Daily Archives: February 8, 2022

Latin America Nations Slam French Auction of Pre-Hispanic Artifacts

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Ambassadors from six Latin American countries on Tuesday denounced an upcoming auction of pre-Hispanic artifacts in France, reviving a longstanding grievance of the region.  The joint statement came a day after Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador denounced the practice as immoral after a recent major auction.  The Paris ambassadors of Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru and the Dominican Republic condemned “in the strongest terms” the sale of pre-Hispanic artifacts organized by auction houses in the coming days.  In their joint statement, they called for the auctions to be halted.  …

COVID-19 Researchers See Hope in Existing Drugs

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An international collaboration led by researchers in Canada and Brazil is applying innovative funding and testing methods to determine whether existing medications can provide cheaper and more effective treatments for COVID-19 and is encouraged by its initial results. Calling it the “TOGETHER Trial,” researchers predominantly in Brazil and Canada refer to their method as “adaptive platform clinical trial,” which permits several potential treatments to be tested simultaneously, reducing costs and the number of people who need to be tested. The researchers have also speeded up the search for effective COVID …

‘Power of the Dog’ Tops Oscar Nominations With 12; ‘Dune’ Nabs 10

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Jane Campion’s gothic western “The Power of the Dog” led nominations to the 94th Academy Awards, where streaming services more than ever before swept over Hollywood’s top honors. In nominations announced Tuesday, Campion’s film landed a leading 12 nominations, including nods for best picture, best director and all of its top actors: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Campion, a nominee for 1993′s “The Piano,” became the first woman to ever be nominated twice for best director. Last year, Chloé Zhao became just the second woman to …

Report Calls for New US Strategy for Opioids

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The U.S. needs a nimble, multipronged strategy and Cabinet-level leadership to counter its festering overdose epidemic, a bipartisan congressional commission advises. With vastly powerful synthetic drugs like fentanyl driving record overdose deaths, the scourge of opioids awaits after the COVID-19 pandemic finally recedes, a shift that public health experts expect in the months ahead. “This is one of our most pressing national security, law enforcement and public health challenges, and we must do more as a nation and a government to protect our most precious resource — American lives,” the …

World Must Work Together to Tackle Plastic Ocean Threat: WWF

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Paris — Plastic has infiltrated all parts of the ocean and is now found “in the smallest plankton up to the largest whale” wildlife group WWF said on Tuesday, calling for urgent efforts to create an international treaty on plastics. Tiny fragments of plastic have reached even the most remote and seemingly pristine regions of the planet: it peppers Arctic sea ice and has been found inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean, the Mariana Trench. There is no international agreement in place to address the problem, although …

Take a Sad Song and Make It Better: ‘Hey Jude’ NFT Fetches $77,000 

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 A virtual version of the handwritten notes for the song “Hey Jude” has been sold at auction in California for almost $77,000, the latest hammer price success for NFTs.    Originally entitled “Hey Jules,” the Fab Four’s hit was written in 1968 by Paul McCartney to comfort a young Julian Lennon during father John’s separation from his mother, Cynthia.      The NFT version of the notes was presented as an animation in which the words are progressively inscribed on the page and was accompanied by an audio commentary from Lennon junior.   “For …

What to Watch for When Oscar Nominations Are Announced Tuesday 

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It’s time again to celebrate Hollywood’s grandest ambitions and most daring risk takers. No, I’m not talking about Jackass Forever. On Tuesday morning, nominations for the 94th annual Academy Awards will be announced. Nominations are occurring a little later than usual. To make way for the Olympics, the Oscars are to be held March 27. And for the second straight year, the Oscars will unfold during the pandemic. The industrial complex of parties, galas and little gold statuettes known as “awards season” has again gone largely virtual, sapping the season …

‘Amazing’ New Beans Could Save Coffee From Climate Change

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Millions of people around the world enjoy a daily cup of coffee; however, their daily caffeine fix could be under threat because climate change is killing coffee plants, putting farmers’ livelihoods at risk. Inside the vast, steamy greenhouses at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the leafy suburbs of west London, Aaron Davis leads the research into coffee. “Arabica coffee, our preferred coffee, provides us with about 60% of the coffee that we drink globally. It’s a delicious coffee, it’s the one we love to drink. The other species …