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Author: By Paul Woodward

News organizations are timidly changing their approach to covering climate crisis

News organizations are timidly changing their approach to covering climate crisis

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The New York Times reports: As Europe heats up, Greenland melts and the Midwest floods, many news organizations are devoting more resources to climate change as they cover the topic with more urgency. In Florida, six newsrooms with different owners have taken the unusual step of pooling their resources and sharing their reporting on the issue. They plan to examine how climate change will affect the state’s enormous agriculture sector as well as “the future of coastal towns and cities…

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Research on honeybees hit by Trump budget cuts

Research on honeybees hit by Trump budget cuts

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CNN reports: The US Department of Agriculture has suspended data collection for its annual Honey Bee Colonies report, citing cost cuts — a move that robs researchers and the honeybee industry of a critical tool for understanding honeybee population declines, and comes as the USDA is curtailing other research programs. It’s also another step toward undoing President Barack Obama’s government-wide focus on protecting pollinators, including bees and butterflies, whose populations have plummeted in recent years. [Continue reading…] WJLA reports: Last…

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The Trump kakistocracy: Government ‘for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools’

The Trump kakistocracy: Government ‘for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools’

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Take Your Daughter To Work Day#UnwantedIvanka pic.twitter.com/nnTzm0Pu51 — Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) July 1, 2019 It’s hard to watch the Trump presidency — the definition of a kakistocracy (“government by the worst people”) — without anticipating its denouement, not so much as expectation but more so as wish. What end would be most fitting, even if it might be unlikely? Donald Trump’s message has been consistent: He can get away with anything. He gloats from the throne of his impunity. The…

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Donald Trump doesn’t deny he’s a rapist

Donald Trump doesn’t deny he’s a rapist

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In response to the latest allegation that he engaged in a sexual assault, Donald Trump’s first line of defense is to claim that the victim is not his kind of woman — he doesn’t deny that he is this kind of man. In reference to E. Jean Carroll, Trump says: “Number one, she’s not my type,” but he leaves open the possibility that any woman who is his type, might be the type of woman he would consider raping if…

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World scientists’ warning to humanity on microorganisms and climate change

World scientists’ warning to humanity on microorganisms and climate change

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An editorial in Nature says: In 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC, and more than 1,700 researchers, issued the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity. It cautioned that humans were inflicting “harsh and often irreversible damage” on the environment, and that current practices were endangering humanity’s future. More than 21,000 scientists have so far endorsed a widely publicized and equally stark second warning, issued in 2017. This week, part of the Scientists’ Warning movement calls attention to a…

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The search for extraterrestrial technology finds none

The search for extraterrestrial technology finds none

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The Guardian reports: The close encounter will have to wait. Astronomers have come up empty-handed after scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life in the most extensive search ever performed. Researchers used ground-based telescopes to eavesdrop on 1,327 stars within 160 light years of Earth. During three years of observations they found no evidence of signals that could plausibly come from an alien civilisation. The only signals picked up by the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia and the…

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Why Trump remains open to receiving foreign aid during election campaigns

Why Trump remains open to receiving foreign aid during election campaigns

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Following Donald Trump’s reiteration that he would gladly receive electoral assistance from any source, Jack Shafer notes: Had Trump answered the hypothetical about taking campaign information from the Russians in 2020 in any other way than he did, it would have been read as a confession that he and his son did something wrong in 2016, and Trump almost never admits to having been wrong—or to anyone in his family being at fault. Confirming that Trump’s statement now amounts to…

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Rory Stewart: ‘The way that you change the world is being honest to the way the world is.’

Rory Stewart: ‘The way that you change the world is being honest to the way the world is.’

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With no notes — the eloquence, clarity, and conviction all his own — Rory Stewart tests a revolutionary proposition: that it is possible to become a national leader by being deeply committed to truthfulness; by being able to discriminate between reality and fantasy; and by placing national interest above personal ambition. In a world where clowns succeed, lies flow in all directions, and the media is perpetually focused on maximizing audience size, Stewart’s seriousness is utterly out of place. But…

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Trump’s obfuscation on the climate crisis

Trump’s obfuscation on the climate crisis

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Following Donald Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan on Wednesday where he talked about the weather changing “both ways,” noted that “it used to be called global warming,” then “climate change,” and now “it’s actually called extreme weather,” Eugene Robinson wrote: “it’s breathtaking that anyone could pack so much ignorance into so few words.” Robinson is doing what so many others do: treat Trump’s statements on the climate crisis as though they merely reflect his ignorance on the issue. The remedy…

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How angry pilots got the Navy to stop dismissing UFO sightings

How angry pilots got the Navy to stop dismissing UFO sightings

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The Washington Post reports: A recent uptick in sightings of unidentified flying objects — or as the military calls them, “unexplained aerial phenomena” — prompted the Navy to draft formal procedures for pilots to document encounters, a corrective measure that former officials say is long overdue. As first reported by POLITICO, these intrusions have been happening on a regular basis since 2014. Recently, unidentified aircraft have entered military-designated airspace as often as multiple times per month, Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for…

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Notre Dame as a metaphor for our planet

Notre Dame as a metaphor for our planet

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In a world where we are so often told that the indomitable human spirit can accomplish almost anything, the response to catastrophes natural or otherwise, accidental or intentional, is that following every loss we can rebuild or recreate. Whatever falls can rise anew — or so the popular conviction would have it. Likewise, in the realm of our mundane and material life, whatever breaks or wears out, can be replaced — often with something better. We live in collective denial…

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The Brexiteers who object to being called ‘white’ prefer to be called ‘the people’

The Brexiteers who object to being called ‘white’ prefer to be called ‘the people’

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On Channel 4 News on March 29, veteran news broadcaster, Jon Snow, candidly observed he had “never seen so many white people in one place,” in reference to the crowd of pro-Brexit protesters gathered in Westminster on the day the UK was meant to leave the EU. What was surely an honest statement, stung some sensitive skin. His remark drew 2,644 complaints sent to the British regulatory body, Ofcom, which prohibits the use of offensive language on television. Sputnik columnist,…

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When did Donald Trump become an environmentalist?

When did Donald Trump become an environmentalist?

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Well before he became a presidential candidate, Donald Trump professed a deep concern about the welfare of birds endangered by wind turbines: “[Wind power] kills all the birds,” Trump told 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on the latter’s radio show Tuesday. “Thousands of birds are lying on the ground. And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California — they’ve killed so many eagles. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill]…

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Speed kills

Speed kills

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When Evan Williams created Blogger and triggered the social media revolution of push-button publishing, an unquestioned presupposition underpinning the creation of the platform was that there was inherent value in reducing the temporal distance between authorship and publication. Supposedly, if anyone, anywhere, could broadcast their words to the world without any barriers standing in the way, this would represent the greatest leap forward in communication since Gutenberg. That turns out to have been a false presupposition for several reasons. What…

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Grassroots antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party

Grassroots antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party

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Jeremy Corbyn’s stated preference is that the media should pay more attention to those Jews who claim that there isn’t a serious problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party than to those who say the opposite: If I were in CCHQ, my next PPB (and every other PPB) would just be this video pic.twitter.com/y2RN90BmGo — Robert Colvile (@rcolvile) February 23, 2019 The letter signed by 200 Jewish Labour Party members to which Corbyn referred in this Sky News interview, states:…

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Mueller’s leak-proof investigation

Mueller’s leak-proof investigation

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On Friday, Peter Carr, spokesman for the Mueller investigation, released a brief statement challenging the accuracy of “specific statements” in BuzzFeed‘s blockbuster 1500-word report on Donald Trump instructing Michael Cohen to lie to Congress: BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate. The Washington Post then reported: Inside the Justice Department, the statement was viewed as a huge step, and…

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