Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

Brittney Griner's Fears

The WNBA star Brittney Griner was convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced to nine years in Russian prison after customs agents found vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage in February.

Griner's team has appealed the decision, but if she's not included in a prisoner swap between the US and Russia, the WNBA All-Star will likely serve her sentence at a penal colony.

As her detention has dragged on, Griner has grown increasingly fearful of the "miserable or inhumane conditions" she could face if and when her appeal is denied, her lawyer told The New York Times.

Here's what we know about Russian penal colonies and what Griner's experience could look like.

Russian penal colonies are prison-labor camps that are essentially the remnants of the Soviet Union's infamous Gulag system.  READ MORE...

Deja Vu

China and Taiwan

China has held its biggest-ever show of military force in the air and seas around Taiwan, including the firing of ballistic missiles.


The military exercises followed a visit to the island by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.


China sees self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be under Beijing's control.


President Xi Jinping has said "reunification" with Taiwan "must be fulfilled" - and has not ruled out the possible use of force to achieve this.


But Taiwan sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland, with its own constitution and democratically-elected leaders.

Where is Taiwan?


Taiwan is an island, roughly 100 miles from the coast of south east China.  READ MORE...

Flautist

 

Panda in Pool

 

ALL SOLAR for Five Hours

Greece ran entirely on renewable energy for five hours last Friday for the first time ever - using solar, wind and hydroelectric power.

It reached a record high of 3,106MWh (megawatt hours) of electricity at 9am local time (7am UK time), according to IPTO, the country's independent power transmission operator.

IPTO said: "For the first time in the history of the Greek electricity system, the demand was covered 100% from renewable energy sources."

Greece aims to more than double its green energy capacity as it hopes renewables will account for at least 70% of its energy mix by 2030.  READ MORE...

Running Horse

AI Changes Art

Art is subjective. It encompasses many points of view and can withstand just as many or more definitions. As a term, it's ever-evolving, and the boundaries for what can be deemed art continue to get pushed.

Artificial intelligence is not generally associated with art, and yet, AI has made its mark on the art industry. The question is, would that endure, or is AI art a fluke? Will AI carve itself a space in art, or will it be quickly forgotten as a failed experiment?

Art is such a broad term that you get stumped trying to define it clearly. What is art? It's visual, performative, and so much more. It can be music and dance, sculptures and literary works. Photography is a form of art, and so is architecture. There's also cinematic art. Art is more than an old painting in a museum.

Modern art is excellent at pushing the boundaries of what is considered art. Anything can be art as long as people perceive it as such. A banana duct-taped to a wall is considered modern art. The performative act of eating that banana, thus destroying the artwork, is also considered modern art.  READ MORE...

Sharks

Causes of Inflation

WASHINGTON (AP) — What keeps driving inflation so high? The answer, it seems, is nearly everything.

Supply chain snarls and parts shortages inflated the cost of factory goods when the economy rocketed out of the pandemic recession two years ago. Then it was a surge in consumer spending fueled by federal stimulus checks. Then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted gas and food supplies and sent those prices skyward.

Since March, the Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates to try to cool the price spikes. So far, there’s little sign of progress. Thursday’s report on consumer prices in September came in hotter than expected even as some previously big drivers of inflation — gas prices, used cars — fell for a third straight month.

Consumer prices, excluding volatile food and energy costs, skyrocketed 6.6% from a year ago — the fastest such pace in four decades. Overall inflation did decline a touch, mostly because of cheaper gas. But costlier food, medical care and housing pointed to a widening of price pressures across the economy.  READ MORE...

Argentina

 

Fast Cat

 

The Democratic Party's Privilege Problem

If you ever get the feeling that Democratic campaign staffers are a lot whiter and better-credentialed than the party’s voters, you’re right. And Swarthmore College sociologist Daniel Laurison now has data to back it up.

According to Laurison’s database of more than 4,500 Republican and Democratic staffers who worked on presidential primary and general election campaigns from 2004 to 2020, 68% of Democratic staffers are white, compared to 60% of Democratic voters.

The differences become even more stark when we turn to education. Over 90% of Democratic staffers have college degrees, compared to two-thirds of U.S. adults who have graduated college. And 40% of Democratic staffers went to elite schools, such as those in the Ivy League, compared to just 4% of the overall population.  READ MORE...

Valhalla

Space Dust Rings

A new image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable cosmic sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars. Just 5,300 light-years from Earth, the star duo are collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140. 

Each ring was created when the two stars came close together and their stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) collided so forcefully that some of the gas was compressed into dust. The stars' orbits bring them together about once every eight years, and forms a half-shell of dust that looks like a ring from our perspective. 

Like a cosmic fingerprint, the 17 rings reveal more than a century of stellar interactions—and the "fingerprint" belonging to Wolf-Rayet 140 may be equally unique. Other Wolf-Rayet stars produce dust, but no other pair are known to produce rings quite like Wolf-Rayet 140.  READ MORE...

Orange Green Blue

OPEC+ Turned Down Biden's Request

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration admitted Thursday it had asked Saudi Arabia to delay the OPEC+ vote to cut oil production until the cartel’s next meeting – after the midterm elections.

“We presented Saudi Arabia with analysis to show that there was no market basis to cut production targets, and that they could easily wait for the next OPEC meeting to see how things developed,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

The Riyadh-led group of oil producers’ next meeting is scheduled for Dec. 4, according to the OPEC website.

Kirby also alleged that other OPEC member nations “communicated to us privately that they also disagreed with the Saudi decision, but felt coerced to support Saudi’s direction.”

The White House was responding to a Wednesday night statement from the Saudi foreign ministry hitting back at Washington’s accusation that it had taken sides with Russia in Moscow’s war against Ukraine.  READ MORE...

Cute & Clever

 

Kitchen Bird Bath

 

Future Warfighting with 6G Networks

With 5G broadband networks still being rolled out worldwide, the US and China are racing for supremacy in next-generation 6G, with significant implications for future warfighting.

An August report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) notes that China is following a centralized command model in applying 6G technology to military purposes. On the other side, the US is relying more on enabling lower levels of command and operators to take the initiative to make critical decisions.

The IISS report says that 6G technology may play a key role in China’s hypersonic weapons program, including in solving the current communication blackout at hypersonic speeds.  READ MORE...

Soccer Play

Florida's Use of COVID Funds

A watchdog group with the U.S. Treasury Department plans to examine whether Florida government properly used federal pandemic recovery money in connection to last month’s efforts to relocate migrants, a top official with the agency told the Massachusetts congressional delegation last week. 

In a letter dated Oct. 7, Richard Delmar, the Treasury Department’s deputy inspector general, wrote that his department plans “to get this work underway as quickly as possible,” as part of its broader oversight of Florida’s use of funds allocated by the American Rescue Plan Act last year. 

Delmar was responding to a written request from members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, who last month called on the department to investigate what the lawmakers deemed a misuse of pandemic relief money.  READ MORE...

A Blonde Walking

 

Ovewewr 50,000 Contaminated Sites in USA

Researchers have determined that the country is dotted with tens of thousands of locations that may be contaminated by PFAS, which are per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances—aka forever chemicals that do not disintegrate over time in nature or in the human body. 

Now, they’re mapping those sites to help regulators better direct resources toward cleanup efforts.

A new study published today in Environmental Science & Technology Letters estimates that there are over 50,000 PFAS-contaminated sites throughout the United States. 

The researchers argued that in the absence of testing data, they can presume contamination based on three categories of facilities that are very likely to be contaminated with PFAS chemicals.  READ MORE...

Moose Swims

 

Nature