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Month: December 2018

After 41 years, Voyager 2 spacecraft enters interstellar space

After 41 years, Voyager 2 spacecraft enters interstellar space

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Science News reports: Voyager 2 has entered interstellar space. The spacecraft slipped out of the huge bubble of particles that encircles the solar system on November 5, becoming the second ever human-made craft to cross the heliosphere, or the boundary between the sun and the stars. Coming in second place is no mean achievement. Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to exit the solar system in 2012. But that craft’s plasma instrument stopped working in 1980, leaving scientists without a…

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Senate votes to limit war powers in Yemen, angered by Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Senate votes to limit war powers in Yemen, angered by Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi

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The New York Times reports: The Senate voted resoundingly on Thursday to withdraw American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, issuing the latest in a series of stinging bipartisan rebukes of President Trump for his defense of the kingdom amid outrage in both parties over Riyadh’s role in the killing of a dissident journalist. The 56-to-41 vote was a rare move by the Senate to limit presidential war powers and send a potent message of official disapproval for…

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Conservative peer Lord Heseltine on Brexit: ‘My generation betrayed the young generation’

Conservative peer Lord Heseltine on Brexit: ‘My generation betrayed the young generation’

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"My generation betrayed the young generation." Conservative peer Lord Heseltine says it is "appalling…that our young people are being ignored" over Brexit, in the latest Ways To Change The World podcast. pic.twitter.com/qWzBxuNHsg — Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) December 12, 2018

Facebook’s fake concern about fake news evident to its factcheckers

Facebook’s fake concern about fake news evident to its factcheckers

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The Guardian reports: Journalists working as factcheckers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation. Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform’s collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they’ve lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said…

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The new authoritarians are waging war on women

The new authoritarians are waging war on women

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Peter Beinart writes: [B]esides their hostility to liberal democracy, the right-wing autocrats taking power across the world share one big thing, which often goes unrecognized in the U.S.: They all want to subordinate women. To understand global Trumpism, argues Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist at Texas A&M, it’s vital to remember that for most of human history, leaders and their male subjects forged a social contract: “Men agreed to be ruled by other men in return for all men…

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Former Ford executives convicted for crimes against humanity

Former Ford executives convicted for crimes against humanity

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The Associated Press reports: An Argentine court on Tuesday sentenced two former Ford Motor Co. executives to prison for helping agents of the country’s former dictatorship round up 24 Argentine union workers who were tortured and held in military jails. The courtroom was crowded with some of the victims and family members, some of whom broke into tears and hugged after the sentencing for crimes against humanity was announced. The court said that factory manufacturing director Pedro Muller and security…

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‘Self-aware’ fish raises questions about mirror test

‘Self-aware’ fish raises questions about mirror test

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Elizabeth Preston writes: A little blue-and-black fish swims up to a mirror. It maneuvers its body vertically to reflect its belly, along with a brown mark that researchers have placed on its throat. The fish then pivots and dives to strike its throat against the sandy bottom of its tank with a glancing blow. Then it returns to the mirror. Depending on which scientists you ask, this moment represents either a revolution or a red herring. Alex Jordan, an evolutionary…

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The race to understand Antarctica’s most terrifying glacier

The race to understand Antarctica’s most terrifying glacier

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Jon Gertner writes: Few places in Antarctica are more difficult to reach than Thwaites Glacier, a Florida-sized hunk of frozen water that meets the Amundsen Sea about 800 miles west of McMurdo. Until a decade ago, barely any scientists had ever set foot there, and the glacier’s remoteness, along with its reputation for bad weather, ensured that it remained poorly understood. Yet within the small community of people who study ice for a living, Thwaites has long been the subject…

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Have the Democrats hit a tipping point on climate change?

Have the Democrats hit a tipping point on climate change?

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The New Republic reports: When President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address nearly a year ago, he didn’t talk about climate change. But he didn’t get criticized nearly as much as the Democratic Party did for failing to mention the topic in its official response to Trump’s speech. The omission led the Sierra Club to declare that Democrats had “a climate change problem,” while the far-right website Breitbart announced that global warming had “officially ceased being…

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Lessons in democracy from the migrant caravan that Trump calls ‘lawless’

Lessons in democracy from the migrant caravan that Trump calls ‘lawless’

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Jesus Rodriguez writes: The caravan migrants who arrived at the border nearly a month ago don’t have a country. But they do have a government. In the time since the caravan left Honduras in mid-October, the asylum-seekers have fashioned a proto-democracy out of their group of some 6,000 migrants overwhelmingly from Central America, most of whom have walked for most of the trip, at times hitching rides in the backs of cars or trucks. To hear President Donald Trump tell…

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Saudi Arabia declares war on America’s Muslim congresswomen

Saudi Arabia declares war on America’s Muslim congresswomen

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Ola Salem writes: Ever since the midterm election, conservative media in the United States have targeted with special zeal Ilhan Omar, an incoming Somali-American Democratic congresswoman and a devout Muslim who wears hijab. In response to Democrats’ push to remove a headwear ban on the House floor to accommodate Omar, conservative commentator and pastor E.W. Jackson complained on a radio show that Muslims were transforming Congress into an “Islamic republic.” The Democratic Party has several rising political stars with Arab…

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The pro-Israel push to purge U.S. campus critics

The pro-Israel push to purge U.S. campus critics

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Katherine Franke writes: There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in…

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