Browsed by
Month: February 2019

A lobbyist at the Trump Tower meeting received $500,000 in suspicious payments

A lobbyist at the Trump Tower meeting received $500,000 in suspicious payments

Comments 0 Comment

BuzzFeed reports: A Russian-born lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 received a series of suspicious payments totaling half a million dollars before and after the encounter. Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military officer turned Washington lobbyist, deposited large, round-number amounts of cash in the months preceding and following the meeting, where a Russian lawyer offered senior Trump campaign officials dirt on Hillary Clinton. The lobbyist also received a large…

Read More Read More

U.S. weapons sold to Saudi Arabia, transferred to Al Qaeda

U.S. weapons sold to Saudi Arabia, transferred to Al Qaeda

Comments 0 Comment

CNN reports: Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States, a CNN investigation has found. The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels battling the coalition for control of the country, exposing some of America’s sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other…

Read More Read More

Iraqi president says Trump did not ask permission to ‘watch Iran’

Iraqi president says Trump did not ask permission to ‘watch Iran’

Comments 0 Comment

Reuters reports: Iraqi President Barham Salih said on Monday that President Donald Trump did not ask Iraq’s permission for U.S. troops stationed there to “watch Iran.” Speaking at a forum in Baghdad, Salih was responding to a question about Trump’s comments to CBS about how he would ask troops stationed in Iraq to “watch” Iran. U.S. troops in Iraq are there as part of an agreement between the two countries with a specific mission of combating terrorism, Salih said, and…

Read More Read More

‘Unprecedented’ floods in Australia

‘Unprecedented’ floods in Australia

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: After weeks of unrelenting heat and bushfires across the continent, torrential rain and flooding in northern Australia have forced hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes in what weather officials describe as an “unprecedented” event. Between Jan. 26 and the morning of Feb. 4, there was close to four feet of rain in Townsville, a coastal city in the state of Queensland, eclipsing records set in 1998 during a flood known as the “Night of…

Read More Read More

Plankton that are both plant-like and animal-like are redefining marine ecology

Plankton that are both plant-like and animal-like are redefining marine ecology

Comments 0 Comment

Knowable magazine reports: Their color gave them away. Ecologist Diane Stoecker was looking at plankton in samples of ocean water from the dock in Woods Hole Harbor in Massachusetts some 40 years ago when she spotted something strange. Under the microscope, she recognized Laboea strobila, shaped like an ice-cream cone — “yellowish green and very beautiful,” she recalls — and the smaller, more spherical Strombidium species — also oddly greenish. Stoecker knew that these single-celled critters, named ciliates for the…

Read More Read More

Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression

Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression

Comments 0 Comment

Science magazine reports: Of all the many ways the teeming ecosystem of microbes in a person’s gut and other tissues might affect health, its potential influences on the brain may be the most provocative. Now, a study of two large groups of Europeans has found several species of gut bacteria are missing in people with depression. The researchers can’t say whether the absence is a cause or an effect of the illness, but they showed that many gut bacteria could…

Read More Read More

Rising temperatures could melt most Himalayan glaciers by 2100, threatening the water supply of 25% of global population

Rising temperatures could melt most Himalayan glaciers by 2100, threatening the water supply of 25% of global population

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: Rising temperatures in the Himalayas, home to most of the world’s tallest mountains, will melt at least one-third of the region’s glaciers by the end of the century even if the world’s most ambitious climate change targets are met, according to a report released Monday. If those goals are not achieved, and global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the Himalayas could lose two-thirds of its glaciers by 2100, according to…

Read More Read More

Gigantic cavity in Antarctica glacier is a product of rapid melting, study finds

Gigantic cavity in Antarctica glacier is a product of rapid melting, study finds

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: The Thwaites Glacier on Antarctica’s western coast has long been considered one of the most unstable on the continent. Now, scientists are worried about the discovery of an enormous underwater cavity that will probably speed up the glacier’s decay. The cavity is about two-thirds the area of Manhattan and nearly 1,000 feet tall, according to a study released Wednesday by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The hulking chamber is large enough to have contained about 14…

Read More Read More

Tasmania is burning

Tasmania is burning

Comments 0 Comment

Richard Flanagan writes: As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne…

Read More Read More

Fool Britannia

Fool Britannia

Comments 0 Comment

Hari Kunzru writes: From the ill-conceived Brexit referendum onward, Britain’s governing class has embarrassed itself. The Remain campaign was complacent, the Leave campaign brazenly mendacious, and as soon as the result was known, most of the loudest advocates for severing ties with the European Union ran away like naughty schoolboys whose cricket ball had smashed a greenhouse window. Negotiations have revealed the pitiful intellectual limitations of a succession of blustering cabinet ministers, the leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition…

Read More Read More

Blackface is the tip of the iceberg

Blackface is the tip of the iceberg

Comments 0 Comment

Jamelle Bouie writes: In American politics, lawmakers can get a pass for almost anything short of open allegiance to racist ideologies or the explicit use of racist imagery. There is a logic to this dynamic, even as it produces absurd results, like forceful condemnations of racism from a Virginia Republican Party that fielded an unapologetic neo-Confederate for Senate just over three months ago or calls for Northam’s resignation from a Republican National Committee that otherwise stands firmly behind President Trump….

Read More Read More

Trump nominates former lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry as the next Interior secretary

Trump nominates former lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry as the next Interior secretary

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: President Trump announced Monday that he will nominate David Bernhardt, a veteran lobbyist who has helped orchestrate the administration’s push to expand oil and gas drilling as the Interior Department’s number-two official, to serve as the next secretary. If confirmed, Bernhardt, a 49-year old Colorado native known for his unrelenting work habits, would be well positioned to roll back even more of the Obama-era conservation policies he has worked to unravel since joining Interior a year…

Read More Read More

Trump administration is slower to fill jobs and has higher turnover than any other administration

Trump administration is slower to fill jobs and has higher turnover than any other administration

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: From the Justice Department to Veterans Affairs, vast swaths of the government have top positions filled by officials serving in an acting capacity — or no one at all. More than two years into Trump’s term, the president has an acting chief of staff, attorney general, defense secretary, Office of Management and Budget director and Environmental Protection Agency chief. To deal with the number of vacancies in the upper ranks of departments, agencies have been relying…

Read More Read More

Most Americans support appropriate levels of taxation on those with excessive wealth

Most Americans support appropriate levels of taxation on those with excessive wealth

Comments 0 Comment

Politico reports: The prospect of 70 percent tax rates for multimillionaires and special levies on the super-rich draw howls about creeping socialism and warnings of economic disaster in much of Washington. But polling suggests that when it comes to soaking the rich, the American public is increasingly on board. Surveys are showing overwhelming support for raising taxes on top earners, including a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Monday that found 76 percent of registered voters believe the wealthiest Americans should…

Read More Read More