The nuclear weapon being developed by the Biden administration that could be24 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 would have devastating consequences if dropped on Russia, according to reports.
An analysis by Newsweek found that such a bomb exploding over Moscow could cause “significant devastation” and kill more than 300,000 people.
“Anything within roughly a half-mile radius from the bomb’s detonation site would be vaporized by a fireball, while heavy damage would demolish buildings and likely kill everyone else within a mile,” the news outlet reported.
Journalists used a visual representation created by Nukemap, an online tool developed by science historian Alex Wellerstein to assess possible damage if the weapon were to be used over the Russian capital.
The bomb, known as the B61-13, could have a maximum yield of up to 340 kilotons of TNT.
The one dropped on Hiroshima had a blast yield of 15 kilotons.
Nukemap, an online tool, assesses the potential damage of a powerful nuclear bomb if it were dropped over Moscow. The B61-13 could result in 300,000 dead with a maximum yield of up to 340 kilotons of TNT.MAPBOX./NUKEMAP/ALEX WELLERSTEIN
President Joe Biden’s administration is developing a new weapon that could be 24 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.AP
The B61-13 bomb could release a vaporized fireball and result in heavy damage to buildings and hundreds of thousands of casualties if dropped on Moscow.Getty Images
The bomb, which was announced last week by the Department of Defense, is a version of the B61 gravity bomb developed in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War.
“The B61-13 would be deliverable by modern aircraft, strengthening deterrence of adversaries and assurance of allies and partners by providing the President with additional options against certain harder and large-area military targets,” said a statement from the Department of Defense. “It would replace some of the B61-7s in the current nuclear stockpile and have a yield similar to the B61-7, which is higher than that of the B61-12.”
Arab leaders on Saturday urged an immediate ceasefire in Israel's military offensive in Gaza, pressing U.S. Secretary of Stateto convince Israel, but the top U.S. diplomat said such a halt right now would only allow Palestinian militant group Hamas to regroup and attack Israel again.
In a rare public disagreement at a news conference in Amman, foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, standing alongside Blinken, repeatedly pushed for a cessation of hostilities, saying the death of thousands of civilians could not be justified as self-defense.
They also refused to discuss in-depth what comes next for Gaza, when and if Hamas is eradicated, saying the immediate focus should be on the effort to establish a cessation of hostilities.
Blinken is on his second trip to the region since Israel and Hamas went to war on Oct. 7, when the Islamist militant Palestinian group raided Israel from Gaza, in a rampage Israel says killed 1,400 people, with more than 240 others taken hostage.
Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 9,250 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since then. The Israeli army has struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground assault, stirring global alarm at humanitarian conditions in the enclave. Food is scarce and medical services are collapsing.
The growing number of civilian deaths in Gaza has intensified international calls for a ceasefire but Washington, like Israel, has so far dismissed them, even though it has sought to persuade Israel to accept localized pauses - an idea rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he met Blinken on Friday.
"A ceasefire now would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7," Blinken said. "No nation, none of us would accept that ... So it is important to reaffirm Israel's right and its obligation to defend itself."
Blinken earlier met with Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers as well as Palestinian representatives in Amman. The Jordanian Foreign Ministry said the meeting would emphasize the Arab stance calling for an immediate ceasefire, delivering humanitarian aid and ways of ending "the dangerous deterioration that threatens the security of the region."
"The international community's responsibility always is to seek the cessation of hostilities, not promote the continuance of violence," Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said at the same press conference.
"I think we need to get our priorities straight," Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said. "Right now we have to make sure that this war stops," he added.
Washington has been speaking with Israel, Arab states and international organizations on the future of Gaza but both Shoukry and Safadi appeared reluctant to discuss openly those conversations to ensure the focus remains on the need for a ceasefire.
"What happens next - how can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left," after this war, Safadi said.
Arab states are also concerned by the risk of the conflict spreading into the region. Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi'ite militias backed by Iran have both launched attacks on Israel since Oct. 7, while Tehran-backed Iraqi Shi'ite militias have been firing on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, stressed the urgent need for a ceasefire in Gaza during a meeting with Blinken in Jordan on Saturday, Mikati's office said. Mikati also said "Israeli aggression" in southern Lebanon must stop.
HUMANITARIAN PAUSES
After his meeting with Blinken on Friday in Israel, Netanyahu said Israel refused a temporary ceasefire that did not include the release of hostages.
A senior State Department official said Blinken's talks with Netanyahu and his war cabinet about humanitarian pauses on Friday mirrored an earlier push last month for access for humanitarian goods into Gaza.
In that case, Israel initially refused but eventually relented, and more than 100 aid trucks per day are now crossing into the strip, the official said. U.S. officials say 500-600 trucks per day are needed to meet the need in Gaza.
Now the U.S. is asking Israel to agree to temporary and location-specific pauses in its attacks to allow aid to be distributed inside Gaza, but Israel is concerned Hamas will use agreed pauses to regroup and resupply.
U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues David Satterfield told reporters travelling with Blinken that Israel's concerns were understandable, but that assurances that Israel will not target specific places or routes were a "strategic imperative" to get aid to those who need it.
Greene’s first measure, also centered on Tlaib’s comments critical of the Israeli government, failed in a House vote this week after 23 Republicans sided with all Democrats to shelve the attempt.
In her pledge to censure Tlaib, Greene specifically included comments Tlaib made Saturday calling for “peaceful coexistence” between Palestinians and Israelis.
“From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate,” Tlaib said on X, formerly Twitter. “My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”
Greene described those comments as “calls for the genocide of our great friend and ally Israel.”
“They censured Adam Schiff so they should be able to vote to censure her,” she said. “Terrorist Tlaib should be expelled but let’s see if we can at least censure her.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was censured in June over comments critical of former President Trump. That effort, just like Greene’s effort now, was denounced by Democrats as political theater.
Earlier Saturday, Tlaib went after Biden for his administration’s continued support for the Israeli war effort in Gaza.
The Biden administration has strongly backed Israel in its conflict against Hamas, including pledging billions in aid for the country. In recent days, the administration has called for a “humanitarian pause” in the war in order to assist Gaza civilians.
“Mr. President, the American people are not with you on this one,” Tlaib said. “We will remember in 2024.”
This week California Governor Gavin Newsom blatantly lied about his record on Covid-19.
“I’m not consumed by what we did wrong,”Newsom said to Fox Los Angeles’ Elex Michaelson.
“I’m consumed a little bit more by what we did right… There’s no large state that outperformed California, one of the top performing states, in terms of health, wealth, and education.”
Newsom went on to say that California’s per capita Covid mortality was “substantially lower than places like Texas and Florida,” that the state’s economy fared better than that of other states, and that we saw less learning loss than Florida. All these statements are misleading at best. Newsom’s claims about California’s economy have already been debunked, and in age-adjusted Covid mortality, as many have pointed out, California and Florida fared about the same. What’s more, cumulative age-adjusted all-cause excess deaths have been higher in California than Florida since early 2020.
As for why schools were closed for so long, Newsom said it was because he gave school districts “local control.” Evidently, Newsom wants to claim both that he is not responsible for his own school policies, and that these policies were effective. Yet both of these claims are completely untrue, and Newsom’s failure on schools is a scandal of colossal proportions.
In 2020, Newsom’s Department of Health created color coded tiers that effectively prevented California schools from reopening. In 2021, statewide guidelines continued to shape restrictions. These guidelines were based on pseudoscience like a six foot rule that created a major barrier to reopening and was not proven to prevent Covid transmission.
While allowing private and charter schools to open and sending his own kids to in-person private school, Newsom never challenged the California teacher’s union to push for full public reopening. Only in March 2021, when the state was facing a lawsuit, and after basically every other state had reopened, did Newsom call for public schools to resume limited in-person classes.
To this day, Newsom insists that school closures and the state’s catastrophic learning loss were no big deal. Florida, he told Michaelson, “had more learning loss in every single category… These are facts.” But are they really?
Newsom appears to be relying on a single 2022 test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), to make this assertion, despite a mountain of evidence that contradicts it. Only a small sample of students in the country take the NAEP. In contrast, all students in grades 3 through 8 and 11 take California’s official state test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC).
While the 2022 NAEP, which only about 4,000 kids in the state took, made it appear that California’s learning loss was not so bad, the dismally low SBAC scores from 2022 showed that school closures had likely wiped out years of educational progress. This disparity strongly suggests there may have been a significant sampling bias in the NAEP, which is probable given that California’s chronic absence rate tripled statewide in the 2021-2022 school year.
Although the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) touted its supposed success on the NAEP, the district’s test results were essentially manipulated. In 2019, high-performing charter schools did not participate in LAUSD’s test, but in 2022 they did. Additionally, demographic changes between 2019 and 2022 may have been a factor, since the district’s enrollment fell by an alarming 10%.
Newsom and other California officials are cherry-picking the data and intentionally neglecting to analyze and address the complete picture of student learning loss. To avoid political repercussions, they are deliberately ignoring the majority of testing results as well as the manystudies which show that remote instruction had a severe impact on learning.
Andrew Dean Ho, psychometrician and professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, reviewed California’s test results as an expert witness in an ongoing lawsuit against the state.
Wrote Ho in his testimony, “In my review of transcripts from depositions of state officials, I find numerous responses that indicate to me a lack of awareness of or interest in data that could enable accurate estimates of academic learning loss.”
The state has abandoned its duty to assess all relevant data and may be concealing it.
“Data currently exist in state repositories to answer questions about the magnitude of academic learning loss for jurisdictions and subgroups in the state of California, untapped,” wrote Ho.
Ho’s revealing testimony is corroborated by the fact that the Department of Education threatened to muzzle and retaliate against California researchers who planned to testify against the state.
As Newsom increasingly seems to be pursuing presidential ambitions, his Covid mistakes should come under greater scrutiny, especially as he remains intent on never admitting to them.
In Newsom’s view, the only reason he’s had any criticism at all is because hindsight is 20/20.
“We should acknowledge at the time we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” he told Michaelson.
“And we’re experts, we’re geniuses in hindsight.”
But California’s education failure is not just about 2020 and 2021 - it’s about the state’s refusal to examine the learning loss data to this day,and Newsom’s clear choice to prioritize his own political ambitions over his accountability to the children and families of his state.
A pair of new studies published this week about long COVID have shed more light on the sometimes-disabling condition that affects millions of people in the U.S.
Long COVID is the persistence of a range of symptoms of COVID-19 for months after the initial infection. Scientists worldwide have been working to understand the wide-ranging condition, from risk factors to causes to potential treatments.
In the first study, 31 adults underwent lumbar puncture, also called a spinal tap, and blood draws to look for changes in their immune systems and also to look for changes in the nerve cells that could affect transmission of signals to the brain.
Among the participants, 25 people had neurocognitive symptoms of long COVID, such as memory loss or attention problems. Six participants had fully recovered from COVID, and 17 people had never had COVID.
Those who had COVID were diagnosed between March 2020 and May 2021. Their fluid samples were drawn at least three months after their first symptoms.
The results were published Tuesday in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Study results showed that long COVID does not appear to be linked to the SARS-CoV-2 virus invading the brain or causing active brain damage.
According to a summary of the study from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, where the researchers work, “there were no significant differences between the groups when analyzing blood and cerebrospinal fluid for immune activation or brain injury markers. The findings thus suggest that post-COVID condition is not the result of ongoing infection, immune activation, or brain damage.”
In the second study, Norwegian researchers compared the likelihood of having 17 different long COVID symptoms based on whether or not a person had been infected with COVID. The analysis included 53,846 people who were diagnosed with COVID between February 2020 and February 2021, as well as more than 485,000 people who were not infected. Most people had not been vaccinated against COVID-19 during the time of the study.
The results were published Thursday in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases. Study results showed that people who had COVID were more than twice as likely to experience shortness of breath or fatigue. They were also more likely to experience memory loss or headache compared to people who never had COVID. Researchers only looked at symptoms that occurred at least three months after a COVID diagnosis.
They also found that hospitalization increased the risk for experiencing long COVID symptoms of shortness of breath, fatigue, and memory loss.
The authors noted that a limitation of their study was that, often, not all symptoms reported during a visit with a general practice medical provider are recorded in Norway, which could have affected the results.
Sources:
The Journal of Infectious Diseases: "COVID-19 Recovery: Consistent Absence of Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarker Abnormalities in Patients With Neurocognitive Post-COVID Complications."
University of Gothenburg: "Post-COVID condition is not linked to ongoing infection or active brain damage."
BMC Infectious Diseases: "Prevalence and predictors of post-COVID-19 symptoms in general practice - a registry-based nationwide study."
CIDRAP: "Study finds no signs of ongoing infection, brain damage in long-COVID patients."
The American Cancer Society has updated its screening guidelines for lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer-specific deaths in the United States and the largest driver of potential years of life lost from cancer.
The 2023 screening guidance, aimed principally at reducing lung cancer mortality in asymptomatic but high-risk, tobacco-exposed individuals, expands the age eligibility and lowers both the former smoking history and the years since quitting threshold for screening with low-dose CT (LDCT).
It is based on the most recent evidence on the efficacy and effectiveness of screening and lung cancer risk in persons who formerly smoked, wrote the ACS's Guideline Development Group led by Robert A. Smith, PhD, senior vice president of early cancer detection science. The new guidelines, which replace the 2013 statement, appear in CA: A Cancer Journal for Physicians.
The primary evidence source for the update was a systematic review of LDCT lung cancer screening conducted for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and published in 2021.
The new guideline continues a trend of expanding eligibility for lung cancer screening, which has had low uptake, to prevent more deaths. "Recent studies have shown that extending the age for persons who smoked and formerly smoked, eliminating the 'years since quitting' requirement, and lowering the pack-per-year recommendation could make a real difference in saving lives," Dr. Smith said. "The relative risk of developing lung cancer in people who have smoked most of their life compared to people who never smoked is very high — about 70 times the risk." Although lung cancer is the third most common malignancy in the United States, it accounts for more deaths than colorectal, breast, prostate, and cervical cancers combined.
The recommendation for annual LDCT for at-risk persons remains unchanged from 2013.
Among the 2023 eligibility changes:
Age: Expanded to 50-80 years from 55-74 years.
Smoking status: Changed to current or previous smoker from current smoker or smoker who quit within past 15 years (number of years since quitting no longer a criterion to start or stop screening). Dr. Smith noted that both the 2013 guidelines and other groups' updated recommendations retained the eligibility cutoff of 15 years since smoking cessation. "But had their risk declined to a level that just did not justify continuing screening?" he asked. "There wasn't an answer to that question, so we needed to look carefully at the absolute risk of lung cancer in persons who formerly smoked compared with people who currently smoked and people who never smoked."
Smoking history: Reduced to 20 or more pack-years (average of 20 cigarettes a day) versus 30 or more pack-years.
Exclusions: Expanded to health conditions that may increase harm or hinder further evaluation, surgery, or treatment; comorbidities limiting life expectancy to fewer than 5 years; unwillingness to accept treatment for screen‐detected cancer, which was changed from 2013's life‐limiting comorbid conditions, metallic implants or devices in the chest or back, home oxygen supplementation.
In addition, decision-making should be a shared process with a health professional providing the patient with information on the benefits, limitations, and harms of LDCT screening, as well as prescreening advice on smoking cessation and the offer of assistive counseling and pharmocotherapy.
"Overall, lung cancer screening remains one of the least used early cancer detection modalities in clinical practice. The new guidance opens up lung cancer screening to all former smokers regardless of time of cessation," said internist William E. Golden, MD, MACP, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock. "This may promote greater uptake in concert with greater availability of low-radiation CT scanning."
While agreeing the expanded criteria will enfranchise nearly 5 million current and former U.S. smokers for screening and may reduce deaths, internist Aarati D. Didwania, MD, MMSCI, MACP, a professor of medicine and medical education at Northwestern University, Chicago, warned that increasing actual uptake may be an uphill battle. "The practical part of the equation is seeing that the scans get done. There is often a lag between a recommendation of a yearly test and getting insurance coverage for it, and many disadvantaged people face barriers." Then there's the knowledge gap. "Patients and doctors have to know what the new guidelines are and who has access," she said.
Reaching the target population in rural areas is particularly challenging with the greater distances to imaging centers. Another barrier is that most electronic health records do not identify eligible patients based on smoking and pack‐year history.
In Dr. Didwania's view, professional medical societies have an important role to play in educating their members, and through them, patients. "Disseminating information about the new recommendations is the first step and would be incredibly helpful."
A brief history of lung cancer screening
1950s: By mid-20th century, the causal association between tobacco exposure and lung cancer became clear and by the late 1950s attempts were made to develop a lung cancer screening strategy for high‐risk individuals, commonly with the combination of sputum cytology and chest x-ray.
1970s: The ACS recommended annual testing for current or former smokers with chest x-ray (and sometimes sputum cytology).
1980: The ACS withdrew the above recommendation for regular radiographic screening after randomized controlled trials failed to yield convincing evidence that such screening saved lives.
2013: After the National Lung Screening Trial found three annual LDCT screenings were associated with a 20% relative mortality reduction, compared with annual chest x-ray, the ACS issued a recommendation for annual screening with LDCT: in persons 55-74 years with a pack‐year history of 30 or more who currently smoke or formerly smoked but had not exceeded 15 years since quitting and had no life-limiting morbidity.
Future mortality
Although tobacco controls are expected to reduce age‐adjusted lung cancer mortality in the United States by 79% from 2015 to 2065, 4.4 million lung cancer deaths are projected to occur in this period, the authors stated. "A large fraction of these deaths can be prevented if we embrace the urgent challenge to improve our ability to identify the population at risk and apply our knowledge to achieve high rates of participation in regular [lung cancer screening]."
The study was funded by the American Cancer Society Guideline Development Group and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The authors disclosed no relevant competing interests. Dr. Golden and Dr. Didwania had no relevant conflicts of interest to declare with regard to their comments.
Anew report provides fresh evidence that infamous January 6 provocateur Ray Epps may have been an FBI plant.
In the first of a two-part series, “Truth in Media” host Lara Logan spoke with Anthime Gionet, also known as “Baked Alaska,” a right-wing influencer formerly associated with the “alt right.” Video footage from January 5, 2021 and earlier indicate that Epps appeared to be particularly interested in Gionet, who was later sentenced to two months in prison for his participation in the riot at the US Capitol.
Gionet (Baked Alaska) was one of several people who filmed Epps on the evening of January 5, 2021 outside BLM Plaza as he told Trump supporters “we need to go into the Capitol!” At first, Gionet said he was amused by Epps’ exhortation to breach the Capitol, and yelled ‘let’s go!’ in response, but after he saw him repeat the line several times to different groups that night, he became convinced the “boomer” was an FBI plant and was up to no good.
Gionet is the one who started the “Fed! Fed! Fed!” chant that went viral on social media.
“I’m someone who creates funny content so I just like to agree with everyone and if someone’s saying something crazy, a lot of times, I’ll just agree—say yeah, yeah,” Gionet said, explaining that he does it to encourage a subject to keep talking.
But the activist said he felt “weirded out” by Epps and quickly moved on to another group.
“I’m like, I’m getting away from this creep, he’s weirding me out,” Gionet said.
“I’m getting weird vibes—something’s off.”
Gionet told Logan that everyone else who heard Epps talking about going into the Capitol were also taken aback.
“I go to another group way far away from him, he follows me, and that’s when he begins instructing the crowd,” Gionet said. That’s when Epps was caught on tape again saying “we need to go into the Capitol.”
“Right when he said that, something clicked in my head,” Gionet said.
“It was like, whoa! This is scripted because he said the same exact line word for word three times and that’s not natural.”
Gionet said that it seemed very odd that he kept going around to all the different little groups and instructing them on what to do on January 6.
“Maybe the first time, he’s being silly or saying something crazy, but when he said it the third time word for word, I knew there’s a strong possibility this guy’s a fed. I started that chant, and guess what? The whole crowd joined in with me—within seconds!”
Gionet told Logan that that viral moment felt spiritual to him at the time.
“That was the spirit moving. That was God saying ‘somethings up here. Watch out, there’s something going on.’ And that’s what I felt in my heart as a believer, truly,” he said.
Shortly before midnight, Epps took a conciliatory tone with Gionet, telling him they he also despises Black Lives Matter and antifa.
“I stood ’em down myself with three Army vets in Queen Creek, Arizona,” Epps said.
“That’s where I live!” Gionet exclaimed. “Are you my neighbor?!”
After more friendly banter, Epps said ”we’re not here to fight man. He then leaned in and whispered “we’re here to storm the Capitol,” and added: “I’m not kidding.”
Logan noted that Epps’ words echoed the official narrative the next day—that Trump supporters “stormed the Capitol” before “it was broadcast across the nation.”
Gionet, aka Baked Alaska, said that because he had been banned from every social media platform, it was virtually impossible for him to tell his story, and so for the first year after J6, nobody heard a word about Epps.
“I thought it was a big story but I was banned off Twitter, I was banned off YouTube, I was banned off all social media so I couldn’t get the story out,” he explained.
He acknowledged that he had no proof that Epps was a “fed,” but remains convinced that he was.
Former Washington DC FBI Field Office chief Steven D’Antuono has acknowledged in sworn testimony that the Bureau had so many informants on the ground on January 6 that they lost track and had to order an audit to account for all of them.
Federal prosecutors finally filed a criminal charge against Epps in September.
The former Marine and Oath Keepers member was charged with a single misdemeanor count of disruptive or disorderly conduct in a restricted area in U.S. District Court in Washington in September, despite his lead role in orchestrating chaos on that day. The charge carries a maximum punishment of a year in prison.
In part two of Truth in Media’s report on Ray Epps, Logan interviewed a friend of Epps. The woman said that “something happened after he left the Oath Keepers until January 6. What, I don’t know but those are two different people.”
Part two, which will air next week, also features a video clip of Epps photographing Gionet without his knowledge during a Trump rally in Phoenix.
