A Michigan professor has been placed on leave after he referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as a “leftist” stunt, and posted other messages online that Twitter deemed racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic. Ferris State University physical science professor Thomas Brennan defended the posts in which he used racist slurs and claimed the health crisis was intended to create “a leftist new world order,” news station WZZM…

An Arizona grandmother and the stranger she accidentally invited to dinner in 2016 have celebrated their fifth Thanksgiving together, their first without her husband who died of COVID-19. Like many Americans, Wanda Dench, 63, and stranger-turned-friend Jamal Hinton, 21, decided not to hold a large Thanksgiving event this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, The New York Times reported. Instead, they had a small dinner…

Guido Vanham and his son Peter Vanham. Peter Vanham Guido Vanham is a virologist, a microbiologist who studies the rapid spreading of viruses, who’s been sending letters to his three children throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The text of his most recent letter is printed below with permission from his son, Peter Vanham. In it, Guido Vanham writes that he’s optimistic about the latest major vaccine…

The Conversation China beat the coronavirus with science and strong public health measures, not just with authoritarianism I live in a democracy. But as Thanksgiving approaches, I find myself longing for the type of freedom I am seeing in China. People in China are able to move around freely right now. Many Americans may believe that the Chinese are able to enjoy this freedom because…

G20 leaders vowed to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines would be fairly distributed worldwide, while declining to explain how they would do so amid funding shortfalls from the world’s poorest nations. In a 10-page communique released following the conclusion of the G20 summit Sunday, leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies said they were “united in our conviction that coordinated global action, solidarity, and multilateral cooperation…

More than one-third of parents believe celebrating Thanksgiving in-person is worth the risk of potentially infecting loved ones with COVID-19, a new poll found. The survey, conducted in August, polled US parents of at least one child living in their home and found that 35 percent believe the benefits of breaking bread together over the holiday outweighs the risk of contracting or spreading coronavirus, according…

Utah Governor Gary Herbert, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum all issued mask mandates. AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, @GovHerbert/Twitter, @DougBurgum/Twitter The US is fighting against a surge of new cases of coronavirus across the country. Governors of Iowa, Utah, and North Dakota all enforced their first statewide mask mandate this month.  The governors cited alarming increases of coronavirus cases in each state…