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Month: July 2019

The Arctic on fire

The Arctic on fire

BBC News reports: Wildfires are ravaging the Arctic, with areas of northern Siberia, northern Scandinavia, Alaska and Greenland engulfed in flames. Lightning frequently triggers fires in the region but this year they have been worsened by summer temperatures that are higher than average because of climate change. Plumes of smoke from the fires can be seen from space. Mark Parrington, a wildfires expert at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams), described them as “unprecedented”. There are hundreds of fires covering…

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How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic

How science got trampled in the rush to drill in the Arctic

Adam Federman reports: Every year, hundreds of petroleum industry executives gather in Anchorage for the annual conference of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, where they discuss policy and celebrate their achievements with the state’s political establishment. In May 2018, they again filed into the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, but they had a new reason to celebrate. Under the Trump administration, oil and gas development was poised to dramatically expand into a remote corner of Alaska where it had…

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Trump’s migration pact with the Guatemalan president

Trump’s migration pact with the Guatemalan president

For The Economist, R.E. writes: Honduras has a little over 9m people—or at least it did. Around 2.2% of the population have been snatched by agents at America’s southern border since October. More still have slipped past; others dream of an escape. Your correspondent is writing this from Tegucigalpa, the capital, where a mood of puzzled gloom prevails among those pondering the exodus. The government, sensing a harsh verdict on its rule, prefers not to mention it. International agencies wonder…

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Trump attacks Elijah Cummings, claiming he represents a rat-infested ‘mess’

Trump attacks Elijah Cummings, claiming he represents a rat-infested ‘mess’

The New York Times reports: President Trump lashed out at a leading African-American congressman on Saturday, calling him “a brutal bully” who represents a Baltimore-based district that has become a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” Mr. Trump’s attack on Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland and leading critic of the president, parroted a segment that aired earlier in the morning on “Fox & Friends.” The president suggested that the…

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While Mueller’s team apparently said his acuity was not an issue, some lawmakers privately worry it was

While Mueller’s team apparently said his acuity was not an issue, some lawmakers privately worry it was

The Washington Post reports: As lawmakers drew closer to the August recess and realized it was now or never to subpoena Mueller, some committee members struggled with whether it was a good idea to bring him in. They talked among themselves about the rumors [that Robert Mueller might not be as sharp as he once was] and whether they could glean any insight from his news conference. There were possible warning signs, some Democrats say privately. For a time, Mueller’s…

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Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset

Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset

Dana Milbank writes: Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset. This doesn’t mean he’s a spy, but neither is it a flip accusation. Russia attacked our country in 2016. It is attacking us today. Its attacks will intensify in 2020. Yet each time we try to raise our defenses to repel the attack, McConnell, the Senate majority leader, blocks us from defending ourselves. Let’s call this what it is: unpatriotic. The Kentucky Republican is, arguably more than any other American, doing…

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We are not at the center of the microbial world

We are not at the center of the microbial world

Ed Yong writes: Aside from those of us with access to microscopes, most people will never see microbes with their own eyes. And so we tend to identify microbes with the disease-causing minority among them, the little buggers that trigger the tickling mist of a sneeze or the pustule on otherwise smooth skin. We become aware of their existence when they threaten our lives, and for much of our history, that threat was substantial. Epidemics of smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, and…

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Judge Andrew Napolitano: Trump has raised a ‘terrifying specter’ and ‘unleashed a torrent of hatred’

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Trump has raised a ‘terrifying specter’ and ‘unleashed a torrent of hatred’

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News analyst, writes: I have known President Trump personally since 1986. The private Trump I have known is funny, charming and embracing. That is not the public Trump of today. When he loudly called for four members of Congress – women of color who oppose nearly all his initiatives and who have questioned his fitness for office – to go back to the places from which they came, he unleashed a torrent of hatred. The…

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The offshore interests of billionaire oligarchs are being promoted by nativist con artists like Trump and Johnson

The offshore interests of billionaire oligarchs are being promoted by nativist con artists like Trump and Johnson

George Monbiot writes: Seven years ago the impressionist Rory Bremner complained that politicians had become so boring that few of them were worth mimicking: “They’re quite homogenous and dull these days … It’s as if character is seen as a liability.” Today his profession has the opposite problem: however extreme satire becomes, it struggles to keep pace with reality. The political sphere, so dull and grey a few years ago, is now populated by preposterous exhibitionists. This trend is not…

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The push for impeachment and the risk of a second Trump term

The push for impeachment and the risk of a second Trump term

The New York Times reports: Robert S. Mueller III’s long-awaited testimony has inflamed divisions among Democrats over impeachment, with some senior lawmakers pushing on Thursday to begin formal impeachment hearings soon, and vulnerable moderates pleading that the party needed to rest its case against President Trump. Liberal House members who have been agitating for impeachment were buoyed by Mr. Mueller’s nearly seven hours of testimony, asserting, despite modest viewership numbers and no dramatic revelations, that the former special counsel’s words…

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Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states, report finds

Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states, report finds

The New York Times reports: The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016, an effort more far-reaching than previously acknowledged and one largely undetected by the states and federal officials at the time. But while the bipartisan report’s warning that the United States remains vulnerable in the next election is clear, its findings were so heavily redacted at the insistence of American intelligence agencies that even some key recommendations…

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NASA should focus on saving Earth

NASA should focus on saving Earth

Lori Garver, former deputy NASA administrator, writes: In a July Pew Research Center study, 63 percent of respondents said monitoring key parts of Earth’s climate system should be the highest priority for the United States’ space agency — sending astronauts to the moon was their lowest priority, at 13 percent ; 18 percent favor Mars. The public is right about this. Climate change — not Russia, much less China — is today’s existential threat. Data from NASA satellites show that future generations here…

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Temperature records are shattered across Europe

Temperature records are shattered across Europe

The Washington Post reports: A historic heat wave has toppled numerous long-standing temperature records with astonishing ease. On Wednesday and Thursday, new national heat records were set in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and temperatures rose to record highs in major cities such as Paris, which soared to 109 degrees. This is the hottest Paris has been in recorded history. The heat wave, caused by a massive area of high pressure extending into the upper atmosphere, also known as a…

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Scientists stunned by ‘city-killer’ asteroid that just missed Earth

Scientists stunned by ‘city-killer’ asteroid that just missed Earth

The Washington Post reports: Alan Duffy was confused. On Thursday, the astronomer’s phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn’t figure out “why everyone was so alarmed.” “I thought everyone was getting worried about something we knew was coming,” Duffy, who is lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, told The Washington Post. Forecasts had already predicted that a couple of asteroids would…

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