It was a sight not seen since 1623!

On a sultry summer night in July 2019, the MV Manukai was arriving at the port of Shanghai, near the mouth of the Huangpu River. This busy tributary of the Yangtze winds through the city and includes the Bund, a historic waterfront area and tourist hot spot. Shanghai would be the American container ship’s last…

NEW YORK -- A Delta flight out of New York City was halted after a Florida couple traveling with a Great Dane puppy fled the aircraft with the pet using an emergency slide, an airline spokesperson and authorities said Tuesday. The incident involving Antonio Murdock and Brianna Greco occurred on Monday as the jet was on a runway leaving for a flight from LaGuardia Airport to Atlanta, said the spokesperson, Morgan Durrant. Witnesses reported seeing a panicky Murdock force open a cabin door and jump out using the emergency chute leading to the runway. He was quickly followed by Greco with the puppy in tow.

Microplastic particles have been revealed in the placentas of unborn babies for the first time, which the researchers said was “a matter of great concern”. The health impact of microplastics in the body is as yet unknown. But the scientists said they could carry chemicals that could cause long-term damage or upset the foetus’s developing immune system. The particles are likely to have been consumed or breathed in by the mothers.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned 15 people, including Republicans who were strong and early supporters, a 2016 campaign official ensnared in the Russia probe and former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad. Trump also commuted the sentences of five others. While it is not unusual for presidents to grant clemency on their way out the door, Trump has made clear that he has no qualms about intervening in the cases of friends and allies whom he believes have been treated unfairly. Despite speculation, though, not on the list were members of Trump’s own family, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and the president himself. The pardons included former Republican Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York. Trump also commuted the sentence of former Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas and pardoned a current state representative, Phil Lyman of Utah, who led an ATV protest through restricted native lands... In the group announced Tuesday night were four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more a dozen Iraqi civilians dead and caused an international uproar over the use of private security guards in a war zone. Supporters of Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, the former contractors at Blackwater Worldwide, had lobbied for pardons, arguing that the men had been excessively punished in an investigation and prosecution they said was tainted by problems and withheld exculpatory evidence. All four were serving lengthy prison sentences.

Section 230 has outlived its usefulness

Facebook and Google agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising, according to an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 states against Google last week. The suit, as filed, cites internal company documents that were heavily redacted. The Wall Street Journal reviewed part of a recent draft version of the suit without redactions, which elaborated on findings and allegations in the court documents. Ten Republican attorneys general, led by Texas, are alleging that the two companies cut a deal in September 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google’s online advertising tools in return for special treatment when it used them. Google used language from “Star Wars” as a code name for the deal, according to the lawsuit, which redacted the actual name. The draft version of the suit says it was known as “Jedi Blue.” The lawsuit itself said Google and Facebook were aware that their agreement could trigger antitrust investigations and discussed how to deal with them, in a passage that is followed by significant redactions. The draft version spells out some of the contract’s provisions, which state that the companies will “cooperate and assist each other in responding to any Antitrust Action” and “promptly and fully inform the Other Party of any Governmental Communication Related to the Agreement.” In the companies’ contract, “the word [REDACTED] is mentioned no fewer than 20 times,” the lawsuit says. The unredacted draft fills in the word: Antitrust. A Google spokesperson said such agreements over antitrust threats are extremely common... According to the draft version, an internal Facebook document described the deal as “relatively cheap” when compared with direct competition, while a Google presentation said if the company couldn’t “avoid competing with” Facebook, it would collaborate to “build a moat.” The redacted lawsuit filed last week doesn’t include those quotes.

The New York Times tells us that the president-elect’s move to undercut progressives “gave Democrats confidence to pull back on their demands” and surrender to McConnell.

“I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation, and to send me a suitable bill, or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package. And maybe that administration will be me,” he said.

Powell was at the White House as recently as Monday.

“I was grateful that when I came out as a lesbian, I didn’t have to step away from the sport I loved,” said U.S. Women’s National Soccer team member and amicus brief signer Lori Lindsey. “I gained the tremendous gift of being fully myself and showing other LGBTQ+ athletes that there’s a place for them in sports.” ... “There is no place in any sport for discrimination of any kind. I am proud to support all transgender athletes who simply want the access and opportunity to compete in the sport they love,” wrote Billie Jean King. “The global athletic community grows stronger when we welcome and champion all athletes – including LGBTQI+ athletes.”

Voat, an “anti-censorship” alternative social network that’s been described as the “alt-right Reddit,” is scheduled to shut down on December 25th. Voat co-founder Justin Chastain announced the pending closure yesterday, saying the site had run out of money after an investor defaulted on their contract in March. “I personally decided to keep Voat up until after the US election of 2020. I’ve been paying the costs out of pocket but now I’m out of money,” Chastain wrote. Voat was founded in 2014 and hosted Reddit-like forums with minimal moderation. It grew rapidly after Reddit added an anti-harassment policy and banned five subreddits that it said violated the rules, including its infamous r/fatpeoplehate forum. The site set a model for other “censorship-free” alternatives to mainstream web platforms, a category that grew to include Gab, Parler, and the defunct crowdfunding site Hatreon.

Advisers persuaded the president on Thursday not to announce support for significantly bigger stimulus payments.

Trump described the groundbreaking legislation as “a disgrace” and suggesting he would not immediately sign off on aid for millions of Americans.

Powerful hospital and physician groups that tied up Congress for nearly two years on how to end “surprise” medical bills saw their efforts pay off with the compromise lawmakers inserted in the giant year-end spending package. The health care providers — including private-equity backed physician staffing groups — chipped away at leading legislative proposals through high-profile lobbying and tens of millions of dollars worth of attack ads while promoting a solution that would submit their payment feuds with insurers to independent mediators. The compromise in the year-end package settles what was supposed to be health care’s “easy fix” in the 116th Congress and ensures patients will no longer have to pay huge bills from out-of-network specialists, air ambulances and other clinicians. But it also underscores the clout of corporate medicine at a time when the health system and safety net programs are reeling from the effects of the pandemic.

Working in the belly of a beast.

Tucked away in the more than 5,000-page long Covid-19 stimulus bill is a new law that severely punishes streamers that pirate large amounts of copyrighted content.

The website asked authors including Rebecca Makkai and Courtney Maum to submit deliberately awful sex scenes, because 2020.

In a year this bruising, this unrelenting grim, do we really need a list of vicious pans? Doesn’t this exercise in festive schadenfreude, now in its forth year, demean us all? Can’t we …

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday he will keep his pledge to roll back the Trump administration’s restrictive asylum policies, but at a slower pace than he initially promised to avoid winding up with “2 million people on our border.” Biden said immigration is one of the urgent matters he will tackle starting next month as the nation emerges from “one of the toughest years we’ve ever faced,” ticking off a list that includes the coronavirus, the economy, racial justice protests and “historic and punishing wildfires and storms.” Biden had promised to end on “day one” a program that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mainly from Central America, to await their U.S. immigration hearings in Mexico. But the president-elect said that creating a system to process thousands of asylum seekers will take months because the government needs funding to put staffers such as “asylum judges” in place. “The timeline is to do it so that we, in fact, make it better not worse,” Biden said, speaking from his home state of Delaware to deliver remarks ahead of the holiday. “I will do what I said. It’s going to take, not day one, it’s going to take probably the next six months to put that in place.”