House Republicans have been foaming at the mouth for months to get Joe Biden impeached and him and Hunter jailed. The Independent reports about the identity of a witness against both Bidens. House Republicans claimed the witness got "lost" somewhere:
A “whistleblower” who has repeatedly accused the Bidens of corruption has been charged by the Justice Department with arms trafficking, acting as a foreign agent for China and violating Iran sanctions.
Gal Luft, who is a citizen of both the United States and Israel, is accused of paying a former adviser to Donald Trump on behalf of principals in China in 2016 without registering as a foreign agent.
Prosecutors say that Mr Luft pushed the former government employee, who is not named, to push policies that were favorable to China.
They also allege that he set up meetings between officials of Iran and a Chinese energy company to discuss oil deals, which would violate US sanctions.
[T]the now-indicted think tank founder claims that there is no basis for the charges and has accused the Biden Administration of targeting him because he is one of the alleged whistleblowers who Republicans have held up as having evidence that President Joe Biden and his family are corrupt.
In a bizarre video first reported by the New York Post, Mr Luft claims his arrest in Cyprus was meant to stop him from appearing before the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee about alleged payments the Biden family allegedly received from Chinese intelligence-linked individuals.
Mr Luft, 57, was arrested in Cyprus in February on US charges but fled after being released on bail while awaiting extradition and is not currently in US custody.
The fugitive also claimed that he offered evidence backing up his claims to the FBI in March 2019, and said it was never followed up on. .... Mr Luft also said he jumped bail and fled after his arrest because he did not believe he could receive a fair trial in New York.
Well, now we know why Luft got lost. He doesn't want to get tossed into the slammer for spying for China. One can see how this will play out with America's radical right authoritarians. They and Luft will accuse the DoJ of being weaponized. Luft will play the innocent, persecuted martyr card and the Republicans will play it up. That kind of crap is the new normal.
American politics: A never-ending clown show.
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From the Brass Knuckles Capitalism Files: The NYT writes about parked choo-choo trains blocking public roads:
Blocked Rail Crossings Snarl Towns,but Congress Won’t Act
The industry has used its muscle to prevent federal, state and local governments from penalizing companies that park freight trains across roads for hours or daysFreight trains frequently stop and block the roads of York, Ala., sometimes cutting off two neighborhoods for hours. Emergency services and health care workers can’t get in, and those trapped inside can’t get out.
“People’s livelihoods are in jeopardy because they can’t get to work on time,” said Amanda Brassfield, who has lived in one of the neighborhoods, Grant City, for 32 years and raised two daughters there. “It’s not fair.”
Residents have voiced these complaints for years to Norfolk Southern, which owns the tracks, and to regulators and members of Congress. But the problem has only gotten worse.
Freight trains frequently block roads nationwide, a phenomenon that local officials say has grown steadily worse in the last decade as railroads run longer trains and leave them parked on tracks at crossings.
The problem has persisted despite numerous federal, state and local proposals and laws because the freight rail industry wields enormous political and legal power.
Courts have thrown out several state laws seeking to punish rail companies for blocking traffic, ruling that only the federal government can regulate railway crossings. No federal laws or rules penalize railways for blocking crossings, and congressional proposals to address the issue have failed to overcome opposition from the rail industry.
In a response to questions, the Association of American Railroads attributed blocked crossings to local governments, which, it said, had routed roads across railway tracks rather than over or under them, an approach that other industrialized countries had taken.
It's hard to have much sympathy for people who vote for Republican politicians. This is the face of the radical right Republican Party's brass knuckles capitalist wing. So here's a possible solution: Stop voting for Republicans or stop complaining because you got what you asked for.
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AI solving problems in biology and medicine: The NYT writes about an AI program designed to predict protein folding:
In 2020, Google DeepMind unveiled AlphaFold, an A.I. system that uses deep learning to solve one of the most important challenges in all of biology: the so-called protein-folding problem. The ability to predict the shape of proteins is essential for addressing numerous scientific challenges, from vaccine and drug development to curing genetic diseases. But in the 50-plus years since the protein-folding problem had been discovered, scientists had made frustratingly little progress.
Enter AlphaFold. By 2022, the system had identified 200 million protein shapes, nearly all the proteins known to humans. DeepMind is also currently building similar systems to accelerate efforts at nuclear fusion and has spun off Isomorphic Labs, a company developing A.I. tools for drug discovery.
I knew a guy who got a Nobel prize for doing early pioneering protein folding work, Chris Anfinsen. He was a super nice guy, not an egomaniac. He worked with folding and unfolding a protein called RNase A (ribonuclease A). That enzyme is a tough little bugger. It causes all kinds of heartburn for people who worked with RNA, including me once upon a time.
This is why intact RNA is so hard to
prepare and work with in the lab
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