Story at a glance:

• A U.S. House of Representatives committee report revealed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ $900 million “We Can Do This” COVID-19 campaign was flawed and claimed COVID-19 shots prevented transmission despite the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stating there was no such evidence.

The European Union continues to push hard for a global transition away from fossil fuels, even as the world experiences worsening economic crises year by year. [emphasis, links added]

In August, the BBC published a news item about a Canadian worker killed by two polar bears. [emphasis, links added]

Stem cells are special in the way they can keep on replicating, and turn themselves into many other types of cell.

Ovulation is a crucial moment in the continuous thread of life, and yet we still know very little about it.

Bavarian Nordic’s JYNNEOS live-attenuated monkeypox (mpox) vaccine has been the primary mpox vaccine administered since the clade II outbreak began in 2022.

Two Australian local governments have joined a grassroots campaign calling for state and federal officials to take precautionary action over Covid vaccine safety concerns.

The number of weight-loss drug prescriptions provided by pediatric and adolescent medical specialists for children and teens increased sevenfold between October 2022 and September 2024, according to a MedPage Today analysis of Symphony, a prescription drug database.

Back to Biblical times and beyond, great floods and storms were the promised punishments for those who sinned against the fashionable orthodoxies and beliefs.

John Balbus, who heads the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, says he is hardwiring his office’s work into the agency to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s vowed reforms of the Department of Health and Human Services. [emphasis, links added]

Another largely unmentionable subject at COP29 was that Azerbaijan is a petrostate.

The main focus of this newsletter is, of course, COP29, which is still staggering on in Baku, Azerbaijan though we have staggered home.

The Telegraph has published an entertaining review of a new book called A Very British Cult: Rogue Priests and the Abode of Love by Stuart Flinders.

Sea ice around Antarctica has “slowly increased” since the start of continuous satellite recordings in 1979 with any changes caused by natural climate variation

An unprecedented glimpse of the human brain as it leaves the womb and enters the outside world has revealed an explosive growth spurt.

The Telegraph has just published a political statement from Tedros Ghebreyesus, the first non-medically qualified head of the WHO.