Today’s News: December 31, 2020

World News

World begins ushering in locked-down New Year

The world began ushering in the New Year Thursday, with pandemic controls muting celebrations for billions of people eager to bid farewell to a virus-ridden 2020.

After a grinding year that has seen at least 1.7 million people die from Covid-19, fresh waves of infection have sparked renewed lockdowns and forced would-be revellers to extend their 2020 tradition of watching events from the sofa. From Sydney to Rome, firework displays, pyre burnings and live performances will be watched online or on television — if they have not been cancelled altogether.

The eagerly awaited first lights of 2021 fell on the Pacific nations of Kiribati and Samoa from 1000 GMT, with the uninhabited Howland and Baker Islands the last to tip over into the New Year, 26 hours later. Although the Pacific islands were spared the worst ravages of the pandemic, border restrictions, curfews and lockdowns meant this New Year’s Eve was still a little different. At the palm-fringed Taumeasina resort near the Samoan capital Apia, manager Tuiataga Nathan Bucknall was pleased to be open without a limit on guest numbers, but thanks to a Covid-induced state of emergency stopped serving alcohol at 11 pm, he said. In Australia’s largest city, Sydney, pyrotechnics will still light up the glittering harbour with a dazzling display at 1300 GMT, but few spectators will be there to watch in person.

Plans to allow crowds were scrapped amid a cluster of around 150 new infections that have seen travel to and from Sydney severely restricted.”I think everybody is looking towards 2021 as a fresh beginning and a fresh start,” Karen Roberts, among the lucky few who were allowed past checkpoints around the area, told AFP at a bar nestled under the Sydney Opera House.

Trump administration taking steps to designate Cuba as state sponsor of terrorism in coming days

The Trump administration will soon take steps toward designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism as an 11th hour effort to create hurdles for the incoming Biden administration, which is likely to pursue warmer ties with Havana. A senior administration official told CNN that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to make the designation in the coming days. A second official confirmed that discussions are taking place, although the timing is uncertain.

The Cuban government has already denounced the move, which is one of a series of bold initiatives the Trump administration is taking as it attempts to leave a lasting imprint on US foreign policy with just three weeks left before President Donald Trump leaves office.

Currently, only three other nations bear the US terrorism designation: Iran, North Korea and Syria. Sudan was recently removed from the list as part of its agreement to normalize ties with Israel.

Such a designation would impose restrictions on US foreign assistance, a ban on defense exports and sales, certain controls over exports and various financial restrictions. It would also result in penalization against any persons and countries engaging in certain trade activities with Cuba.

The New York Times was first to report that Pompeo was considering the designation. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on Tuesday, saying “we do not discuss deliberations or potential deliberations regarding designations.” The White House declined to comment on the record when reached by CNN.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Bomb-sniffing dogs? Check. Times Square crowd? Not this year

New York City police turned to familiar tactics ahead of Thursday’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, deploying bomb-sniffing dogs and sand-filled sanitation trucks intended to guard against explosions. But the department’s playbook this year includes an unusual mandate: preventing crowds of any size from gathering in Times Square.

Citing concerns over the spread of COVID-19, police closed the Crossroads of the World to vehicles and pedestrians at midnight and said they would disperse any onlookers venturing into a so-called “frozen zone” — the blocks surrounding the ball that historically draw shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. The coronavirus has upended public life for months, and New Year’s Eve will be no different. This year, police said, revelers headed to Times Square won’t be permitted past police lines.

“If you think you’re going to be able to stand there and watch the ball, you’re mistaken,” Chief of Department Terence Monahan said, referring to the glittering, crystal ball that descends down a flagpole in Times Square each New Year’s Eve to mark the stroke of midnight.

The NYPD announced a two-part freeze that will become more expansive at 3 p.m. Even guests at five hotels in the area have been told to stay inside.Juanita Holmes, chief of patrol for the NYPD, urged would-be partygoers to ring in 2021 “from the comfort of your home.”

“Coming to Times Square is a family tradition for some. It is a bucket list item for others. But this year is different,” she said. “I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for everyone to stay home.”

The Police Department will still roll out heavy weapons teams, explosive-sniffing dogs, drones and sand trucks. But it has planned a drastically scaled-back presence in Times Square, including an 80% reduction in its typical workforce assigned to the area.

“We always have to prepare for the worst in terms of counterterrorism overlays,” Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said, “but the crowds will not be like they were in other years.”

This year’s celebration will unfold without the usual throngs of cheering, kissing revelers. Indeed, the event’s special guests, first responders and essential workers, were expected to watch the festivities from a private, well-spaced area.

“It’s almost like a ‘Seinfeld’ episode,” Shea said, invoking the 1990s “show about nothing.”

“This is a ball drop about nothing, where you can’t see,” he said, “so you may as well stay home.”

When We Teach Our Kids That Life Has No Value, This Is How They Act

The endless chaos in our streets is directly related to how we have been raising our children for the past couple of decades. Bad beliefs lead to bad actions, and we have been teaching our kids values that are fundamentally flawed.  In particular, our children are endlessly taught that life has no value in a multitude of ways. 

They view thousands of murders on television and in the movies as they grow up, the news glorifies politicians that tell them that it is a good thing to slaughter the unborn, and western nations are increasingly embracing the idea that older people should be willing to ask for the “plug to be pulled” once their “usefulness” is over. 

Throughout their lives, our kids are trained to believe that they evolved from animals and that there is nothingness after they die, and the logical conclusion of such a worldview is that the period of time between birth and death is rather meaningless.

If life has no value and our existence is essentially meaningless, you might as well do whatever you feel like doing because tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us.

Sadly, millions upon millions of our young people have adopted such an outlook at this point, and so we shouldn’t be surprised that many of them are completely out of control.

Economy & Business

Colorado Woman Receives Dozens Of Unemployment Debit Cards In The Mail – CBS Denver

 Dozens of unemployment cards are showing up at the wrong address in Longmont. When the first white envelope showed up with Sharlene Kesler’s mail, she didn’t think much of it, other than to return it to sender, but then more showed up. “It’s my address but it’s not my name. I don’t know any of these people,” Kesler told CBS4. She recalls it started about four weeks ago.“Then the next day I got two, then almost every day I’d get a couple,” she said.Currently, it’s up to three or five a day. Just recently, Kesler inspected one of the envelopes to see if it was some kind of scam.“I opened one and realized it was an unemployment card,” she said. Kesler has called a few numbers to report the issue. The bank referred her back to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. She went through automated prompts for about half an hour. “And then they came on the line and said, thank you for calling. We’re sorry we have not appointments available,” she said.

Ten Ways Covid-19 Has Changed the World Economy Forever

Economic shocks like the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 only arrive once every few generations, and they bring about permanent and far-reaching change. Measured by output, the world economy is well on the way to recovery from a slump the likes of which barely any of its 7.7 billion people have seen in their lifetimes. Vaccines should accelerate the rebound in 2021. But other legacies of Covid-19 will shape global growth for years to come.

Some are already discernible. The takeover of factory and service jobs by robots will advance, while white-collar workers get to stay home more. There’ll be more inequality between and within countries. Governments will play a larger role in the lives of citizens, spending—and owing—more money. What follows is an overview of some of the transformations under way.

Leviathan

Big government staged a comeback as the social contract between society and the state got rewritten on the fly. It became commonplace for authorities to track where people went and who they met—and to pay their wages when employers couldn’t manage it. In countries where free-market ideas had reigned for decades, safety nets had to be patched up.

To pay for these interventions, the world’s governments ran budget deficits that add up to $11 trillion this year, according to McKinsey & Co. There’s already a debate about how long such spending can continue, and when taxpayers will have to start footing the bill. At least in developed economies, ultralow interest rates and unfazed financial markets don’t point to a near-term crisis.

In the longer run, a big rethink in economics is changing minds about public debt. The new consensus says governments have more room to spend in a low-inflation world, and should use fiscal policy more proactively to drive their economies. Advocates of Modern Monetary Theory say they pioneered those arguments and the mainstream is only now catching up.

Even Easier Money

Central banks were plunged back into printing money. Interest rates hit new record lows. Central bankers stepped up their quantitative easing, widening it to buy corporate as well as government debt. All these monetary interventions have created some of the easiest financial conditions in history—and unleashed a frenzy of speculative investment, which has left plenty of analysts worried about moral hazards ahead. But the central-bank policies will be hard to reverse, especially if labor markets remain fractured and companies continue their recent run-up in saving. And history shows that pandemics depress interest rates for a long time, according to a paper published this year. It found that a quarter-century after the disease struck, rates were typically some 1.5 percentage points lower than they otherwise would have been.

Energy & Environment

Quiet Caribbean Volcanoes Suddenly Rumbling to Life

Volcanoes that have been quiet for decades are rumbling to life in the eastern Caribbean, prompting officials to issue alerts in Martinique and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as scientists rush in to study activity they say hasn’t been observed in years. The most recent warning was issued late Tuesday for La Soufriere volcano in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a chain of islands home to more than 100,000 people. Officials reported tremors, strong gas emissions, formation of a new volcanic dome, and changes to its crater lake. The government warned those living near the volcano to prepare to evacuate if needed, declaring an orange alert that means eruptions could occur with less than 24 hours’ notice. La Soufriere last erupted in 1979; a previous eruption in 1902 killed some 1,600 people.

That occurred shortly before Martinique’s Mt. Pelee erupted and destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre, killing more than 30,000 people. Mt. Pelee too is now active once again, and in early December officials issued a yellow alert due to seismic activity under the mountain. It was the first alert of its kind issued since the volcano last erupted in 1932, reports the AP. While the eastern Caribbean is one long chain of active and extinct volcanoes, volcanologist Erik Klemetti said the activity at Mt. Pelee and La Soufriere are not related. “It’s not like one volcano starts erupting that others will,” he said, noting the activity is evidence that magma is lurking underground and percolating toward the surface, although he added that scientists still don’t have a very good understanding of what controls how quickly that happens. “It’s science that’s still being researched.”

Science & Technology

AI expert warns 180,000 deepfake porn videos of innocent people will be online in 2021

Deepfakes regularly go viral, with hilarious parodies of Nicolas Cage or Donald Trump, but broadcaster and author Nina Schick says that the fast-developing technology will increasingly represent a “serious challenge” to our society. While funny clips are the public face of the fast-developing deepfake technology, the most widespread application is deepfake porn. 

Dutch cybersecurity startup Deeptrace estimated in late 2019 that 96% of all deepfakes online were pornographic. Sensity, another Dutch-based cybersecurity company set up to combat the growing menace of deepfakes, says that the number of deep fake porn clips – where the faces of innocent victims are added to the bodies of performers in explicit videos – is doubling every six months, and by summer 2021, there could be as many as 180,000 porn videos “starring” innocent people online.

By 2022, they say, that number will be more like 720,000 – and anyone is vulnerable. All that is required is a photo, video or audio recording of the victim.One celebrity was depicted in a widely-circulated fake “sex tape” in 2017. But in 2020, the technology is so easily obtained – and simple to use – that anyone could find themselves a victim.

Kate Middleton, Emma Watson and even Ivanka Trump have similarly had their images misused in this way. Avengers star Scarlett Johannson said there was so much deepfake porn featuring her face that there was no point even trying to fight it.

Health

Health Officials Say COVID-19 Variant Was Detected in San Diego County 

San Diego County health officials confirmed Wednesday that the COVID-19 variant found in the U.K. and in Colorado was detected in a patient in San Diego.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom first announced in a joint news conference with Dr. Anthony Fauci the COVID-19 variant was detected in Southern California, but did not provide any more specifics on exactly where or how B.1.1.7 was discovered.Later, San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher announced the variant had been detected in a 30-year-old man in San Diego County with no travel history outside the county.

The man was tested on December 29 after two days of symptoms and a diagnostic test on the S gene dropout was confirmed to have B.1.1.7, said Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., Department of Immunology and Microbiology, at Scripps Research.The patient is not hospitalized and contact tracing is currently underway, health officials explained. There is one household contact who became symptomatic and was tested Wednesday. The man had little interaction with people outside his household while potentially contagious.

“Because there is no travel history, we believe this is not an isolated case in San Diego County and there are, probably, other cases of the same strain in San Diego County,” Fletcher said.

“I don’t think that Californians should feel this is something odd. This is expected,” Fauci said. 

Fauci also said we would likely be seeing more cases in other states as well, and while the variant is transmitted more easily, there is no indication at all that it is more strong or deadly.

“What’s really important is that detecting this lineage here [in San Diego] doesn’t really change what we need to do, other than we need to do it better,” Andersen said. “And the question we typically get around this are that: Is it really transmitting better? In the U.K., it is. We know that it’s because of the properties of this particular lineage. We should expect that the same is going to be true here in San Diego, but we don’t yet know whether that’s really going to be the case.”

The first person in the U.S. known to be infected with a new and apparently more contagious variant of the coronavirus was identified Wednesday as a Colorado National Guardsman who had been sent to help out at a nursing home struggling with an outbreak.

The announcement came after Newsom recommended in-person learning continue in California schools in the coming year.

Animal News

Do Dogs Really Make Us Happier?

Last summer my life was upended when I was given an oversize 4-month-old puppy for my birthday. Otis’s arrival created joy and anxiety in equal measure. Already well into the pandemic, my husband and I wondered what effect this shaggy, disoriented creature would have on us. Would he provide comfort? Or would his chewing, nipping, soiling, lunging and barking only multiply our stresses? By April 2020, the adoption rate for dogs in the U.S. had increased by more than 30%, according to Sara Kent, CEO of the nonprofit database Shelter Animals Count. By year’s end, spending on pet care and supplies had reached a record $99 billion. Lots of Americans expect dogs to lift their spirits, it seems.

We’re not alone: A new study of the human-dog relationship during the early days of the pandemic, by Liat Morgan and her research team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of British Columbia, found that in Israel, too, dog adoptions ramped up as social and economic restrictions increased. Disasters like earthquakes and floods usually prompt people to give up their pets, but the study found that during the pandemic, far fewer people relinquished their pets to shelters—a trend echoed in the U.S., said Ms. Kent.

I soon became besotted with Otis, who is now an 80-pound adolescent. Still, I wanted some proof: Do pets really reduce our loneliness and make us feel happier?

In 2019, a study led by Lauren Powell, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, looked at whether getting a dog