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Month: March 2018

The Supreme Court case that could give tech giants more power

The Supreme Court case that could give tech giants more power

Lina M. Khan writes: Big tech platforms — Amazon, Facebook, Google — control a large and growing share of our commerce and communications, and the scope and degree of their dominance poses real hazards. A bipartisan consensus has formed around this idea. Senator Elizabeth Warren has charged tech giants with using their heft to “snuff out competition,” and even Senator Ted Cruz — usually a foe of government regulation — recently warned of their “unprecedented” size and power. While the…

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Russia’s new trove of bizarre doomsday devices

Russia’s new trove of bizarre doomsday devices

Jeffrey Lewis writes: The U.S. developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile in the 1960s, but it was canceled it because, well, it was insane. The nuclear-powered ramjet was literally deafening to people on the ground and left a trail of radioactivity from the unshielded reactor. The United States couldn’t even find a suitable place to fight-test this monster. Officials worried that if it went off course from the Nevada nuclear test site, it might crash into Las Vegas. Putin says Russia…

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Syria’s long war has reached its Srebrenica moment

Syria’s long war has reached its Srebrenica moment

Roy Gutman writes: The Assad regime and Russia are poised to destroy totally the East Ghouta region just outside Damascus or expel its population of some 400,000, and nothing but the empty words of the United Nations, the United States, and Europe stand in their way. So, too, 23 years ago, the world sat mostly mute, watching events unfold in and around the small village of Srebrenica in a remote corner of eastern Bosnia. No government was ready to lift…

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Myanmar continues to kill its Rohingya — a genocide in slow motion

Myanmar continues to kill its Rohingya — a genocide in slow motion

Nicholas Kristof writes: Sono Wara spent the day crying. And even after her tear ducts emptied, her shirt was still wet from leaking milk. Her newborn twins had died the previous day, and she squatted in her grass-roof hut, shattered by pain and grief. She is 18 and this was her first pregnancy, but as a member of the Rohingya ethnic minority she could not get a doctor’s help. So after a difficult delivery, her twins lie buried in the…

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Nor’easters are now just as dangerous as hurricanes

Nor’easters are now just as dangerous as hurricanes

Eric Holthaus writes: On Friday and Saturday, the winter storm now moving up the East Coast will unleash hurricane-force winds on Washington, blizzard conditions across parts of New York and New England, and inflict the worst coastal flood in Boston’s history. By all accounts, this storm is a monster. It’s also the latest sign that New England’s long-feared coastal flooding problem is already here — and it’s time to admit climate change is its primary cause. The storm’s strongest winds…

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Oil was central in decision to shrink Bears Ears Monument, emails show

Oil was central in decision to shrink Bears Ears Monument, emails show

The New York Times reports: Even before President Trump officially opened his high-profile review last spring of federal lands protected as national monuments, the Department of Interior was focused on the potential for oil and gas exploration at a protected Utah site, internal agency documents show. The debate started as early as March 2017, when an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, asked a senior Interior Department official to consider shrinking Bears Ears National Monument in the southeastern…

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Jarrod Dicker on what the blockchain can do for news

Jarrod Dicker on what the blockchain can do for news

Mathew Ingram writes: For journalists who are also into new technology, Jarrod Dicker has a pretty compelling CV: He was the head of product management at Huffington Post, director of digital products at Time Inc., helped run operations at online-publishing startup RebelMouse, and ran a digital-research lab at The Washington Post. With a career like that, lots of people in media pay attention when Dicker calls something interesting, and so many heads turned when he said he was leaving the…

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