Author: TheGuardian

Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a recent study. The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic. The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analyzed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations. The results...

Although the phrase “All politics is local” is usually attributed to Tip O’Neill Jr, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the aphorism probably originated in the February 1932 Associated Press column “Politics at Random,” when the Washington bureau chief, Byron Price, wrote: “All politics is local politics.” As valid as Price’s summarization of inside-the-Beltway politics may be, there is probably a more accurate way to describe the All American sport of civic power-brokering: All politics is racial. Over the last quarter-century, White voters have overwhelmingly identified with the GOP while every other racial and ethnic group...

State residents cheered when the Wisconsin-based manufacturer Oshkosh Defense won a large contract to build a new generation of post office delivery vehicles, up to 165,000. But now Wisconsinites are fuming about the company’s decision to produce those vehicles in South Carolina, rather than Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s political leaders and labor unions are stepping up pressure on Oshkosh Defense as well as the U.S. Postal Service and White House to get the company to do that manufacturing to Wisconsin. The 10-year contract, which could exceed $10bn, is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs. These leaders warn that unless the...

Interest in Anime, gaming, and K-pop is fueling a boom in Korean and Japanese university degrees that is helping to revive modern languages departments struggling with falling enrollments. Acceptances to study Korean more than trebled from 50 to 175 between 2012 and 2018, while Japanese places grew by 71% in the same period, according to a report published this year by the University Council of Modern Languages (UCML). More students now study Korean than Russian, and more take Japanese than Italian, the report shows. Experts said this was due to the popularity of east Asian culture – in particular...

The president has had to withstand a barrage from right-wingers, and for Republicans the formula might be working to their political advantage. It seemed that Joe Biden would be bad for business in “Make America great again” world. In theory, the U.S. president, a white man with working-class roots and moderate policy positions, was a more elusive target for Donald Trump’s increasingly extreme support base than other prominent Democrats. But after his first year in office, it transpires that Biden is not too boring to be a rightwing boogeyman after all. “He’s our best salesperson,” said Ronald Solomon, a...

Even as economists celebrated a job market recovery seen from the beginning of the pandemic, when unemployment peaked at 14.8%, to November when unemployment was 4.2%, Black Americans have continued to see a much higher jobless rate. In November 2021, Black Americans had an unemployment rate of 6.7%, while the unemployment rate for white Americans was 3.5%. The gap is even more pronounced between men: Black men had an unemployment rate of 7.3% in November while white men saw an unemployment rate of 3.4%. That this disparity has continued over the course of the pandemic is unsurprising to economists...