we found an electoral map undergoing a series of changes, some steady and others abrupt.

Multiple Lab Zero members publicly announced they've resigned from the Skullgirls and Indivisible studio, accusing the owner of inappropriate behaviour.

A protest marcher was shot in Bedford County Monday night as a group of activists was walking from Milwaukee to Washington for a Martin Luther King Jr. event and to bring awareness to racial injustice. In a video posted early Tuesday morning to Facebook, marcher Tory Lowe said the group had parked to organize before they walked up an incline when a man emerged from a house and started shooting at them with a rifle, firing at least seven shots.

A soldier assigned to Fort Hood who was missing was probably found dead on Tuesday, his family’s attorney said, adding to the toll of soldiers at the Texas installation who have vanished or died in recent months. Support our journalism. Subscribe today. Sgt. Elder Fernandes, 23, was last seen Aug. 17 by members of his unit at a home in Killeen, outside the sprawling base, the Army said. His family later arrived in Texas from Massachusetts to aid in the search. Fernandes previously reported an “incident of abusive sexual contact” that is being investigated, said Lt. Col. Chris Brautigam, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division. Army officials said Fernandes may have left on his own accord after speaking with soldiers in his unit. Fernandes’s family said the circumstances were suspicious. Fernandes was hospitalized at Fort Hood from Aug. 11 to Aug. 17, his family said, the last day he was seen, and they grew concerned when he did not make a phone call he promised to his mother. His blue BMW was found at his unit parking lot, his family said.

Aaron Coleman, a 19-year-old Democratic candidate in a local race, admitted to engaging in bullying, blackmail, and revenge porn when he was younger.

A couple whose remains were found in a suitcase by a group of TikTokers on a Randonautica adventure was allegedly killed by their landlord.

Trump has certainly cultivated his party’s authoritarian elements more energetically — and delegitimized his opposition more shamelessly — than any other 2016 presidential candidate was liable to do. But regardless, the basic fact remains that the GOP is — and has been — dominated by a movement that sees the Democratic Party as an internal enemy of the United States and any election that a Democratic president wins as illegitimate by definition. In the aftermath of a landslide victory, Biden might be able to secure the cooperation of a couple idiosyncratic Republican senators (Mitt Romney might be invincible enough in Utah to chart his own course; Lisa Murkowski already knows that she can win elections in Alaska without the GOP’s institutional support). But the bulk of the congressional GOP is bound to resist Biden’s agenda as though the salvation of the Republic — and realization of God’s will — depend on it.

Hippopotamus ivory seems to have replaced elephant ivory trade in Karnataka following extensive crackdown by foresters.

Pushing the theory on to bigger platforms proved to be the key to Qanon’s spread — and the originators’ financial gain.

To understand the citadel of law enforcement, we must reckon with its unions—which resemble fraternities more than labor unions. The man stands before them, head slightly bowed. He is gangly, awkward, against the backdrop of the officers’ firm march. They are hurried and he is not. Everything about them is fast, crisp, matte. We watch the push. We watch him fall. We watch them pass his body. Swirling around him, an eddy of thick black fabric. When the blood comes, it drifts languidly across the concrete. When night falls, this is the story they tell: “During that skirmish involving protestors, one person was injured when he tripped & fell.” But when the video appears, the world will see the police shove Martin Gugino to the ground, fracturing his skull. The email from John Evans, president of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, came the next day. Evans forcefully defended the police officers implicated in the assault. “After witnessing first hand how these 2 officers were treated,” Evans wrote, “I can tell you, they tried to fuck over these guys like I have never seen in my 54 years.” He signed off the email by writing, “Fraternally, John Evans – PBA.” There are people who will tell you that people like John Evans lead a union. But this is not a union. This is something else.

It's been two weeks since Nashville police announced two men who threw the infamous East Nashville "Fashion House" party would face charges for violating emergency health orders during the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, one of them has already pleaded guilty in the case that drew swift public criticism after photos and videos surfaced showing hundreds of guests partying in close quarters without masks or proper social distancing. On Tuesday, Davidson County Sheriff's Office jail records showed the other man, Christopher "Shi" Eubank, had not been arrested. According to Eubank's Instagram account, he's out of the country on a beach.

A Russian nuclear energy agency released formerly classified footage of the Soviet Union’s 1961 Tsar Bomba test.

One of the speakers for the second night of the Republican National Convention was pulled from the program after The Daily Beast surfaced a tweet from her, earlier in the day, urging her followers to investigate a supposed Jewish plot to enslave the world. “Do yourself a favor and read this thread,” Mary Ann Mendoza, who is a member of the Trump campaign’s advisory board, tweeted to her more than 40,000 followers Tuesday morning. Mendoza, an “angel mom,” was scheduled to speak Tuesday about her son’s 2014 death at the hands of a drunk driver who was in the country illegally. But a Republican source familiar with the programming said the speech had been cancelled amid uproar over her tweet. Hours earlier, Mendoza had linked to a lengthy thread from a QAnon conspiracy theorist that laid out a fevered, anti-Semitic view of the world. In its telling, the Rothschilds—a famous Jewish banking family from Germany—created a plot to terrorize non-Jewish “goyim,” with purported details of their scheme that included plans to “make the goyim destroy each other” and “rob the goyim of their landed properties.”

In a win for amne­sia, Con­gress advanced a bipar­ti­san bill on Tues­day dereg­u­lat­ing the bank­ing indus­try, just a decade after Wall Street trig­gered a finan­cial cri­sis that caused mil­lions to lose their jobs and their homes. S.2155, known as the Crapo bill both for its co-author, Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee chair Mike Crapo (R‑Idaho), and its gen­er­al qual­i­ty, was pitched as a nar­row mea­sure to pro­vide relief for salt-of-the-earth com­mu­ni­ty banks and cred­it unions. But any­one mak­ing that claim is either mis­in­formed or try­ing to spin the truth. In real­i­ty, the Crapo bill will dereg­u­late 25 of the 38 largest banks in Amer­i­ca, weak­en cap­i­tal require­ments that force banks to pay for their own mis­takes, free some lenders from dis­clos­ing data used to detect lend­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion and large­ly hand­cuff the Fed­er­al Reserve’s abil­i­ty to apply spe­cial reg­u­la­tions to the biggest banks, to name just a few pro­vi­sions. Plus, the changes have already begun to con­sol­i­date the bank­ing sec­tor, with the very com­mu­ni­ty banks the bill was intend­ed to help being scooped up by larg­er rivals. Com­bined with efforts inside the agen­cies that reg­u­late banks to weak­en rules, it rep­re­sents a pen­du­lum shift away from safe­ty and toward anoth­er finan­cial cri­sis.

Since last fall, Minnesota State Sen. Roger Chamberlain, R-Lino Lakes, has taken a keen interest in a book called Bronze Age Mindset. The self-published tome has captivated many on the American right while trafficking in neo-fascism, racism and misogyny. The writer is an anonymous internet figure who goes by the pen name “Bronze Age Pervert” and has 45,000 Twitter followers. The book argues that equality and human rights are unnatural; that most people form a vast, inferior class who will only find “solace and meaning” through “submission” — and that the proper rulers of the world are white men. A passage claims, “Life appears at its peak not in the grass hut village ruled by nutso mammies” — using a racial slur to refer to Black women — “but in the military state.” Chamberlain, the influential chairman of the upper chamber’s Taxes Committee, tweeted at the author, Bronze Age Pervert, on April 30, thanking him for an introduction to Bach’s “Fugue in G-minor;” likely a reference to Pervert’s podcast, which uses classical compositions as bumper music. (The podcast is even more overtly white supremacist.)

“Statistically, I look at our prison population and I see that there is a disproportionately high number of African-American males in our prison population for crimes, particularly for violent crimes. So statistically, when a police officer sees a brown man like my Jude walking down the road — as opposed to my white nerdy kids, my white nerdy men  walking down the road — because of the statistics that he knows in his head, that these police officers know in their head, they’re going to know that statistically my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.” “So the fact that in his head, he would be more careful around my brown son than my white son, that doesn’t actually make me angry. That makes that police officer smart, because of statistics.”

If you’ve been tested for COVID-19 then you’ve probably experienced the unpleasantness of a nasal swab. Someone takes a long-handled cotton swab and sticks it up your nose — way up your nose — until it reaches the back of the mucus-cave that is your nasal cavity. Upon arrival they give the swab a good twirl to collect your secretions and beat a merciful retreat. I can say from personal experience that it’s a uniquely unpleasant sensation. It’s something that just feels wrong, like the opposite of scratching an itch. That’s perhaps why I was so unsettled by the sight of this autonomous nasal swab robot developed by Taiwanese medtech startup Brain Navi. Of all the entities I don’t want sticking cotton swabs up my nose, an industrial robot arm is pretty high on the list, right between an excitable toddler and a trained mountain gorilla. A nasal swab requires trust.

Steve Bannon may be facing years behind bars but at least he can do his next court appearance in his swim trunks. The right-wing flame-thrower got permission to appear via video next Monday for a Manhattan hearing on charges that he scammed donors who gave millions to a charity claiming to build a stretch of a wall along the border with Mexico. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres cited the coronavirus pandemic in a ruling permitting President Trump’s fired top political adviser and three co-defendants to skip the in-person appearance. Bannon, 66, was busted last week on a multi-million dollar yacht owned by a Chinese billionaire where he has lived for the last few months.

On the first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention, Mark and Patty McCloskey—a St. Louis, Missouri couple who became well-known after brandishing firearms at racial justice protesters—championed President Donald Trump as a defender of "law and order" while labeling the Democrats as a lawless radical mob. "Whether it's defunding the police, ending cash bail so criminals can be released back out on the streets the same day to riot again, or encouraging anarchy on our streets," Mark McCloskey said, "it seems as if Democrats no longer view the government's job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens." He added that "radicals" who marched outside of his home also want to "walk the halls of Congress," stating, "This is Joe Biden's party. These are the people who will be in charge."