Month: August 2022

Enlarge / Mehmet Oz, US Republican Senate candidate for Pennsylvania, speaks during a campaign event in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, US, on Thursday, June 9, 2022. (credit: Getty | Bloomberg)

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mehmet Oz—aka Dr. Oz—repeatedly emailed top-level Trump administration officials, urging them to push the ineffective malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, to treat COVID-19 based on scant, sketchy data from a now-disgraced French researcher.

Emails from the notorious celebrity doctor were revealed for the first time Wednesday in a report from the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis. The report, titled "A 'Knife Fight' with the FDA," delved into how the Trump administration worked to undermine, pressure, and bully the Food and Drug Administration during the pandemic.

Specifically, it unearthed how the Trump White House pressured the FDA to bend safety standards so that COVID-19 vaccines could be released before election day. It also revealed the tenacious efforts and subterfuge by top Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro and advisor Steven Hatfill to pressure the FDA into supporting the use of the debunked malaria drug. The report's title stems from a direct quote from Hatfill that the White House had a "knife fight scheduled with the FDA" over hydroxychloroquine.

Enlarge / The Dolmen of Guadalperal completely visible in July 2019 due to a low water level in the Valdecañas reservoir. (credit: Pleonr /CC BY-SA 4.0)

Last week we told you about the flurry of recent coverage resurfacing 2018 news stories about the re-emergence of so-called "hunger stones" due to extreme drought conditions in Europe. We also noted that Europe is once again in the midst of a historically severe drought. Now an ancient site known as the "Spanish Stonehenge"—submerged underwater by a reservoir for decades—has been fully exposed for the second time since 2019 due to low water levels in the reservoir.

The site is also known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, a circular grouping of 150 large vertical granite stones (called orthostats) dating back to between 2000 and 3000 BCE. However, Roman artifacts recovered at the site—a coin, ceramic fragments, and a grinding stone—suggest it might have been used even earlier. A team led by German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier discovered the monument in 1926 near a town called Peraleda de la Mata.

Among the recovered artifacts were 11 axes, flint knives, ceramics, and a copper punch. A nearby settlement likely housed the people who built the monument, given the presence of houses, charcoal and ash stains, pottery, and stones to hone axes. Obermaier restored some of the granite stones to their rightful places and made reproductions of the engravings, which were published in 1960.