sciencehabit writes: It took just one virus to cripple the world's economy and kill millions of people; yet virologists estimate that trillions of still-unknown viruses exist, many of which might be lethal or have the potential to spark the next pandemic. Now, they have a new -- and very long -- list of possible suspects to interrogate. By sifting through unprecedented amounts of existing genomic data, scientists have uncovered more than 100,000 novel viruses, including nine coronaviruses and more than 300 related to the hepatitis Delta virus, which can cause liver failure. "It's a foundational piece of work," says J. Rodney Brister, a bioinformatician at the National Center for Biotechnology Information's National Library of Medicine who was not involved in the new study. The work expands the number of known viruses that use RNA instead of DNA for their genes by an order of magnitude. It also "demonstrates our outrageous lack of knowledge about this group of organisms," says disease ecologist Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research group in New York City that is raising money to launch a global survey of viruses. The work will also help launch so-called petabyte genomics -- the analyses of previously unfathomable quantities of DNA and RNA data.

That wasn't exactly what computational biologist Artem Babaian had in mind when he was in between jobs in early 2020. Instead, he was simply curious about how many coronaviruses -- aside from the virus that had just launched the COVID-19 pandemic -- could be found in sequences in existing genomic databases. So, he and independent supercomputing expert Jeff Taylor scoured cloud-based genomic data that had been deposited to a global sequence database and uploaded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. As of now, the database contains 16 petabytes of archived sequences, which come from genetic surveys of everything from fugu fish to farm soils to the insides of human guts. (A database with a digital photo of every person in the United States would take up about the same amount of space.) The genomes of viruses infecting different organisms in these samples are also captured by sequencing, but they usually go undetected.

Friday the results of several large studies showed that getting a third Covid vaccine "booster shot" dramatically decreased infections from the Omicron variant.

And now the Times of Israel reports that the country's Health Ministry "said on Sunday that the fourth vaccine dose for those aged 60 and up offers a threefold protection against serious illness and twofold protection against infection in the current wave driven by the Omicron variant." The ministry said the figures are the result of initial analysis by experts from various leading academic and health institutions, and compares the fourth vaccine with those who received three doses at least four months ago.

The figures are based on 400,000 Israelis who received the fourth vaccine and 600,000 who received three doses, with the ministry stressing that the methodology is similar to previous papers the experts have published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine.

fahrbot-bot shares a report from Ars Technica: Space isn't easy on humans. Some aspects are avoidable -- the vacuum, of course, and the cold, as well as some of the radiation. Astronauts can also lose bone density, thanks to a lack of gravity. NASA has even created a fun acronym for the issues: RIDGE, which stands for space radiation, isolation and confinement, distance from Earth, gravity fields, and hostile and closed environments. New research adds to the worries by describing how being in space destroys your blood. Or rather, something about space -- and we don't know what just yet -- causes the human body to perform hemolysis at a higher rate than back on Earth.

This phenomenon, called space anemia, has been well-studied. It's part of a suite of problems that astronauts face when they come back to terra firma, which is how Guy Trudel -- one of the paper's authors and a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation at The Ottawa Hospital -- got involved. "[W]hen the astronauts return from space, they are very much like the patients we admit in rehab," he told Ars. Space anemia had been viewed as an adaptation to shifting fluids in the astronauts' upper bodies when they first arrive in space. They rapidly lose 10 percent of the liquid in their blood vessels, and it was expected that their bodies destroyed a matching 10 percent of red blood cells to get things back into balance. People also suspected that things went back to normal after 10 days. Trudel and his team found, however, that the hemolysis was a primary response to being in space. "Our results were a bit of a surprise," he said. [...]

Trudel's team isn't sure exactly why being in space would cause the human body to destroy blood cells at this faster rate. There are some potential culprits, however. Hemolysis can happen in four different parts of the body: the bone marrow (where red blood cells are made), the blood vessels, the liver, or the spleen. From this list, Trudel suspects that the bone marrow or the spleen are the most likely problem areas, and his team has plans to investigate the issue further in the future. "What causes the anemia is the hemolysis, but what causes the hemolysis is the next step," he said. It's also uncertain how long a person in space can continue to destroy 54 percent more red blood cells than their Earth-bound kin. "We don't have data beyond six months. There's a knowledge gap for longer missions, for one-year missions, or missions to the Moon or Mars or other bodies," he said.

The omicron-driven surge has sent COVID-19 hospitalizations skyrocketing across the U.S., reaching a new pandemic high this week with 145,982 patients hospitalized. From a report: This exceeds the previous high recorded in January last year, according to data tracked by the Department of Health and Human Services, from more than 5,400 hospitals in the country. Patients with COVID now fill about 30% of ICU beds in the nation and pediatric COVID hospitalizations are also at the highest rate of the pandemic. The record-breaking numbers are a sign of just how quickly the omicron variant has swept across the country. Overall, infections are also at record levels, with the U.S. averaging more than 700,000 new cases a day. And researchers and health workers warn that the crowded conditions could be leading to a rise in avoidable deaths, as clinicians struggle to provide the level of care they would normally. "Things are looking grim and substantially worse in many ways than even just a year ago," says Dr. Doug White, a critical care physician at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: A 57-year-old man with life-threatening heart disease has received a heart from a genetically modified pig, a groundbreaking procedure that offers hope to hundreds of thousands of patients with failing organs. It is the first successful transplant of a pig's heart into a human being. The eight-hour operation took place in Baltimore on Friday, and the patient, David Bennett Sr. of Maryland, was doing well on Monday, according to surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center. "It creates the pulse, it creates the pressure, it is his heart," said Dr. Bartley Griffith, the director of the cardiac transplant program at the medical center, who performed the operation. "It's working and it looks normal. We are thrilled, but we don't know what tomorrow will bring us. This has never been done before."

The heart transplant comes just months after surgeons in New York successfully attached the kidney of a genetically engineered pig to a brain-dead person. Researchers hope procedures like this will usher in a new era in medicine in the future when replacement organs are no longer in short supply for the more than half a million Americans who are waiting for kidneys and other organs. "This is a watershed event," said Dr. David Klassen, the chief medical officer of the United Network for Organ Sharing and a transplant physician. "Doors are starting to open that will lead, I believe, to major changes in how we treat organ failure." But he added that there were many hurdles to overcome before such a procedure could be broadly applied, noting that rejection of organs occurs even when a well-matched human donor kidney is transplanted.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Shortly after coronavirus vaccines were rolled out about a year ago, women started reporting erratic menstrual cycles after receiving the shots. Some said their periods were late. Others reported heavier bleeding than usual or painful bleeding. Some postmenopausal women who hadn't had a period in years even said they had menstruated again. A study published on Thursday found that women's menstrual cycles did indeed change following vaccination against the coronavirus (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The authors reported that women who were inoculated had slightly longer menstrual cycles after receiving the vaccine than those who were not vaccinated.

Their periods themselves, which came almost a day later on average, were not prolonged, however, and the effect was transient, with cycle lengths bouncing back to normal within one or two months. For example, someone with a 28-day menstrual cycle that starts with seven days of bleeding would still begin with a seven-day period, but the cycle would last 29 days. The cycle ends when the next period starts and would revert to 28 days within a month or two. The delay was more pronounced in women who received both vaccine doses during the same menstrual cycle. These women had their periods two days later than usual, the researchers found. [...] One serious drawback of the study, which focused on U.S. residents, is that the sample is not nationally representative and cannot be generalized to the population at large. The data were provided by a company called Natural Cycles that makes an app to track fertility. Its users are more likely to be white and college educated than the U.S. population overall; they are also thinner than the average American woman -- weight can affect menstruation -- and do not use hormonal contraception. "I want to make sure we dissuade people from those untrue myths out there about fertility effects," said Dr. Hugh Taylor, the chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale School of Medicine. "A cycle or two where periods are thrown off may be annoying, but it's not going to be harmful in a medical way."

With that said, postmenopausal women who experience vaginal bleeding or spotting, whether after vaccination or not, should be evaluated by a physician, says Dr. Taylor. It may be a sign they have a serious medical condition.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Weighing 80-100kg and sporting long straight horns, white spots on its face and large facial scent glands, the saola does not sound like an animal that would be hard to spot. But it was not until 1992 that this elusive creature was discovered, becoming the first large mammal new to science in more than 50 years. Nicknamed the "Asian unicorn," the saola continues to be elusive. They have never been seen by a biologist in the wild and have been camera-trapped only a handful of times. There are reports of villagers trying to keep them in captivity but they have died after a few weeks, probably due to the wrong diet. It was during a survey of wildlife in the remote Vu Quang nature reserve, a 212 square mile forested area of north central Vietnam, in 1992, that biologist Do Tuoc came across two skulls and a pair of trophy horns belonging to an unknown animal.

Twenty more specimens, including a complete skin, were subsequently collected and, in 1993, laboratory tests revealed the animal to be not only a new species, but an entirely new genus in the bovid family, which includes cattle, sheep, goats and antelopes. Initially named Vu Quang Ox, the animal was later called saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) -- meaning "spindle horns," the arms or posts (sao) of a spinning wheel (la) according to Lao-speaking ethnic groups in Laos and neighbouring Vietnam. The discovery was hailed as one of the most spectacular zoological discoveries of the 20th century but less than 30 years later the saola population is believed to have declined massively due to commercial wildlife poaching, which has exploded in Vietnam since 1994. Even though the saola is not directly targeted by poachers, intensive commercial snaring that supplies animals for use in traditional Asian medicine or as bushmeat serves as the primary threat.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: A new COVID-19 vaccine, developed by researchers from the Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, is being offered patent-free to vaccine manufacturers across the world. Human trials have shown the vaccine to be safe and effective, with India already authorizing its use as production ramps up to over 100 million doses per month. The vaccine has been named Corbevax and it is based on a traditional protein-based technology that has been safely used for decades. Like other COVID-19 vaccines, Corbevax focuses on the coronavirus spike protein, but instead of using mRNA to direct our cells to produce those spike proteins internally it delivers lab-grown spike proteins to the body. The researchers took the gene that codes for the spike protein and engineered yeast to produce it. These proteins are collected, purified, and combined with an adjuvant to enhance immune responses. This exact method has been used to produce the hepatitis B vaccine for years.

In late 2020 the US research team developing the vaccine joined forces with India-based pharma company Biological E to begin clinical trials and establish manufacturing capacity. Across 2021 those clinical trials included several thousand participants and ultimately found Corbevax to be safe and effective at generating robust immune responses to SARS-CoV-2. The trial data was compared to an already approved vaccine called Covishield (the Indian-made version of Astrazeneca's well-known COVID-19 vaccine). Corbevax generated significantly fewer adverse effects than Covishield and produced superior immune responses. Neutralizing antibody responses to Corbevax indicate the vaccine should be at least 80 percent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 from the Delta variant. Specific data against the Omicron variant is expected soon but it is hypothesized to be at least as effective as most currently available vaccines. Perhaps the most important feature of this new vaccine is the fact it has been developed as a patent-free product that can be easily manufactured by vaccine-producers around the world. The project has been described as "gift to the world" by researcher Peter Hotez. "India is the first country to issue emergency authorization to Corbevax and Biological E reportedly has 150 million doses ready to go, with production capacity set for 100 million doses per month from February," reports New Atlas.

Time reports on virtual doppelgangers — also known as "digital twins". (Alternate URL here.) Created by feeding video, images, blueprints or other data into advanced 3-D mapping software, digital twins are being used in medicine to replicate and study internal organs. They've propelled engineers to devise car and plane prototypes — including Air Force fighter jets — more quickly. They allow architects and urban planners to envision and then build skyscrapers and city blocks with clarity and precision. And this year, digital twins began to break into the mainstream of manufacturing and research. In April, chipmaker Nvidia launched a version of its Omniverse 3-D simulation engine that allows businesses to build 3-D renderings of their own — including digital twins. Amazon Web Services announced a competing service, the IoT TwinMaker, in November...

The need was always there. In the 1960s, NASA created physical replicas of spaceships and connected them to simulators so that if a crisis ensued on the actual vehicle hundreds of thousands of miles away, a team could workshop solutions on the ground. Dave Rhodes, the senior vice president of digital twins at Unity Technologies, a video-game and 3-D-platform company, says that digital-twin technology is only now being widely released because of several confluent factors, including the increased computing power of cloud-based systems, the spread of 5G networks, improvements in 3-D rendering and the remote work demands of COVID-19....

Digital-twin technology is being trialed across the medical landscape, for planning surgical procedures and exploring the heart risks of various drugs... Digital twins are also being used in other complex and potentially dangerous machines, from nuclear reactors in Idaho to wind turbines in Paris.... Digital twin humans are coming too: the NFL and Amazon Web Services have created a "digital athlete" that will run infinite scenarios to better understand and treat football injuries.... BMW could soon implement digital twins at all facilities.

Frank Bachmann, the plant director in Regensburg, says that the advantages of digital twins will only be fully realized when every factory is digitized in a standard way. "We need these processes of digital twins everywhere," he says.
The technology "raises questions about privacy and cybersecurity," Time warns. "Many of these digital twins are made possible by a multitude of sensors that track real-world data and movement.

"Workers at factories with digital twins may find their every movement followed; the hacker of a digital twin could gain frighteningly precise knowledge about a complex proprietary system."

A sugar additive used in several foods could have helped spread a seriously dangerous superbug around the US, according to a 2018 study. ScienceAlert reports: The finger of blame is pointed squarely at the sugar trehalose, found in foods such as nutrition bars and chewing gum. If the findings are confirmed, it's a stark warning that even apparently harmless additives have the potential to cause health issues when introduced to our food supply. In this case, trehalose is being linked with the rise of two strains of the bacterium Clostridium difficile, capable of causing diarrhea, colitis, organ failure, and even death. The swift rise of the antibiotic-resistant bug has become a huge problem for hospitals in recent years, and the timing matches up with the arrival of trehalose.

"In 2000, trehalose was approved as a food additive in the United States for a number of foods from sushi and vegetables to ice cream," said one of the researchers, Robert Britton from the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, back in January 2018. "About three years later the reports of outbreaks with these lineages started to increase. Other factors may also contribute, but we think that trehalose is a key trigger."

The C. difficile lineages Britton is referring to are RT027 and RT078. When the researchers analysed the genomes of these two strains, they found DNA sequences that enabled them to feed off low doses of trehalose sugar very efficiently. In fact, these particular bacteria need about 1,000 times less trehalose to live off than other varieties of C. difficile, thanks to their genetic make-up. [...] It's still not certain that trehalose has contributed to the rise of C. difficile, but the study results and the timing of its approval as an additive are pretty compelling. More research will now be needed to confirm the link. According to figures from the CDC, "C. difficile was responsible for half a million infections across the year and 29,000 deaths within the first 30 days of diagnosis," adds ScienceAlert.

The findings were published in the journal Nature.

The experimental process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in oceans could help limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, explain Romany Webb and Michael B. Gerrard, both of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. Overcoming challenges presented by this treatment will need coordination with all stakeholders, including research scientists, investors, and environmental groups, they say. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg Law: At last month's climate conference in Glasgow, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres declared that the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius was still alive, but "on life support." Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) -- the process of drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it on land or in the oceans -- could be part of the medicine needed to bring it back to life. But, like all experimental treatments, its use presents a range of challenges. Overcoming them will require a coordinated effort by a wide range of stakeholders, from research scientists and investors to policymakers and lawyers to environmental and community groups. So far, no CDR techniques have been deployed at a large scale, and many require significantly more research before that can happen.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences identifies over $1 billion worth of "priority research" that will be needed over the next 10 years to better assess the feasibility and impacts of key ocean CDR techniques. That includes $125 million for so-called "foundational research" on legal, policy, social science, and related issues. [...] On the legal side, there is significant uncertainty as to how different CDR techniques, particularly ocean-based techniques, will be regulated. Because the oceans form part of the global commons, ocean-based activities are subject to a large body of international law. But there is currently no comprehensive international legal framework specific to ocean CDR.

There are no U.S. federal laws dealing specifically with ocean CDR. Unless and until that changes, projects will end up being regulated under general environmental laws that were developed with other activities in mind, and so may be poorly suited to ocean CDR. We've documented some of the potential problems in two recent reports on the laws governing ocean alkalinization and seaweed cultivation for the purposes of CDR. As recognized in the National Academies report, developing a "clear and consistent legal framework for ocean CDR is essential to facilitate research and (if deemed appropriate) full-scale deployment, while also ensuring that projects are conducted in a safe and environmentally sound manner."It is vital that framework be developed with input from all stakeholders -- scientists, entrepreneurs, governments, NGOs, environmentalists, indigenous peoples, coastal communities, and other potentially impacted groups. Those same groups must continue to be engaged as projects are developed and deployed. [...] Further engagement and coordination with the full range of stakeholders are important to ensure safe and responsible CDR development and deployment. Without that, our hopes of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius may well be dead and buried.

With his narrow chin, small nose and curly hair he physically resembles his father, said radiologist Sahar Saleem. Perhaps surprisingly for someone who lived about 3,500 years ago, he also has strikingly good teeth. From a report: Saleem is talking about the mummified body of the pharaoh Amenhotep I, a warrior king who has been something of an enigma in that he is one of the few royal mummies not to be unwrapped in modern times. Until now, that is. Saleem, a professor of radiology at the faculty of medicine at Cairo University, is part of a team which has successfully unwrapped Amenhotep I not physically but digitally. The results, using 3D computed tomography (CT) scanning technology, are unprecedented and fascinating. They provide details about his appearance and the lavishness of the jewellery he was buried with. "We show that Amenhotep I was approximately 35 years old when he died," Saleem said. âoeHe was approximately 169cm tall [5ft 6in], circumcised, and had good teeth. Within his wrappings, he wore 30 amulets and a unique golden girdle with gold beads. "Amenhotep I seems to have physically resembled his father ... he had a narrow chin, a small narrow nose, curly hair, and mildly protruding upper teeth."

When The Matrix Resurrections premiered in San Francisco, the city's mayor "celebrated the appearance of her fair city in the film and cheered the film's economic contributions to the region," reports SFGate. "But there's a problem of aesthetics at play here... It is undeniably a dystopian hellscape where police rule the city and technology looms over all..." In the first section of the movie, the metaphor of the Matrix mirrors that of the tech industry depicted in the film. Tech is stereotypical here — lots of T-shirt-wearing men playing ping-pong and talking about how to design the next great video game. The most annoying character in the film, Jude (Andrew Caldwell), is a proxy for all annoying tech bros...
Meanwhile Politico writes that the original 1999 film The Matrix actually "changed politics, almost entirely by mistake," and calls the new Matrix Resurections "a sophisticated self-critique of the culture that swallowed it." In the past two decades, the idea of a "red pill" has taken on a life of its own in American culture, most prominently at first in an infamous misogynist subreddit, and then more broadly as a symbol of any kind of political awakening, almost always on the right. The idea has proliferated wildly throughout politics, and especially the darkest ideological corners of the internet, in which to be "red-pilled" means to realize that American society has been hopelessly debased by liberals, requiring a total rethink of its premises... Hugo Weaving, who memorably portrayed the original films' villain, lamented in a 2020 interview how people "will take something that they think is cool and they will repurpose it to fit themselves when the original intention or meaning of that thing was quite the opposite...." [T]he Wachowskis have been largely silent about the "meaning" of their creation — a movie franchise that not only became a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon, but predicted the cultural tenor of politics in the digital age with an eerie, oracular accuracy. We know they got it right, but what did they think about it?

Wednesday saw the release of "The Matrix Resurrections," a long-delayed sequel from one of the original writer/directors (Lana directed; Lilly sat it out) — and also an answer to that question. As a movie, it's everything its predecessors was, an impressive feat of visual-effects artistry, action choreography and original sci-fi worldbuilding. But even more, it's a two hour and 27-minute-long piece of cultural criticism. The film interrogates, to a jarringly specific degree, not just its own iconography, but how American culture has evolved around and bastardized it over the past two decades. "The Matrix Resurrections" is both wildly successful popcorn entertainment and a window into a long-misunderstood creative mind. But in refitting its entire premise to the social media age, it illustrates just how much the contours of American society have changed in the intervening decades....

The original "Matrix" was deeply of its time. Reeves' Neo a was a quintessential late 1990s corporate drone, captive to the professional ennui also depicted in films of the era like "Fight Club" and "Office Space." Its modern incarnation is a cry of protest against something else: society's willingness to trade individual agency for the neurological reward pellets of the Online. Visual metaphors abound, with Reeves disoriented by a procession of mirrors that serve as gateways to another world, another possible truth. "Your brain is hooked on this shit the Matrix has been feeding you for years," one character tells him. "They don't know you like I do.

"I know exactly what you need...."
The movie is streaming now on HBOMax for subscribers in their $15 ad-free tier — but, like, Dune, only during its 31-day theatrical run.

FFP stands for "filtering face piece." It is a European standard for mask efficiency, ranging from one, the lowest grade, to three, the highest. The Economist adds: FFP2 masks filter at least 94% of all aerosols, including airborne viruses such as covid-19. America's N95 and China's KN95 masks provide similar levels of protection. These disposable masks have several layers of different fabrics, including a polypropylene filter, made by "melt-blowing" polymer to create miniscule, irregular fibre patterns that can trap the smallest airborne particles. A study published in December by the Max Planck Institute, a German research organisation, found well-fitting FFP2 masks reduced the risk of infection with covid-19 to 0.1%. Cloth or medical masks, on the other hand, merely disrupt the airflow of the speaker and trap the largest aerosol particles in their woven material. Their efficacy varies wildly depending on the design and fabric used: tight-fitting, multi-layered masks made from dense materials are much more effective than single-layer linen masks. One study in the Journal of Education and Health Promotion found surgical masks were three times more effective at preventing inhalation of aerosols than homemade cloth ones. Another study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, a journal, compared different cloth masks and found that their efficacy at containing viral particles ranged from 26% to 79%.

Necklaces and accessories claiming to "protect" people from 5G mobile networks have been found to be radioactive. The BBC reports: The Dutch authority for nuclear safety and radiation protection (ANVS) issued a warning about ten products it found gave off harmful ionizing radiation. It urged people not to use the products, which could cause harm with long-term wear. [...] The products identified included an "Energy Armor" sleeping mask, bracelet and necklace. A bracelet for children, branded Magnetix Wellness, was also found to be emitting radiation.

"Don't wear it any more, put it away safely and wait for the return instructions," the ANVS said in a statement. "The sellers in the Netherlands known to the ANVS have been told that the sale is prohibited and must be stopped immediately, and that they must inform their customers about this." The ANVS has published a full list of the products it identified as radioactive on its website. Further reading: Worried About 5G's Health Effects? Don't Be

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The parent company of Facebook and Instagram has banned seven firms it says used its platforms to spy on some 50,000 unsuspecting targets, including human rights activists, government critics, celebrities, journalists and ordinary people in more than 100 countries. These "surveillance-for-hire" companies were linked to around 1,500 accounts on Facebook and Instagram that were used to collect information on people and try to trick them into handing over sensitive personal information so that the firms could install spyware on their devices, according to a report released on Thursday by Meta, formerly known as Facebook.

"Each of these actors rely on networks of fake accounts on our platforms that are used to deceive users and mislead them," Nathaniel Gleicher, Meta's head of security policy, told NPR. Some firms also used Meta's WhatsApp to infect targets' phones with malware. The surveillance was also carried out over other internet services, from email and text messages to Twitter and YouTube. The goal, Gleicher said, is to "spy on people or snoop on them without them knowing about it." Gleicher's team spent months investigating surveillance activity before taking action against the seven companies for violating Meta's community standards and terms of service. Four of the firms are based in Israel, and the other three in China, India, and North Macedonia.

They include Black Cube, an Israel-based intelligence group reportedly used by Harvey Weinstein to dig up dirt on his accusers and journalists. Meta said Black Cube created fake accounts posing as graduate students, human rights workers and film and TV producers and tried to set up phone calls and get email addresses for a wide range of targets, from Palestinian activists to people working in medicine, mining and nonprofit organizations to figures involved in Russia's tech, finance, real estate and media sectors. [...] Another Israeli firm called Bluehawk CI tried to trick government opponents in the United Arab Emirates by pretending to be reporters for Fox News and Italy's La Stampa, Meta said. Meta also took down accounts connected to "an unidentified entity in China" that, Meta says, made tools used by Chinese law enforcement to spy on minority groups in Xinjiang, Myanmar and Hong Kong. "Meta has banned the companies from its platforms, removed the accounts it linked to them, and sent them cease-and-desist warnings," adds NPR. "It is notifying around 50,000 people whom it believes were targeted, and shared its findings with security researchers, other tech companies and policymakers."

There is at present "no evidence" that the Omicron coronavirus variant is any less severe than the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London, which also highlighted the elevated risk of reinfection posed by Omicron and the need for booster shots to combat it. From a report: The research, based on UK infection data, casts doubt on the hopes of some experts that a change in the virulence of the new variant would ease the pressure on health systems despite Omicron's high levels of infectiousness. "The study finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection," said the research team, led by Professor Neil Ferguson, an infectious disease modeller and government science adviser. However, they cautioned that hospitalisation data "remains very limited at this time." The study said data suggested "at most, limited changes in severity compared with Delta." Early reports from medics in South Africa's Gauteng province, the centre of the Omicron outbreak there, had raised hopes that the variant's mutations might have led to a change in the virus' biology causing it to be less severe.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A panel of outside advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday voted to recommend Americans choose to receive one of the other two authorized COVID-19 vaccines over Johnson & Johnson's shot, due to rare but sometimes fatal cases of blood clotting. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization voted unanimously to make the recommendation in favor of the vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech over the J&J shot. The regulator still needs to sign off on the guidance.

Fewer Americans have received the J&J shot than the other two vaccines by a significant margin. Out of more than 200 million fully vaccinated people in the United States, around 16 million received J&J's vaccine, according to CDC data. [...] Members of the panel also said J&J's vaccine is less effective in preventing COVID-19 than the other two authorized vaccines. In a presentation to the committee, a leading J&J vaccine scientist said the vaccine generates a strong and long-lasting immune response with just a single shot.

The U.K. reported a record number of new daily Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, with 78,610 in the last 24 hours. From a report: The figure was an increase from 59,610 the day before, and it surpasses the previous high of 68,053 cases reported on Jan. 8. It underlines the dramatic surge in infections that the country is seeing ahead of the Christmas holiday period with the omicron variant expected to quickly become the dominant strain. One senior British health chief has warned that there could be "staggering" numbers in the next few days. Long queues have been seen outside vaccination centers in many U.K. cities and towns with the government putting its booster program on overdrive to try to get a third vaccine shot to as many people as possible. There were 165 new Covid deaths in the U.K. on Wednesday, according to government data. While deaths remain low currently and initial reports suggest that the omicron variant might not be any more severe than other Covid strains, health experts have repeatedly warned that the sheer number of infections could lead to mounting fatalities and an overwhelmed health-care system.

Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: At least one person in the UK has died with the Omicron coronavirus variant, the prime minister has said. Boris Johnson said the new variant was also resulting in hospital admissions, and the "best thing" people could do was get their booster jab. Health Secretary Sajid Javid told MPs Omicron now represented 20% of cases in England. The PM has set a new target for all adults in England to be offered a booster by the end of the month. Mr Johnson said on Monday that people needed to recognize "the sheer pace at which [Omicron] accelerates through the population" and that they should set aside the idea that Omicron was a milder variant.

The UK recorded 54,661 new coronavirus cases on Monday, as well as 38 deaths within 28 days of a positive test. There are 4,713 confirmed cases of the Omicron variant but Mr Javid said the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) estimated the current number of daily infections was around 200,000. Omicron has risen to more than 44% of cases in London and is expected to become the dominant variant in the city in the next 48 hours, he said.