What is lurking in the form of off-balance sheet VIEs today at some of the megabanks on Wall Street is just as opaque and dangerous (if not more so) than it was in 2008. JPMorgan Chase’s 10-K (Annual Report) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (page 202) shows it has $1.498 trillion in off-balance sheet exposures as of year-end 2023. This is the same bank whose Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, is bullying his regulators to drop their demand that his bank hold 25 percent more capital. - Wallstreet On Parade
What does it take to win at the role of television game show host? The most successful of them are charming and likable, yet reserved. They exude just enough personality, but not too much. They offer a smooth, subtle affability, greasing the wheels of these sometimes-clunky productions. - The Curious Charisma of Game Show Hosts
Poland ‘ready’ to host nuclear weapons, Polish president says
UK's Sunak to announce Ukraine aid during visit to Poland
What if fashion could actually save the planet?
Europe likes to present itself to the world as a near-perfect democratic club, a guiding beacon for the world. However, while the practice of electoral democracy is, in some respects, more advanced here than in other parts of the world, its institutional foundations remain no less fragile and incomplete. The challenge is not only to defend transparency in Kyiv and challenge Ukrainian oligarchs’ political stranglehold on elections and the media; but also to reduce the power of French, German, Italian, Polish or Maltese oligarchs, and to promote new, more democratic, pluralist and egalitarian forms of political participation throughout the EU – protected from the powers of money and private interests. - Should Ukraine join the EU?
You don’t have to think about flying, your spinal cord just takes over.
Common antibiotic may be helpful in fighting respiratory viral infections: In their study, the researchers found that mice treated intranasally with neomycin showed a robust ISG line of defense against both SARS-CoV-2 and a highly virulent strain of influenza A virus. The researchers also found that an intranasal treatment of neomycin strongly mitigated contact transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in hamsters. In healthy humans, intranasal application of Neosporin (containing neomycin) also initiated a strong expression of ISGs in a subset of volunteers, the researchers said. - PNAS
“It is imperative to remain less interested in who or what we imagine ourselves to be than in what we can do for one another, both in today’s emergency conditions and in the grimmer circumstances that surely await us.” - Paul Gilroy
German police arrested the aide of a top European lawmaker working for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party over accusations he spied for China. - Politico
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY: The pressures on our employers and funders from legislation, insurers and lawyers has meant that there is an irresistible urge to issue, on an annual basis, yet more demands upon the people working in the fields. If like me, you have ploughed a conscientious furrow, respecting compliantly for years the edicts that are issued, you will be rewarded by receiving a fresh set of requests. There will be several more forms and reports, training modules and policies that you have to comply with this year, generated by an increasing number of staff who are employed to do just this. This is doubly so for those of us who are clinicians as well as scientists.
Soviet Joke: “Life made me a satirist. It was unavoidable. I wanted to be a realist, writing about what I saw. Almost like journalism. But when I published my work, which I thought was really true-to-life, they said, 'You're writing satire.' I wasn't, it was just life that was so absurd.” - Voinovich said in a 1987 interview with the Washington Post
H5N1, one of the many viruses that cause bird flu, had already killed at least 24,000 South American sea lions along the continent’s coasts in less than a year. Now it had come for elephant seals.Dr. Uhart called it “an image from hell.” In the weeks that followed, she and a colleague — protected head to toe with gloves, gowns and masks, and periodically dousing themselves with bleach — carefully documented the devastation. Team members stood atop the nearby cliffs, assessing the toll with drones. - NYT