Tag Archives: claim

Business

New Yorkers react to claim that California has best bagels in the country

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Hey, we’re making great bagels over here!

New York City is known for having a lot of great signature foods, including pizza, cheesecake, and of course its famous bagels. But when another state attempted to stake its claim to the best bagel, New Yorkers reacted exactly the way one might expect.

New Yorkers are taking issue with a recent article claiming that California is home to the best bagels in the country.
(iStock)

A recent article in The New York Times claimed that, despite the commonly held belief that New York was home to the best bagels, California was actually the king. Specifically, the article claimed the best bagels can be found in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

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New York bagels. meanwhile, are said to unique to New York City due to NYC’s famously soft water, which weakens the gluten and makes the bagels chewier, The New York Post reports. According to Scot Rosillo, a bagel shop owner in Brooklyn, New York’s bagels are also made with more love, and a technique that goes back 100 years.

The news outlet also spoke with Ess-a-Bagel COO Melanie Frost, who says that her company ships “hundreds of bagels to California” from New York, suggesting that even Californians prefer the New York original.

“They can’t come close to a New York bagel — crunch on the outside, chewy on the inside,” Frost said. “California, stick to the avocado toast. You know that best.”

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Strangely enough, “best bagel” isn’t the only food title that New York City has had to defend in recent weeks. Fox News previously reported that lawmakers in Connecticut recently attempted to make pizza the official state food, as Connecticut often claims to have the best pizza in the country.

In response to Connecticut’s bill, which was introducted by New Haven-based Rep. Patricia Dillon and Sen. Gary Winfield, New York City-based restaurant consultant Jason Kaplan told Fox News that when it comes to the country’s best pizza, “it’s definitely not Connecticut.”

“New York is the pizza capital,” Kaplan claimed, citing Lombardi’s, a pizzeria in Manhattan said to be the country’s first, which today is still serving thin-crust Neapolitan-style pizza.

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Fox News’ Jeanette Settembre contributed to this report.

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Technology

You Can Claim PlayStation Plus’ Monthly PS5 Games Before You Get A PS5

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You don’t need a PS5 to score a “free” copy of Graceful Decay’s stunning Maquette this month.
Screenshot: Graceful Decay / Annapurna Interactive

PS Plus continues to offer “free” games to subscribers, and, in recent months, has even started offering PlayStation 5 games. If you don’t have a still-impossible-to-find PS5, you’re not quite S.O.L.. You just have to claim those games through a web browser.

For $10 a month (or $60 a year), PS Plus allows members to play online games. Beyond that, subscribers receive monthly games at no extra cost. (These games are only “free” if you remain signed up. Stop paying your dues, and you’ll lose access.) The offerings aren’t always worth writing home about, but every now and then, PS Plus will put up some true gems. Recent months have allowed players to add the likes of Final Fantasy VII Remake, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Greedfall, and Fall Guys to their PS4 libraries.

Since the PS5 launched in November, Sony has made PS5 games available to members of PS Plus too. First up was Bugsnax, the wacky puzzle-adventure game featuring edible insects. In February, the derby game Destruction AllStars—initially slated as a PS5 launch title with a $70 price tag—was made available, where you can still claim it through April 6. (After then, you’ll be able to buy it for $20.) This month, the wonderful Maquette, a recursive puzzle game about love and heartbreak, is available on PS5.

The easiest way to nab these titles is through the PS5 itself, as the console’s dashboard has a baked-in PS Plus portal. Just click a few buttons, and the game you want will pop into your digital library. In the event you don’t have a PS5 on which you can actually do that, you can claim your games through a browser.

  1. First, go to Sony’s landing page for monthly PS Plus games.
  2. Click “find out more” for the game you want, which will take you to its store page.
  3. If you’re signed into the store with the same PlayStation account that’s signed up for PS Plus, the price tag should be stricken out. Instead of a “Buy” button, you should instead see an “Add to Library” icon. Click on that.

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When you finally get your hands on a PS5, you’ll see all of your claimed games in the console’s game library.

There’s a small wrinkle with cross-gen games, though. For instance, Maquette is available on PS4 and PS5 (and, yes, PC). If you grab it via PS Plus, you’ll only get the PS5 version. To play it on PS4, you’ll need to buy a copy. When Kotaku tested this workaround with Maquette, the game didn’t show up in our PS4 library, but we were able to download it on a PS5.

A PS5-exclusive game, like Destruction AllStars, won’t be playable at all on your PS4, but you knew that already.

It might be a while until you can actually get your hands on a PS5. With this workaround, at least you’ll be able to hit the ground running with a handful of killer games.

More PS5 Tips And Tricks

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Technology

PSA: Switch Online Members Can Now Claim Some More Smash Bros. Ultimate Freebies

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Nintendo’s Switch online service from time to time will offer a bunch of freebies for certain games. For Super Smash Bros. Ultimate it normally hands out a bunch of spirit board power-ups that can be used in the game’s events.

The latest offer for Switch Online subscribers (which is a bit different this time around) is Spirit Set 1, which is available via the Switch eShop. This set includes a random Ace-class primary spirit and a random Legend-class support spirit. Once again, this is an entirely free downloaded – provided you’ve got an active Switch Online membership.

According to the official Nintendo website, Spirit Set 1 will require an 8MB download. In related news, later today Masahiro Sakurai will be showcasing the new DLC fighters Pyra and Mythra. Will you be taking advantage of this offer? Do you even sub to Nintendo’s online service? Leave a comment below.



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World

Israeli Court Says Converts to Non-Orthodox Judaism Can Claim Citizenship

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JERUSALEM — The question of who is and isn’t a Jew has always been a subject of debate within Israel. Since the state was founded, the government has largely deferred to Orthodox Jewish authorities, who do not view converts to more liberal forms of Judaism as Jewish.

But on Monday, the Israeli Supreme Court struck a symbolic blow for a more pluralistic vision of Jewish identity: It granted the right to automatic citizenship to foreigners who convert within the state of Israel to Conservative, also known as Masorti, or Reform Judaism.

The decision was mainly symbolic because typically, only 30 or 40 foreigners convert to Reform or Masorti Judaism in Israel every year, according to the Israel Religious Action Center, the rights group that led efforts to obtain the court ruling.

But the ruling chips away some of the monopoly Orthodox rabbis have held over questions of religious identity that are central to frictions within Israeli society. It also inflames a long-running debate about the relationship between Israel’s civil and religious authorities — and particularly the role of the Supreme Court.

The Israeli right has portrayed the court as a bastion of the country’s secular and liberal elite, acting without democratic legitimacy. And though the court delayed ruling in this case for years, hoping Parliament would vote on it instead, the court’s critics were already making political capital from the decision on Monday night.

The party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a regular antagonist of the Israeli courts who is on trial on corruption charges, swiftly cited the decision as a reason to vote for the party and “ensure a stable right-wing government that will restore sovereignty to the people.”

Israel’s “Law of Return” gives foreign-born Jews, or anyone with a Jewish parent, grandparent or spouse, the automatic right to claim Israeli citizenship. Those who convert to non-Orthodox Judaism in another country have been able to gain Israeli citizenship for decades.

Despite the small numbers involved, the court’s ruling held deep significance for the campaigners and plaintiffs who first brought the case to the Supreme Court in 2005, and for the Orthodox authorities who opposed them.

“It’s a tremendous sense of relief and gratitude and gratification,” said Anat Hoffman, the executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center. “This verdict really opens the gates for Israel to have more than one way to be Jewish.”

One of Israel’s two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, called it a “a deeply regrettable decision,” and said that conversions to the Reform and Conservative communities were “nothing but counterfeit Judaism.”

“Public representatives are to be expected to work quickly to correct this legislation,” he said, “and the sooner they do so the better.’‘

The news is particularly sensitive ahead of next month’s general election, Israel’s fourth in two years. The battle between Israel’s secular and religious communities has been a major feature of the pandemic and a source of debate in the election campaign, as has the role of the Supreme Court.

“It is a big deal because for 15 years there has been an impasse over this issue,” said Ofer Zalzberg, director of the Middle East program at the Herbert C. Kelman Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group. “And it comes just a month before an election, so it becomes dramatically more politicized, and it touches people in visceral places: Who are we? What is our identity? And what are our freedoms?”

Mr. Zalzberg said, “This has already triggered a backlash among a large constituency who reject the court’s right to take decisions about what Jewish collective identity is all about.”

There are still restrictions on the marriage of non-Orthodox converts to Judaism, since this area is controlled by Israel’s chief rabbinate, which does not recognize Reform or Conservative Judaism. There is no civil marriage in Israel.

But for non-Orthodox Jews the Supreme Court decision constituted a moment of qualified relief — both inside Israel and among the diaspora.

“It affirms that Israel is a homeland for all Jews,” said Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the joint head of an international association of rabbis who practice Conservative Judaism, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. “The ruling is an important step in guaranteeing religious freedom in Israel and recognizing the diversity of the Jewish people and its practices in Israel and throughout the world.”

Within Israel, the overwhelming majority of Jews are either Orthodox or secular, but liberal rabbis said that there had already been an uptick in the number of non-Jews seeking to convert to more liberal streams of Judaism.

Rabbi Gregory Kotler, a Reform rabbi in Ramat Gan, in central Israel, said he had received roughly 20 new requests in a matter of hours.

“I almost didn’t want to answer your call,” he said with a laugh, “because I thought it was another person asking for conversion.”

The Israel Religious Action Center stressed that each new would-be convert would undergo a rigorous conversion process that takes two or three years.

Orthodox critics “will claim that we are Jewish-lite, they will say terrible things about our conversion,” said Ms. Hoffman. “But it’s not true. We demand that they become part of our communities.”

Gabby Sobelman and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem and Elizabeth Dias from Washington.



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Sports

Jeremy Lin not ‘naming or shaming anyone’ after claim he was called ‘coronavirus’ during G League game

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The G League is looking into a claim made by Jeremy Lin that he was called “coronavirus” on the court during a game. Lin, the former NBA guard who is trying to break back into the league, posted on Facebook last week addressing the ongoing racism facing the Asian-American community, while giving personal examples of racism that he’s dealt with.

“Being a 9 year NBA veteran doesn’t protect me from being called “coronavirus” on the court,” Lin wrote in his post.

Lin didn’t go into details about when this incident took place, or if it even happened while he’s been playing in the G League, which just started its season a couple of weeks ago where he’s been playing with the Warriors G League affiliate, the Santa Cruz Warriors. Lin went on to further talk about how “this generation of Asian-Americans are tired of being told that we don’t experience racism.”

“We are tired of being told to keep our heads down and not make trouble. We are tired of Asian American kids growing up and being asked where they’re REALLY from, of having our eyes mocked, of being objectified as exotic or being told we’re inherently unattractive. We are tired of the stereotypes in Hollywood affecting our psyche and limiting who we think we can be. We are tired of being invisible, of being mistaken for our colleague or told our struggles aren’t as real.”

A day after making his claim, Lin took to Twitter to make it clear he didn’t plan to call out anyone specifically over the offensive comments. Instead, he hoped to use the situation as a learning experience. 

“I know this will disappoint some of you but I’m not naming or shaming anyone,” Lin said. “What good does it do in this situation for someone to be torn down? It doesn’t make my community safer or solve any of our long-term problems with racism… Fighting ignorance with ignorance will get us nowhere. Sharing our own pain by painting another group of people with stereotypes is NOT the way. 

“Listen to the voices that are teaching us how to be anti-racist towards ALL people,” Lin added. Hear other stories, expand your perspective. I believe this generation can be different. But we will need empathy and solidarity to get us there.” 

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, there’s been a rise in racial attacks against Asian Americans in this country, which has led to many advocacy groups calling for action and change. Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that has been addressing anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic, released a report in August stating that it received over 2,500 claims of hate and discrimination toward Asian Americans since the group was founded in March 2020. 

The conversation around racism and discrimination toward Asian Americans has led many prominent people across several industries to speak up on the matter, as the hashtag “StopAsianHate” has trended on Twitter for several days. The National Basketball Players Association issued a statement the same day Lin posted to Facebook, which said:

“The NBPA condemns any and all forms of racism, discrimination or antagonism directed against specific ethnics groups. We stand in solidarity with the Asian-American community and abhor the recent, repugnant acts of violence being committed against them — this hatred has no place in our society.”

On Friday night, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr applauded Lin’s words and said he would like to also see the NBA investigate his claim.

“I just saw the Facebook post just now,” Kerr said. “Really powerful. I applaud Jeremy for his words and echo his sentiments regarding racism against the Asian American community. It’s just so ridiculous and obviously spawned by many people, including our former president [Donald Trump], as it relates to the coronavirus originating in China. It’s just shocking. I don’t know — I can’t wrap my head around any of it, but I can’t wrap my head around racism in general.”

Lin was the first American-born NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent when he started his career with Golden State back in 2010. He quickly rose to fame after he joined the Knicks during the 2011-2012 season, where he averaged 14.6 points, 6.2 assists and 3.1 rebounds in 35 games. He earned the nickname “Linsanity,” after putting up 24.4 points and nine assists while leading the Knicks on a seven-game win streak that season. 

This isn’t the first time Lin has addressed the racism he’s faced while playing basketball. During a podcast appearance in 2017, the veteran guard said he’s received racist taunts while playing in the NBA, but the worst was during his four years in college at Harvard when he was playing on the road. 

“The worst was at Cornell, when I was being called a c—k,” Lin said on Outside Shot with Randy Foye. “That’s when it happened. I don’t know … that game, I ended up playing terrible and getting a couple of charges and doing real out-of-character stuff. My teammate told my coaches [that] they were calling Jeremy a c—k the whole first half. I didn’t say anything, because when that stuff happens, I kind of just, I go and bottle up — where I go into turtle mode and don’t say anything and just internalize everything.”

Although Lin has spoken on this numerous times in the past, it often doesn’t lead to more action or change from others. Hopefully, this time people will begin to take notice, and people will begin to be held accountable against the abhorrent racism aimed at the Asian American community. 

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Technology

E3’s 2021 live event has been cancelled, LA city documents claim

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E3’s physical event for 2021 has been cancelled, according to Los Angeles city documents published this week.

In a new report published by the Board of Los Angeles Convention and Tourism Development Commission, a sales update lists E3 2021 as a “cancelled live event”.

The document states that the Convention board is working with E3 organiser The Entertainment Software Association” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/entertainment-software-association/”>Entertainment Software Association (ESA) on broadcast options at the Los Angeles Convention Center and the nearby LA Live complex. The City board also claims it’s “working” on a 2022 and 2023 license for E3.

The cancellation would mark the second year in a row the E3 event has been called off due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As exclusively revealed by VGC this month, The ESA has been pushing forward with plans for a digital E3 event this summer, but it still requires the backing of major games companies.

A LA city document lists E3 2021 as cancelled.

According to E3 2021 pitch documents sent to games publishers and seen by VGC, the ESA has outlined its proposals for this year’s event, which would see three days of live-streamed coverage held during the previously announced dates of June 15-17.

The broadcast event would be supplemented by media previews the week before, as well as demos released on consumer platforms, according to the ESA’s proposal.

Xbox Series X/S at retail

However, the E3 2021 plans still require the approval of ESA’s membership, which is made up of the industry’s biggest games companies and who have significant influence over the direction of the show.

The ESA was already facing significant pressure to reinvent E3, with several major publishers including Electronic Arts” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/electronic-arts/”>EA, Sony Interactive Entertainment” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/sony/”>Sony and Activision” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/activision-blizzard/activision/”>Activision having abandoned the event in recent years – and that was before 2020’s cancellation, after which many companies such as EA and Ubisoft enjoyed success running their own digital events.

Multiple games publishing sources had told VGC they were working under the assumption that the physical event would not take place this year.

In a statement issued to VGC, the ESA said it would soon share exact details on this year’s E3 show and claimed it was having “great conversations” with developers and publishers, but would not confirm who had signed up for the event.

“We can confirm that we are transforming the E3 experience for 2021 and will soon share exact details on how we’re bringing the global video game community together,” an ESA spokesperson said. “We are having great conversations with publishers, developers and companies across the board, and we look forward to sharing details about their involvement soon.”

E3 2021’s live event has been cancelled, LA city documents claim.

Commenting on VGC’s report, former Nintendo” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/nintendo/”>Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aimé said this month that he believed The ESA needs to act fast if it is to save the historical games event.

Speaking to Gamertag Radio, Fils-Aimé said he saw reports about E3 returning digitally in 2021 and wasn’t enthused. “I have to say that what I read doesn’t sound all that compelling.”

“If I were king for a day, I’ll tell you how I would do it,” he said. “I do think doing this digitally is absolutely right and the reason for that is, there are more than the 60,000 people who would typically attend an E3. There are millions more interested in finding out what’s going on and executing an event digitally is the way to bring that to life, so that’s the right track.

“Having said that, I think that the platform holders need to find a way digitally to enable their fans, their players, to experience the content because that’s the key for E3 right – the ability to be playing The Last of Us Part 3 for the first time, or to play that next The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/the-legend-of-zelda-series/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/”>Breath of the Wild game for the first time, or to play the next great game coming from the new amalgamation of all the Xbox” href=”https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/xbox/”>Xbox studios.

“To play for the first time is what’s magical and the platform holders need to figure out how to deliver that experience to their fans during an E3-like digital experience. I think that would be huge.”

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US

Angelo Quinto: Man dies after police kneel on his neck for nearly 5 minutes, family says in wrongful death claim

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Angelo Quinto had been “suffering from anxiety, depression, and paranoia for the previous few months,” his family’s attorneys said in a wrongful death claim, filed on February 18.

His sister Isabella Collins called police to their Antioch, California, home on December 23 because she feared he would hurt their mother, family lawyer John L. Burris said during a February 18 press conference.

Before police arrived, Quinto’s mother had been holding him to her chest with her hands clasped around his back for a few minutes, and “he had already started to calm down,” the claim stated. When two officers from the Antioch Police Department arrived, Burris said they made no attempt to understand the situation and instead, immediately grabbed Quinto from his mother’s arms.

Quinto lost consciousness and was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead three days later, family attorneys say in the claim.

Maria Quinto-Collins, Quinto’s mother, used her cell phone to record part of the incident.

“What happened?,” she says breathlessly as Quinto is seen not moving and laying on his front. Officers roll him over to carry his body out, and his face is bloody. He is moved to a gurney and paramedics administer chest compressions on Quinto as his mother records on her phone, asking questions.

It was not clear from the video if the officers were wearing body cameras.

“As far as we know, they were not,” Burris said last week.

In the nearly two months since Quinto’s death, police have not issued a press release on the incident. The Antioch Police Department and the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Division did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

“These Antioch police officers had already handcuffed Angelo but did not stop their assault on the young man and inexplicably began using the ‘George Floyd’ technique of placing a knee on the back and side of his neck, ignoring Mr. Quinto pleas of ‘please don’t kill me,'” Burris said.

Quinto’s cause of death is still pending, the Contra Costa County Sheriff Coroner’s office told CNN on Monday. His death is under investigation by the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office.

Isabella Collins said she called police in hopes they would help de-escalate the situation.

“I don’t think I will ever not feel bad,” she told CNN affiliate KGO. “If it was the right thing to do, it wouldn’t have killed my brother.”

The Antioch city clerk and attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

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World

Indian Court Rejects M.J. Akbar’s Defamation Claim in #MeToo Case

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NEW DELHI — A court in New Delhi on Wednesday acquitted an Indian journalist of defamation after she accused M.J. Akbar, a prominent former government minister and newspaper editor, of sexual harassment, in a dispute widely seen as a barometer of the country’s fledgling #MeToo movement.

Mr. Akbar had accused the journalist, Priya Ramani, of criminal defamation after she made her allegations. But the court found that Mr. Akbar failed to prove his case, saying that Ms. Ramani’s claims were in the interest of preventing sexual harassment in the workplace.

The court said in its order that the “right of reputation can’t be protected at the cost of right to dignity.”

Mr. Akbar has the opportunity to appeal.

Had Ms. Ramani been found guilty of defamation, she could have been imprisoned for up to two years, fined or both. Under Indian law, individuals can make a criminal defamation claim in the courts, though the legal standard is higher than for civil defamation cases.

Even though Ms. Ramani was acquitted, experts say the defamation suit could still have a chilling effect among women seeking to come forward to complain of harassment and violence at the hands of powerful men. Mr. Akbar, a member of India’s Parliament, mustered a team of nearly 100 lawyers to press his defamation claim against Ms. Ramani.

Mr. Akbar, who founded and edited several newspapers and magazines before switching to politics, has been the most prominent figure in Indian public life to face wide accusations of sexual harassment amid the rise of the #MeToo movement. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and was part of the team that helped bring Mr. Modi to power in India’s 2014 election.

He resigned as minister of state for external affairs in 2018 after Ms. Ramani’s allegations of sexual harassment prompted 20 other women to sign a letter making similar accusations. Mr. Akbar has denied all of the women’s allegations.

Ms. Ramani’s accusations focused on Mr. Akbar’s tenure at The Asian Age, the newspaper he started in the early 1990s.

In October 2017, she wrote an article for Vogue India in which she described an uncomfortable hotel room encounter with a senior editor during a job interview more than 20 years earlier. She described him as a legend in the news industry but did not include his name.

A year later, in October 2018, as the #MeToo movement swept Indian social media, with Bollywood stars and journalists speaking out, Ms. Ramani tweeted a link to the Vogue story, this time identifying Mr. Akbar, then a junior foreign minister in Mr. Modi’s cabinet.

“Lots of women have worse stories about this predator,” she wrote. “Maybe they’ll share.”

Within days, nearly a dozen journalists came forward with allegations ranging from harassment to rape by Mr. Akbar during his tenure as a senior editor with various Indian publications. By the end of the month, 21 female journalists had published their allegations. They said Mr. Akbar had used his position as a senior editor to harass and intimidate them, mostly young women starting their careers in journalism.

Mr. Akbar resigned amid the allegations but filed a defamation suit against Ms. Ramani the following day. Ms. Ramani has since deactivated her Twitter account. Mr. Akbar has said the deactivation amounted to evidence tampering.

In a court hearing in September, Ms. Ramani said her allegations did not amount to defamation because they were true and in the public interest.

Mr. Akbar did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Wednesday. Ms. Ramani said that she could not discuss the case until a verdict had been reached.

“I spoke because women before me spoke up,” she said at a literature festival in 2019. “I spoke so people after me can speak up.”

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US

Axios deletes tweet fact-checking Harris claim Biden admin ‘starting from scratch’ with vaccine rollout

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Axios drew criticism Monday after it deleted a tweet fact-checking Vice President Kamala Harris, who repeated the debunked claim that the Biden administration is “starting from scratch” with its coronavirus vaccine rollout. 

During an interview with Axios co-founder Mike Allen that aired on HBO Sunday,  Harris was asked about the struggles of the administration’s response to the pandemic after nearly one month in office. 

“There was no stockpile … of vaccines,” Harris responded. “There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations. We were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out. And so in many ways, we’re starting from scratch on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year!”

AXIOS POLITICAL REPORTER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH TOP BIDEN STAFFER RAISES ETHICS CONCERNS

Axios shared that exchange on Sunday evening, but included a comment by White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, who refuted CNN’s reporting last month that quoted anonymous Biden officials making the same claim. 

“We certainly are not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution,” Fauci said during a White House press briefing. 

That fact-checking tweet, however, was later deleted, leading to questions among eagle-eyed Twitter users.  

“Why did Axios delete this tweet?” “Ruthless” podcast co-host and conservative Twitter personality Comfortably Smug asked.

WH AIDE TJ DUCKLO RESIGNS AFTER DEMEANING REPORTER DESPITE BIDEN’S WARNING OF FIRING

“Axios deleting this tweet seems suspicious given the revelations that a reporter for them who covers Kamala Harris is head over heels in love with a now former Biden Administration member. See the problem now guys? @mikeallen” conservative commentator Stephen Miller tweeted.

“They got Duckloed,” Tablet Magazine associate editor Noam Blum quipped.

Even the left-leaning fact-checker PolitiFact called out the vice president, declaring on Monday that her claim was “wrong.”

AXIOS CEO VANDERHEI ADMITS MEDIA ‘REMAINS FAIRLY CLUELESS’ ABOUT AMERICA OUTSIDE BIG CITIES

As the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy pointed out, Axios did reshare the clip of Harris’ exchange with Allen, though the tweet scrubbed Fauci’s comments that contradict the vice president’s claim. 

Axios did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment. 

This snafu comes on the heels of another Axios-related controversy involving reporter Alexi McCammond and her recently publicized relationship with former White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo, who resigned from the Biden administration on Saturday after he berated a Politico reporter and threatened to “destroy” her for pursuing a story about their relationship.

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According to Axios, McCammond, previously covered President Biden during the 2020 presidential election and transition, was reassigned to cover “progressive politics” and Vice President Harris for the outlet. Critics argued the move still presented a conflict of interest, since Ducklo was still working for Harris’ boss before his resignation. 



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Science

Claim for giant ‘Planet Nine’ at Solar System’s edge takes a hit | Science

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The clustered orbits of six distant worlds (purple) were invoked as evidence for Planet Nine (orange). But some think the clustering might just be an observational bias.

Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

By Daniel Clery

For planetary scientists, it was the boldest claim in a generation: an unseen extra planet, as much as 10 times the mass of Earth, lurking on the Solar System’s frontier, beyond Neptune. But the claim looks increasingly shaky, after a team of astronomers reported last week that the orbits of a handful of distant lumps of rock are not bunched together by the gravity of “Planet Nine,” as its proponents believe, but only seem clustered because that’s where telescopes happened to be looking.

Planet Nine supporters aren’t backing down yet but one skeptic not involved with the new work says she is “very happy” to see it. The study has carried out “a more uniform analysis” than done previously of the far-off rocky bodies known as known as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), says astronomer Samantha Lawler of the University of Regina, who has tried and failed to simulate the clustered orbits in computer models with an extra planet.

Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology made headlines worldwide in 2016 with their prediction for a distant Planet Nine. They based their conclusion on a study of six TNOs, each smaller than Pluto, in extremely elongated and tilted orbits around the Sun. The orbits of these “extreme” TNOs were bunched together, Brown and Batygin said, because Planet Nine’s gravity had nudged them there over billions of years. Several more extreme TNOs discovered since then seemed to cluster as well. “I would argue that the relevant [Planet 9] dataset is in pretty good shape,” Batygin says.

Planet Nine is claimed to be five to 10 times as massive as Earth, in an orbit well beyond Neptune. 

Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Lawler and other astronomers were concerned about selection biases, however. Given how small and dark extreme TNOs are, they are only visible—if at all—during their closest approach to the inner Solar System, and often only if they are not observed against the bright backdrop of the Milky Way’s disk. Critics of the Planet Nine claim said the apparent clustering of the discovered TNOs might only be because that’s where telescopes were looking or were most sensitive. “Every survey has biases,” Lawler says. “Some are aware of them, some are not.”

A team led by Kevin Napier of the University of Michigan decided to test whether selection bias was playing a role. They gathered 14 similarly distant TNOs discovered by three different surveys: the Dark Energy Survey (DES) which uses the Blanco Telescope in Chile, the Outer Solar System Origins Survey on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, and a third which used a variety of telescopes. All three had well characterized selection biases. None of the 14 TNOs were among the original six invoked by Brown and Batygin.

Napier says the team took account of when and where the telescopes pointed, and how sensitive they were to faint objects. With that data, the team calculated a “selection function” that varies across the sky. And sure enough, the extreme TNOs found by all three surveys were in or near areas where selection function was highest, the team reported on 11 February in a paper posted to the arXiv and accepted by Planetary Science Journal. As a result, Napier says, the team could not reject the null hypothesis that the extreme TNOs are uniformly distributed around the Solar System, which would rob Planet Nine of its foundational evidence. The clustering “is a consequence of where we look and when we look,” he says. “There’s no need for another model to fit the data.”

Batygin doesn’t accept that conclusion. He points out that the DES survey looked largely in the area of the sky where the TNO cluster he and Brown identified resides and found more extreme TNOs. So ruling out clustering is “not logical,” he says. “The more relevant question to ask is: can their analysis distinguish between a clustered and uniform distribution, and the answer appears to be ‘no’,” he says.

Napier acknowledges that trying to draw conclusions from a sample of 14 TNOs is tricky. “There’s only so much statistical power you can draw with so few objects,” he says. The matter is unlikely to be settled, he adds, until the Vera Rubin Observatory—a powerful new survey telescope being built in Chile—starts observing in 2023. Its survey will have well defined selection biases and is likely to detect hundreds of new extreme TNOs. That, says Napier, “will be like Christmas morning.” 

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