Bloomberg - Oxford Scientists Find Gene That Doubles Risk of Dying From Covid-19: “Scientists identified a specific gene that doubles the risk of respiratory failure from Covid-19 and may go some way to explaining why some ethnic groups are more susceptible to severe disease than others. Researchers from the University of Oxford found that a higher-risk version of the gene most likely prevents the cells lining airways and the lungs from responding to the virus properly. About 60% of people with South Asian ancestry carry this version of the gene, compared with 15% of people with European heritage, according to the studypublished Thursday. The findings help explain why higher rates of hospitalization and death may have been seen in certain communities and on the Indian subcontinent. The authors cautioned that the gene cannot be used as a sole explanation as many other factors, such as socioeconomic conditions, play a role. Despite a significant impact from the virus to people with Afro-Caribbean ancestry, only 2% carry the higher-risk genotype…”
The adequacy and efficacy of Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing
Pomeranz Presents Ghosting The Tax Authority: Fake Firms And Tax Fraud Today At The OMG Transatlantic Tax Talks
Jason Edelstein knows how to pick locks, avoid security cameras, bypass electric fences and dodge guards.
In the dead of night, he’s broken into data centres and critical infrastructure sites and stolen sensitive information.
Meet the ‘ethical hackers’ fighting the rising threat of cybercrime
Police will investigate further, after the alleged created false accounts such as bank, telephone and credit lines between August 2019 and September 2021.
Tax Inspectors Without Borders
Tax Inspectors Without Borders – a great joint OECD / UNDP programme in which John Christensen, formerly of the Tax Justice Network has played a
Read the full article…
Scientists believe obesity may be cured by modifying a series of genes called ‘hippo’.
Daniel N. Shaviro (NYU), Bittker’s Pendulum and the Taxation of Multinationals, 173 Tax Notes Fed. 621 (Nov. 1, 2021):
In this report, Shaviro examines the recent calls for increased entity-level corporate income taxation of multinationals, on both a source and a residence basis, and he details historical parallels.
UNSETTLED SCIENCE: Letting babies eat eggs could help avoid allergy later, study says.
Moll Cutpurse , who ran a criminal empire in 1600s London, was an early Queen of the underworld
How To Memorize Something Complex? There’s A System For That
1. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage. I read this as a kid, and was surprised how well my reread held up. To the point, subtle, and with an economy of means. I hope the new Paul Auster biography of Crane (which I will read soon) will revive interest in this classic.
2. Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah. #2 in the Dune series, I disliked this one as a tot, but currently am marveling at its political sophistication. Somewhat uneven, but better than its reputation. The Wikipedia page for the book also indicates that Villeneuve is likely to do a Dune 3 based on this story.
3. Elisabeth Anderson (not the philosopher), Agents of Reform: Child Labor and the Origins of the Welfare State. Considers the political economy of child labor reform Germany, France, the United States, and the failed case of Belgium. Pathbreaking, a major advance on the extant literature. The explanations are messy rather than monocausal, but often focus on the success or failure of individual policy entrepreneurs.
4. Gordon Teskey, Spenserian Moments. No one seems to care about poor old Edmund Spenser, yet there seem to be quite a few good books about him.
5. Patrick McGilligan, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. The best book on Hitchcock, John Nye recommended it to me eight years ago.
There is Howard Husock, The Poor Side of Town, And Why We Need It.
And Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.
Richard A. Williams, Fixing Food: An FDA Insider Unravels the Myths and Their Solutions, covers the food regulatory side of the FDA, and:
Markus K. Brunnermeier, The Resilient Society.
ICAC has dived deeply into a very thin slice of politics, and presented us the language and culture of politics, and the social difficulties faced by some politicians, with very little context (“MPs divided over Gladys Berejiklan’s testimony”, October 31). MPs should definitely not be declaring sex with anyone to anyone as part of any government or parliamentary process. ICAC demonstrated that our longstanding political process is one of government by friends and frenemies. Once sex or other personal behaviours become declarable, they open the political process to criminal and foreign influence via blackmail. Peter Egan, Artarmon
Your editorial barely touches on the reasons for the NSW ICAC investigation into the ex-premier’s government by only emphasising failure to disclose a secret relationship and the issue of public trust (“PM, listen to voters and back a federal ICAC”, November 4). Surely, the investigation concerns whether she broke the ministerial code of conduct by suppressing the relationship, created a conflict of interest in financial decision-making, and failed in her duty to inform ICAC of what should have been concerns about one of her ministers.
Widespread Security Risk Identified in Phones and Bluetooth Devices SpectrumIEEE
A Drone Tried to Disrupt the Power Grid. It Won’t Be the Last Wired
A critical opportunity to ban killer robots – while we still can Amnesty International
Australia’s biggest auditor PwC has used dozens of unqualified workers, on lower salaries and with less training and resources than their main office counterpart, to complete audit work for large listed clients from an unbranded office in western Sydney’s Parramatta.
The 40-odd workers in the “Skills Hub”, who include university students without any accounting experience, say they work for ASX 200 clients such as Stockland and Iluka Resources, and allege they are not subject to appropriate oversight or training.
PwC used unqualified staff in secret ‘hub’ to audit ASX 200 firms
Raw Photos Of Landfills Show The Extreme Amount Of Waste Humans Produce - BuzzFeed News: “Thousands of diplomats and activists are currently convening in Glasgow to discuss the worsening climate crisis at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26). Sustainability, pollution, and mitigation will be covered, and with that, this felt like a good time to look at all the things that go to waste. 1,825 pounds of trash per year: That’s how much the average American produces, according to statistics by the Environmental Protection Agency, which tracks facts and figures of municipal solid waste. According to the agency’s findings, food and paper top the rankings for types of waste going into landfills. Another big piece of the trash equation is plastic. Just last year, the US shipped about 1.4 billion pounds of plastic trash overseas.
And according to a new report by the Bennington College, Vermont-based project Beyond Plastic, plastic production is quickly becoming a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. “If plastic were a country, it would be the world’s fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter, beating out all but China, the US, India and Russia,” the report states. America certainly isn’t the only culprit when it comes to overconsumption and needing new solutions to waste management, as these photos show the handling of waste in a variety of ways around the globe…” [Please reuse, recycle, up-cycle, compost, donate for further use, buy used products, and diminish buying – there is far more “waste” than places to dump along with the huge environmental and health ramifications.]