Influential institutions

A Chinese marketing firm likely organized and promoted protests in Washington last year as part of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing influence campaign, according to new research.
The Chinese firm also used a network of over 70 fake news websites to promote pro-China content in an example of the more aggressive efforts by pro-China operatives to influence US political debate in recent years, according to security firm Mandiant, which analyzed the activity.

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Health officials have “virtually” eliminated HIV transmission in parts of Sydney that were once the center of the Australian Aids epidemic, raising hopes of conquering a disease that has killed more than 40mn people.
HIV diagnoses in inner Sydney plunged 88 percent from the 2008-12 average to just 11 cases last year, a decline on a scale never before recorded in a former Aids hotspot.

Much of this will be attributed to education but these new meds are incredible.

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In the spring of 1954, Oppenheimer endured an exhaustive four-week interrogation that questioned his US loyalty and ultimately stripped him of his security clearance. (The US government would ultimately clear his name 68 years later.)

Influential institutions

This study makes three primary contributions to a fuller understanding of the contemporary landscape of incarceration in the United States. First, we assess the scope of decarceration. Between 1999 and 2019, the Black male incarceration rate dropped by 44%, and notable declines in Black male imprisonment were evident in all 50 states. Second, our life table analysis demonstrates marked declines in the lifetime risks of incarceration. For Black men, the lifetime risk of incarceration declined by nearly half from 1999 to 2019. We estimate that less than 1 in 5 Black men born in 2001 will be imprisoned, compared with 1 in 3 for the 1981 birth cohort. Third, decarceration has shifted the institutional experiences of young adulthood. In 2009, young Black men were much more likely to experience imprisonment than college graduation. Ten years later, this trend had reversed, with Black men more likely to graduate college than go to prison. Our results suggest that prison has played a smaller role in the institutional landscape for the most recent generation compared with the generation exposed to the peak of mass incarceration.--a study

The notion that prison is an institution that contributes to development is just staggering.